It’s been three and a half years since we moved onto our land, and I have to say, I’m completely, utterly obsessed with this place. With this island. With this lifestyle we’ve chosen to live.
But goodness, these past three and a half years have been HARD.
When we first moved here, I had all these plans to document our journey. I imagined making YouTube videos, writing blog entries, sharing our progress as we built our off-grid home and planted our food forest.
But in reality, none of that really happened.
I think part of me felt like my life needed to be a little more put together before I could share it with the world. At the same time, I felt like so much of what we were going through was too personal to share.
I wanted to inspire people to follow their dreams, especially those who dream of living closer to nature and building a life off-grid. But I kept waiting until I had something beautiful to show for it.
And the truth is, behind the scenes, life was a mess sometimes.
We struggled financially from the very beginning. There were times when we had absolutely nothing. My husband had to find work almost immediately after moving here, and just when things seemed to be moving forward, he suffered a terrible infection in his leg that nearly took his life. It was one of the scariest experiences our family has ever been through, and his recovery took months.
Meanwhile, I was trying to keep my art business alive while our entire family lived, slept, and worked out of one tiny room. My workspace was our living space, and there were times when I genuinely thought I was going to lose the business I had spent years building.
And somewhere in the middle of all of that, we found out we were expecting another baby!
Bringing our son into the world right here on our land, through an unassisted home birth, became one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. But of course, raising a growing family while trying to build a home from the ground up meant that progress often happened much more slowly than we imagined.
Through everything, one thing remained our priority: growing food.
We kept planting. Bananas, fruit trees, and all kinds of things we hoped would one day feed our family. Even when our house was unfinished and everything else felt uncertain, we continued working on our food forest.
And now, three and a half years later, I’m standing on this little hilltop, looking out over our land.
The bananas are flowering and fruiting. The tiny trees we planted three years ago are getting tall. Everywhere I look, things are growing, filling in, becoming lush and green.
Our little cabin that we’ve spent the past two years building is complete. My husband has established himself here through his work, and we’re finally finding some financial stability after years of uncertainty.
And I just can’t help but feel an overwhelming amount of gratitude.
I love this land so much. I love the life we’re creating here, even with all its imperfections.
Looking back, I realize that maybe I was waiting for everything to be established before I felt comfortable sharing our journey. And now that I finally feel like we’re growing roots, I wish I had documented more of those messy beginnings.
Because there’s so much beauty in the process, too.
So here I am, finally writing that blog entry I’ve been meaning to write for over three years.
I hope to share more of our little world here. The projects, the garden, our off-grid home, our food forest, and perhaps a few stories from those challenging early years.
If you’re curious about our homestead, living off-grid, or what it’s like to start a food forest from scratch, I’d love to hear your questions.
And if you’re dreaming of creating a different kind of life for yourself, I hope our journey gives you a little inspiration to keep going.
Sometimes things take a lot longer to grow than we imagined. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t growing.
Stay tuned…more to come…
Aloha!
