stop feeding the beast

"There's a lot of work to do if we are going to avoid the dangers that loom ahead, but in the meantime, whatever else we do, lets vow, whenever possible, to stop feeding the beast.  With every purchase you feel you have to make, buy it from a local retailer and if something is not available locally, buy from an independent retailer, not a chain.  When we do this together, we detonate a quiet bomb that has the potential to level the marketplace."
- AdBusters #91

When we first began sleeping in the Yurt we would be sung to sleep by a chorus of singing toads. Literally.  There's really no sound in nature (that I've heard) that comes close to the melodic sound of toads on a full moon.  We would lie in bed with our eyes closed letting the stress of the day drift away to that music.  And then, after a few months of nighttime bliss, a lone bullfrog set up camp in the pond closest to our house.  It would set off a periodic "buurrrgggg," followed by minutes of silence.  Then, just as we're about to fall asleep: "buuuurrrgg."  The intervals were spaced out just enough to ensure the maximum amount of irritability.  After a few nights a second frog showed up in the pond directly opposite of the first.  Now they would "buuurrgg" love poems to each other in newlywed delight at having stumbled upon their watery frog eden.  Apparently they hit it off, because within a few months we were surrounded by bullfrogs.  The melody of the toads was replaced by the comparable car horn of the bullfrog. 

Our night-time symphony turned into a cacophony of noise.  We couldn't sleep.  We couldn't think. At times it was too loud to even talk to each other.  Then, possibly because of a scarcity of food brought on by the hordes of frogs, they began eating our baby ducks.  We'd hear the scream of a duck and run outside to see its body being thrashed across the pond.  I'd jump off the deck just in time to have the eviscerated duckling give it's last bloody death throes in my hand.

And they continued to multiply.  Since my wife is Buddhist and I'm a fragile vegetarian incapable of inflicting death on an animal, we didn't know what to do. We researched different ways to prepare grilled frog.  I caught them in nets and transported them to the other side of the property.  But the noise kept getting louder, the duckling deaths continued, and we never got the nerve to fire up the grill.

And then the tables turned.  Nature in all its evolutionarily honed glory fought back.  First it was the toads.  We'd find a pile of toads drying out in the sun.  I'd pick them off of each other only to find an emaciated dead bullfrog at the bottom of the pile.  Nature's second wave of defense were the egrets.  They began stalking the edges of the pond using their sharp beaks to pierce all but the biggest of the frogs.  Then they would ingest them nearly in one piece.  Some days every egret in Kapahi must have been stalking for bull frogs on our land.

With the combination of food scarcity (they killed most of the ducklings), gangs of marauding toads, killer egrets, and a host of factors invisible to me, the population leveled out.  We still have a lot of bull frogs but the diminished noise (relative to its peak) is now almost unnoticeable.  The toads have laid off their attack and most of the egrets have gone on to greener pastures.  

Nearly every day I'm lucky enough to witness the balance of nature.  It's a constant redistribution of resources which ensures that no creature is dominant.  It's far more than a circle of life, it's a complex web where every component, from human to cat to duck to frog to bird to beetle to fungi to bacteria play a part.  Remove one aspect of the web and, like a massive Jenga, the whole structure teeters.

To my eyes, my yard appears to be thriving.  However, I know that she has a chronic illness.  The atmospheric concentration of Co2 is higher than it has ever been since the Hawaiian islands broke through the surface of the Pacific in a fiery burst of steam.  Every day it increases at a rate 14,000 times faster than in the last 600,000 years.  For the first time in history of the Earth, a creature is effecting every square inch of the planet.  Bill Mckibben has coined our anthropogenic influence on the planet as: "The End of Nature."  Not to mention the regional ecocide we have waged: from fracking in the North East, to underwater oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico, to pesticide drift on the West Side.  In the pursuit of progress under the spell of an economic model named capitalism, we are in a war with Earth that she never evolved to balance out.   

While I'll never come close to understanding the infinitely intricate web of life beneath my feet, capitalism is a circle that is comprehensible.  Goods are mined from the Earth (whether through agriculture, deforestation, mountaintop removal, or oil rigs), pushed through the refining process of major corporations, and sold to us. Debt financing allows those corporations to expand indefinitely in order to be the low cost provider, and that same debt is paid off by the growth it creates.  Would you invest in a company that wasn't committed to growing? Would you buy a house that you knew wouldn't increase in value?  It's a paradoxical system that is dependent on infinite growth, yet reliant on a planet of finite resources. 

If capitalism is the beast, then we are fodder.  We spend our lives at work so that we can convert our paychecks into manufactured goods.  We complete the circle and, with our daily purchases, enable the corporations to continue to extract resources.  This cycle doesn't have the benefit of four billion years of evolution (as nature does). It has no balancing agents.  There will be no egrets or toads to save the day. As long as we keep consuming from unaccountable corporations, the ecocide will continue.  Exxon will dig deeper for oil.  A future president will put his stamp of approval on a Keystone pipeline to transport oil from tar sands to market.  Monsanto will continue to manufacture and market poison.  Cocacola will continue to dry up local aquifers and then move on leaving a wake of desecrated land.  Apple Computer* will continue to legally avoid paying $17 million per day in taxes.   The planet will continue to warm. All under the guise of progress. 

But we do control the inputs.  If I cut off water to my garden, the plants will wither.  If we "opt-out" of the system, then we stop feeding the beast.  We have options.  Every time we make a purchase, we are choosing who we are working to support.  Do we want to support a company that is legally bound to improving its bottom line for shareholders (any publicly owned corporation).  Or do we want to support a local artisan?  Do we want to buy from the low-cost producer of food, or from the family farm down the road who has been farming the same piece of land for hundreds of years?  Consumer choice is the greatest power that we have.  By leveraging the power of choice, we can starve the beast and begin to balance out the power of corporations.  


*Full disclosure: this was written on my Macbook (made in China).  I answered my Iphone (made in China) four times while writing it. The desk that the Macbook sits on came from Ikea (made in China). The screws in the deck that the desk is sitting on came from Home Depot (made in China).  As I said in my last post, we are all complicit.  Much of what I write is a pipe dream view of the world through a very small and idealistic lens.  But it's the only lens that I have and the only place that I know where to start.  

Four plants that everyone should plant today

"The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is now."
- Chinese Proverb

If you live in Hawai'i and you have any available land, then plant these three trees as soon as possible:

Sunrise Papaya:
Without a doubt, this is the best tasting papaya out there.  I spent the large majority of my life staying away from the vomity taste of papaya.  My first cold sunrise papaya opened up the world to me.  You can go from seed to fruiting tree in less than a year.  Plant a dozen of them and you'll have a papaya a day.  They are incredible sources of Vitamin C, Vitamin A, fiber and folate.

Apple Banana:
Since bananas may disappear from the grocery store within our life times, planting some bunches of Apple bananas might be prudent.  They will also bear fruit within a year, and, because the banana patch will rapidly spread, before you know it you'll have more bananas than you can handle.  Be warned that when a banana tree fruits, it also dies.   We have 10 producing bunches (each has 3-5 trees) and we can harvest bananas about every three weeks. 

Moringa;
Possibly the most amazing tree on the planet.  It grows rapidly from seed or cuttings.  By wight, it's leaves contain 7x the vitamin C of oranges, 4x the vitamin A of carrots, 4x the calcium of milk, 3x the potassium of bananas, and 2x the protein of yogurt.  It's seed pods are edible and are high sources of dietary fiber, vitamin C, and magnesium.  The seeds themselves contain a medicinal oil and are reportedly able to filter water.  And the roots can be used like horseradish.  If you plan on surviving off one tree, this is it. 


If you're on Kaua'i and need cuttings (moringa), keiki (bananas), or seeds (papaya) then let me know and I'll gladly provide. 

Kona Storms

My yard is a flooded mud pit. The compost that I spent all day yesterday heaping around my trees has washed away. The small dam on my lower pond burst, releasing most of the water. Our gravel path is now a small stream.  The current casualty toll is: two milos, a papaya, and a banana.  The ducks look like children making the most of their temporary water world.  The chickens have resigned themselves to the rain and are stoically standing their ground against the elements.  My dogs are cowering under the bed. 

So it is with every kona storm.  The heavy stillness of the torrential rain will be broken by the sound of a freight train barreling down the mountain from the south west.  Due to some meteorological phenomena, the north east facing valley behind us acts as a superconductor for south west winds.  While the rest of the island is just dealing with rain and thunder, we have a gusting mini hurricane on our hands.  Alternating episodes of stillness followed by 50 mph gusts.  Because we have to close our dome and all of the windows (to keep the rain out), the Yurt ends up acting as a barometric pressure gauge.  Right before a gust of wind hits us, the yurt puffs up from the drop in pressure (because the pressure outside is momentarily less than it is inside).  And then the massive amount of moving air chasing the low pressure hits. 

It's like riding a ship through a storm. You can feel the flimsy structure straining against the wind, you can see the wind rippling through the canvas walls, and you can hear it.  Nothing compares to the sound.  Albezia trees are snapping like gunshots, pieces of flying debris (mostly leaves) are hitting the walls, and the supernatural roar of the wind consumes all.  It might be some almost dormant PTSD left over from huddling under a mattress with my brother during hurricane Iniki, but the sound of wind definitely rankles me deep inside.  That low encompassing roar created from the friction of rapidly moving air against the earth is the sound of destruction.

But then it's over.  And the only sound left is the unworldly silence of rain drops on our polyvinyl chloride roof and distant thunder punctuated by the occasional jabber of a happy duck finding a worm.   In a few hours the sun will come out.  My lake of a yard will begin to dry up.  And tomorrow I'll get to work repairing the damage. 

And so it goes for winter in Hawai'i. 

Perspective

When we first started on this "path," I had some simple delusions.  The goal was self-sufficiency, so, in my mind, that meant put up solar panels, drink rain water, and grow food.  Easy, right? Having spent my entire life learning everything I need to know from reading, I bought a dozen books on each subject.  Things like Backyard Homesteading, Edible Food Forest, and a few permaculture guidebooks.  One of the books claimed that a family of two could grow all the food they need on 1/4 of an acre and it had this neat little diagram of a farm house, some pigs, chickens, fruit trees, and a little wheat patch.  I was inspired.  I have an acre and we live in the land of the endless growing season, growing all of our own food should be a piece of cake. I had this vision that within a few years I'd just walk into my yard for a bit of grazing when I got hungry.  The vision was so strong that, for a moment, I thought I was a farmer.  Or at least a master gardener.

I don't think I've ever been more wrong on anything in my life.  I've been working on the land for exactly three years and put in somewhere around 2500 hours into creating sustainable food production systems.  I've put in a comparable amount of time reading on the subject, and spend much of the rest of my life thinking about it.  For the vast majority of human history, people grew their own food.  With access to the internet and some gas powered tools, how could I fail so miserably?

My garden has never produced anything except eggplant and herbs.  I had some beautiful peas once, but the wild chickens ate them all.  My sprawling watermelon vine produced one massive watermelon, but in our excitement we picked it before it was ripe.  The wild pigs destroyed my sweet potato patch (I have since successfully grown sweet potato in barrels) and my lo'i.  All of my avocado trees died.  My ducks and chickens are alive and very happy, but every egg they produce probably cost 4 times more in feed costs than a store bought egg.  While I'm starting to figure some aspects out, if this were the pre-industrial society that my repressed inner-hippy seems to yearn for, I would've been dead long ago. 
 

In a few years the rest of the fruit trees will begin fruiting, but I'm not sure how much that will help.  I've gone many stubborn days where I would attempt to only eat food from my land.  That basically meant eating 15 bananas, a papaya, and a lilikoi, and still feeling famished at the end of the day.  The amount of fruit that you need to consume to satisfy hunger is mind-blowing.  I could have every fruit tree in my yard bursting with fruit, and I'd still only be a small step closer to self-sufficiency than when I lived in Honolulu. 

I was beginning to think that self-sufficiency was a pipe dream.  Then we went to Cambodia, and my view of food was turned completely upside down.  The country is nearly entirely agriculturally self sufficient.  And you can see why from the instant you get off the plane. 

Every inch of land is cultivated.  We drove through half of the country (the equivalent of driving from Houston to Seattle to LA and back to Houston) and for the entire drive there are rice fields from horizon to horizon on both sides of the road.  Every home has a mango tree, a lotus patch (which they eat), a banana patch, and a small herb garden. Nearly every home has ducks and chickens and a cow.  The animals double as sources of protein and lawn mowers (of which you won't find one in the entire country).  Any hillsides (and therefore not suitable for rice cultivation) are massive orchards, most of which seem to be cassava or mango.  But, the biggest single difference is that nothing is wasted and everything edible is eaten.  You'll never see a banana blossom still hanging from a fruiting banana tree, because it gets eaten.  The trunk of the banana tree itself is even eaten.  When we eat a shrimp, we eat 1/3rd of the body; when they eat a shrimp, it's the entire thing, head, shell, and digestive track.  What we see as weeds (such as Wandering Jew) are eaten.  What we see as pests (spiders, rats, crickets, and ants) are eaten.  And whatever isn't eaten, is used for something.  For example, take rice: the stalk is fed to the cattle (the manure fertilizes the field and the cows are eventually eaten), the shelled husk is used as mulch and as a fuel source, and the rice kernel itself is eaten. 

I realized that my problem isn't that I'm a terrible gardener (which I am), it's that my relationship to food is skewed.  I'm used to looking at food as it comes out of the grocery store: perfect, predictable, and plastic looking. I don't salivate when I look at my bamboo patch. I don't see a potential meal from the fruit of our hala tree.  And I definitely never thought about grazing through my hillside overcome by Wandering Jew.  Our acre is overflowing with food.  Just not the food that I intended.  I've been approaching the problem from the wrong end.  I will continue to be an abysmal failure if I'm trying to replicate our current food system in my backyard, because it's not possible.  But I think it'll be awhile before we start roasting rats or sauteing spiders.

Ka Wae

Exactly a year from my last post, here's my 173rd attempt at kick starting this blog.  I've finally changed the name (and the URL) to something a bit more inclusive.  Ka Wae was actually one of the alternatives that we were deciding on when we chose the name of our company (settled on Kamanu).  For me and this blog, the root is similar to Kamanu; because the way that I look at the world has been so influenced by the lifetime I've spent in and around outrigger canoes, I wanted a name that would root me to that. The wae on a canoe is where the 'iako get lashed on. It's the strongest part of the wa'a and it allows the ama to connect to the canoe, therefore keeping it upright.  Though relatively small, it's a fundamental and defining piece of the outrigger canoe.  So, in a metaphorical stretch (for a very literal person), it's a good reminder for me regarding strength and interconnectedness.  According to wehewehe.org, wae also means meditation. So there it is, the new name.  In a pre- New Year's Resolution (since I always fail at resolutions, I figured I'd try and do it early this year), here's to updating at least a few times per week. 

As a refresher (for myself and anyone who happens upon this blog) I'm writing about our (my wife and I) experience trying to explore life by living within our means.  If you're new to this blog, read this post as a good starting point as to what this is about.  We live "off-grid," meaning we don't have any physical connection to the outside world.  Our water comes from our roof and our electricity comes from the sun (converted to AC electricity by our PV panels and an inverter).  Most of our calories still come from Costco, but we're working on it. We're not trying to save the world or prove a point, we're just doing our best to remove ourselves from an unsustainable system by living within our means to produce.  There is no end goal, just a long and slow learning curve on what it means to step away from consumption.  And we're writing about it primarily to document the process and learn from our mistakes.

For better or worse, this is our story.

Below you can see some recent pictures.

Our current animal total is at: 16 ducks, 9 chickens, one mysterious goose, three dogs, two and a half cats, two koi, 12 Tilapia, and some catfish. 

We have somewhere around 50 fruit trees growing one our acre: banana, papaya, kumquat, lime, fig, brazillian cherry, noni, lychee, breadfruit, mango, tangerine, orange, acerola, rambutan, longan, ice cream bean, coconut, avocado, white sapote, jackfruit, durian, black sapote, mamey apple, tamarind, acai, coffee, cacao, chico, soursop, and haitan star apple.  Plus an uncountable number of koa, pigeon pea, hapu'u, hala, bamboo, and gardenia. On adjacent State land I've planted about 60 koa trees that we started from seed from the koa forest in the mountains behind us and a number of other native trees that we get from the annual Arbor Day Native Tree Giveaway (a'ali'i, alahe'e, 'ohia, hala, munroidendrom, etc).  

We made a gravel path, to minimize our mud wallowing, and began the never-ending process of mulching away our grass.  The goal is to put 90% of our land into some type of food production, while leaving a small yard (visible in the first picture) for when Sokchea and I are in need of a quick game of freeze tag or dodge-ball with the dogs. 

We've probably gone a bit overboard with the tree planting, but I can't help it.  There is something evolutionarily very satisfying about planting a tree.  In the same way that a long dormant gene in my chicken's awoke when they began brooding, something in me clicks into place with every seed that I sprout in my shade-house.