The HUNTERS! The PROVIDERS!

GB and Ra'am went hunting in the river today for prawns.

They used no nets, just their gloved hands- Ra'am said, "so that the prawns have a fighting chance". The fearless hunters returned with 14 of them.

Now this is not just a little shrimpie. These are tahitian prawns, Macrobrachium lar. They are pretty large and the males have long claw arms.

We don't have pics of the actual hunting.... but here are the at home pics.

Don't they look appetizing, swimming in the bucket?

Ra'am shows us how big this one is

GB is cooking

Smells good!

The finished meal. Prawns, mashed potatoes, and steamed warabi (fern shoots). The last picture is Kika enjoying what's left of the meal.

Next time they'll bring a net. They're also going to buy one of those disposable underwater cameras. They said that there were TONS of fish in the water. Can't wait!

Just for the record. The HUNTERS! The PROVIDERS! was coined by GB and Ra'am

Working on the Highlands

I usually park in the Down By The River area.

These two trees were ailing from all the choking foliage. We have to decide whether to keep these two - a large mahogany relative and a big avocado. They seem to have some new growth, but there are a lot of dead branches.


Tools of the trade. STIHL is the bomb!



The benefit of all this clearing is new growth. This 5' banana tree is only a couple of months old!



On the way up the hill I pass some baby Miconia (that nasty plant that wiped out the native foliage of Tahiti). It is growing under a large plant I cut yesterday. This litte plant can grow into the 20' tall monster on the left in less than a year and drop 10,000 seeds!



The least fulfilling land to clear is land covered with hau. Hau is a light wood. Very easy to cut.



The Hawaiians used them for their outriggers. The problem is the tree seemed to evolve with a defense against people with chainsaw and bulldozers. It can grow into a tight curve and snap at you when you cut it. You can cut a whole acre of the stuff and it will interlock and hang above your head.


The first photo is from my previous work. The second is 120+ cuts later. Notice the deference? Ha!



Out on the Ridge, the cutting is a mess of downed palms and java plum, but the views are beginning to open up.



Looking south into our other gulch - Pu'u Moi Stream



And the ocean!



It also looks like we might have a 120 degree ocean view when we finish cutting!

BTW 4pm the skeeters arrived in force!

Luka makes any old picture of dirt look good

Last week we met an architect at the land. She definitely gave us some good ideas to work with.... we're still up in the air about whether we design a custom home or do the milti-faceted homes. If we do those, we'll likely be making it very custom anyways.

While we talked, Luka played. A water bottle, some dirt and some sticks provided much entertainment. He was very content, until I realized that it was nap time. We left and he fell asleep in the car w/in 3 minutes of the land. Playing is tiring.

No Mosquitoes Today

Karen might have had a cloud of them, but today I was there for few hours with my new chainsawing partner Kapila and did not see even one mosquito. Lots of fruit flies feasting on the fallen strawberry guava (aka Waiwi), but no skeeters.

We are in stage two of clearing the Ridge. I'll post pics next time I go (maybe tomorrow if the weather holds).

I spent a half hour picking up all kinds of trash today: pieces of metal roofing, old bottles, a shovel head, plastic tubing, PVC pipes, and got punctured by barbed wire hidden in some vines! I used the abandon concrete mixer as a trashcan.

One of the bennies of the Ridge is it it totally free of trash.

The Highland has a few truck tires scattered about, but will be easy to clean up.

Down By the River has trash everywhere. It will be a long time before we can run our fingers through the gorgeous black soil without pulling out a nail, some plastic or a piece of glass :(

Houses and Mosquitos

Yesterday GB and I spent the afternoon talking about houses and designs. He'd contacted some architects and apparently the cost of building, per square foot, has gone up dramatically in the last few years. The island has seen a huge building boom and the contractors must be going crazy raising their prices.
Back then- which was only like 7 years ago, $150-200 per sq ft was spendy- and could get you some luxury materials. From what we've heard recently, this same cost per sq ft is very very low. yikes.
Basically at those prices, it seems cheaper to buy property with a house already on it rather than build your own. huh?

Our discussion (and GB's drawing of many plans on paper) led us to revisit these kit homes. We looked at them years ago- even visited their site. They're really pretty- redwood, cedar- which is naturally termite resistant. And heavens knows we need all of the termite resistance we can get. They come in cool shapes- hexagons (small), octagons (med) and dodecagons (large). They're pretty flexible as far as how you put them together too.

In any case, we're doing some more research and will be meeting with an architect on Wed, as well as getting in touch with a contractor that comes highly recommended.

We ended up going back to the land to look at the house sites some more. Like GB said, there is the ridge with the killer ocean view- but narrow land, and then the lower part of the property which is gorgeous but no ocean views.

We were up on the ridge, pacing out a possible design using the multifacetted homes. Within about 10 minutes of being there, I had a major swarm of mosquitos around me, despite the fact that I was mostly all covered up :( To say this was disconcerting is putting it mildly. We were there in the early evening, but it was crazy. And another 10 minutes and there was a cloud around GB too.

We had said that if clearing the land wouldn't make a difference in the mosquito population that we'd sell the land, but at this point we're emotionally invested- esp GB, who has been spending so much time working there.

I mean, we want to put a pool there. I can't imagine hanging out near the pool with mosquitos trying to get at my uncovered flesh. And they don't usually bother me, so you know it was baaad.

Surprisingly we went to the lower part of the property to check out the mosquito population, and they didn't bother us, eventhough the stream is there.

In the end we figured that since we've cleared so much in the lower part, that the mosquitos have fewer places to breed. The upper part still is pretty jungly.

So next step? clear the ridge..... cept for the beautiful old mango trees and the awesome bamboo patch.

moral of this long winded story? We think a lot. We talk a lot. It's difficult to make decisions- especially the right ones. A few paragraphs of my rambling barely dents the scope of us talking about it.

oh, and we took some pics, but I don't like them. we'll see if GB can doctor them up so they're nicer.

Trying to find the best house site

The land rises about 220 feet from the river to the top. There are a lot of great house sites, but the only place to see the ocean is from the upper property. Really, the land is two different pieces:

Down By The River. with about 3 house sites and great river views and absolutely no neighbors in sight and the river is the only sound you hear. You might as well be a thousand miles from anywhere! There are a couple of acres of flat area for house and yard. No ocean view though. The pictures in the previous posts were of the "Down by the River" area.


Ra'am and I were discussing the many different places we could site the house when Karen and Luka showed up. Karen took this photo of us as we walked off the ridge area.

We walked the ridge to look for a house site.








The Highland and Ridge. The ridge is 300 feet long...begins at about 60 feet wide and slowly thins to about 20 feet wide.










Luka gets a ride along the ridge towards the ocean.















Luka and I are standing about 100 feet from the tip of the ridge. The ridge was originally covered with waiwi which I cut by axe and chainsaw.

The tip of the ridge is only a few hundred feet from the ocean.

I have begun to hand clear this area and still need to take down a lot of waiwi.

From the front of ridge you can only hear the ocean and river. At the back of the Highland you can kind of hear the main road and is close to an empty lot with possible neighbors in the future.


Between the Highland and the Ridge there is a grove of four old growth Mango trees (see left) and giant bamboos. This grove is about two acres and the widest part of the upper land.






The decision- where to build the house?

Dozing

We've had some dry weather recently. Keoki, DJ, and others have been helping out on some D3's (smaller dozers, less impact). Here is a view looking West and East from the lower area where the east "driveway" flattens out. Two days later it rained hard and I had to help Keoki tow his 4WD truck off our "driveway".

Some More Pictures

Here are some pics I have of a day at the river. This shows how beautiful it is looking up river.Here the kids (including an extra from next door) are playing while GB moves boulders in the background. He was trying to create a pool.

And here's our most dedicated worker. GB spends so much time at the land and there aren't a huge amount of pictures depicting that. He's cleaner here than he usually is when he works ; )

The Last of the Past to the Present

I spent a whole year walking the property in my ‘free time’ (I’ve got kids and I’m a filmmaker). I came to know this land like I did my first land. I cleared paths and some trees. One of my old friends, Joe, worked along side me (he has since escaped the mosquitoes back in his native Santa Cruz).

Slowly, I realized I had bitten off a mouthful as the mosquitoes made off with a tanker full of my blood. I had to control the Miconia – a noxious plant that has decimated the forests of Tahiti. I had to figure out the power, water, phone thing otherwise I’d be starting alimony and child support payments. I had to make it 'fun', so my kids and partner would help!

I knew there was an ocean view because the land was 300 feet tall and only 600 feet from the ocean and I could hear it so clearly. The river and stream that bordered the property were choked with brush, littered with dead trees, and you could breathe mosquitoes. And the trash was seemingly endless. Lots of work.


Eventually, I became an expert at chainsawing taking out trees, but only after I broke a rib and almost died when a tree decided to take me out.

So, our blog begins now. The summer of 2006. The land has been mostly cleared. Most of the really hard work is done. The pile of trash and car parts sits waiting to be hauled off. Many of the noxious trees have been removed. The Miconia is under control for now.

My T100 for scale.

The creative part begins now. Time to create a wee bit of paradise. Hope you enjoy this journey with me, GB, my partner, Karen, and my three kids Ra’am, Noam, and little Luka.

The Past - Part 4

The 10.5 acre property ‘had a lot of potential’. None that any other buyer could see. It had a bad mosquito population (both in numbers and attitude). The people in this area had used it for a trash dump for about 50 years and you couldn’t see more than 50 feet in any direction because of the dense growth. The property had been on the market unmoved for two years, eventhough the surrounding properties were skyrocketing and selling to mainlanders like hotcakes.

I took a number of photos of the abandoned cars and trash. I told the seller I would pay full asking price if he dealt with all the trash, otherwise I’d pay about half. I was bluffing about the full price, but the seller had never seen the property close up. He was shocked at the photos and agreed to my offer. I closed my purchase about the same time as selling my tree farm for untold amounts of money. My dad’s basic lesson: Buy Low, Sell High. Buy Low. Easy right?

The Past - Part 3

About the same time I was breaking up with my first love of the land, Donald Trump AND Oprah both announced the Big Island of Hawai‘i was one of the most undervalued places in America. My property value went up five times in a matter of months. Before I even sold, I found a piece that fit my partner’s requirements better: closer to town, easier access, power, phone and water. Well, this property had two – the power, phone and water? We’ll get to that eventually.

When I had a job shooting a video on O’ahu, I took photos from the plane of the land. I was in love again!

The Past-Part2

In 1997, I bought the farm. No, I mean I bought a piece of dreamland: Two waterfalls and expansive views. It was my first piece of land. Real estate was relatively cheap back then. I began cutting the grass and removing invasive species and planting. A couple of years later the monk moved nearby. I did a ton of work restoring the property. It was becoming one of the rare places you could be without seeing any non-native foliage. I shot my first feature film on the property – Ka’ililauokekoa. If you haven’t heard of it, you probably don’t speak Hawaiian.

Karen and I laid the waterline from the watertank to our house site. Things were really getting going!













After 4000 plants, much of it native tree restoration work, we were getting ready to build our dream house to go on our dreamland, but like many first loves, this was to end in heartbreak.


The Monk was on a rampage. He yelled at me every time I came up to work and “get away from it all”. He usually apologized afterwards. I knew what he had been through. Training the mujahadeen (Osama’s people) in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets for the good old US of A and this was after his wife was killed in Nam. Anybody would need some serious anti-psychotics to push down the demons this guy carried. Never-the-less, they were his demons. I couldn’t see my family, especially my kids, dealing with a guy who would brandish a 6 foot sword or shotgun when he couldn’t recognize you through his failing eyesight.

Enough was indeed enough. I got ready to sell.

The Past-Part1

In 2003, my very interesting, but unstable PTSD Special-Forces-Vet-Buddhist-Monk-Bipolar neighbor basically was off his meds one too many days in a row. My bit of paradise that I was growing from what was previously pasture didn’t feel utopian with him 3 inches from my face yelling:
“F@#king people parking in front of my yurt. Do you know these f@#kers?”
“No.” I reply
“You don’t f@#king give a sh#t about all these people coming up here. If it weren’t for me this’d be one f@#king mall by now. If you don’t help me, I going to get f@#king pissed!”

But some backstory first. Here is my lovely wife Karen and our little Ra’am on our first dreamland circa 1997.

Anniversary Day. 14 years of love.

I wrote this the other day. August 2nd was our anniversary.

We had planned to go and do some work on the land in the late afternoon and then go to dinner. But the early half of the day was shaping up to be really busy for me and I thought that I wouldn't make it til dinner. That was ok, since we're going to stay at the Mauna Kea with the kids in 2 weeks and celebrate then.

In any case, we got home from a busy and late day in town and Luka was asleep. Ra'am suggested that we go and do our land work. We left the kids at home with the Japanese exchange student who was staying with us.

That.... well that was crazy. We were trying to use a pink string to connect 2 poles that mark corners of the property- so that we could see where the property line is. Problem is we were spanning like 500 ft.... and there were plants and trees and just stuff in the way. And GB kept telling me we were going for perfection. yup.

anyhow, we left, but partway home realized we hadn't looked at possible housesites. so we went back. walked around. talked. saw mosquitos.

then.... on the way to the car.... GB sees some bees still hanging around a beehive he was trying to get rid of. He'd been torching it with his flame thrower.....

weeeellll. he saw the bee and wanted to bust out the flamer. I said that I needed to get back to the baby. Luka had been awake for awhile at home and was happily watching a movie, but I didn't wanna push it. Plus, it was time to make dinner.
BUT... did GB listen? NOOOOOO. dude busted out the flamer in an attempt to sizzle out whatever was left of the hive. And what was the result? a burning tree.

the tree was already a falling down tree- in the shape of an arc. and it was most likely all hollow already. that hollowness? a perfect vector for the fire to shoot through. PLUS, the hollow thing was probably filled with beeswax. ever used a beeswax candle? burns.

of course one would think that we should have grabbed a hose and squirted. great. if there was a hose. the land is au naturel. no improvements... yet.

and GB? in the beginning, he was throwing clumps of dirt at it. did nothing.

I went to buck and lena's and picked up their fire extinguishers. they are designed for little kitchen flares. not a tree.

so after a lot of uh ohs, we decided to go home so I could tend to the baby and he could get his chainsaw. with that, he could cut the tree down and then deal with it by shovelling dirt on it.

he came home and picked up Ra'am... oh, and we got the pizzas we had ordered an HOUR before that were getting cold at the closed pizza place. sigh...

the boys did put it out. in the dark.... and it took an extra 2 hours. they got home after 9. and R's first day of school is tomorrow. so much for being prepared.

so our anniversary? was interesting. and I spent at least 20 minutes of it making jokes and telling GB how stupid he was for starting a fire.

and just for perspective? this is the SECOND time! our bulldozer guy is allergic to bee stings, and too macho to carry an epi pen. He asked GB to get rid of the hives. when he torched the 1st one, he did it in the am, and walked away. he had to go back in the eve to put out the smoking embers. luckily that day it rained. today, is remarkably DRY. of course.