We are a family run tropical sustainable homestead, permaculture, agroforestry, and simple living experiment.

The experiment is whether we can live a sustainable lifestyle in the tropics in a way that is inspiring, enjoyable, and attractive to others. One goal is to provide for our staple food needs on this farm or within our neighborhood (bartering). Our farm is young and it is not yet producing much food to share and trade, but currently we are able to provide our family of 3 with (most of the following, some of the time): taro, long beans, lima beans, wing beans, okra, eggplant, tomatillos, chives, perennial greens, ginger, tumeric, cardamom, lemon grass, black pepper, pineapple from the garden, goat’s milk, yogurt and cheese, eggs from the livestock, wild pig and mangoes from the jungle, breadfruit, avocado, lemons, limes, passion fruit, jak fruit, soursop, rollinia, papaya, banana, coffee, allspice, black pepper from the orchards and mac nuts, coconuts, vanilla from the neighborhood.

We are excited at being able to produce approximately 80% of our food from the farm and we want to share this opportunity with others who want to experience this freedom (freedom from getting a job to make money to buy a car and gas to drive to the grocery store for food.) We are designing/creating a second “work-trade” homestead with a shared kitchen living space and 3 separate, private sleeping spaces. We are currently digging a garden, planting an orchard and building a chicken coop to begin to support the food needs of this second homestead. There is also the potential for goats to join this new homestead.

We are not a religious or spiritual group, but we consider ourselves spiritually connected to the work we do and the relationships we have.

We are not advocating what to eat because we still aren’t sure. We have tried a variety of diet choices (macrobiotic, vegan, raw vegan, raw everything, organic steak and potatoes…). Now we mostly try to eat what smells good and what is relatively close to its natural state.

We are a family farm (Scott, Karin and daughter Lauren (16). We are not practicing communal living. The three of us share one kitchen/living building, and the (3-5) interns share another. We rely on trading plants in our nursery for many of our purchases. Recently we traded for tilapia for our pond, recycled lumber, vegetable starts.

The neighborhood around us is a uniquely village-like environment, very supportive of alternative living. In fact, there are 5 other farms within an easy walk of our farm that are working towards sustainability defined in their own ways. The natural environment here near the coast on the windward side of the Big Island of Hawaii is very rainy and sunny. We are at 250′ elevation, and four miles from the ocean.

Living in a tropical climate provides a level of simplicity in living structures that you can not find in temperate climates. Basically our needs are to keep the rain and rodents and insects mostly outside. Our buildings reflect those simple needs. We combine locally harvested poles with commercial building materials in our own pleasant designs. We have essentially eliminated walls.

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We have planted over 1,000 trees on our 22 acres (including palms, exotic tropical fruits and nuts, banana mats, and bamboo) in over 100 different varieties.

We also have:

  • a herd of 6 nubian milking goats on 6 acres of pasture.
  • two truly free range flocks of about 36 chickens (roosting in mango trees, napping on our doorstep, etc.)
  • three ducks in our pond (soon to be filled with tilapia, carp, catfish… )
  • two horses (arabian and arabian/quarter horse)