Hawaii permies roll call

Roll Call! for all permies in Hawaii Nei. auwe, ka nani.

Please post your Island, your area, experience, and resource available for trade/bater/gift.

Myself - Big Island, Kaiwiki Mauka
just north of hilo, 1900' elevation, 200+ inches annual rainfall
dense cover of waiawi, heavily eroded clay soil, topsoil nonexistent in any open area

I manage my land with an aim towards timber production. growing Koa, timber bamboo, and various hardwoods. Also growing lots of kalo, sugar cane, and sweet potato. I raise pigs - a blend of wild boar and potbelly - that thrive on grass, green bananas and some food scraps. pigs are for sale or for imu. I have a dexter bull, and i'm looking for a heifer to mate with him. i have a small nursery and greenhouse where i propagate bamboo, some LEGAL psychoactives and Koa seedlings. i'm growing tea to test it's feasibility as a cash crop. i have propagules of these plants, as well as a wide selection of other permaculture plants. I'm happy to trade seeds for 5 minutes of permaculture chatting.

I have some equipment (tiller, chipper, chainsaws, and about 10,000 machetes), knowledge of felling trees and milling, experience with carpentry, solar PV, irrigation+plumbing and of course cultivation...general homesteading stuffs. I'm happy to share these paltry skills and limited tools with anyone.

I'd like to find is a purebred dexter heifer to be Kau Kau's (the dexter bull) girlfriend.

Ua mau ke ea o ka aina
Moku nui o Hawai'i no ka oi

shoots den, we cruise em. aloha

Hey, howzit, Kaiwiki Clay! I'm in Hawaii, too. Not very far from you, all things considered. Same road, 1400 foot level! We're neighbors.


Just recently getting into the goal of permaculture, but have not done too much. We're raising chickens that cruise around the yard for bugs and stuff but they're still eating feed from Dels. We had a vegetable garden that eventually got weeded over and so now we're starting over with a rain shelter/greenhouse that is nearly finished. This is less from the idea that the rain creates an impossible situation (it seems that way sometimes), but more from being realistic about our desire to go out and weed a patch of mud after two weeks straight of rain. Plus, on our first go around I had added so much sand and compost to the clay that it lost its natural stickiness and we problems with soil erosion/loss in heavy rain. So our solution is to keep the rain off. We have a goal of eventually feeding the chickens only on what comes off our land. And also a plan of raising rabbits.

We have a very tiny plot compared to most of Kaiwiki, so our possibilities are more limited. I have a lot of ideas and do a lot of research but have not put a lot of these ideas in action yet. Mostly we'd like to move toward growing some food with composted inputs from our own land and feeding chickens and rabbits from the land. We've also put charcoal in the ground with the idea of trying anything that might work. Building the greenhouse from scratch has been the major project lately. The next project is replanting the vegetable garden and then planting some trees that could be sources of green manure.

It would be fun to trade ideas. Although, it sounds like we could learn a lot more from you than the other way around.

Please drop by or contact back throughout he thread! Our address is 2579, the first driveway above the one lane bridge that's above Kaiwiki park and the old chapel. I don't think we've met already...? Are you the place with all the funny street signs?

Aloha,

Mike

Awesome!

I'll stop by the next time I get a chance!

Good lord I know the problem with vegetables. I gave up on the idea of market gardening after two years of watching grass invade everything. Makes even a diehard permie like myself want to use roundup. Ugh. (note: not gonna). Plant selection is crucial. Recently, I've been planting vetiver around all my garden patches. It really slows down the wainaku grass.

I'm just past the place with the "snowplow" signs. That family has a large hoophouse, and is growing a lot of veggies in it. I'll be building a bigger hoophouse hopefully before the winter rains set in.

More and more folks on the hill are getting into growing food. It's a great neighborhood. I lucked out to move here, to Ka Wao Akua - the forest of god

Aloha

Clay, Mike,

I hope you get some kind of alert and you see this post!

I grew up in Maui, been living on the mainland and also in Mexico, pursuing the rat race and eventually got into permaculture. My husband and I (along with my dad and mom-in-law) would like to come home and are looking at the Big Island. We want to run a fitness retreat and a small farmstead and steward the land we settle. We found a property at the end of Kaiwiki Rd the other day on Trulia that looks incredible http://www.trulia.com/property/3102966427--Kaiwiki-Rd-Hilo-HI-96720.

However, your description about overwhelming rainfall combined with warnings about lack of top soil is concerning for that area.

We plan on visiting and living there before buying anything and we're looking for places to either rent or do a work exchange while we experience/explore. We've saved up enough for buy a little chunk of heaven but we're also looking at perhaps just buying a business with an option to buy the property. Know of either?

Thanks,
Remy
(remy.olson@gmail.com if you prefer)

aloha,
just adding to the list, meleana here from Waihuena Farm on north shore oahu...we hope to be planning an oahu permaculture convergence in early august....and hopefully a statewide convergence (possibly on another island) in early 2014.

OAHU
NORTH SHORE
EXPERIENCE_ PDC in 2003, founded our farm in 2007, been running CSA program since late 2009, and hosted PDC intensive summer of 2012
resource, an amazing piece of land to steward/share across from pipeline!

Answering the roll call:

I'm on Big Island, down toward South Point. I have a 21 acres that I farm as a homestead. So I raise veggies, fruit, livestock, bees, and seeds. The farm provides firewood, rock, compost ingredients, bamboo, and lots of stuff. I'm at 2300 feet/ 60-80 inches rain. We're off grid, on catchment, and are reasonably self reliant.

I maintain a blog about our farm ---- kaufarmer.blogspot.com

howziiiit!
fine idea!
my grandparents, mom and I all lived o'ahu before I was born...but I stay big island now...this is home for life.
they told me this was a spaghetti lot, but I just can't get the spaghetti to grow!!
what happened to "just stick it in da ground"?!

but seriously folks....
i'm in fern forest, just starting to clear and grow, building screenhouses.
spring is great! just had the first fresh strawberries...oh man!! i know fresh is best, but i never had a fresh strawberry before.
as good as fresh pineapple...and that's ono! (check dave attell's description!)

all the usual garden stuffs....tomatoes, peppers, kale, collards, eggplant, okra, Brussels sprouts, broccoli ..... herbs, watermelon, poha and tomatillo, mamaki, 'awa.......hoping 'ulu will grow at this elevation...i haven't found out yet.
a little sugar cane for decoration, but i planted sorghum for its much higher sugar content. i want to grow plenty dwarf fruit trees.
growing tea is a great idea...it does grow great at the 2k elevation. it's very valuable...can be worth more than pakalolo...but it's all in the processing. i have designed a machine to do the kneading/rolling action.
maybe it'll work! i'm not sure yet.... my contraptions generally all work but this is working plant material.

i'm new to learning the agriculture...i misspent my youth on airplanes and motorcycles and mechanical engineering of offgrid contraptions....steam power and hydropower are my specialties.

so....hope we can get together sometime, talkstory....

shoots {

smith

permies!
we are planning our first OAHU CONVERGENCE august 24 & 25 at Waihuena Farm north shore oahu, not exclusive to oahu residents, but i heard from tom baldwin he might be planning another convergence for early winter 2014...
more info soon:)