This last week we went around the east side of Maui to Kipahulu, the land of love-snatching winds, to work and learn at Whispering Winds Bamboo Cooperative. Most of our time was spent doing hands on activities and working with our teams on our design projects.
We had another lecture on water by Evan Ryan. When designing for water on land it is important to remember permaculture principle 11: Use edges and value the marginal. We talked about how ponds can be used as a pollinator attractant, a home for fish and frogs, and a mulch and nutrient source. The deeper ponds are dug, the less evaporation will happen. Ponds can be lined with geotech-style fabric, used carpeting, or high density polyethylene. During one of our hands-on afternoons this week, we mucked out the pond by bucketful. I hauled the buckets from the pond up the liner and into the tractor.
We also had a lecture on natural building from Evan. Green building includes an energy efficient design, recycled building materials, sustainable choices, less toxicity, and standard building practices. Natural building includes an ecological design, regenerative materials, earth-based local materials, and appropriate technologies. Examples of natural building include cob, straw bale, urbanite, earth bags, earthen plaster, adobe, hemprete, rammed earth, stone, green roofs, earth ships, cordwood, wattle, ferro cement, bamboo, and timber.
My design group is working on the Kuleana Cooperative, a Food Hub in Haiku that will feature a permanent farmers market, an aggregation and distribution zone, an education center, fiscal and legal resources for local farmers, incubator farms, and more. I am focusing on the permanent farmer’s market, which will be an Ibuku bamboo structure with booths, food trucks, and a courtyard on the ground floor and a kombucha cafe and kava bar on the second floor.