GO FORWARD, DESPITE THE CIRCUMSTANCES! SDA COUNTRY LIVING

[Music] [Applause] aloha friends and welcome back today we thought it would be a good day to make another video and update you on what we're up to our progress here at the property the winter has passed the rainy season has passed and we have lots of sunshine it's a lot warmer now weeds are growing like crazy and so are our plants and trees as many of you are aware we are working toward establishing a place where we can live debt free and be self-sufficient for the necessities of life as you may have noticed in past videos we have a lot of breezes blowing through our property and that has sort of limited the sound quality on some of our past videos and so we've invested in some microphones to help with that so drop us a note in the comments below and let us know if the audio is improved there are pretty much constant breezes coming off the ocean and blowing through this property like right now yes but that's uh that makes it quite pleasant it keeps it cool yes and um it's it's really a wonderful blessing actually yes well what have we been up to since last time they saw us well we've been pretty much working non-stop since that last time that's the reason why you haven't seen much videos is not that we don't have anything to say but just we don't have time to say it so today is sunday we have one day a week where we can set aside toward working toward our goals here on the property um the other days of the week uh after i finish my work shifts i come here almost each day and do as much as i can before nightfall but this is kind of a special time where we have a day as a family here together and we've been doing a lot of things now keep in mind that for some of you that you know perhaps it might feel to you that that some of the progress is slow here on the property and one of the reasons why it may seem so is that we are actually financing everything ourselves every step of this project we are financing and paying for in cash and so that takes more time than if you were just to get a bank to issue you a check and then boom you can buy everything all at once and so you know it's kind of like slow and steady wins the race where just we're kind of like that tortoise that every day all day all night we're we're making inches of progress we'll get there and i thought another thing is i think it's encouraging for some of you to watch our progress and not see us just you know bam we did everything in one year or something because a lot of you experience delays and discouragements and you know we're right there with you um so i thought it would be encouraging for you to see that it's not just all just easy and fast yes and in in many of our videos we mention uh the setbacks that we faced three years ago when we lost our home and our farm in a natural disaster and we share that over and over again for two reasons number one youtube analytics show us that a lot of the people who watch each video are new to the channel and they don't know our backstory and number two it's not for sympathy it's so that we can encourage you that you got to realize three years ago we were we became we went from debt free living on our other property to being broke again and then we're starting over in a considerably more expensive time in a more expensive area and so the costs are are very high the point is is that there are a lot of challenges and that if we can get through these challenges in one of the most expensive places to do this certainly you can in your neck of the woods amen well why don't we take you with us on a little tour around the property just to show you what we've been up to and you can see some of our progress so let's go all right got my head on we're going into the sun so where should we go first ryan well we're gonna head over here to this hillside okay this is the the windiest portion of the property we're on right now and we're setting up some things here to be sort of wind breaks on the edge of the property we have in the near future some plans for some useful bamboo edible and maybe for timber bamboo for a building that we're going to be putting in this area over here for now we're developing this this hillside in other useful crops we have a row of five coconut palms we have quite a bit of sugar canes that we've planted here this is about six different kinds of sugar i know it looks like weeds right now but it's actually sugar cane like all the way there so we have sugar cane all the way down and recently we've um i've kind of become inspired to to grow quite a bit more sugarcane and we're looking into getting a sugarcane juicer to juice our own sugarcane juice so um so we're going to be planting a lot more sugarcane we've got a row of especially wind resistant goldfinger bananas they are so tall now yeah these when we when we bought them of course they were really tiny yeah and they're they're making good progress and so this is a temporary wind break and also food production keep in mind that bananas uh when they're ripe of course they can be eaten as a fruit but when they're green you can cook them something like a starchy potato and so oh we started a little area here let's show them real quick we put some cardboard down and covered it with mulch right here and we're growing some pigeon peas here this particular pigeon piece we put here for the shade for this little plant this is uh champa deck this is a little tree that requires some shade yes and then these um pigeon peas can you show them ryan how tall they are like look look how massive they are and they already have flowers and so this will be a really good then when yeah i think couple months i think these are a couple months old you have one here that's already flowering nicely yes but before long we'll have some good peas that we can eat and also we can propagate and spread more these plants around the property because these not only do they provide shade for some of the younger plants but they improve and enrich the soil yes we have some of our native peppers here that are growing these are these are some nice little yellow peppers and actually you can see them here oh look look here's uh oh that's cute yeah and we just recently planted some new strawberry papayas and there's another one right there so we're planting more and more of those every week we've got some jamaican lilikoi or passionfruit that we're growing here this is one of our favorite passion fruits do you want to talk about this black stuff yeah so we are um trying to figure out how to minimize our workload around the property upkeep is really uh challenging and so we don't want to just spend all our time maintaining which is hard enough we want to actually be pushing forward and making progress toward living here on the property and so one thing to help us with that is we're putting down thousands of feet of this weed barrier and so this is sort of a commercial grade weed barrier and we're going to be just putting it around fence lines and putting it other places so we have less and less weed eating to do less and less upkeep to do so it's a great assistance in that there's process hill again from this side looks even better so right now we have a bunch of soursops here but uh soon we'll likely replace these and relocate these and put here a windbreak of certain rain resistant mangoes and so we we plan uh quite a number of mangoes maybe about 10 in total that will have around the property as wind breaks so that the young trees in here they can grow without so much challenges from the wind and also this will produce a lot of food for the family oh do you want to talk about the bit of your grass sure so despite all of our expense and efforts in bulldozing the property correctly for prevention of erosion during the high rainfall winter months we found that we lost a lot of soil last year in certain areas and the rain tends to run down here and run off the property and so we did some research and we've just recently found and planted some vetiver grass these are some starts here and what these are going to do is they're going to grow they're going to grow to be like about this big each and they're going to grow up and they're going to be sort of a wall that will filter the water as it goes through slowing the water reducing erosion and overall retaining the soil so we've recently also been planting cassava or tapioca and we've got some of our um locally um indigenous kind of squashes that we're growing here we started growing some hawaiian varieties of tomato and so here you can see some of those here we got to stick that one up it's getting heavy falling down of course we have lots and lots of moringa which we eat the leaves and so way we use this is we will you know pull off the leaves and we will put these in pots of beans and other soups and things of that nature and we will have tremendous nutrition from this if i was just gonna you know start with one thing to grow for my family to improve nutrition and that i would grow moringa definitely someday i might make a video on that so here's the small tree orchard everything's growing things more than others this of course is the brazilian cherry the gramachama as they call it in australia and other parts of the world yeah we're trying to put a lot of trees in cages because they do so much better we are finding absolutely that those trees that we start off in cages are doing much better than the others this is anna apple yeah this is our apple which we've shared with you guys before this is the israeli apple the low chill variety grows well in the tropics and when we bought this thing it was so small and kind of pathetic looking and it's grown incredibly well in just a few months so many things that we planted you know got terribly chewed up by the bugs initially and once we put them in the cages um they've just bloomed and done so well as far as their foliage this one looks amazing this is a yellow ross sapote which is similar to egg fruit here in this section of the yard we have our food islands these are all relatively young this is the most recent planted one this one is kind of like kitchen herbs and over here we have our second most recent one you can sort of see the progression and how they grow this is um we have edible leaves pineapples tongan spinach banana cranberry hibiscus this is the katooq green and then if you step over here you can see what just a few months time does for it and so here we have things like brazilian spinach and sweet potato as the ground cover we've got lots of papayas spread throughout here our favorite cooking green which is the um edible hibiscus leaf or tongan spinach and um papayas it's just really taking off taro of course we have the taro growing around the edges look at this papaya is so big yeah yeah so we're really excited about this garden a lot of progress in just a few months and it's really like a food for us now at the center we've got a banana that's right the native weed grasses we call it cane grass it grows so fast in the summer it's very hard to keep up with so putting down more of this weed barrier is a tremendous help in cutting back our labor here on the property and look at the bananas again they are getting really big so one of the major infrastructure improvements we've made over the last couple months is this and so this is a driveway a gravel driveway that we have running up from another area of the property to the house site and so we do this in three stages one is we scrape the ground and just make it nice and level then we buy a high quality road fabric that goes underneath and then we apply two and a half inch minus rock and the reason why we invest in the road fabric which isn't particularly cheap is that here the ground is so soft that whatever rock you put will in time kind of sink into the earth and disappear and so it's better to get the road fabric in place and it will kind of hold the rock and and preserve your road so with this recent addition we've added about 400 feet of gravel driveway and this is ultimately leading to the house site which will be over here and we're going to pause where it is for now just because we're not quite sure about the layout of the house and once we figure that out we can finish the driveway and get it right up to where the garage will be so here's the driveway going all the way down to the entrance and ultimately it would be nice to someday add asphalt on this we're not sure if that will become a reality but right now we've got more important things to spend money on and the reason why this was essential is that you cannot get a cement truck up to a site to pour a house pad unless you have a road there and so this is kind of has to come before we actually build the house and another thing that's worth mentioning is that when you're buying a property like this it's really a valuable addition if you already have established driveways roads etc this particular property has a lot of driveway it has well over half a mile it's probably close to three quarters of a mile of driveways now so all of that adds up to a lot of expense and fortunately much of the driveways came with the property and so that was one of the bonuses in fact we have a more than a quarter mile is you know paved with asphalt and so that was a real blessing so while we had some equipment here doing this work for us we had them do some other things to help us out and we decided to get them to lend us a hand with fruit tree holes as you know we've been digging a lot of fruit tree holes and they're typically four foot by four foot by three to four foot deep and that takes a good bit of time and so while we had the excavator here they dug some holes for us of course i wasn't here at the time to supervise so they made the holes a little bigger than we anticipated but this is just about the size of a small jacuzzi it seems like it's like a shelter in here yeah just put a roof and you can live there but um but definitely this this should be sufficient to uh to plant the fruit trees so we got 26 holes like this dug you know a lot of times people wonder why why are you guys planting so much fruit and so many trees well there are several reasons for that number one you won't know how much food you need to live off of until the time comes right in other words how many people are going to be here with us how many family members are we going to be supporting how many if times get tough or when they get tough second we are total vegetarians meaning that we live off the produce of the land we're not eating animal products and so for that reason we like to eat a lot of variety and a lot of high quality produce which is one reason why we moved from the east coast of the united states to hawaii one of many reasons the biggest one being god's providence but you know food that's grown here on a farm like this compared to what you find in a grocery store there's no comparison there's no comparison to a pineapple grown here and a pineapple you get at the grocery store and then in addition to that there are financial incentives right a lot of financial incentives who knows how long we'll be here until jesus comes right that's our goal and so exactly when that will be we're not certain but but we want to be ready and to be able to live here and to be happy as a family for as long as that as that time period is and so with that in mind we have to keep some things in mind like taxes taxes on a property like this can be pretty expensive and while we can afford them at the present time perhaps at some point in the future that might become more of a burden and so there's ways to sort of protect yourself number one the excess produce that we grow can provide significant income to help pay the property taxes and keep us on this property in the future and then also number two there are incentives by the local government to grow agriculture and have your property in agricultural production and they will dramatically reduce your tax property tax bill and so for all these reasons combined it makes perfect sense to grow much more than we need and to share with others and to sell and all kinds of things like that so this fencing here we put up some months back i think it was like december of last year and we put it up just to keep the pigs out temporarily and so it was never intended to be a fence that would remain here right and so we're hoping within the next two three weeks that this fence will all come down and go away and so we're going to replace it with a more professional fencing that we're going to be putting out there and so we're going to expand this area fence it out from the pigs and have a fence that will be of a quality that will last for decades and that's that's our one of our next projects you know some of you might ask why decades well i don't particularly like fencing and when i do fence jobs i would prefer it to last and not have to be like my neighbors who are using inferior materials and then as a result they're having to redo it redo it dig out those wood posts put in other posts so that's why we do it with more expensive materials in a way that will last and hopefully be once and that's it initially when we did the bulldozing we thought that we might put a fence somewhere out here at some point but we did some measuring and we figured out that we could fit some some really nice extra trees in if we just expanded the fence a little bit and so while the mini excavator was here he cleared this area for us and this will become like a new fence line this adds i don't know maybe um an acre acre and a half to the land that we already have cleared or at least the land that we already have fenced and so this will be um a lot of beautiful gardens hopefully a lot of papaya production and over here one of my favorite specialty crops we're going to be planting a small durian orchard so this is a basically 11 acre property as of this moment i think we're up to about six or six and a half acres that are all cleared and so we'll just little by little expand on that but um for the foreseeable future i think we'll work with what we've got we've got a transition from planting to house building and getting on the land to live okay so this will be the durian forest since durians grow so tall we decided to put them here since we have some tall trees eucalyptus here and they won't cover our view of the ocean so this is our first durian on the property and so we're really happy to be back in durian production again this is pohakulani which is a hawaiian variety of durian and so we've made a cage it's actually meant to protect the young tree and we're covering it for now but you can see the young grafted tree in here and hopefully in the near future we'll have many more of these as we can find them one by one at the moment they're kind of in short supply so well shall we talk about the house plans yeah let's go let's go take a look at the house site and talk about the house plan so this right here is our house bed it's quite large because we weren't sure what we're building you know the one question that we've had more challenges with than any other as far as decisions to make is what is it that we are building of course it needs to be a home for our family but what's it going to look like how big is it going to be in all of that and it's very hard to estimate what a home is going to cost right now because the prices of materials are just all over the place and so nobody has an estimate as to what it's going to cost and it's almost surely going to cost more than anticipated and so we're still working on that but regardless of the circumstances we're determined to move forward and to live on this land it doesn't matter whether it's going to end up being a three to four bedroom house or whether it's going to end up being a garage that we stay in for a period of time we have the determination to get on this land and to be free of debt and to provide for our family for the necessities of life the circumstances don't matter we are not going to allow circumstances to master us we are going to master the circumstances by god's grace and so i think that a lot of us are looking out there and they're saying you know what i'd love to do that i want to do that for my family but i don't i don't know that it's possible well of course it looks impossible you know there's like a thousand different steps that you have to take and you can't take them all at once you've got to take them one at a time keep in mind that even the children of israel you know weren't moses didn't expect the water to part until they stepped in the water right god told them step in the water and once they stepped in the water things open for them right and so there's lots of challenges challenges all the time and who knows maybe this as a result of this high expenses maybe it will take me a couple more years of saving through the process to get to the finish line but regardless we are committed to taking each step one by one and trusting that god is going to make a way and we believe that regardless of the cost whether this costs so many thousand hundreds of thousands or whether it costs twice that amount that god will in time provide a way for our family and so we would encourage you to consider the same you know that reminds me of a very inspiring quotation from the book patriarchs and prophets page 290 i'd like to share with you this quotation god in his providence brought the hebrews into the mountain fastnesses before the sea that he might manifest his power in their deliverance and signally humble the pride of their oppressors he might have saved them in any other way but he chose this method in order to test their faith and strengthen their trust in him the people were weary and terrified yet if they had held back when moses bade them advance god would never have opened the path before them it was by faith that they passed through the red sea as by dry land hebrews 11 29 in marching down to the very water they showed that they believed the word of god as spoken by moses they did all that was in their power to do and then the mighty one of israel divided the sea to make a path for their feet the great lesson here taught is for all time often the christian life is beset by dangers and duty seems hard to perform the imagination pictures impending ruin before and bondage or death behind yet the voice of god speaks clearly go forward we should obey this command even though our eyes cannot penetrate the darkness and we feel the cold waves about our feet the obstacles that hinder our progress will never disappear before a halting doubting spirit those who defer obedience till every shadow of uncertainty disappears and there remains no risk of failure or defeat will never obey at all unbelief whispers let us wait till the obstructions are removed and we can see our way clearly but faith courageously urges in advance hoping all things believing all things my friends god is bidding us go forward move our families out of the cities into the country and god will provide a way we believe that and we are acting in faith according to our belief well friends we hope you have been blessed seeing our progress and hopefully it encourages you to continue in your own country living journey if you're new here and you would like to follow our journey go ahead and subscribe click notification bell so you don't miss any of our new videos and also go ahead and give us thumbs up so that more people will be able to see these videos and until next time aloha and god bless [Music] you

Channel: Aloha, Country Living

Views: 1,235

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: God reliance, sda, country living, adventist, out of the city, out of the cities, homestead, country, off grid, off-grid, sda country living, growing tropical fruit trees, planting bananas, self reliance, Move to the country

Id: 7wSvb4ZO77A

Length: 27min 47sec (1667 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 11 2021