How much money to save to get few acres in Big Island (for sale, health insurance)

[jeffington]

Originally Posted by Kansoku

What are some tropical fruits that bears fruits 12 months a year besides banana and papaya?

Wild Pigs.

[jeffington]

Originally Posted by Kansoku

Thank you for your information. How much does the 2 or 3 acres cost?

100,000 # of bananas.

[Vaedrem]

Originally Posted by Razzbar

Definitely you can grow a TON of food on five acres. I used to have 2 acres, and less than one in any kind of production, and I had avocados, bananas, papayas, etc. etc. etc. etc. coming out of my ears!

The downside is that besides the lack of soil (which is less of a problem than you'd imagine for trees), is that the soil is lacking in nutrients. My experience is that it took about a tablespoon of fertilizer to produce one papaya. If you don't feed your trees, they won't give you much fruit. I kept chickens as much for the fertilizer they gave me as for the eggs. You really, really need to conserve soil and any organic material that you can compost. I never even tried to grow carrots, the soil was so thin. OTOH, I couldn't even kill an avocado tree, they were well suited to the conditions.

Also, it's pretty hard to grow all you need to eat well *anywhere*. Conditions might be optimal for one type of plant, and impossible for another. Forget growing apples, for example.

I had part of my land ripped, hauled in soil, etc. But found that my best trees grew in among the existing trees on areas that I didn't bulldoze.

Most of the parcels in the Puna subs are 2 or 3 acres in size. Two is enough to live on. More important is elevation. The higher you go, the harder it is to grow truly tropical crops, and it gets pretty wet, too.

You make some good points; trees will grow in pounded lava, but they won't thrive without inputs. You do need a very active composting system to make your own fertilizer if you aren't using manure from animals, or buying organic fertilizer from a store. It's also impossible to calculate beforehand that you will be totally self-sufficient on X date, because there are always issues that come up with plants, sometimes a crop might fail, a tree might take four years longer to produce than you thought. A good idea would be to grow a lot of something that grows very well for you, and barter it for foods that you don't or can't grow yourself.

Our property is at a higher elevation, and we tend towards more subtropical trees--cherimoya instead of atemoya, green sapote instead of mamey, lucuma instead of eggfruit, etc. We also grow persimmons and low-chill nectarines, in addition to avocados and many rarer plants I like to cultivate. But many of the trees are still young, and even with a lot of vegetables and 4 acres (mind you, some of that land is also used for things like buildings, a driveway, water catchment tanks...and not all of it is suitable for utilization; the size of the lot won't neccessarily = the size of your cultivated farm,) I'm still not self-sufficient. You're right that trees do grow better in a sort of agroforestry situation, utilizing the plant-soil-water network already existing.

[Kansoku]

What are some tropical fruits that bears fruits 12 months a year besides banana and papaya?

bumping this question

[Kansoku]

I am guessing bananas will be the staple of the diet, because they are good source of nutrition and is ever-bearing. Maybe I could just forage the other fruits while growing the more slow fruits.

I was thinking I could maybe sell excess fruits for the money I would need for things like internet access.

How much would the following cost?:
1. internet access
2. setting up solar or wind power
3. electric fence to protect yourself from invaders

Where do you buy the catchment tanks?

I also thought about maybe buying land in cheaper place like Ecuador. Or perhaps southern Mexico if it's allowed to buy land there. Do you know of any disadvantages of going to Ecuador rather than HI?

[cagary]

Originally Posted by [LEFT

Kansoku[/LEFT];18968431]bumping this question

While its true that banana plants can fruit in all months of the year, you're going to have to plant a lot of them in order to be eating ripe bananas year round. Depending on the season (yes, Hawaii has seasons and plant growth does slow down a bit during winter) the plants take between 9 months and a year from pup to the fruiting stage. Staggering your planting will help but not guarantee fruit year round.

Papayas are similar. They just are not going to fruit as quickly in January as in August. They will just sit there in their green stage for weeks during the winter.

Guavas fruit year round with less ripening in winter.

If you plant several different cultivars of avocado, you can get pretty close to year round production.

[OpenD]

Don't forget breadfruit. In the days of sailing ships they used to load up thousands of pounds of breadfruit in the islands, because they keep better than potatoes.

[hotzcatz]

You can also put in a semi-permanent garden. Things like collards which can have a few of the leaves harvested while leaving the main stalk there to grow more leaves will last for years. Lima bean vines will last for two or three years and are very prolific. Of course, you have to like to eat lima beans. Some varieties of tomato will grow for several years and the small fruited "cherry" varieties bear fruit without being bothered by the fruit flies. There is a type of edible hibiscus which will give greens to eat for years and most older houses will have some moringa trees planted for soup greens. Food isn't that hard to grow, you can also put in an aquaponic system and get fish as well as vegetables.

You can get limited but free internet access at the local libraries. Otherwise, there are different providers, ours is $56 a month and that includes the cable for the TV, too.

The costs of setting up wind or solar power entirely depends on the size of the system you are setting up. To run a house with lights, a computer, TV, miscellaneous small appliances and a refrigerator, our system cost us just under $9K. That was four big panels at approximately 150-175 watts each, a charge controller, a battery bank of eight deep cycle batteries, an inverter to change the DC power from the batteries to regular house currant and a back up gas generator for when the sun didn't shine. The stove and water heater ran off of propane although solar heated water would be better.

Electric fence isn't necessary, a regular "hog wire" fence with a line of barb wire at the bottom will keep four legged pigs out. If there were other "critters" you didn't want onto your property, then put a line of barb wire across the top as well. Electric fence also requires power to make it work and more maintenance to keep running than a regular hog wire field type fence. For cows, just several strands of barb wire will keep them in.

I don't think providing food will be your biggest problem, I suspect finding a cash input for things like internet, phone, taxes and things you can't grow or make yourself (such as dental work) will be more of a problem to solve than mere food. But, if you are providing your own food, then any money you make can go for other things. If you had excess food, you can always sell it for money to pay your taxes.

[mangodog]

Originally Posted by winkosmosis

I highly doubt you can grow enough fruit to sustain a single person on 5 acres of land.

Not only that, a fruitarian diet is unhealthy for humans. We're omnivores. You need the nutrients from meat and fish.

Man I am so glad to know that there are still omnivores out there that are not ashamed to admit it. The female vegetarians are almost militant and pass out the guilt to us omnivores. Where are all the healthy male vegetarians ? The men who are veggies are usually skinny and do not look healthy to me. Sure, a 24 year old guy can look healthy on a veg diet for a while but by the time they are 50 +, they look like S--- ! I have seen a bunch of them !

[Kansoku]

A good idea would be to grow a lot of something that grows very well for you, and barter it for foods that you don't or can't grow yourself.

That's a very good idea, thank you.