Subsistence Farming - Hawaii

we are devoting a building to growing tomatoes. they get stung her by a fruit fly. they also don’t savor this much rain. i miss them but lauren REALLY misses them. we have about 12 plants in a screened house with a screen roof.

the gardens are going well, mostly i am giving up on anything that requires any TLC. i’m looking for the hardy players! that means eggplants, lots and lots and lots of beans, bunching onions, kale, sorrel and some herbs. in the screen house we also have cucumbers and peppers and a few more herbs. we eat most stuff from trees.

we are currently focusing on a pond for our 2 baby ducks who are being raised by a chicken mama (surrogate). they are so funny. a hen mama is quite displeased with her “chicks” when they choose to frolic in the water bowl.

last week lauren test drove a horse named malia that we are purchasing (as a second riding horse and companion to java, since prince died)

all the animals are doing well. i especially love our chickens. they love us and follow us.

we are close to giving up the truck once we harvest enough ohia wood for the last buildings we want to make permanent. the ohia is a native tree that grows only 1/20th an inch a year. it is super hard. unfortunately so many of the new owners in the local subdivisions have their lots totally dozed and they distroy them, push them into a pile to rot. so… we have an ad posted around saying we will come haul and build with them.

lauren is getting ready for a hula performance. she is also almost 14! she is reading on the couch at this moment. she reads about 4-5 books a week! and milks and takes care of the horses and takes hula classes, and trains the horses and reorganizes her horse tack area over and over and goes to school….

for our human waste we do something similar to “humanure.” we have 2 ferrocement tanks with 2 chambers, two “seats” each and a door for each chamber in the back. we use one side, close it up for a year, empty it and switch sides. we have one in our area and one in the intern homestead. the rental has a 5 gallon bucket outhouse.

my sister is coming this summer. yippie. my folks have been here twice. lauren thinks of scott as her step dad now. he is so good to her. he teaches her meteorology, physiology, math and sometimes grammar. they laugh together a lot.