They've Escaped Civilization Homesteading in the Jungle 🇺🇸

welcome to civilization oh wow what an operation this is huge did you build this yeah santanello that's your Google calendar what does that mean I love it these deer go and then what do you do I grabb my 22 this is toothache plant you know in permaculture we're time Scouts what a place it showed us how ridiculously dependent we are on systems that we're not even paying attention to this is delicious first world third world well this is the fourth world so you figure it out it's pretty special they've been doing this for almost a half century out here [Music] get this is beautiful out here is that all you got that's it I roll I was wondering if I needed to bring a wheelbarrow oh no here's some peanut butter cookies in there thank you do you eat those do we eat them yeah okay okay I thought you'd like something like that out here welcome to wua means twin Waters why is the Hawaiian word for water that's why you have so many wise cities Y and I Yu why he because we live uh 500 ft off road wheelbarrows are a way of life I have a small Fleet of them when did you first move here uh mid 70s 76 I came and you're from San Diego yeah how many acres do you have back here this is about an acre here and we have an acre over there this is a food Forest here in permaculture we call it a food Forest we cleared it and we planted and now everything in here is a useful edible plant is this cacao this is Cacao this is our mother tree uh my wife just harvested these are real close remind me I'll show you when we get home roasted cacao seeds Okay and we'll grind some into coffee great I didn't realize what a out of the- box existence it is but there have been times where I look at Robin and I go I haven't seen another human being in two weeks and I don't even notice it I haven't been in a car in two weeks when's the last time you saw TV China Beach I was in the 80s so you've never even seen CNN or Fox News or any of this in the 80s we had no electricity we had no radio we had no television in the 80s when our girls were young we had kerosene lamps how many girls did you raise here four and we have happened to go over to Maui and we heard something about this guy named Michael Jackson who had caught himself on fire on stage and then we were late night at a friend's house watching TV and this comedy show comes on and there was a little skit and then it was like the introductory skit it goes 15th anniversary Saturday Night Live and we go oh this looks interesting let's watch this I mean I never even heard of Saturday Night Live this is after gildar Ratner and everything so I mean we dro out of we were on Mars during the 80s and that's and we were doing this because where where are you now what planet you know in permaculture we're time Scouts bill mson would say we're time scouts because if I look at any landscape I don't see what I'm seeing I see what it was before I see what it is now and I see the various iterations that it's going to be if we clear a piece of land we want to plan it we don't think about oh one crop of this We call we do what's called time stacking okay we want to have an orchard of trees we can go put our avocado at 40ft centers but in the meantime let's grow some edible hibiscus in between and since those are going to go up we can get a we can plant pumpkin that runs underneath that but the pumpkin will disappear first to edible hibiscus will last 3 years and they will nurse in the avocado so we actually go in and plant four 6 8 10 time things all at once welcome to civilization did you build this yeah and I've had some really good help but a lot of this like this whole house we go okay well we can fit this big of a floor let's build it and then after the floor was done we got up on there and go hm where should we put the walls where should we go in so there was never a drawing cookies oh all right yeah hello hello Peter Robin Robin nice to meet you nice to meet you too yeah thank you for letting me come yeah you're very welcome we're miked up already oh you are Sant told s oh there you go look at that santinello that's your uh your Google calendar what does that mean instead of putting it online we got it I love it we just avoid Google as much as possible they're in the same envelope with Orcs Orcs And Google in the same place Orcs And Aron right Google I got to turn off the oven Robin's making a we call it chili Renos but it's really a green chili baked chili oh great baked green chili cuz we have duck eggs and there's dozens under here you like duck eggs better than chicken eggs we like ducks better than chickens they're just nicer to work with yes in this climate and it's a wet climate and we have a confined space Ducks work we actually raised chickens for years and they were a different kind of work and if I had more space we are appropri Arians we eat what's appropriate we try to do work that's appropriate in permaculture work smart not hard you're not working hard not really not you know we are meant to hang out like this and talk story and drink tea and have a good time and then go do a little bit of work and then come back in and have a good time that's what we're here for is to help each other along the way humans are designed that way is that what you're saying yeah people think permaculture is about agriculture well yeah that's part of it but it's about this it's about our neighbors it's about everything sustainability pulls everything in sustainability is a Big Stew it's hard to put in the words guys but there's a very special deep relaxing feeling going on out here it's tough to capture the in the visuals I think some of it comes through but obviously not like being here just the way the water comes through the Big Trees The Greenery being in the valley I'm just describing how beautiful this place is it's beautiful now see this a rope and look at the other side of the bridge ropes tied to the trees what does that tell you when you're flooding yeah the water gets to here oh it rips that hard here yeah and it's solid water from here past that other one oh wow this whole valley is underwater and this the bridge is lift up and I have to come and put them back you can see look at all the debris that's built up I didn't make that pile right there see I don't know where this came from but it came down and was wound up here this is 2 months ago so when it rains hard from over that River gets big over here all the way across almost your place water wow I've been out here you know like going from tree to tree with water around me like this before just to check it out cuz out here it's not fast it's moving out in the Stream it's roaring it how many times a year does that happen it happens maybe once every four or five years it isn't every year that we get quite that much okay we've had maybe eight or 10 massive floods in 40 years here yes but we've also had years where twice a month for 3 months in a row it'll move my bridges and I have to put them back it's just a wet period the most difficult is drought which we have not had for 10 years we have had drought but drought is that's scary huh cuz you your whole livelihood is off growing things yeah and it's on having water yeah and we we can't get County water in here so even the water we drink and bathe everything comes everything's coming down there yeah everything y look they massive wow probably picked 10,000 avocados this year look see that dead Branch right there in the middle of that see it okay so you guide me now I think I see it it's pretty special they've been doing this for almost a half century out here you know it's 20y olds River probably doing the same exact thing there oh I think there's another one still some excitement to it oh and I didn't even get one did they both it's quite special where did you two meet here here who was here first I was I was already on mikai and I happened to come out here and I met Robin okay and she was all by herself and I went home one night and I went wow I see an opportunity here Robin was had goats and she had a refrigerator next to a building with a tarp covering it but she had a refrigerator so she had cold goat milk and I was staying in a tent over here somewhere and so I would come over Robin could I get some goat milk for my coffee please that was my Inn this was the line if you want to know about lines so Robin what brought you to mikai um my first husband was a surfer and he took me to the NorthShore of Wahu which is was a scene this was in 1974 it was a scene Surfers and and drugs and um I was not my scene but I met a a Hawaiian woman who was my age and I got pregnant and she was we had a young child we became really close friends and it was her grandmother told me we should go to mikai at her grandmother who was Chinese we came over to mikai I fell in love we my first husband and I brought the property together but then he got tired of me and left me with a 2-year-old in a tent and a half belt kind of you guys had found this piece of land together and bought it right okay so that had to be challenging obviously it was challenging yeah but you know I was yeah I joke but Robin this was a person who was under a lot of stress and really you know when you're both drawn and you have a passion to do something and yet the circumstances around it just kind of suck for a while it's like it makes you question and um yeah I think when he left me he thought I'd give him the land and go back to California but said no I want to stay here and I wound up being a stepdad it's the hardest thing I ever did I mean I went from you know it wasn't until our last we had four girls and when the last one moved out of home all of a sudden here me and Robin are empty nesters but I realized it's the first time you know 40 35 years later that we were ever alone together we never had that alone together as a couple with no kid cuz I came into a situation with a child already I was instant stepp right how was raising kids out here raising kids out here was sent from heaven yeah yeah and they would all of them would own to their like wow what a place to grow up before Christmas the girls would come out here and they'd pull they'd go up into the woods and they'd pull Vines and then they'd wrap them into wreaths and then they'd go cut various flowers and stuff and they'd make these gorgeous you know like $100 wreaths and this was their play yeah that was their play being being on this land when the little one who did hoola was going to have hoola they'd go out and they'd make her Haw hula right here a Haku is a head lay I mean they just oh they had and there was a at one point there was another family with two little girls that were right in between ours and they had had a little village out they had a little village out in the woods there's there's archaeological remnants of rocks lined up where they had their little roads for the village and no concerns about safety about bad influences about school was not easy for them some of them more than others got teased and you know they were they were the Holly kids but they were sometimes the only blonde in their class and but it's like that for kids no matter where you go there's always Outsider kids there's always kids who get teased even if for just whatever reason the heavier k whatever there's kids are harsh on each other yeah sure really har learn you know if you talk to them now they're all the stronger for yeah they are they really are and they all learned uh how to do things you know like um our daughter in New Zealand she owns a house and she knows how to she she's one one okay so one Friday late afternoon something breaks in the bathroom and water's running and it won't shut off and our daughter comes home and her husband says well we can't get a plumber on the weekend and our daughter goes there has to be a valve somewhere goes out crawls around under the house finds a shut off valve because she grew up here and she grew she went to Doo and Robin Plumbing school well yeah she grew up this like without a choice you know where we live if it works we made it work y right whether it's turn on a light switch turn on a faucet whatever it is there was nothing we built it all and if it if it breaks guess who fixes it yeah oh man but we do want to uh get find uh you know a young couple or somebody who would you know make a commitment to be here for a while and train them as a farm manager okay so I do want to leave that Below in this video in the description I'll leave a link to you guys either a website or an email or something yeah an email um so you're looking for a couple even a phone number or we old school or what yeah don't don't do that you don't want your phone ringing all the time but uh true would they live out here or would they live in town or would better to be on the land CU better to be here somewhere else and they got to have their own transportation and they got to move to mikai it's like yeah you know we need and you you would provide the education the expertise somebody with understanding and possibly experience in the permaculture world would be great because that's where we're coming from in all the stuff we do cuz every day there's decisions oh what am I going to do with that mulch well let's put it there be why because of this and this and this and that's a permaculture approach you know is multiple outputs from any action you're always maximizing the return people ask how do you guys do it how do you guys do all this stuff I say well we try to be really smart with what we do do we trim this tree and this stuff is going to get hauled into the bananas there's a ton of it out there already but once we take it into the we got loot now take it into the bananas I got the deer that are starting to wipe out like a young banana like this one but if I take this thing and put it like that see now no buck deer is going to bother to mess with that cuz all this junk is in his way he'll go somewhere else so now this one's going to get messed with yeah once they're this big they're good it's the young ones okay you know deer hit right about there and this is the perfect height for him to want to get in there and you know go like this with his horns he shaves and shaves and just erodes this cuz it's a banana it's all just watering so you want some people out here that either get this or into this way of thinking right and it doesn't have to be a couple could be single person but couple they've got each other and that helps cuz it could get lonely out here yes yeah it could you or you might just find the perfect person on [Applause] M this is an orchard ladder three-legged Orchard ladder okay can go in really crazy places where no to far A little oh no that's good that's good oh now I'm in the right place here we go go okay dark yes so are you just feeding your family and the surrounding Community or is it is it going it's molai I mean we we grow a lot of food they're they've just turned out to be our most avocado is definitely more important than TV believe me the most profitable profit yeah in the summer we have mangoes so this is your full-time job if you wanted to call it a job but you sell all your produce here yeah how much can you sell say one avocado like this far uh $250 $3 depends on the size oh that's great sustainable mulai is a nonprofit they're trying to help they're trying to both make it good for the consumers and good for the farmer so they're marking up just enough to help cover their administrative costs and everything okay so there's a real movement to get people eating food on the island oh yes from the island on the island yeah there's a real sustain it's sustainable M okay because it does seem a bit absurd that you're importing at least Maui I was told it was roughly 90% of the food is being imported no that's not what what you said is completely incorrect it is massively absurd how much food has to get imported it's not just a little bit absurd it is absurd capital a capital B etc etc okay yeah a borderline criminal do you know how much avocado there could be in just in this Valley look at this to feed the whole island easily right you could feed allai in this Valley 95% of the Citrus gets brought in a guy from plant at Hawaii a big nursery on the big island came here 20 years ago and he he looked up the hillside behind molai behind kanak kakai and he goes you know what if you go 2 miles wide and you go 3 miles up that Hillside and plant that all to orange trees Hawaii would Hawaii the whole straight would not import one orange see okay okay so why isn't more of it being done it's just the economics are cheaper to import everything than do it here yeah I mean it's going to be some labor to do it and it takes political will and it takes land ownership etc etc yeah it's like like yes we can grow all those oranges and they're delicious and they make great oranges but they don't look pretty like the oh man there's a dark one come to Popa perfectly symmetrical oranges bright orange and our oranges don't come bright orange because it takes colder nights to make them bright orang Oh wrong way plow ahead okay see the ripening bananas yep see them on top of that so that means that banana is ready it starts at some place sometimes even in the middle a fuel start ripening by tomorrow maybe it'll be a whole another hand ripe and the birds will have eaten those ones and in two days it'll be half rip there's a bird up there right now no doubt they know what's good bananas are not a tree there's no wood if you look at how these are growing any one banana tree makes one fluoresence I could climb up there with the ladder cut that off but in a month this would all be dead so to harvest bananas we cut the tree which isn't a tree down now I could get behind here and chop that and this would fall over right and I've seen many bananas harvested that way and it would hit that and break a bunch of those and really destroy some of the bananas so the real technique to harvest bananas is a v cut into there and then a little bit out now it's going to start now that will just come down see that's holding it cut that off so for those amount of bananas you have to cut the tree down it'll only do this once then it'll die like I said I could have climbed up in there and cut this off but then the tree would die right see that it's just it's actually a giant huge stock of celery a clump of bananas in a permaculture setting is your organic dump whenever you do any clearing you just take drag all that stuff and dump it in your bananas okay dump it all in your bananas and it feeds the bananas potassium everybody knows that what's potassium almost nobody knows that where did we learn that I think we learned it in kindergarten you know like nappy time they play subliminal stuff bananas have potassium a soil scientist told me this potassium is the bricks you have a lot of bricks you can build a big house well this is a big plant this isn't a little grass or something this grows if that grows to that in a year that's a lot of bricks to build all of that a lot of cell walls and stuff this is full of bricks all of that's full of bricks see we cut some Plum across the river there and I dragged all of this stuff into here why cuz as that breaks down all that bricks all that potassium goes into the soil so that feeds the bananas so I don't buy any fertilizer yes see here's one that got see these ones these have been that made of stock and it's been cut off and here it is rotting and it rot it literally rots look at how soft it is see it's not wood it's fiber look at that these are great and this you throw anywhere or you wouldn't want to do that there's a whole deal you could but that is nutrient Rich carbohydrate so if I think what's the highest use is to feed it to the Ducks and that replaces store-bought feed so in a permaculture setting or out here in the fourth world right because everybody knows the first world third world well this is the fourth world so you figure it out because it is the United States was slow on that one I got you it is the United States but it's different and also we're way out here we're we're in we're 20 miles from town it's a big deal so you know you make in permaculture you make use of everything to the highest use and yeah I could throw it out and this in the geologic sense yeah Back To Nature we actually had had that happen with a with an in young intern once they were throwing their banana peels I said okay I get it there's no harm in that but why don't we make a higher use of that and set it over there and feed it to the Ducks and turn it into eggs and turn it into manure on the garden and you see what is the modern thing the modern thing is take make use lose with any resource right they find something they make something you use it and then you throw it away and it's linear and then it falls off a cliff or whatever but it's linear it goes nowhere every system we build in permaculture is a circle and it just keeps going this looks amazing especially from the outside it looks like almost like a dream world there is a ton of work that goes into it most people wouldn't be able to do it let's just be real I they could if they made a conscious choice but the vast majority of people can't go this far with it no what could somebody do even that's in a city like what would your what would your advice be for people to like adopt some of these principles let's say okay our oldest daughter lives in Portland okay in an apartment on the third floor so she when she chose an apartment she chose one that had a little bit of a balcony and she has raspberries tomatoes basil all the time out there as much as she can some of it comes in when it gets too cold she keeps her compost and they go out and feeds her plants I mean it's just it's just a little thing but it actually feeds her soul is the biggest reason why she's doing that I think she's is stressed about the state of the world in many ways and it feels to her like this is a little way that she can stay in touch with nature and do something for herself it also breaks the illusion of that se of that supposed separation between the material world and the spiritual World they aren't really separate from each other so when you do something you grow your own raspberries and basil and stuff it's a little less external input you have to bring into your life but it also is this incredible thing of that it makes something for you at the at the karmic level at the spiritual level you know you know that song by John Lenin mind games playing those mind games together that's about being part of the cosmic wheel he says pandemic right what a disaster right other end of the spectrum what an opportunity what a change if you'd asked us 10 years ago 2018 oh man we got to change the world well the world changed he did it for us so now here we are so let's keep our asses in gear and you know keep on moving molison said the problem is the solution what the problem is the solution his example was he's going down the road in Australia somewhere and he goes around a curve and Lantana which is this thorny plant is a and we have it here is a problem in cow pastures because it takes up it keeps the grass from growing and the cows don't eat it so it Lantana patches get big bigger and bigger and he's going around this curve and he sees out in this pasture of cows an apple tree growing surrounded by Lantana and he goes stop stop and he gets out of the car and he goes That's exactly somebody threw an apple out there it fell inside the lantana the cows can't get at it so it grows the lantana the problem is the solution so mson worked with the Aboriginal people and he would go out to the Aboriginal camp with his land Rover and 100 little pistachio trees and little grow bags and he would grab his aborigin but buddies and they'd head off into the Outback and they'd find a place where a big eucalyptus tree fell and it had a branch like that and they they'd break off another Branch or they'd make a place like that and a barricade a place and they plant a pistachio tree there so it was barricaded from the foraging animals it was mulched it would low it would grow by itself if they put it out in the open it would never live the problem the down trees the other stuff was the solution so the problem of the pandemic what's the solution it wakes people up to maybe don't be so dependent on things way outside of your control when it comes to food or yeah or or move more in this direction of even if it's raspberries in Portland on your balcony yeah look at all the supply chain lengths and all the typical things that you could find by reading the news it showed us how ridiculously dependent we are on systems that we're not even paying attention to and permaculture is all about designing systems that like I said instead of take make use lose are Circle circular and you have to pay attention to them you have to pay attention to them yes for us it's second nature because you know you talk about young people seeing something about permaculture and getting inspired well we were out here milking goats raising Ducks growing our vegetables and I went and I spent two weeks with Bill mson and I had my mind blown like I said because all of a su I go it all fits together in a way I never even imagined it has always excited me when I find useful plants this is a Creeping Time oregano margam a lot of these are culinary herbs but I do some medicinal herbs um you do do medicinal yeah to some extent ones that I use I've got some fever F it's over there we can show it to you which is a terrible B herb that I sometimes have swallowed down for headaches oh here's a little bit of fever f it self-seeds itself so okay so if you have a headache you just eat a little bit of that it's particularly for certain kinds of headaches I mean first thing I do for headaches is figure out if my neck's out because that's the most works I rarely get headaches but every once in a while I'll get one and it's like terminal there's no solution for me but that's the kind of heada this work that's young plant but if I find a good fever flu I'll break off yeah there's one right behind you D when's the last time you two took something like Advil does that ever happen or no aspirin I take but not ad aspirin okay aspirin we have a friend who's an herbalist and he said aspirin can affect your stomach but your stomach lining can rejuvenate yeah but uh I don't even remember what Advil is uh ibuprofen ibuprofen ibuprofen messes with your liver you got to be careful with your that's what I would do I was take that much fever F and it's bitter it's bitter here's one we'll see in the garden what is that this is spanis toothache plant and if you take that and chew it you go numb for 3 minutes it is a natural anesthetic do you guys have any any vices like it seems like you're living a very healthy life coffee chocolate yes chocolate okay but you'll eat some sugar and we grow our own chocolate too we'll eat some sugar we're not we're not strict I got that D said we're an appropri tarianism appropri tarianism we were not strict with our kids either they if they got candy they went Halloween get a bunch of candy whatever you know and one of our daughters had no interest in it but they were you know it's more important to eat the good stuff than to try to go oh no to that and no to that and no to that A very wise nutritionist once told me you know at the molecular level all the cells in your body have the strings of molecules and there's they have like things where things grab onto there bances well if you're eating all the nutrients they get filled up with potassium and all the minerals and stuff if they're empty then the Mercury the lead the poisons attached there and it's hard to get rid of them but if you eat enough of the right stuff and you get nutrient-rich food those will all fill up oh you know it isn't about what you don't do it's about doing and the goods you want coffee oh I'm good thank you yeah fine Robin doesn't drink coffee in the morning okay and likes to have it lunchtime and so I was going to show you here's caca beans that grew on the tree you saw over there mhm and Robin picked them and then fermented them for about a week but so I just put about uh three of them grind it fine and you know how press coffee like that at the end you get the drgs the powder comes through well it's like tastes you get this a total hint of hot chocolate oh yeah this is a barricade this is a duck fence a temporary duck fence yeah this is a temporary duck fence because do they start charging or what's going on well they would go that way and they they maybe they they'd go hey we can get away or we can get in the river oh man if ducks in the river it's game over they're gone I mean they'd follow the river down to the ocean but they run over the whole yard they go way up the hillside so you see what's this up here Dan little hangout Zone uh it was a bedroom at one point but this building got kind of Changed by that huge Rock and so yeah I it just came down the mountain yeah okay I'm G to tell you what I want you to walk on this upper Trail and we're going to take the lower Trail okay and you're GNA not go very far because I'm going to let these ducks out but I'm afraid that if you were down there they would be like oh wait a minute who's he yep right you ready girls it's like kids it's like seveny olds hunting Easter eggs go on go on you go out go go with your sisters go on what's great is they will find every tiny little snail or slug that exists out here and eliminate them completely so they just forage all over your property cockroaches and yeah they're yeah and they'll glean any little bits of fruit so they actually go out and feed themselves pretty well by running like this that's one flock of ducks there's three more oh wow what an operation this is huge there's a lot going on here in the permaculture book this is called a poultry forage system which means it's an integrated system combining poultry plants and garden so there are any number of Gardens within this bigger duck pen that these ducks are running in see the ducks can run here and go over to there and then go around the back side of this so here's a big island within the duck pen it's all Garden this is brand new we just planted some San Chili's in here a week ago the Ducks were here and had been in here for a couple of months so the ground is real fertile and I dig in here a little bit for them and when I dig there's earthworms and the ducks eat the worms they eat the soil I don't buy fertilizer I buy a little bit of duck feed but I don't buy fertilizer cuz the Ducks are providing at all the ground is incredibly nutrient Rich from having the ducks on it and so I can throw a little piece of wire out here it's just sitting here it's not pegged down or anything it's just sitting and then plant these and in 5 months I'll have sorrano chilies this high and they'll be loaded I mean I've got a garden here we already harvested there was a whole crop in here that's harvested already and we came back in and planted more Pock Choy more toat soy over there uh some end Dive Right Here cherry tomato that actually was a volunteer right there come here girls oh yeah here you come paa there you go time to eat oh great what a place I love how open it is yeah there's permaculture design design in this kitchen particularly about letting the air flow because it's Hawaii it gets warm right nice fresh salad and we yes that's nice fresh salad and we a kiche it is like a kiche in fact but it's um it's called baked chili Rino it's from the de Smith cookbook I've used it for years it's been our often times our Christmas meal because you can make it ahead of time wow thank you for this chance to meet someone new and talk about good positive things thank you for this food amen amen amen so you're you're both religious we're bahis both of us bahas explain bahas please there's Buddhists mhm there's confusion sure there's James Jews yeah Christians Muslim yeah wow what that's pointing to is that throughout human history there have been incarnations of the godhead came to people and gave them the message they were like ready for at that point okay when Jesus came he said love your neighbor as yourself because they were not ready like our Prophet bah incarnation of God he said equality of men and women well in jesus' time they weren't ready for that we're not ready right love your neighbor as yourself that was good enough because every society in the world had slaves everybody kept slaves in this Ro Roman Empire so our notion is that we believe in this thing called successive Progressive Progressive re Progressive Revelations and that drives the Christians mad and the Muslims mad because it basically says all right Jesus wasn't the last one it tells the Muslims you know the Muslims follow Jesus but they believe Jesus wasn't the last one then Muhammad came and the Muslims they feel like they're the last stop of the abrahamic religions yeah right they're not but bahis don't B don't in fact we believe there's going to be more and so the bahas picked up after Islam came y in the when yeah when PA came in the 1800s he came down into the Muslim world he was exiled he was imprisoned he was tortured he was he came into Iran what what is now Iran okay yep and he said one world religion equality of men and women Universal education in fact if there's not enough resources educate the women because they bring up the children mhh the Muslims were not the mulas were not maybe the Muslims were maybe the sufis might have been ready to hear some of that the sufis were but the mulas you know they were the dominant right you know they were like are they religious or are they political it's every religion is like what about is it connected to Zoroastrianism at all we recognize zor asrian as one of the um as one of the prophets one of the manifestations of God one of the okay one of our principles is Unity through diversity so takes contrasting po supposedly polarizing things and says no they work we honor the diversity of all these different groups ethnicities even beliefs there's one God it's like a jewel hanging with all these faces inside of that jewel is the same but it looks different depending upon how you turn the jewel MH what about diversity of thought if you're not on the bahai progam let's say ideologically it matters not it matters not no we we do not there are no Outsiders we do not prosti okay and in fact we're engendered to to on holidays and things to do good works within the community if it brings people to a point a Unity it's bah even if we never say the word or people don't know okay so like on Martin Luther King day which is a great celebration honoring that whole thing the bah all over do things and help out other groups these other groups that they're helping don't even know they're bahis it doesn't matter that's not the point the point is not getting people to be bahis how many bahis in the world roughly I don't know and I'm not good with holding figures I know that it's really widely dispersed throughout the world I heard a couple years ago that it was really increasing in India particularly among the lower cast people who okay you know was like oh we don't have to think we're inferior we this is a relief right right yeah equality men and women a little bit of Hope in life yeah um this it's highly in in Iran particularly but in a few other Muslim countries it's highly persecuted I went out of the country in 1971 but okay that was I got as far as Afghanistan got very sick oh wow long before Dan that was amazing time to travel Afghanistan in the 70s still a horrible okay still horrible but there were a lot of Travelers going through there yeah there were there really were but anyway the only place we've been out of the country is New Zealand okay New Zealand is the only place I've ever been that was hard to leave and come back here we both felt that way I mean yeah because I think it this is you know this is total new Agy but what I'm going to say now but it's just like somehow at a vibrational level we've absorbed mly so when we drove in the rural areas in New Zealand there were more Mali and whenever we would in shop some stuff in Conor Mali they just like welcomed us and took us oh yeah even though we were look Caucasian like Outsiders Etc they could feel your Island Vibe I knew it yeah they could just part part of that was we were projecting to them what we felt for them we know local culture you know how to relate to them but isn't it true you just get you mostly get what you put out it comes back at you yeah I think that's true for the most part right I mean has that been your experience here on mikai yes this is delicious yeah Rob makes good you really can tell the difference between G grown vegetables versus buy the red a little bit but there's a lot of our stuff in there too no but the the greens are amazing yeah the greens are amazing it's all those banana peels that go into that is so good so one thing too with the work I do I was in Southern Louisiana last week I'll be in DC in a couple weeks like the jux to positions are massive like here in Washington DC two different worlds I can hardly imagine but um what I'm discovering is we're in this odd time of the online or TV reality versus the on the ground reality that the Gap is pretty wide mhm and um that's kind of sad it is sad because people are viewing other parts through that online reality and I don't think it's very reflective of the average person in those places like for example most Americans I'm all over the country are really cool and if you treat them with respect they're really warm and will'll treat you with respect right like the vast majority that's been our experience yeah yeah but when you go online these days or on the news obviously I mean that that's the business mods meant to divide and that gets attention the negativity gets attention it's just hardwired in us but um I was told Malachi you know I was told them now careful you're the outsider they really don't want tourists they don't want people they eat Hol over there they eat holes for for breakfast Walter ridy eats Hol he was over here a couple weeks ago is the most gentle softspoken guy in the world he's really nice and yet because he's adamant and he's kind of become the titular head of this movement mhm they ascribe all these qualities to them I mean that's how it goes so that I was told one thing I get here and it's been the kindest locals like everyone has been so cool yes and because you're on a chill Island they have time yeah and you get a along conversations and it's just been am you go to the Post Office you get a package guaranteed somebody's going to open the door for you when you go out yeah guaranteed unless there's nobody else in the post office which is pretty rare for a pretty blonde right I'm a Capa I'm an elderly yeah you're an but but even years ago I noticed that yeah yeah I know just the cashiers in the store say hey Uncle how you doing yeah I'm Uncle now because I'm Uncle oh any I'm aunti any older male is Uncle any older female is Auntie to for me I'm Uncle even if they're I don't know how old you are but you could call me uncle and that would fit still yep so do you feel Society is watching out for each other here cuz it's small enough nobody nobody can really get away with anything if they tried well I mean in many many ways yes be respectful of everybody else right and you know I got that when I first came here when I first came here I I forget who but some Elder I was talking to and this was in weeks of being here they knew I was new so I would get these little talks mhm y here's how you behave here here's who you are because they sense I was I would hear that I would ask I would want to know so I was an open door so they walked right in and they told me this lady said okay so walking down the street M and there's a mango tree in the front yard of some house and there's a mango all the way to the ground you don't go R over there take some mangoes and I got plenty mangoes take some and go no you if you want the mangoes then you just be bold you walk right up to the door you knock you say hello I see you got mangoes all over your yard so you know what mangoes look really good to me honestly I like some but you know can I pick up all your mangoes for you and give them to you so you don't have to come get them you know go oh yeah sure help yourself take all you want oh no no whatever you know what I mean Y and she says main thing you ask yeah main thing you asked yep wow I did that today wow driving here I had to go to the restroom and um I went into the library and I said uh excuse me ma'am may may I use your restroom and she said yeah it's right there and she she stopped and she said thank you so much for asking it was this this older local lady so I think what you're saying just by the courtesy of asking goes because you know what you without knowing as far as she knows fulfilled the protocol you showed that respect you asked you need to be told y when in reality you didn't have to but that's just like you're the kind of person who would ask so yeah perfect you know when I got here and I was in monoa anytime there would be locals who would go go eat eat oh there's plenty get plenty that means we have plenty get plenty get plenty well I came to realize that it's the difference between a worldview of abundance versus a worldview of scarcity and the Hawaiians had a worldview the world is abundant MH we get plenty and that's why they shared to The Outsiders that's why they gave everything right to The Floodgate that Captain Cook opened and that's why so much got taken away from himh because the world was abundant so you share it's their protocol it's their way it's how they Define themselves you know in fact the the state motto of Hawaii it's a very awkward translation into English but it's translated as the life of the land you know the haa is perpetuated in righteousness what an awkward translation the life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness okay they have this word Pono you know Pono I've heard of it what p is like if you do we have a postcard somewhere if you do what's appropriate you're Pono if you do the right thing in a given situation you're Pono okay if you're courteous to other people you're Pono if you help your brother when he's in need you're Pono Pono means that it's all those things one most is like that it's multi-layered meaning it's one of the most amazing words it means doing the right thing it's really nice how having you here spending time with you because we get to talk about some of the things that are very real to us and they matter and with somebody who's honestly interested thank you yeah it's it's an honor to be here if it helps make the internet a better place I say right on you hear what I'm sorry I hear a deer bark these deer go like that very much like that good very good good yeah that anybody else would go that's that was a deer yeah they bark and then what do you do I grab my 22 I walk right out here sometimes it's seriously 60 seconds and I have a green light and their eyes shine and they don't see that they don't see green they don't have the rods and cones we have they have the one less anyway one night there were two right over there right I got them both boom boom do you have a good shot you know I don't shoot way far with a 22 cuz it doesn't have the power and I'm trying to be Humane I don't want to injure one and have it get away you can go online and you'll find people say it's inhumane to hunt deer with a 22 well not if you kill them the Hawaiians had Terraces here of which they did agricultural things and is it okay to walk up here sure okay there is a very interesting feature up here this you want to see okay see this right here remember I told you this word why means water yep well right here see this low spot yeah if you put a hose and ran water there it would run through this and this would continue on there's some stuff that's falling in and go like that and curve around over to there and we can walk in this aw it's basically an aqueduct the hain's built and this we can follow this and it goes all the way up and as that river goes up Valley about a quarter of a mile from here it goes right to the river in ancient times they were bringing water down here jumping across the river and The Terraces that we were on they were flooding those Terraces and they brought the water through this Hawai and flooded that the Hawaiian had they were masters of Waterworks and they were taking water out of the river flooding areas putting it back in taking it out flooding putting it back in for the tarot for the tarot rock is built up to enclose an area there's caves underneath this rock under that rock okay and we've had archaeologists here who told us that basically this was a house site that they built up from there and put thatch and then had this protected place okay so they they live down here in the cave they never know the Hawaiian didn't live down in the bottom land the bottomland was all agricultural they came up on the ridges and in the areas where you couldn't grow and lived wow yeah this is definitely a archaeological site here and any archaeologist would just come and go oh wow look at this da yeah please be careful y you make my wife nervous just being there and there's caves right yeah can I go down here sure you can oh yeah you could easily sleep under that rock yeah I want to send the right people your way someone not shortterm right you don't want someone out here for a month what would you what would you ideally want want you know we've had any number of interns we've had people show up and want to do a work exchange yep even for a week or two and if they're really you know kind of like on our side and willing to help out and be not a burden it's worked remember that guy Daniel this guy showed up and he was great at climbing trees and cleaning he just wanted to give a little bit it's a lot of work out here there is a lot of work okay okay yeah and it's a lot of complexity and understanding so I somebody has to be in that mindset of recognizing that and not it's not we've actually had the situation of people with a lot of experience were harder to deal with people who' been on other Farms but we're we're getting on in age okay we want to travel and teach permaculture a bit what we really need now is somebody who has the belief in themselves that they can manage this place in our absence and want to learn farm management which there's a lot of valuable skills that they could take somewhere else later on you know we're marketing all those avocados we picked today yeah and we're and and learn from the masters of how things are done in environment you know it's not just agricultural stuff we're homesteaders we have our own water system we get a big flood the intakes go goes out somebody has to hike up the mountain and know how to cut and glue PVC and start of siphon and you know a whole bunch of things uh repair Bridges repair Bridges but you'll teach them if they don't have that absolutely okay all right guys if any of you are interested out there in that setup uh for the right person I think it's a dream come true uh link is down below to reach out to Dan and Robin thank you guys thank you pet that was awesome I learned a lot you have a beautiful world out here a lot of respect and admiration for what you're doing thank you so thank you thanks for watching you guys until the next one [Music]

Channel: Peter Santenello

Views: 551,991

Keywords: remote living, peter santenello, off grid, off the grid, homesteading, permaculture, self sufficiency

Id: 3Np8JRUmACo

Length: 57min 10sec (3430 seconds)

Published: Sat May 18 2024