HawaiiSPACE

We are an artistic eco village
We purchased our 12 acre kipuka “island of trees” in 1987. There are 35 founding members (mostly jugglers and performing artists) from 8 different countries, who met at one of the 19 Hawaiian Juggling festivals. We loved the Big Island of Hawaii enough to decide to live or visit here regularly and organized ourselves to establish a permanent home and performing arts center.
We bought an abandoned jungle homestead that was overrun by vines and weed trees. Since 1987 we have worked thousands of hours on the land, and have turned a slice of raw jungle into a tropical paradise. Almost all of the work has been done voluntarily and with love.
Bellyacres has six houses and twelve cabins for members and renters who live here year round. Currently we are 17 adults and 6 kids plus 6-10 visiting volunteers.
Our organic farm is focused on exploring location appropriate sustainable agriculture and grows a great variety of diversified crops for the residents and local community. Crops include, coconuts, breadfruit, mangoes, papayas, avocadoes, bananas, oranges, lemons, limes, grapefruit. Tangerines, Tangelos, soursop, jack fruit, lychee, rambutan, berries, passionfruit, pumpkin. We also have about 100 hens, 6 roosters, 2 horses, 2 dogs, 7 cats and a stuffed monkey.
We do not have conventional gardens which are inappropriate for our climate but are currently building a large greenhouse in which we plan to grow greens and some temperate crops. We will be installing irrigation infrastructure to support this new development. We get our electricity from solar panels. Our water is mostly collected from roof catchment systems. We are working hard to improve our food production, food processing and local food distribution.
For nearly 20 years we have been a traveling circus (HICCUP -Hawaii Island Community Circus ) providing weekly performance arts classes throughout Hawaii in schools and in rural communities, plus presenting a range of community performances and circus training camps. Due to the success of these activities we have raised funds that enabled us to eventually build our own community performance arts facility. Our SPACE facility which opened in November 2007 has changed our focus. We currently have limited circus programs since we now serve as the local community center for loads of arts and cultural activities, we host a small Waldorf inspired charter school, a weekly farmers market and a variety of other social and community building events.