Know Your DIY Limits: Safety on the Homestead

Reader Contribution by John Atwell
Published on September 26, 2016
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East Hawaii, the windward side of the Big Island, is a bastion of do-it-yourself practitioners. This widespread spirit of self-sufficiency and body of DIY expertise are two of many factors that drew us to this rock when we decided to break from our conventional lives and white collar jobs on the mainland to develop a homestead.

For additional context, let me just mention that during our two years here our family members have rubbed elbows with folk who have personally, and by hand, converted their vehicles to biodiesel and now propel themselves ’round the island using only old kitchen grease scrounged from local eateries.

We have come to know an individual who, by himself and in the later years of his life, like a modern-day Grizzly Adams, built a two-story cabin (that we stayed in for some time) using only hand-powered tools. We have gotten acquainted with contemporary settlers who have designed and hand constructed multi-room compost toilets that exhibit design elegance, efficiency, and functionality (not to mention no smell) that would have left Leonardo DaVinci in awe.

Wild guava saplings hand hewn and woven into a fence on our property.

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