Q Kealoha

paul wheaton wrote:

Roberta Wilkinson wrote:Is this for sure happening on the big island, or is the choice of island still in flux?

Nothing is for sure. I know that Seth is plotting and scheming. He has somebody he is talking to about being the primary host.

I would like to say that I would like all expenses paid for jocelyn and i. And that jocelyn doesn't have to do anything. And it would be nice if cassie could get covered too (although I will make cassie work!

I think if the even covered five days and we were there for ten days, that would be about right.

Maybe the even could be two days of presentations and three days of permaculture tours.

Jocelyn puts so much stuff into the empire and the labs for zero pay: I just feel like it would be great if she could get the red carpet treatment.

I hope you could at least hit all the MAJOR islands: Big Island, Maui, O'ahu and Kaua'i.

While Big Island does have a lot to work with, most of the farming that takes place in Hawaii is done on O'ahu, which is the central island for the State, offering the most venues for presentations.

You can't make everyone happy, but I can only hope that you could possibly do something on every major island instead of everything on one, thus limiting your exposure.



P.S. I've been attempting to get Willie to come to O'ahu for a potentially huge project that requires large scale reforestation on the Ka'iwi coast. They are currently in a bid war to win the mountainous land for sale, and if they do win, it would be the first time that a stretch of land from the mountain to the sea would be protected from development. I think this could be a huge opportunity for the leading experts in permaculture to show what can they can do by transforming this essentially desolate (yet beautiful) area and maximizing it's potential using permaculture techniques.

To learn more about the project, go to http://www.kaiwicoast.com

Is like to see a forum on tropical permaculture.

Wow...I'm so blown away that Paul answered my questions!

P.S. Paul: English is my first language, I just have fat fingers that don't work well with a smart phone keyboard.

I live in Hawaii in a zone 12b, on the eastern side of the island of Oahu.

- soil sucks here; pure adobe with top soil nonexistent due to severe run off and lock of organic material. currently attempting a back to Eden Garden approach. your recommendations for best way to build the soil?

- so far, 6 cover crops have failed ( white and red clover, sweet clover, buckwheat, cow peas) likely due to soil conditions and intense Sun during the summer and sometimes spring months. will be attempting to use Sun hemp. your recommendation for a hardy tropical brown cover/biomass accumulator?

- currently using a model similar to yours to rebuild the forest using breadfruit trees. Forest in my area is dominated by leucaena leucocephala, and currently cutting and dropping this material as tree slash to help build the soil and water soluble aggregates. plan is to attempt to build a sustainable food forest that the ancient hawaiians had on several islands using the breadfruit tree. Given soil conditions, heat and limited rainfall during late spring and summer months, do you think it is a good approach to try and rebuild a forest like this or would it be better to incorporate various other crops, and if so which trees and that life do you recommend for this area?

- finally, when are you and Paul coming to Hawaii to do a seminar?

Thanks Paul and Willie.