More green...less green

I thought it would be good to have a record of the property from top to house and from house to bottom. It will change a lot over the next year! So today I shot the former.

Below is the road from the highway to the old railroad track. Notice the fine mowing job the Massey did!


This is going along the old railroad.


This is the right turn from theold railroad onto our property.


Looking down from the top of the property. On the left we will be planting our first fruit tree orchard!


On the left are mango trees on the right are java plum.


I think I might be building a retaining wall on the right. Too steep to mow!


The B.hirosi on the left had a low success rate (the B.vugaris.vittalis had almost 100% success!), but hey free is free!


Our mango grove. The view is even wider now. I spent a few hours taking out more of the hau on the right after this photo was taken.


Taken from the biggest mango tree. You can see our empty house site. Might be the last time it is totally empty!


Here you can see on the right our now wider ocean view. I finally got the hau to collapse. The stuff hangs in the air like nothing else.

fascinated with fire

fascinated with fire
Originally uploaded by malama2006.

smores

smores
Originally uploaded by malama2006.

July 4

July 4
Originally uploaded by malama2006.

July 4 Party!

DSC05905
Originally uploaded by malama2006.

We decided to host a party at the land for July 4. We shlepped the grill out there, some tables and chairs, and set to having a party!

It was really fun. GB and some of the kids went down to the river early in the day to catch prawns to grill.
We cooked a delicious meal, built a huge bonfire, set off some fireworks, and had a great time.

The kids were awesome- they played and ran around and all got along great.

Tractor!

Yay! Tractor day!

Friday the tractor was delivered. GB was at the store early in the am getting instruction.

We met at the land and waited for our new tool.

Here the tent awaits its new inhabitant.

GB jumped right on for a photo-op

so did a little bug.... illuminating the fact that the tractor is NOT a toy.

So did Luka..... he was bummed he didnt get to drive it.... but I don't think that a 2 year old driving is in keeping with the above note about avoiding injury

GB did a little mowing to test it out
Action shot
I always thought that if we ever owned a tractor, it would be a green and yellow one. But this Massey Ferguson? Red is MY color!

Unrelated to the tractor news.....
the day before tractor delivery day, Jerome loaded GB up with a bunch of bamboo.
bambusa vulgaris vittalis
here it is all loaded up in his truck
and here it is.... all planted up at the back of the property. GB did this work on his own.... and it was a long day.

New growth on the temple bamboo!

Got Contractor?

Yes we DO!

I just called Gene, our new contractor (well technically not, until we sign a contract with him). Gene came with great recommendations, can do complicated work, is easy to deal with, communicates well, came in fastest with his bid, and his bid was right on the mark.... which we think will change once we start going over the nitty gritty details.

Main thing is that he's a nice guy and we think he'll build us a great house.

phew!

We have one obstacle to complete before starting- and that's finishing up the legal easement papers.... which are well in progress and almost complete. yay!

Tomorrow, the tractor will be delivered!

More updating

GB reminded me that there was more to update.

Our pool plans are completed and going to the county for permit on Tues (Monday is a holiday here- King Kamehameha Day).

Our house plans are BACK from the county and approved. All we need is this little thing called a contractor. Also we need to finish up easement paperwork. It was seemingly done, but is now back with lawyers getting some important info added on.

GB planted some palms on the side of the pool area. He hurt his back doing so and spent awhile in bed after that. Planting things in big pots should be a two person job, at least.

We put some termite bait/ poison stuff around our house pad. After our experience with termites in our current house, we figure we'll go all kamikaze and do as much termite prevention as we can. I guess that when we pour our slab that there will be termite stuff done then as well. More is better, IMO.

Oh, and the water tank is complete and awaiting water. Until we have a roof to catch off of, we'll call a water delivery truck to fill it up.

Update

I've been remiss in keeping up with this blog!

We have been doing a bit of land work.
On house news, we have heard back from only one of the 3 contractors we met with. His bid is in the ballpark of what we figured we'd be paying, and he seems like he'll be easy to work with. We've got some great references for him and later today we're looking at a 2nd house he built. We're hoping the other contractors get their bids to us. It doesn't look good for the other guys if one guy gets his bid in weeks before the others.....

So our mower is on its way and the tractor will be delivered by the end of the week. GB and I headed out yesterday to erect a tent/ shelter for the tractor and its implements.

Of course a seemingly easy job is never as simple as it should be.

GB went to the hardware store and got all of the appropriate poles and joins.

Here he is, happily unloading the poles from the truck

Now we're both college educated and pretty handy people. But the darned thing was just NOT making sense to us. The joins seemed all wrong.... and frustration was setting in.

GB decided to go back to the store. Something was NOT right.

good thing the land is pretty close to town.

Luka and I stayed at the land. He didn't want to go for an extra drive.
We had a nice time playing. It was a beautiful day.

We discovered this really interesting plant below the pool.
This is a close up of the fruit. Weird, eh?? I think it's in the passiflora family. I first thought it was like a tomatillo or poha berry, but the leaves are different and it's viney.
And that furry stuff? kinda sticky.GB returned with the CORRECT joins, and we finished the job in about 20-30minutes. Turns out the guy at the store gave him what was on the shelf, but the parts were mislabeled.
Of course, with the snafu and extra trip to town, this little job took 3 hours. oh well.


Afterwards we walked around. Or maybe I should say rode around.

To Answer your questions

How awesome that I got some questions to answer!

Jessi asked what we planned to do as far as electricity is concerned. We are getting bids on a solar electrical system. It's going to cost us a bunch up front, but it'll pay for itself over time. We're going to have panels on the roof of our shed and the whole system will be housed there. While GB is organizing that, I'll be getting a full lesson when the time comes so that I can help troubleshoot it (since we won't be able to just call up the electric company for service!)

Erica asked about the spinach. Here, from the website of the nursery we bought it from:

Okinawan Spinach: Is it an ornamental ground cover or is it a vegetable? It's both! Okinawan spinach is a succulent vine that gets about a foot tall and sprawls around forming a thick matte of stems and leaves. They are tangy to the taste, and beautiful to the eye.

I've also heard that it's a cholesterol lowering leafy green. My experience, however is that spinaches here on the islands aren't all that yummy. If you harvest the *very* youngest leaves, they're not so bad, but otherwise they're tough and slimy. So while I'm sure we'll taste it, and use it in a pinch, I don't see us eating a whole bunch of it.

We planted it mainly for it's fast growing and matte cover for the (formerly) eroding hillside.

Waiting Patiently

So as of yesterday, we've handed our plans over to 3 different contractors for bid.

Now the wait.....

All 3 contractors were recommended to us by different people. Two of the recommendations were from acquaintances who had houses built by these guys and were very pleased. The 3rd recommendation was from our draftswoman.
The contractors were all so different. One is a large (for Hilo) company and the others are small, one-crew companies. My instinct is that a smaller company will suit us better, but we'll see. It's really important to us that we can communicate well with whomever we choose and that they are helpful with ideas and input.

So now? Wait wait wait for the bids. Apparently it takes 2-4 weeks to complete one.

Okinawan Spinach Part 2.... or how we planted to keep the hill from going bye bye

Wednesday was slated to be delivery day for the 2nd half of our okinawan spinach order.

We were very very pleased to see how well the 1st half was doing. These plants were put in the ground 5 weeks ago. They are so BIG! The weather was dry for the 1st couple of weeks of their "in ground" life, but since then we've had perfect growing weather- some rain at night and massive amounts of sunshine during the day.


We had an extra person working with us, Brian, which was a good thing. We had a lot of planting and when a toddler is involved, it's best to work in an expedient manner.

Noam was an excellent helper. He played a bunch in the truck with Luka, under the makeshift tent that GB erected.

And he did a bunch of planting too. In this picture you can see how small the new plants are (in comparison to the picture above).Ra'am also gave up his weekly trip to Starbucks with his friends to come and work. I ran out to pick him up and he was a great help once he arrived.

Nothing as good as lying under a shady tree on a sunny work day. Lunch break was awesome :)


It's easy to stick the plants in the ground, but we were working on a very steep grade. And then after they're in the ground, each plant needs water- and since we aren't hooked up with a hose yet, that means a heavy bucket.

Ahhh.... the end of the day!


In the end, we planted 288 plants this day.... for a grand total of 540 okinawan spinach plants planted.

Moving and shaking

We've had a busy week with awesome visitors, Shelley, Jodi and baby Zev!

While they were here we met with our first contractor! Elliot met us out at the land. We came prepared with a list of questions (thanks Shelley and Jodi for helping us gather them), and Elliot patiently answered them all. I was sort of feeling like a pregnant mama, interviewing her potential midwife for the 1st time- it felt that big.

He called yesterday and said he had more questions after looking things over and so he came by today to chat. It's good because it gives us a chance to hear about things that might come up, as well as think about things we hadn't thought of.

Tomorrow we meet with another contractor.

We're also receiving the last batch of Okinawan Spinach for the side of the hill. It's gonna be a huge work day. It's a lot of plants. The plants that we already planted are looking fabulous too. It's been abount 5 weeks since we planted them and the weather has really been perfect growing weather- a little rain at night and lots of sun during the day.

Getting building Permits!

Val, draftswoman just called and told us that she already turned in our building permits (one for house, one for shed) in to the county!

A copy of the plans is on the way to us, and she already dropped off a copy with a contractor friend of hers. WOO HOO!

GB and I made out a list of stuff that needs to be done regarding the land/ house. We divvied it up and put things in order of importance. The level of organization we need to pull this off is daunting in some ways. There are just SO many details- and we haven't even really started yet.

I think that once we secure a contractor, we'll be in a good place as far as the house. But the power system is what really intimidates me. We've got GB on that, since I'm terrified of it. If you're reading this and confused.....
The land is off grid. Power lines are pretty close, and I suppose if we really wanted to, we could shell out some serious $$ for poles and get hooked up to the local power company. But currently on the Big Island we're paying amongst the highest in the state, and the HIGHEST in the country for power. AND.... HELCO (Hawaiian Electric Light C0.) just requested a large rate increase and they got it (it actually went into effect this last week, but still needs complete approval- the increase basically pays for legal and other costs incurred by HELCO when a proposed expansion of a power plant into the conservation district was legally challenged) .

Our bill at home right now is about $250+ - that includes GB's office, but does NOT include hot water, cooking, dryer, etc..... It's very expensive. With the new rate increase I think we'll see another $11 added on the bill (and there was a rate increase just last year as well).

So.... given all of that.... the idea of not paying into such a system sounds pretty nice. Of course we'll be paying a lot up front, but it'll be nice to not be paying into HELCO every month.

Well that turned into a long-winded rant.....

Satellite Pictures!!!!

Karen and I were playing with Google Earth and found our land. This seems to be taken about a year and a half ago. At that time, I had just finished clearing a chunk of the hau (the brown spot left of the house site which is the white square)

Then we found her folks' place in LA. (We're sure this is accurate).

Then we found my folks' place in NYC. (It is close, but we aren't sure - any error is Google's fault!)

All of these photos are taken from the same altitude, so the scale is approximately the same. Here's with our land outlined.

House Plans!

GB's awesome parents asked to see a copy of the house plans. Here is the most recent set I have- there have been some minor changes since this, but it's essentially almost complete:

Outside view

Downstairs. This is mostly patio, koi pond, and one room (TV room). We'll also be parking our cars here.
We are going with a really open design downstairs, since we'll be living on the 2nd floor (better views). We did have to add some walls and things for shear support, so the house wouldn't sway when people walk in it.

Upstairs, main living area. There are 4 bedrooms here- one of which is Karen's office/craft space. The "hole" in the center is open to the sky and to the koi pond below. The rooms basically go around the center opening. The house should be really full of light and gentle winds.

I know it's not the easiest to read these things- esp like this. Trust us that the house will be fabulous! We can't wait!

Bamboo

Friday work day! We've been working almost every Friday- which is an awesome thing, except for the fact that Ra'am is in school- and when he is in a working mode, he's as helpful as an adult.

We planned a mellow day, actually. GB, Luka, Noam and I set out in the morning. We wanted to thin out the big bamboo and then plant some of it. Last week (not written about that yet) we noticed that some of the cuttings we had used as stakes were sprouting. So we set out to make cuttings and plant them alongside our driveway.

It's not easy, dealing with this bamboo.GB mostly cut (and did a great job on starting to thin out the big clump) and I mostly planted. The guys were there working on the water tank, so in all it was a productive area.
We ended up planting maybe 20-30 bamboo this day. We figure that with this method (basically sticking the cuttings in the ground) that we'd get a 1/4 success ratio. So maybe 4 or 5 plants? Time will tell!

We almost left the o'o bar there. When we retrieved it, it was so boiling hot from the sun. I thought GB looked funny carrying it with his shirt. He wasn't pleased I took a photo of him (click for larger.... warning, graphic finger displays abound)
Luka spent a lot of time running down to the house site. Somehow he just knows that's his place. Of all the kids he's the one who will really be growing up here. He's down there standing near the pile of rocks.... while we all sit in the shade of the mango tree.

Stuff's Happenin'

Well I am THRILLED to say that we are almost completely done with our house plans!!!!!

It's been a difficult week in that regard. We've been working with Val, the draftswoman pretty much daily the last week.
There were so many decisions to make- esp regarding the foundation and the technical stuff.... we had pretty much figured out the design of the house awhile ago- it's the engineering things that were making us crazy!

But now all is good.... plans were dropped off at the architect she works with yesterday and we should have them back (with hopefully few changes) this coming week- including plans for the shed. YAY!

On another positive note, the water tank is in full production. They poured the bottom of it, and Friday the guys were there doing the mesh/rebar for the sides. They're probably going to spray the concrete on Tues (Karen does a little happy dance!).

A blah work day for Karen

We got a very very late start to this work day. Despite me being the really "blah" family member, I somehow insisted that we get out and get some work done on the land (what was I thinking???).

The major good thing was the state of the soon-to-be water tank

We had Kairos along with us, and thought we'd finish laying out the geotextile (erosion control blankets). We figured it would take us about 2 hours to lay them- and unfortunately we almost always underestimate how long it'll take to do these things.

Our plan was really to take the kids down to the river to do some prawn catching.....

We drove into town to get supplies- the blankets and some more nets for the prawns. GB was too cool, talking on the phone while we shopped.

We made it to the land probably around 1pm- pretty late. GB set right to work on raking and getting the ground ready. I was shovelling and complaining like it was the hardest work ever. It was a really complainy day for me. I know I was driving GB crazy.
The kids busied themselves by throwing rocks and trying to hit a hollow piece of bamboo at the bottom of the hill that made a huge noise when his (which we discovered when Luka of all people hit it).

We discovered that the bamboo we had used as stakes a few weeks previous, had sprouted.

Luka started falling apart- ready for a nap.... and then we realized that we didn't get the pins that tack down the blankets. So I took him for a drive and to pick them up and GB put the boys to work.

Eventually kvetching me returned from town with a napped child and we completed the job. Phew. Now we're just waiting on a bunch of plants to stick in the blankets. Then this project will be complete!

Though it was already getting late, we did go down to the river. GB, Noam, and Kairos went out hunting for prawns. The water was cold, but they managed to catch about 11 of them- enough to have Kairos' family over for dinner and cards, and for everyone to have at least one.



On the way back to the car, Luka "helped" GB carry the bucket full of crustaceans by holding the rope ; )