A:  In short, no. We are using less resources, but that just slows down the inevitable. If only one quarter of the pit mines were still operating, and only one quarter of the laborers are working in a shoe factory, and only one quarter of the chemicals were running into rivers… Who is going to be the person who works in the factory manufacturing these super toxic computers, under miserable conditions and shortened lifespan? Who is the guy who works in the mines, extracting the iron for our trucks, or bicycles, or machetes? I keep going in the direction of using less-toxic materials, or fewer resources, but I get confused. Being “more” sustainable is not sustainable. It just delays the damage. Here’s a quote from a movie: “You’re on this train heading for a bridge, and the bridge is out, and all you have time to do is run to the back of the train”

What I am trying to say, in terms of our consumption practices, that something drastic needs to happen other than just doing less of the same. Other than our success in food production, try as I may, my lifestyle is not substantially better for the planet than everyone else. It’s just less of the same. I am feeling deep disappointment in the ability of humans to actually live in harmony with the earth. Why do we need so much stuff? I am riding right down the middle of a global ecological crisis. I know what is going down. I even identify myself as part of the solution. But I know that’s a crock o’ poop.

My assertion that my lifestyle is not substantially different from a normal american lifestyle is evidenced by the stuff I use. Almost every item that I depend on is made within the same industrial system as everyone else. I am using the same products. Who isn’t? There is no alternative industrial system. When I am using animal bones, plant fibers, and stones to meet my needs, then I am outside the system. The rest of the time, I am within our industrial complex. Where would I be without access to lead acid batteries? Telephone? Our massive transportation system? Pipes, wires, glass, plastic, steel, concrete? My ‘alternative’ infrastructure will last as long as I can get replacement parts for it. As soon as I am one plumbing fitting short of complete, I will be hauling water in buckets (until they degrade, too). As soon as my roof rusts out, all my books and belongings are soon to be soil. Almost all of my techniques for meeting my daily needs are adaptations to industrial products. Aside from the food production, my farm is an experiment in using  modern industrial products in slightly different ways. Unfortunately, it is not about building entirely new relationships with meeting our physical needs.

As I see it, there are two ways to profoundly change our relationship to how we live on the land. One, discover and invent new technologies. this is the job of a scientist. Two, learn primitive skills. I am doing neither. I am using “alternative” technologies (like solar electricity and water heating) that someone else already invented. No brainer. The rest is no big difference. My plumbing system looks alot like everyone elses. PVC and glue. My electric system: romex and lead acid batteries. And so on, with minor differences. Sure, I am car free. No car. but how do you think I’m getting to the dentist on thursday? On a donkey?

An alternative lifestyle is one that demonstrates a different direction. “Reduce, reuse, recycle” is the same direction, but slower. What matters is the baby steps toward increasing our awareness. What matters is changing how we relate to the land we live upon. An abusive relationship needs fundamental change, no just fewer or milder incidents of abuse.

I will give one hopeful example of how our infrastructure is fundamentally different than a regular house: Our grey water simply runs out of our house and pours on top of the ground onto food trees, rather than into a tank underground. This creates a loop, a cycle, of resource use rather than a line segment with an end point. That little step can allow people to see that our life on this earth is made up of loops like that one. People notice that the coffee grounds don’t vanish when they go down the drain. In fact, the plants at the receiving end seem to be happier with the coffee grounds etc. accumulating around their roots. Watching people learn from this little twist sustains me.

Sheep are very hardy, and they handle most of their needs without help. The main issues are: adequate pasture, dog attacks, wet skin, minerals,  too much inbreeding.

A rule of thumb in Hawaii is land can accomodate (very roughly) 4 sheep on 3 acres. More than 2 sheep per acre is probably too much. Reduce these numbers during droughts, or on poor land. There are only two breeds that I know of on this island that are appropriate for the lowland humid tropics: Barbados Blackbelly and St. Croix White. These breeds are known as “hair sheep”, as they have hair but no wool. People often mistake them for goats. They have been specially bred for hardiness in humid tropics. They have good parasite resistance, and their lack of wool keeps them cooler and drier.

Hair sheep are common in Hawaii, and it is easy to find people willing to sell some of their flock. Just look on rural bulletin boards, at feed stores, on Craig’s list, etc. The current price of hair sheep is between $50 and $100, depending on the age and sex of the animal and the whim of the owner. All you need to start your flock is one male, and some number of females. Start with a smaller flock, and let it grow into your pasture. When you are selecting your sheep, watch the animals for a while. Look at their energy level, signs of diarrhea, sings of limping, signs of hunger, meatiness. Spend some time searching for the animals that you want on your land. If you are a person who prays for guidance, now is a good time. Otherwise, use your intuition.

Feed them every now and then to make friends with them, and especially make friends (food and petting) with the head ram. This way they will come when you need them to.

They definitely like a shelter. When it starts to rain, they will all run under any roof. If their hair stays wet, they could get the blow fly, which is disgusting, swarming all over them and eating their skin. Avoid this.
A little mineral supplement is good. I have used the red animal salt from the animal feed store, and kelp granuals for trace minerals. You could also experiment with giving them dolomite, Azomite, baking soda. The lore is that mineral deficiency will lead to bark eating. They go for the taste of minerals in the bark.

Under normal conditions, sheep will drink little or no water. It’s good to have some available, especially during a dry time. (Maybe during lactation?)

On most land, their hoofs should be self trimming. If the hoofs are smelly and have little holes, you can trim them, but this is probably a sign of zinc deficiency. If they get skin problems, like the flies, or soft hoofs, lack of zinc is a likely cause. Use zinc methionine only! Zinc oxide is not effective for hoof and skin problems.

Every person I know in Puna who has kept small livestock has suffered from dog attacks. It is a big deal. It happens randomly, and usually late at night. The fence must be touching the ground securely, and I put a strand of barbed wire 8″ above the hog wire, and sometimes a strand of barbed wire at bottom as well. I have read that a donkey will protect the herd, and I have witnessed a donkey protecting  a sheep from multiple dogs. This would be similar to having a sheep dog that eats grass. I know donkeys have a taste for many different foods, and this might be a problem, depending what’s in your pasture. I know little about donkeys, except that the males can be VERY mean, and they can kick with all four legs, front and rear. You could possibly make some cash hiring out a good donkey stud? (to make mules) In any case, I wouldn’t keep sheep without secure hog wire, and still not in a remote place without some sort of additional protection (dog, donkey, or man with gun)

Gestation is four and a half months. Don’t worry about pregnancy, birthing, and lactation. They take care of themselves. A St. Croix ewe will usually have twins, and almost twice a year. The Barbados are similar, but a bit less prolific.  With either breed the size of the herd is going to rapidly increase. Have a plan for this.

Keep culling the young rams, for food and to prevent inbreeding. Every couple years, trade in an outside ram from another herd for fresh genes. Cull out the ewes who have more wool (dreadlocks I call them), and breed for short hair.
In terms of slaughtering, I harvest them with a .22 to the head. It doesn’t seem to make the others less trusting, oddly enough. If you don’t feel comfortable with the process of slaughtering and butchering, sell them, trade them, or someone could process them and give you some meat in exchange. My attitude toward culling the herd is like that of a watchful wolf; I am on the alert for animals that are unwell. I selectively prey upon the weak and sickly. This harvesting method also serves to maintain the health of the herd. For example, if an animal has a wound that will not heal, or is especially susceptible to parasites, I cull it. If a lamb is rejected by its mother, I don’t go out and buy milk replacer and nurse it to health, I cull it. This may sound heartless, but this heartlessness is necessary for their long term viability as a species. Arguably, one of the responsibilities of a land steward is to “play god” and select which plants and animals will predominate and which will not.

Well, there’s a start. You’ll figure the details.

(BTW: We offer none of this for sale, so you’re on your own finding hard copies)

Our website is: http:EveningRainFarm.com/   (see our nursery)

Here is the local Hawaii island forum website:  http://sensiblesimplicity.lefora.com/
Start by browsing their forum topics. You can find all sorts of informative conversations about sustainability issues, and many of the members are on the Big Island and connecting with each other by organizing get-togethers and sharing resources with each other.

For a solid resource of many major tropical fruit trees, you can view the entire text of “Fruits of Warm Climates” on line.
I think bound copies can be had for $70.

http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/index.html

The 3 volume “Permacopia” by Hunter Beyer and Franklin Martin. We reach for these books more than any others. the set is upwards of $60.
The author lives on island, and sells copies locally:

http://www.permacopia.com/

You really can’t go wrong with this classic, hefty volume: “Permaculture: a Designer’s Manual” by Bill Mollison. A brilliant man, brilliant theories and practices. You can also purchase 47 hours of recorded lectures on disc, as Bill Mollison teaches an entire Permaculture design course.

http://permacultureplants.net/

Try Craig elevitch’s site:  www.agroforestry.net
In particular, download his document: www.agroforestry.net/pubs/Hawaii_Homegrown_Start-Up_Guide.pdf
This article has many other links for the beginning tropical gardener, including: http://www.hawaiifruit.net/
Craig has gone far in promoting agroforestry in the tropics. He has written some valuable books, and he has made much of his writings available for free on line.

Also try http://echonet.org/content/agriculturalResources    for “Echo Development Notes” which are excellent documents
these can be purchased bound as “Amaranth to Zai holes” and “Echo Development Notes #52-Present” (a great browse!)
and then in particular, find: echo technical notes: “selecting the best plants for the tropical subsistence farm” by Franklin Martin
Echo used to sell tropical seeds as well, but we recently had no response from them.
Their seeds are particularly suited to the tropics, though some of them are adapted to dry tropics.

http://www.tradewindsfruit.com/   has descriptions and some photos of some of the more obscure plants. A good browse, and they sell seeds as well.

For loads more details, Volunteers in Technical Assistance (VITA) has published thousands of pages of documents concerning simple technology and food production in the third world. They can be downloaded for free.

http://www.journeytoforever.org/farm_library/VITAlist.html

If you still need more books and links, see Karin’s “Links We Like”

Have fun with this stuff!

My needs for a good combination of food crops is:

1) an abundance of calories, oils, protein, greens

2) not too difficult to grow, harvest and prepare

3) delicious to eat

…and it is a big bonus if the crop has…

4) a long harvest season, or

5) is easy to preserve and store

It is very advantageous for the farmer and the land…

6) that the crops be no-till. (This means that it requires no plowing.) Plowing the land year after year is just plain not sustainable for the soil, and it is a bunch of hard work for the farmer, or his servants, animals, or machines (all potentially problematic).

If I were in various mainland climates, I might be raving about pecans, walnuts, hazel nuts, almonds, pine nuts, blueberries, apples and the other stone fruits (peaches, apricots etc.), but this article is only about the lowland tropics(below 1,000 ft):

At about 30 foot spacing, one could fit roughly 45 trees in an acre. This figure is complicated by the fact that many plants grow well as understory crops, and some (like bananas) closer together than that number. Simply put, if you mix tall and short plants, and sun loving and shade loving plants together, and so on, you can fit more than if you were to plant an orchard of one variety. That said, one needs to consider the amount of sun space and soil space that each plant needs to survive or to thrive.

The first acre would need room for at least some of the following: a house, a storage/workshop building, water tank, an array of solar electric panels, solar hot water panels, sun space for garden areas, a clothes drying area, driveway.

Of course, some areas can serve multiple purposes, and some trees can be planted above some of the infrastructure, increasing the capacity. Elevation, soil, rainfall, and wind all influence what will grow well on a property.

In order to be concise,  I am leaving out most details of why I chose this or that plant, and many details about particular needs and attributes of these trees. Perhaps I will write a series of fact sheets about key trees…

I will make one exception by mentioning that coconuts and breadfruit are less productive as you increase elevation and are less than ideal over 1,000 feet or so. That said, at 500 feet or lower, those 2 would be the first trees on my list.

I would plant at least these, in order of importance:

• 18 coconuts palms (a mix of tall and dwarf)
• 2 breadfruit (of different varieties to increase the length of season.)
• 5 different grafted avocados (chosen for fruit availability year round)
• 1 key lime tree
• 20 banana plants
• 1-4 grafted mac nuts
• 2 grafted jackfruit
• 1 breadnut
• 1 Malabar chestnut
• 1 Minneola tangelo
• 5 papaya plants
• 1 small diameter bamboo (under 2″ diameter, for poles, trellises, rails, handles)

Then for greens:

• 1 hedge of Chaya
• 1 hedge of Katuk
• 1 hedge of edible hibiscus

And for alternate carbohydrates:

• cassava patch
• taro patch
• sweet potato patch
• A few yams

The rest, I would divide up amongst your favorite fruit trees: Tangerines (various), Brazilian cherry, Jaboticaba, Pomelo, Oranges, Surinam cherry, chico sapote, Mangosteen, Durian, Soursop, Rollinia, Cacao, Coffee, Mango (dry areas only), Rambutan, Lychee, Longan, Chempedak, Starfruit, Star Apple, Abiu, Lemon, Grapefruit, Marang, Passionfruit(vine), Pili nut, Wi apple, Peach palm, Acai palm, Cashew, Cinnamon, and others.

I have planted all of the above, (they all have their particular characteristics and advantages) but for sake of discussion, my personal top picks of these (all things considered) are: tangerines (various), Jaboticaba, Lychee, Star apple, Passionfruit (yellow), and Rollinia.

I would also consider adding some more bamboo plants, if you have space (bamboo plants are larger than you might think), such as: Bambusa textilis, Guadua angustifolia, gigantichloa apus, and Bambusa tuldoides.

Before planting any of these plants, get to know what conditions each require, and check that the appropriate form of propagation was used (seedling, graft, air layer etc.)

This plan would allow some more space for a few additional larger trees (timber trees, large bamboo, Pili nut, etc.) which could double as trellis for the many useful tropical vines. (Chayote, Passionfruit, Kiwano, Yam)

As you are planning this system, there are two particularly useful livestock that shouldn’t be overlooked.

1. It is often a good idea to have some tropical sheep in your orchard. They will eat many of the weeds, and supply meat eaters with an occasional lamb. At minimum, they need a sturdy fence to keep dogs out, and a tarp for shelter from the rain. Sheep could be included at no more than 2 animals per acre, usually less.
2. Additionally, a 2 acre parcel could easily include 30 chickens in a free range situation. “Free range” to me means they live as feral animals and find their own food and shelter.

The inclusion of sheep and chickens would provide substantially more food, and would likely save work, since they would be doing “work” during their normal foraging activities, and they provide for almost all of their needs with scant human input.

So, there is a basic plan to get you started. I’ve left out most timber plants, fiber plants, annual garden plants, herbs, groundcovers, medicinals, aquaculture, root crops, spice trees… I’ve pretty much neglected all of the understory plants, and I’m hoping to convince my wife, Karin to write a sequel to this post soon.

But first, I will tell you about two billboards I saw while driving down highway 580 in Oakland years ago. They were both advertisements for the California lottery. They were quotes by recent lottery winners. One was,”I threw away my alarm clock”. The other read,”I burned my ties”. My point is, in my present lifestyle, I can connect with the glee, and the freedom they expressed.

It’s been 10 years since I bought this farm and started working on it. At this point, Karin and I are basically done with expanding the infrastructure. The orchards are at 10-20% of their eventual production, so there are still shortages of some desirable foods. We are still experimenting with new projects, and adding new orchards and wood lots, but we’re not putting much money into that.

The two of us are living on a total household income of about $700 per month, here in Hawaii. That’s about $4,000 per person per year. This includes everything! (land taxes, dentist, house repair, transportation, etc.) Every month, we portion out our $700 into various envelopes for each category of expense.

Here is what our envelope looks like:

land tax                               25
telephone                            35
dial up internet                    10
long distance card               10
computer replacement         20
solar electric                         20
medical & dental                 120
propane                                15
office & household                15
farm (tools & maint)            125
scooter (repair & gas)           15
Scott (food & clothes & etc) 100
Karin (food & clothes & etc) 130
chainsaw & weedeater         30

This comes to $670. We’ve been using this system for over a year, and it is actually working very well, and it’s a pretty accurate measure of our actual expenses so far. We occasionally need to ‘borrow’ money from another section for sudden expenses, but we have usually (not always) paid it back. It’s been very successful, and an educational experience for us to keep track so thoroughly. Some things just don’t get purchased, and our lives just keep running along smoothly.

We are not poor, we are not living in poverty. Though our income is below the poverty line, I consider my life luxurious. This budget doesn’t encourage off-island travel, dentist bills seem huge, I would love to replace my old guitar, and so on, but we are living quite nicely.

Living on the cheap has been partly about working the land, but mostly about letting go of habitual beliefs.

The biggest recent money savings came from selling our motor vehicle. The trick here is not so much that we saved on gas, insurance, and repairs, (though we did) but there is now less opportunity to buy comfort foods, impulse purchases, reward purchases for how much suffering I went through during my time in town, and so on. It is surprising how much less we spend, and it doesn’t reduce my contentment. We just stay around Kapoho area, and it’s much nicer. If the truth be told, I fought tooth and nail for the past few years against divesting ourselves of our farm truck. My wife, Karin, was more committed to a car-free life than me. I was afraid that we would have trouble getting materials and salvaging things. But the time finally came when our infrastructure was basically complete. The seemingly endless period of bringing supplies onto our farm has indeed passed its peak. Now, we only seem to step into an automobile about once per month. It is a very sweet life. And Karin was right; there were unforeseen benefits to getting rid of our farm truck.

In the process of getting rid of our automobile, I noticed (at least) two things: First, it took a certain amount of readjusting my lifestyle to be happy without a car, and second, it never felt like the right time. I always felt insecure. I kept imagining emergencies, or other events where a motor vehicle would be indispensable. We live in a close knit village, and a few neighbors made standing offers to hitch a ride with them on their town trips. That helped.

One of the factors that encouraged me to get rid of our truck was doing some math. We calculated that, all inclusive, it costs us at least 50 cents per mile to drive our ’91 Toyota truck. That means a trip to Hilo town costs about $35. This makes hitching, bicycle, bus, and even taxi look pretty good. For a year, whenever we drove, we checked our odometer, and put our driving cost into an envelope labeled “truck expenses”. We watched lots of money go into that envelope during the year. This made the cost more visible to us.

I could get my food expenses down to zero if I were really committed to eating only what I grow. However, I am spending some money to buy certain foods that I find delicious and satisfying. $40 per month goes to cheese, butter, ice cream, cookies, and cooking oil (all organic, and priced to startle). The other $30 goes to a local farmer/friend who sells fresh milk, which I allow to culture into something like yogurt. I harvest, forage, or hunt the rest of my food.

My carbs are mostly breadfruit, bananas, taro. My greens are mostly sweet potato greens, edible hibiscus, chaya, and moringa. I eat fruit all day, if it is available. I feel no reason to buy carbs, greens, or fruit. I have been trading for off-grade mac nuts this month. Last month, I received some lamb meat in exchange for slaughtering and butchering it.

Travel is probably the second biggest potential expense, next to medical emergencies (knock on wood). With a yearly budget of less than $8,000, a trip for two to the mainland would eat up about four months of our annual income. This was one of the factors in my decision not to go to my brother’s wedding a few years back. This was confusing and painful for several of my family members. I dread having to make some difficult funeral decisions in the coming years. I haven’t left the island since ’03. Maybe that was my last time.

In terms of medical treatment for accidents, the last time I accompanied a friend to Hilo hospital to get stitches, I watched very carefully. The procedure cost over a thousand dollars, yet my do-it-yourself material cost would have been under ten bucks. There are many things like this to consider.

Reducing expenses is often more practical than increasing income. When confronted with something that “needs” to be done, I’ve learned that doing nothing can sometimes be a viable option.

I am still startled by the puny pathetic girth of my money savings account. We have intentionally converted any spare money we had into actual durable objects, and it is curious how insecure this occasionally leaves me feeling. I am familiar with the unconscious act of “investing” in another entity that I know very little of, like a bank. When I had a chunk of extra money, I used to buy stocks. It is strange and wonderful to invest in my own family economy. I now have an abundance of things, like orchards of trees, beehives, machetes, tools, nails, work clothes, bike parts, and so on. I have a small number on my bank statement. It means that if life gets rough, I won’t have the option to write a fat check and make things all better. I’ll have to make other arrangements.

It’s funny, as I get out of the habit of actually handling money, it becomes less enjoyable. It feels like I am recovering from an addiction of the process of exchanging money. It’s not just the thrill of getting the object of my desire; there’s an oddly comfortable feeling from just shuffling around the stuff. So now, money appears less frequently in my daily life. Yesterday I picked some tangerines off a tree, and no money changed hands. Sounds like I am being sarcastic, but I am gradually learning that money is not the source. Seriously. In my gut, it used to be that a pile of money was going to keep me fed. Now I know in my gut that a row of trees will keep me fed. Money comes from other people (like bosses, customers, the government), but trees grow right out of the ground. It’s a nice feeling knowing that I can stay at my farm nurturing trees instead of, for instance, standing behind a counter and saying,”may I help you?” to strangers all day. It’s very exciting, and it makes me want to be more self reliant in other ways besides food.

I am sometimes sad when I must forsake some useful gadget. I am like the monkey who loves shiny things. I want heaps of nice stuff. I want a cordless drill, that aluminum cargo trailer, a durable guitar, waterproof hiking shoes, stainless kitchen items of all sorts (very shiny), and so on. I love to gaze and admire at the cleverness, imagine the future utility, and appreciate the integrity of a well made useful item. This ancient, and very important trait seems to be getting my species in big trouble. So, as my wife occasionally says as I sadly place the item back on the shelf, “we can make it out of bamboo”.

Just the other day, while I was eating my supper in one of my “doom and gloom” modes, it occurred to me that I have no idea what sort of a safety net exists globally in terms of food supply. How much food is stored up? My answer could have been three months, or three years. I had no clue. So, I went on a few government web sites to look at the official statistics. As it turns out, since 1999, global grain production has consistently fallen short of demand. Last year was the largest worldwide grain harvest ever, but it  failed to break even. So right now we are left with a 59 day buffer. Two months, then we are running on empty (empty bellies, that is).

It seems to me that there are many links along the chain of food production and distribution that could fail to support the weight of our population. A multitude of surprises could await us: war-inspired blockades, oil shortages leading to fertilizer shortages, weather extremes may fail to nurture our fields, social or economic unrest leading to disorder, local storms interfering with ships. We live in interesting times.There are many things that we can neither change nor predict. Fortunately, here in Hawaii food security comes easy.

As tropical farmers, we have several easy-to-grow alternatives to grains. Some options are: sweet potato, taro, cassava, plantain, breadfruit, malabar chestnut, breadnut, and peach palm. However, some tree crops in particular  make carbohydrates available with very low labor input,  high disease resistance, and a reliable harvest. A few notable ones are Breadfruit, Breadnut, Malabar Chestnut, and Peach Palm.

Many of the plants of the genus Artocarpus grow rapidly and produce heavily on the rainy side of the Big Island. Breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis) is no exception. Breadfruit will begin fruiting in about 3-5 years, and continue fruiting for 50 years or more.  Depending on your conditions, a mature tree fruits more or less continuously for 8-10 months. Some fruits may be present on the tree almost all year long, with ripeness coming in several flushes during the year. As the tree matures, these flushes will overlap more and more, becoming an almost continuous season. There are at least 160 named varieties of breadfruit. I have tasted 7 varieties, and consider them about as similar as the various potatoes. The most interesting factor in having more than one variety of breadfruit is they may ripen at different times of the year. There is very little information available on this island about which varieties fruit at which time(s) of the year. Also,the season varies from year to year, and also according to rainfall, and elevation. I have 6 varieties in the ground, and am gradually learning about these trees. Based on my observations of my fairly young trees, I am guessing that with a few select varieties, a 12 month harvest will be possible. I’ll let you know in ten years. For now, the Hawaiian and Samoan (Ma’a’ fala) are the most readily available, and they make good eating. You can’t go wrong with either of these.

Cooked Breadfruit is less than 2% protein and about 3-6% fat. To prepare a breadfruit for eating, just do anything that you would do to a potato. It can be steamed, boiled, baked, roasted, and/or fried. The skin and core are edible and agreeable, though some prefer to remove them. Once cooked, it can be mashed, sliced, fried, and combined with any recipe in place of pasta, grain, or potatoes. Homefries, lasagna, poi, and pancakes are among the final products. I personally like to steam it in the pressure cooker for 15 minutes, then make mashed breadfruit, because it is so easy. If you can get the timing right, a whole Breadfruit stuffed under the embers at an outdoor fire comes out really delicious.

Breadnut is in the same genus as Breadfruit, but is considered a different species. This tree has very similar appearance and growing habits. It’s fruit  looks very much like a Breadfruit , but is filled with seeds instead of starchy pulp. The seeds are somewhat like jackfruit seeds.  Breadnut has significant amounts of protein (13-16%) and fat (6-29%). Breadnut seeds are very similar to, and a bit better than, Jackfruit seeds. I usually boil Jackfruit seeds for over an hour, when they’re slightly soft and the skin splits.

Malabar Chestnut also grows rapidly and begins fruiting in a few years. It’s fruits are generally similar to Breadnut, in that within each fruit are a number of seeds which can be boiled, roasted,  or steamed to yield a tasty carbohydrate. Malabar seeds are about 16% protein and 40% fat. I like to boil the seeds for 15 minutes, then scoop out the flesh and eat it with a tiny spoon. It has a nutty sweet flavor. A worthy snack all on its own.

Peach Palm (Bactris gasipaes) is known on this island for it’s heart of palm. It grows very rapidly, and is clumping. These two features make it a very prolific producer of palm heart. Of more interest to subsistence farmers is it’s high protein (16%), oily, and starchy fruit. In central and south america, there are dozens of varieties of Peach Palm specifically grown for their fruit. Unfortunately, as far as I know, the varieties that are grown here on this island are selected for their heart. Since these fruits have oxalic acid (like taro) they need to be cooked thoroughly. I boil them for at least an hour (or two) and remove the peel before eating.

I encourage you to plant at least one starch producing tree on your property. It’s a small investment of time and energy, and it may one day meet your most basic needs. Most people in this country, even farmers, have become used to food always being available at the store. For those of us who haven’t experienced hunger, it’s difficult to fathom the emotional effect of not having basic food to put on the table. Psychically, food has been relegated to the position of entertainment. It has not always been so, and it may not always be so in our future. Your Breadfruit tree could one day stand as the most precious thing in your life.

If anyone knows of sources of Peach Palm varieties which are selected for their fruit, or has information about breadfruit seasons and varieties, or if you want to talk story about other aspects of this article, please get in touch with me by leaving a comment below.

- Scott

Our location: Our farm is located in the humid tropics, on an isolated island, within an affluent culture. These factors add up to a uniquely conducive environment for growing one’s own food. I like to say that food self sufficiency on the Big Island of Hawaii is “like cheating”. I will explain in some detail:

1) We have a 12 month growing season. Rain is relatively evenly distributed throughout the year. The temperature is never below 60 degrees. This means that it is never necessary to store food. Storing, freezing, canning are all optional. Planting and harvesting can be accomplished as needed. Fresh food is available every day, all year. Further, it is comfortable to work outside all year. No need to spend months waiting for nature to awake from her winter slumber.

2) The abundant rain and balmy temperature make plants grow fast here. This means that it is reasonable for a middle age person to plant orchards with the expectation of enjoying the products. For example, bananas can bear fruit in 12-18 months, and many other fruit trees bear in 3-5 years.

3) We have very few pests. No gophers, rabbits, deer, monkeys, snakes, raccoons, possum, bats, and many insect pests are absent. They simply haven’t made the 2000 mile journey over the ocean. Consequently, our gardens, orchard saplings, and chickens are relatively safe at night. Our chickens sleep in the trees all year.

4) We have an broad variety of useful plants available. Over the last 100 years, or so, explorers and collectors have acquired most of the interesting useful plants from tropical areas in every continent and brought them back to Hawaii. This means that we have (relatively) easy access to all the best fruit and nut trees, greens, palms, bananas, tubers, and bamboos from all over the world.

For example, we not only have access to Avocado (from Mexico), and Peach Palm (from Central America), but Paradise Nut (from Brazil). So, in my search for a vegetable source of oil, I have at least 8 good options. And the same holds true for access to carbohydrates, vitamin C, and so on. The choices are mind boggling. The general rule is: if it’s good, it’s probably here.

5) We are surrounded by eccentrics, hippies, botanists, and other enthusiasts who are active in food self sufficiency. A uniquely high proportion of the residents in our village are growing food and living simply off-grid. This means we regularly share information, seeds, food, recipes, sob stories, anecdotes, and other resources. If someone discovers some new thing, everyone soon knows about it.

6) The climate is easy on the body. It is mild enough to live without walls. It is not only feasible, but pleasurable to live under a tarp, or even, perhaps, under a thatched roof. This means that a person can devote all their time and money into the land. Shelter needn’t absorb much of one’s energy.

It’s been three years since our first blog on our food experiment. During this time, our livestock has dwindled, and our orchards have both matured and expanded. Karin and Lauren have devoted much of their time and focus to homeschooling Lauren. Much of Scott’s energy was available for expansion of our plantings and completion of our infrastructure.

Livestock

Three years ago, we had  8 Nubian goats on 6 acres of pasture, which supplied us with an abundance of milk, and rarely, meat. Over all, the goats demanded a large portion of our human energy. 3000 feet of fencing needed to be maintained to exclude dogs. The pastures needed frequent “haircuts” to keep the proper balance of delicious plants. The lactating goats needed regular milking and feeding. They needed concentrated food to supplement their grazing diet. For some years, supplements came in the form of organic wheat berries (from the mainland). Eventually, it began to feel absurd to augment our 22 tropical acres with more acres in some mainland wheat field. We chose to harvest Noni fruit, Ti leaves, jackfruit seeds, bananas and other tropical treats to entice our milking goats into the stanchion. This felt more in line with our ideals, but it added time to the frequent chore of milking them.

Three events led to our decision to abandon our small goat dairy:

First, an accidentally introduced gall wasp killed 90% of our Wili Wili trees. We had planted over a thousand of these trees as edible fence posts for our pastures. They were an  indispensable source of high protein fodder for our goats, and for sturdy, rust proof fence posts in our extremely rocky environment.

Second, the goats reached a toxic fodder tree called “gunpowder tree” (Tremis orientalis) and three of our favorites died a painful death.

Third, Lauren reached a time in her life when she was no longer willing to be our milkmaiden. She had done it with great joy for a few years, and had a change of heart. Karin and I chose not to manage this task between the two of us; it felt like “a chore”.

So, sadly, we sold all of our goats.

Later, during a lull in the pig hunting, I decided to introduce tropical hair sheep into the two pastures. They were a cross between St. Croix White and Barbados Black Belly. Sheep are more hardy and less maintenance than goats in the tropics. All of the goat breeds originate in dry or temperate climates, and their reproductive systems are genetically designed to produce excess milk, at the expense of hardiness of the animal. Tropical hair sheep seldom need any assistance during gestation, birth and lactation. In addition, I find lamb to be my favorite type of meat.

Unfortunately, our neighbor’s dogs agreed wholeheartedly with this last part. Our venture into owning sheep involved more conversations with the Humane Society, the Police, and the County Courthouse than suited us. It all ended after fifteen months, with 5 sheep dead or mauled, two dogs shot by me, and our neighbors were fined $430 (we received $180 of this amount). The worst part of it was lying in bed all cozy and sleepy, and then hearing a noise which might be a dog and jumping up in my undies and slippers and a gun and running/stumbling off to the pasture. After a few dozen false alarms and a couple of live encounters, my desire to be a sheep rancher left me.

So now we have two empty pastures.

Since then, we have planted a variety of trees along the borders of our pastures as living fence posts and fodder producers with the possibility that we will change our minds. Couldn’t hurt. Meanwhile, we are buying raw milk from a local organic farm with four cows.

In the past few years, we have done much studying online, and planted a whole lot of new perennials in the ground:

We expanded our Cacao orchard from six trees to twenty six. We planted Lilikoi vines on every one of our giant Rainbow Eucalyptus trees. We purchased and planted, without tasting them, nine new-to-us varieties of shrubs in an area we fondly call “berry alley”. We planted over a dozen varieties of useful or edible palms. We finally got connected with a few Cashew trees and planted several dozen Pili nut seeds. We found a thornless variety of Chaya, our favorite perennial green. We sought and found Cupuasu, a close relative of Cacao. We planted another hundred banana plants, and five new types. We planted over two hundred malingensis bamboo as a living pasture fence. We increased our Durian planting by eight trees. We planted dozens of Malabar chestnut, and a few trees of a close relative. We found and planted a delicious Mountain apple. And, finally, a few more Cinnamon, Brazil cherries, Tangerines, Marang, Surinam cherry, and Mulberry bushes.

To me the most exciting examples: we acquired Pili nut trees, Assai palms, and a seedling of Mayan breadnut.

Karin is studying and experimenting with our pond in her efforts to create a system which resembles a natural aquatic environment. We are hoping to be able to harvest Tilapia eventually. We are owners of eight beehives, and plan to replace them with top bar hives in the near future. Karin has also been studying the medicinal uses of many plants.

All that said, our family food self sufficiency hasn’t improved much. To a large extent, Karin and Lauren have been so absorbed with Lauren’s schooling, that they haven’t had the extra energy to devote/divert to eating off the land. Lauren has maintained an annual garden for a few years now, supplying us with collard greens, peppers, eggplants, chives, and basil.

The traditional family garden in the tropics is an oddity to me. At times it is intense to see so much productivity occurring in such a concentrated space. The annual garden can be quite a resource. Unfortunately, most mainlanders put so much energy into growing traditional annual plants which are unhappy in this climate and soil. The majority of temperate zone garden plants are not worth the struggle here. However, there are a handful of temperate zone plants which will grow quite nicely in Hawaii, and if you know which is which, a garden can be a lovely supplement. I am not much of a gardener. I have a fair amount of knowledge of what grows well and what doesn’t, just from seeing so many attempts, some impressive, and some pathetic. To me, traditional gardens are too fussy and too ephemeral. You devote all this time and energy into a plant, and before you know it, it dies of old age and you need to plant another generation. I can’t be bothered. I’m happy to eat the stuff, though.

In the tropics, it is very important to allow the perennial greens to occupy their place in your diet. I am referring to Chaya, Edible hibiscus, Sweet potato greens, Shisoo spinach, Katuk, Okinawa spinach, Chayote, green Papaya, heart of palm, and tropical pole beans (like wing bean). In addition, for carbohydrates: Taro, Sweet potato, Tropical pumpkin, Breadfruit, Breadnut, Malabar chestnut, bananas and plantains, Cassava, Jicama, Yacon, Pigeon pea, and Yams. The truth is that tropical perennials are all you need for excellent health. The “garden” is optional.

PAY ATTENTION TO THIS: The biggest key to success in self sufficiency is to learn to eat what grows well in your micro-climate. Develop new eating habits. Don’t worry about learning fancy techniques. The perennials listed above are easy to grow in the humid tropics. They are nutritious and delicious. They are not what we are used to. On our farm, we have all the plants and skills we need to be well fed. That part has been easy.

We use phrases like “comfort food”, “convenient food”, “entertainment food” to describe what keeps us going to the health food store. My emphasis on abundant variety is not essential for good nutrition; it’s about pleasure. The keystone of our experiment at Evening Rain Farm is not to find a way to simply survive. It is to find whether a sustainable lifestyle can be more pleasurable and fulfilling than a standard American lifestyle. So far, the answer has been “yes”.

My best guesstimate on our family food self sufficiency is Scott eats 90%, and Karin and Lauren eat less than 20% from the farm and neighborhood farms. This summer, Lauren’s homeschooling ends, and she goes off to Simon’s Rock college in Massachusetts. Karin intends to refocus on the farm at this juncture.

Scott’s diet

This year, my diet consists mostly of coconut water for breakfast, fruit during the day, and eggs, steamed greens, and some tropical starch for dinner.

The coconuts: Many folks have coconut trees which they don’t harvest, and they are more than happy to have someone come by and load piles of coconuts up and take them away. Every two months or so, I drive a pickup truck to Rodrigo’s house and spend an hour with my friend Geoff throwing three hundred mature coconuts into the truck. When I get them home, I open about 5 per day, drink the sweet, oily water inside, and leave the meat out for the chickens to eat. When the chickens are done with the coconuts, I throw the husks in piles around our banana plants.

Fruit: When I feel hungry, I wander under whatever tree is making fruit right now, with a picking pole or ladder, if necessary. I pick and eat while either sitting in the branches, upon the ladder, or under the tree until I am quite full. I repeat as often as necessary during the day. Some fruits are so large that they require a group effort to finish off even one. Jackfruit, for example, are frequently over sixty pounds. There are many other tropical fruits which commonly weigh between two and eight pounds. This past week, I have been frequenting the Brazillian cherry trees. I have also been eating Rollinia, Chempedak, bananas, and Papayas.

Eggs: Our chickens produce plenty eggs for about half the year. During egg season, we are content to receive about half an egg per day per hen. This means that with around twenty five layers, we harvest a dozen eggs each day. I eat five eggs every night. Karin likes to amuse our friends by mentioning that I have often eaten ten or more eggs in a day. Actually, the most I have eaten in one day is nineteen; in a week, sixty three. My rule for this is that each egg must be eaten from a place of desire. When we had abundant goat milk, I drank an average of over three quarts per day over the course of three years. If a favorite fruit tree is producing, I will often eat many pounds of that fruit per day. Whatever is in abundance.

By the way, the only food that we provide for our flock of twenty five hens is five mature coconuts, and between zero and ten bananas per day, depending on our supply. The rest of the day, they eat plants and various little critters. They usually find their own places to roost and lay eggs, and they replenish the flock with little assistance from us. Our main duty is regularly trapping or shooting the clever mongooses.

Greens: Tonight, I walked to a Chaya bush, pulled ten leaves, and put them in a pot with an inch of water. It’s like steaming the top leaves, and boiling the lower ones. Then I pour the water into my dinner bowl. If I am frying my eggs, I pour the vegetable water into the skillet after frying, then into my dinner, in order not to waste the oil used in frying.

Starch: I prefer Taro to all other starches, but I’ll take what comes my way. Breadfruit is easier, as it hangs abundantly from the tree 9 months of the year. Imagine: you plant a breadfruit tree, wait five years, and then this tree produces hundreds of pounds of tasty potato-like fruits every year for the next fifty years. How can one even compare this to fifty years of planting, watering, fertilizing, weeding, and harvesting potatoes, or wheat? Anyway, this week I was raking up a new trail, and some Cassava roots caught on my rake. So I eat Cassava for the week.

In case you are curious, the main foods I buy at the store are: butter, peanut butter, cheese, coconut oil, and chocolate. Definitely an oil theme here. Always organic. My monthly food bill is about sixty dollars. This month I spent forty dollars on four pounds of cheese. Yum.

Scott with Wild pig

Wild pig: Last year, my primary food was pork. Every dinner was wild pig. It was very flavorful. The hunt was always an intense primal experience. And then dragging it home and butchering. I loved the feeling of harvesting feral animals from the woods. I felt very connected by my diet to the jungle that surrounds us. Earlier this year, though, I have opened up some animals and found unhealthy bodies. I noticed on some that the livers looked bad, and I found lots of worms in the last two pigs. It was unnerving and discouraging to see living, moving parasites in the body cavity and even within the muscle tissue (and crawling on my gloved hands!) It didn’t make sense to me that these wild animals would be so unhealthy. Perhaps the pigs are eating too many toxic papayas from the commercial papaya farms nearby. The commercial papaya farms use all sorts of chemical pesticides. I don’t know. All I know is that I am not eating pig right now.

So, there it is. Please respond and tell me what else you want to hear about.

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/

http://www.kunstler.com/blog/

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/BreakingNews.html

- Scott

Q: Will the commercial ‘factory farm’ breed of egg layers fare well in a free range environment?

A: The White Leghorns:  I did a brief bit of research on them several years ago, and was inspired enough to buy a dozen day-old chicks for our free range flock. They are good layers, industrious, good foragers, and did quite well in a totally free range environment (sleeping in trees, foraging for themselves, etc.). I was surprised, and impressed that the ‘factory’ hens did so well. They’ve been part of our flock for at least 4 years, and we still have a few left, as well as some crosses. Over the years, though, we have phased them out in favor of Reds, Barred Rock, Brown Leghorn, and Red Breasted Kraienkoppe. The white leghorns problems? their feathers aren’t so durable, they tend to get some sort of prolapse, they aren’t as good mothers, and they look dirty.

Q: Do barred rocks make good mothers?

A: We have 3 barred rocks in our flock, and we like them. They are friendly and trusting, yet they seem to lay plenty of eggs and they complete the cycle of laying, setting, and then raising the chicks. They make formidable mothers (in terms of protecting their chicks from mongoose).

Lauren(stepdaughter) and Karin(wife) are the ones who keep track of who is who in terms of setting and mothering behavior. (Incidentally, Lauren knows them all individually, and can remember who is missing, who has been sick, their ages, and much of each of their histories)

You see, we replenish our flock sort of naturally, by letting the hens decide when they want to start sitting and make a batch of their chicks. We do interfere when a bad mother tries to set. Bad mothering takes several forms. The most common is that the hen loses interest and forgets about her clutch of eggs in the middle of ‘gestation’. Occasionally a bad mother will fail to leave the nest when the chicks are hatched, and they all starve in the nest. Or they choose a lousy place for a nest, in terms of mongoose safety. And so on. Anyway, our barred rocks are good mothers. All the breeds we like have the potential of being good mothers, but it is also an individual thing.

We like the barred rocks so much that we have a barred rock rooster for one of our flocks. The other rooster is a brown leghorn crossed with a red of some sort. There are two kinds of reds: Production reds, and rhode island reds. I cannot remember which is what or ID them properly.

Maybe someone else can speak about the two kinds of reds? we have several and we like them, whichever they are.

Q: How do araucanas compare with the reds and rocks?

A: People say that the araucanas are very fine chickens. We’ve had them in the past, and liked them, and I’d like to have some again.

Q: What breed rooster would be good for my 5 nearly two-year-old barred rocks and why?

A: In terms of roosters, keep in mind that he will contribute half of the genetics of all future hens under his domain. Genetically, we are happy with several varieties. Reds, barred rocks, red kraienkoppes, (and araucanas if we had them).

There are definitely good and bad personalities for roosters, and I haven’t pinned it down by breed. But some roosters are mean and selfish, and some are chivalrous. Chivalrous means they watch out for danger, give extra scraps to their hens, break up fights, act nice to all the hens, and find good nests. Bad roosters beat up hens they don’t like, attack people, and steal and hog food from their hens. Not surprisingly, we often have to wait until after the rooster is past his adolescence to see if he will turn out good.

My chicken experience is from a free range flock of about 20-40 birds, over about 10 years.