Big Island Grant Writer (sale, buy, price)

[Badatta2de]

Anyone know of a grant writer, preferably on the east side? Ive tried multiple searches and only come up with listings on Maui and Oahu. Someone who knows about agriculture would be a plus as well. Mahalo.

[Badatta2de]

found one on another forum, if anyone else is interested or in need, DM me and Ill let ya know how it went =)

[hotzcatz]

Is it too early to ask what you are going to grow? Lately there has been folks interested in dairies along the coast here.

[Badatta2de]

No its not too early to ask. My father in law is interested in planting coffee.
I myself am interested in reforestation. I have already been working on this on my own but $1 per tree gets expensive fast when you are talking about larger areas of land.
Dairies are neat, but require SO much dedication. I am looking to add a few goats to our family of people, dogs and chickens. For a long while I thought I was milk intolerant until i got introduced to goats milk. Low and behold, I can drink it and dont spend the rest of the day sickly. Not sure what the difference is in the makeup of it. I was on a raw milk cowshare on the mainland (you cant buy raw milk there, you have to partly own the cow) thinking it was everything that was added afterwards making me sick, still had no luck.

[garden1der]

If it's agriculture you might check with the Natural Resources Conservation Service. I think they walk you through the application process. Otherwise, I think you'd need to be a non-profit organization with a mission, by-laws, etc. At least that's the type of grant writing I'm familiar with here in California.

[hotzcatz]

Hey, maybe you can get rid of these mono-culture planted in rows eucalyptus trees along the coast here and put in some native forest heavily weighted with tropical hardwoods. I was working with a group to do that up on the Hamakua land the county tried to sell lately with no bidders, but this was about five years ago when back when they were planning on selling it the first time. They never got the sale ready to go before all our investors went off to do other things. They had planned on primarily a koa forest with all sorts of other trees. They'd planned on logging with mules since those wouldn't hurt the forest floor. Apparently koa have delicate roots.

They were saying there is already a deep koa seedbank in the lands they were looking at. Even though it was old cane land, there were koa seeds there so they were planning on pushing the guinea grass off and letting the existing seeds naturally sprout up after wards.

[Badatta2de]

Funny you said that hotz, the trees I bought so far were rainbow eucalyptus. I think they are very pretty and they grow quickly so that seemed a good bet for me. Koa would be nice as I have none growing here now. Would not be sure where to get seedlings as they were not on the list of ones available where I was getting the eucalyptus.

[garden1der]

Sorry, this is off the grantwriting topic. Hotzcatz, that's an interesting idea about getting rid of the eucs by logging with mules. It's so destructive to take out entire groves. My son's doing a research project here in California trying to see what native plants will grow under the eucs, because the oils in their leaves contain toxins, which kill out almost everything. That makes it hard for any natives to get established. I wonder if it's the same with the koa.

[hotzcatz]

They were going to harvest the native Hawaiian koa with mules because the koa has a delicate root system. It's also worth a whole lot more per board foot than any species of eucalyptus so the limited logging as provided by mules would still be economically sensible. Koa interacts really well with other species of trees, flora and fauna, especially all the native types. It would provide a good basis for a nice "value added" craft industry if there were more local hardwoods available.

They weren't going to do anything with eucalyptus at all other than harvest some of the eucalyptus robusta that was already growing on site for hardwood flooring. The land they were looking at putting a native forest on was old sugar cane land that was fallow and hadn't had all those paper pulp eucalyptus trees planted on it. It was a higher elevation, too, that might be why no euc trees.

The toxic eucs are a problem. The ones we have around here were planted in the mid to late 90's and were supposed to be made into wood chips for paper pulp but the paper mill never was built so the trees have never been harvested. Other stands of trees have been planted elsewhere on the planet so these particular trees don't have a lot of value anymore apparently.

Maybe he can get a grant to figure out what to do with all the planted in rows eucalyptus that are still here. (To get back to the grant writing topic)

[Calico Salsa]

Interesting list of Hawaiian woods:
Koa Seeds

Online ordering of koa:
Future Forests Nursery, Hawaii - Native Hawaiian, Mahogany, Rosewood, Eucalyptus, Hardwood