The theme of the last few days has been Chopped. Chopped is one of our favorite shows, so we download it and watch it on the laptop when we need a break. It is a fun show that starts with a mystery basket of four strange ingredients and the chefs are supposed to create tasty, creative meals with them. It is a lot like how we cook here. You never know what new interesting ingredients will be at the store or what they will be out of or what we will find on the property, and since we have no stove, we always have to think of creative uses. Lately it has been chopped veggies, rice, fish and ginger all thrown together in the rice cooker for lunch (and sometimes dinner) and chopped coconuts (and coconut water) and starfruit with coffee for breakfast.

Farm-fresh breakfast!

But beyond TV shows, the Chopped theme has been present in other ways as well. Britton managed to process all the wood from the torn down deck bathroom by separating the good pieces that will be used for the chicken/turkey coop and chopping and bagging all the unusable pieces.

Lots of bags=lots of work

Kitty even helped out a little in his supervisory capacities making sure everything was safe with the chop saw

When that was all finished, we went on to the next chopping project of chopping down more trees to clear the land for our orchard and poultry. Britton had been doing it all by hand with just a handsaw or bowsaw and while he was getting much stronger and faster, it was still a slow process. At Home Depot we saw a chainsaw marked down from over $200 to $99 and so we thought that would be very helpful. It also makes the job inherently more dangerous and while Britton took safety precautions, he still managed to chop a little portion of the tip of his thumb when we was adjusting the chain blades.

But that was a much better warning than if the machine had been on. One day we worked for about 6 hours under these trees. I used the loppers and took down the small trees and vines that are under 2 inches in diameter and cleared the area for Britton to work chopping and piling. I also took the hose around to all our baby transplant trees. This property will take everything that we have, but it is becoming more and more manageable every day and we enjoy the work, believe it or not.

Like a hot knife through butter…the work is much easier with a chainsaw

We still have lots to do -all these trees need to come down (Britton is in white below)
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