Hawai'i County Food Self-Sufficiency Baseline 2012

[oregonwoodsmoke]

If the only problem is that your own rooster crows at night under your window, the easiest solution would be to pen your chickens at night somewhere as far as you can get them from your bedroom window.

They are easy to put up at night. Chickens will put themselves to bed with only a few nights training to go into their coop.

[hotzcatz]

Yeah, we have to fudge on the chill hour numbers. Another website mentioned two hours of less than 58 would count as one chill hour and even then we still have to fudge the numbers. I'm also suspecting the required chill hours are for full production from the tree. We get smaller harvests because of not enough winter chill, but we still get some harvests. Still, a small harvest of fresh peaches when your only other option is flown-in-from-somewhere-far-away-while-not-quite-ripe peaches is better than no harvest at all.

There is an un-named "mountain" peach in the backyard here which is doing really well and produces quite a lot. It produced bigger ones after the tree was pruned. It is a yellow, semi-clingstone, rather tart peach with a pointed tip. It makes a great peach jam and the fellow who planted it grew it for pickled peaches. We are at 1,000 foot elevation with about 90 inches of annual rainfall. At the other house (300 foot elevation, 120 inches of rainfall) there were several peach cultivars. "Florida Prince" did the best. I have three different other cultivars of peaches planted and one nectarine, but they've only been in the ground for a little over a year so I don't know how the production will be yet. The same with the almonds, apple and cherries. Usually it seems that a tree will grow roots before branches so they sit there for a year or so and then grow quickly so hopefully this year will be the make branches year.

Originally Posted by cagary

Chill Hours: Number of hours where temperatures are between 32 and 45 degrees Fahrenheit.

Hilo has never has a "chill hour". Its never been under 53 degrees in Hilo, let alone below 45.

[hotzcatz]

Yup, chickens are pretty easy to get organized but some of them don't go along with the plan. We had a bunch of Rhode Island Reds (great backyard chickens, very tame and very productive) along with three little Japanese bantams. Those wretched bantams would not live with the big chickens but wanted to live in the carport rafters which was unfortunately much too close to the bedroom. They got relocated off to the other side of the island and the well behaved (and much more productive) Rhode Island Reds stayed.

Originally Posted by oregonwoodsmoke

If the only problem is that your own rooster crows at night under your window, the easiest solution would be to pen your chickens at night somewhere as far as you can get them from your bedroom window.

They are easy to put up at night. Chickens will put themselves to bed with only a few nights training to go into their coop.

[OpenD]

Originally Posted by oregonwoodsmoke

If the only problem is that your own rooster crows at night under your window, the easiest solution would be to pen your chickens at night somewhere as far as you can get them from your bedroom window.

You don't need roosters to get eggs, so the easiest solution is really to get rid of them. And cutting them loose won't help, they'll just come back to where the food is.

A neighbor has a rooster, in the 4th lot away from me, and it's close enough to be annoying. I've offered to cook Coq Au Vin for them, but so far they have demurred.

But my buddy in Kurtistown has it the worst. One of his neighbors raises roosters for fighting, so he typically has 50 or so on hand, and they go off about an hour before sunrise, then quiet down a little, then go off a second time at sunrise. It's a heckuva racket.

Between them and the coqui frogs all night, I really don't know how he gets any sleep.

Everybody sing now... In the jungle, the quiet jungle, the lion sleeps tonight...

[hotzcatz]

Folks bring me roosters by the box full. There's three young plump ones which are supposed to show up this week. Half the eggs hatched are roosters and you only need one rooster for about every ten hens so there's a lot of extra roosters out there. If nobody eats them, they fight and kill each other so eating nine out of ten of them is a service, IMHO. Plus it's tasty.

I think a lot of food self-sufficiency is learning how to actually deal with things like eating real chickens and not buying them pre-shrink wrapped at the grocery. Backyard birds are also better tasting than grocery store chickens and better for the chickens to have run around in the back yard eating bugs and getting sunshine and such before becoming dinner. The grocery store chickens have a miserable existence before they get to the shrink wrapped stage so every time you eat a backyard chicken you've bought one less miserable shrink wrapped chicken. If everyone raised their own backyard birds or if enough people had them that everyone could get them when they wanted chicken, the big chicken farms would go out of existence. Better for the consumers, better for the consumed. Not so good for the chicken corporation and who do you think buys legislators? Who do you think pays for advertising? Folks are being - well not exactly brainwashed, but at least persuaded by the media - into thinking they must to be consumers of processed foods.

[HiloDiver]

Tonight, Thursday, September 6, it’s the monthly Waimea Town Meeting.

Tonight’s meeting’s primary topic will be food self sufficiency. The focus will be a recent County of Hawai’i Food Self-Sufficiency Baseline Study by land use planner Jeff Melrose. The study summarizes the results of a new Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping effort that has digitized current agricultural activity on Hawai’i Island. This data provides a 2012 snapshot of farming on this island, which can serve as a baseline to monitor future trends in agriculture land use. This mapping effort also illustrates the variability of agricultural activities island-wide by describing where farming occurs and why.

Also included as part of the study is a thoughtful list of “100 Ways To Increase Food Self-Sufficiency.” To reinforce the fact that Food-Sufficiency is everyone’s kuleana, the list identifies small actions that can lead to big outcomes. It also identifies some fundamental rethinking that will be needed by individual consumers, retailers, food buyers, schools, institutions, hotels and others, including public policy makers.

There will also be an update on plans for the Waimea Regional Park. North Hawaii Community Hospital CEO Ken Wood will give an update on the hospital.

Waimea Town Meeting is open to all. It’s tonight, 5:15, Waimea Middle School cafeteria. There is no charge, but all are urged to bring non-perishable food for the food pantry or cash/check donations.

[MickeyE]

Here's a site that may be of use to anyone wanting to grow food, particularly if they don't have land to plant on. our.windowfarms.org | Home . They do want you to register on their site and give feedback as you build your window farm and and how well it works for you. Also any hints, tips and/or modifications you make and how they work.

Mickey