Being Self Sustainable on the Big Island (Hilo, Honokaa: buy, college)

[saltylady]

I posted this message as a response on another thread and decided to instead start my own thread, hoping for some advise from anyone with some hands on experience.

My husband and I are moving to the Big Island (Hilo side) next month. We have already purchased 18 acres off the grid a few miles outside of Hilo. I have been reading thru these forums and have noticed that noone has discussed that on the Hilo side of the BI is one of the only places on earth were one can live completely self sustainable, we plan on growing our own food, having solar and windmill power and a water catchment system. We will be completely self sustainable, we absolutely love the Hilo side of the big island, there are many rural areas were one can farm there own land. There is much rain which allows for growing your own food year round and enough sun and wind to produce enough power to live off of (if you can be conservative with the amount of power you use, no more blow drying my hair!). I realize that we are very fortunite to have been able to purchase the land we did, however with that being said living the lifestyle we plan on living will be very inexpensive, we will have no power bill or water bill and we will produce much of our own food if not all of it (we eat very little meat). We have traveled to all the Hawaiin Islands many times and did much research and found that with the lifestyle we want to live the Hilo side of the BI was the only choice for us. Does anyone out there have any advise to offer on setting up solar, windmill and or water catchment systems on the Big Island?

[cynmkolohe]

Hi Salty,

Welcome to East Hawaii!

One valuable resource regarding catchment systems: http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/oc/freepubs/pdf/RM-12.pdf

I look forward to hearing your progress as you settle in here on the Big Island.

With aloha,

Cynthia

[hotzcatz]

Aloha,

Are you going to farm the 18 acres? What will you grow? The link Cynthia gave you above is really good. The College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources (aka CTAHR) has a lot of good information on farming and such. They have a good link to get locally produced seeds, too.

For fruit trees, Plant It Hawaii is the place where your fruit trees will come from most likely. Plant It Hawaii, Inc. if they are locally produced trees, that is. For information on "low chill" varieties of fruit trees: Welcome to Dave Wilson Nursery

There are some workshops on sustainable agriculture going on for the next several months. Hawaii has some interesting challenges when it comes to producing food and fruit. Fruit flies, various fungus, virus, etc. Since we don't get the winter chill that the mainland does there are a lot of insects and pests which don't get killed off each year. Then after you produce it, you get to figure out how to process and sell the stuff. We don't have a lot of agricultural processing facilities yet. My friends with ten acres of coffee trees can't even find coffee pickers. So figure out what sort of crop to grow that doesn't require a lot of additional labor. There is a lot of interest in diversified ag lately, though, so hopefully there will be something you can grow profitably. Gotta make enough money to pay the land taxes and buy the stuff you can't produce, don'tcha know?

Most of the sustainability folks don't see the islands as very sustainable since we are on the wrong end of a 2,500 mile supply chain and somewhere above 80% of everything we eat and use is shipped in. We also get most of our power from oil. This state is either the most dependent on oil or one of the top three. Also, even if you are sustainable, in case of some sort of disruption in the supply chain, there will be a lot of hungry folks around and there probably won't be enough food to feed them all. Even if the Island of Hawaii could feed itself, the barges will still make it over to Oahu and they don't have a prayer of feeding themselves. Emergency rations from here will be confiscated and relocated to there so this island needs to be prepared to feed itself as well as Oahu.

We just picked up an additional 600 watts of solar panels last week so now we will be able to plug in the new freezer. Yay! Living off the grid you get real sensitive about what gets plugged in. Sometimes you can find used solar stuff at Sauces & Propane (aka "Soschi World) in Honokaa. They are just down from the post office and have a lot of "character" as well as characters but they are good folks none-the-less.

[saltylady]

Hi Hotz,

We are not planning on farming the land in order to sell anything commercially, however we are planning on having a large vegtable garden, fruit trees (we already have bananna trees and a small macadamian nut orchard), avacado trees, etc for our own consumption. I am sure we will have plenty of extra food which we will give to our neighbors and sell if it ends up working out that way. I really appreciate the links that you and cynmkolohe provided. My husband and I both have internet businesses so we are fortunite enough to have work that we can bring to the island with us. I am sure there will be a big learning curve for us adapting to the climate and bugs on the island. I have heard of the centapedes, flying cockroaches and very large spiders that we have to look forward to, yikes!!! I have already picked up some really good advise on this forum in regards to not having a bed skirt and other stuff like that. I am sure we will learn as we go, I will keep everyone posted. We can not wait to make ourselves a part of the big island community...

[hotzcatz]

No worries, chickens love centipedes. Guess they'd eat the spiders too, if they find them.

If you like lima beans, they grow really well. Especially the vining ones. Lillikoi is also easy to grow and guava trees for jam. There are a lot of things which grow well here and a lot of stuff that you'd think would grow well is very obstinate. Elevation has a lot to do with what will grow, it is almost as important as rainfall in deciding what will grow.

[JULANI]

Originally Posted by saltylady

Hi Hotz,

We are not planning on farming the land in order to sell anything commercially, however we are planning on having a large vegtable garden, fruit trees (we already have bananna trees and a small macadamian nut orchard), avacado trees, etc for our own consumption. I am sure we will have plenty of extra food which we will give to our neighbors and sell if it ends up working out that way. I really appreciate the links that you and cynmkolohe provided. My husband and I both have internet businesses so we are fortunite enough to have work that we can bring to the island with us. I am sure there will be a big learning curve for us adapting to the climate and bugs on the island. I have heard of the centapedes, flying cockroaches and very large spiders that we have to look forward to, yikes!!! I have already picked up some really good advise on this forum in regards to not having a bed skirt and other stuff like that. I am sure we will learn as we go, I will keep everyone posted. We can not wait to make ourselves a part of the big island community...

I believe it is easy to grow orchids in Hilo ; might not be easy to sell , even on the internet .