3.4 acres hosted by Melissa C.
This land was once part of an ahupua'a that extended across the street and up mauka. When I bought the land in 2005, the ground was mostly rock and pretty barren. A neighbor told me that when the road was built, equipment was stored here on the property. Working on this land and stewarding it back to health has very much been a labor of love. I started from scratch, with no electricity, no running water and no phone service. I lived for a year without refrigeration and had a very rudimentary composting toilet and solar shower bag. It has taken me many, many years to create functioning systems such as solar power for electricity and catchment systems to harvest rainwater. When I met my partner, Jeff, in 2015, he eagerly jumped on board and has played a huge role in furthering the health of this land by using agroforestry methods like "chop and drop," spreading cinder, planting hundreds of trees and nurturing them. We're still in the process of building soil, especially on the eastern side. We love to share what we've learned over the years in off-grid living. More importantly, we want to offer our place as a kind of sanctuary where people can experience what it's like to be close to the earth, to walk out and pick a fresh orange or a handful of mulberries, to lay up and look at the stars or to just have a bit of quiet in a very busy world.