Sustainable living dream: Building an Off-Grid Homestead: January 2019

Day 1: What a day! It started at 02:25am to catch a flight to Hilo at 05:00am. As soon as we touched down, our first stop was at Home Depot to purchase supplies for the next stage of our land development.
We needed four 16inch foundation blocks for the four corners of the shipping container to rest on, as well as a level and string to ensure level placement. In addition I bought organic soil and more non-GMO Papaya seedlings.

Early morning Home Depot date

After a quick breakfast, we made our way to Big Island Containers to pick out a used 40ft shipping container. The big red container we bought was a retired old dame who had spent her last years shipping products from South Korea. We found an old shipping invoice still inside the container which was interesting to read... mostly dried food products and household goods. The exterior was a little dinged up but the interior was clean, sound and dry. We'll name her "Connie" and paint her green.

"Connie"

After arranging Connie's delivery, the next stop on our shopping expedition was at Plant It Hawaii, a wholesale nursery which opens it's doors to the public twice a year and fortunately we happened to arrive on one of those days! It was immense fun and very educational roaming around the nursery and learning about the different varieties of all the trees they had available. Finally we settled on selecting a Malama Avocado and a Lychee tree

We have an Avocado and Lychee tree selected

After a successful and exhausting day working on our land until the sun went down, we camped in our Ohia forest with thunder and lightening in the distance and the chorus of coqui frogs singing us to sleep with their mating calls.

Ohia trees against late afternoon sky

Our camp

Day 2: The day left us with a sense of accomplishment as we feel like we're making progress and getting things done! Dreadknot did an epic job of measuring and leveling the foundation blocks for Connie. I was his "right hand woman" and heaved rocks, pulled strings and looked at level bubbles. We spray painted the layout and plan onto the house pad to get a feel of how everything would fit together. The plans are currently at the permitting office and include the first round house or "rondawel" dwelling, septic tank and water catchment tank. It was fun to be able to get a visual of the layout from a high point and from our drone footage.
We dreamed it and now we're seeing it!

Heaving rocks

Precision foundation leveling

I'm standing in the center of the roundhouse, septic tank to the left and water catchment tank in foreground.

Day 3: Today was all about the shipping container delivery. We started with an early morning 5.5 mile run and then made a mad dash to Home Depot to replace a sledgehammer which broke after one day of pounding into lava rock. Shortly after we arrived back, "Connie" was delivered, which has changed the game considerably as we now have safe, secure dry lock-up storage!

Watch our YouTube video here!

Welcome to "Connie"

The rest of the day was spent installing secure locks and landscaping until the sun went down!

Driveway leading to house pad

Day 4: We started the day off with a 7 mile run in the boonies, followed by dry-stack rock wall building and planting our papaya and banana trees in an area were calling "Papaya Plantation". The layout of the plantation just happened organically (no pun intended) as we built a terraced garden on the bend leading to the container. We had fashioned a water catchment system off our camp area tarp roof and could make lovely little beds for each sapling by pounding holes through the lava rock with an O'o bar, filling them with rich organic soil and watering the trees with buckets of water. We're delighted with the new fledgling garden!