Subsistence Farming - Hawaii

still here

we are slowly converting our temporary buildings into “permanent” ones. peace of mind.

we have an intern here from nyc and one from sf. this is quite a change in geography and life style for both of them. the one from sf milked the goats and now won’t even consider tasting the milk after having done so. they both have cell phones.

i remember when i used to feel scared when i lived in that little basement apartment in wilmington and i had to pass by the woods to get from the parking lot to my door. i don’t really understand whether i was afraid of people in the woods or wild animals or if it was just a childhood bogyman thing. i used to get such a sense of security living in the city (phila, sf, portland) when i could hear people making people noises at all hours of the night. its hard to believe that we walk every night through jungle to get to our tiny sleeping space (no electricity, can’t even stand up). that would have been an impossibility for me in the past.

nature? sometimes i still think “thanks but no thanks. i’ll take the ballet and high tea and tweeds.”

my days of “fighting fires” look like dealing with a neighborhood dog pack rolling our mongoose trap or stabbing holes in the barn tarp roof to relieve the “bathtub” of water collecting from 40 days and 40 nights of rain, or walking a colicy horse for hours with my entire arm up to the armpit up his ass trying to find the blockage in his intestines. my favorite days are working with scott and the interns, sweating, laughing, taking a break in the got sun with blended ice, local honey and our limes (a slushy), or getting so carried away with some tangent during homeschooling with lauren that we get hopelessly behind and we don’t care one bit.

lauren is in high school! here is a r. steiner quote i just sent to her dad:

“We shouldn’t ask: what does a person need to know or be able to do in order to fit into the existing social order?”

“Instead we should ask: what lives in each human being and what can be developed in him or her? Only then will it be possible to direct the new qualities of each emerging generation into society. Society will then become, what young people, as whole human beings, make out of the existing social conditions. The new generation should not just be made to be what present society wants it to become”