We Left Hawaii
How did we go from we are 100% having this baby in Hawaii to… we think we want to move back to the East Coast at some point with the baby, so he can grow up near family to… actually it makes sense for us to get there ASAP - time to change all the plans!
A lot of factors go into this kind of decision making and while it might seem like it comes out of nowhere, and Lou and I are definitely fast decision-makers, I think this one had actually been brewing for a long time without us completely realizing it. Then a few things happened that pushed our process along at a much faster rate than we were expecting.
FACTORS FOR THE MOVE
We Want To Own Land + Build A Homestead
To be honest, this has been a dream of ours for as long as I can remember and we originally thought that we’d be setting up a homestead in Hawaii. However, after a lot of thinking and experiencing life on the island a bunch of different things pushed us back to the East Coast. One is that land is super expensive in Maui, which made our dream of having tons of acres and privacy to set up our own farm and cabin feel impossible. But it wasn’t just that land was going to be very hard for us to acquire there, which gets me into the next factors for the move.
We Want To Create A Base For Future Adventures
Hawaii is really incredible - there’s so much natural beauty, the people are so kind, and the weather is spectacular. But there are definitely some challenges - the cost of living is really high, especially food and rent. It’s also SUPER far from everywhere else in the world. A flight to the East Coast of the US where Lou and I both grew up and still have lots of family/friends takes over 16 hours. So while we really loved creating a home base somewhere, we realized that it might be better for us to have a home base on the East Coast. This way we could be near loved ones during our day-to-day life and then use our travel time to go see parts of the world we have never been to (we still dream of traveling to Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and lots of South America!) If we had our base in Hawaii we would still want to go back to the mainland to visit our family at least once a year, so that our future child could see his grandparents and cousins. This would probably mean we wouldn’t get to do much other traveling when we consider expenses and logistics.
We Want Our Son To Grow Up Near Family
This really started to hit home the more and more pregnant I became. As we got to the point where we were trying to make plans on when both sets of our parents and all of our brothers would come out to visit to meet our son, the prices and logistics of flights/home rental/car rental… well all of it started to sink in as well. Neither Lou nor I grew up physically close to extended family and I think that lack of support made parenting harder on our parents. We are super grateful to have lots of family and dear friends all located on the East Coast between Pennsylvania all the way up to New Hampshire and it will be so nice to be within driving distance of loved ones.
So when did this all start falling into place? Well, Lou and I made a trip back to the East Coast in February of this year to visit family and friends and show off my pregnant belly :) During that trip, we decided to do a little exploring. It was supposed to be a reconnaissance mission to see if there was somewhere that seemed like it fit our criteria for a homestead location:
ample access to freshwater for the future homestead
low risk for forest fires
wouldn’t need to get on an airplane to visit family
ideally, would be within driving distance of NYC
low price per acre, so that we could get a large piece of land
close proximity to mountains for running and hiking
With all those criteria in mind, we started exploring Upstate NY and to our surprise, we absolutely LOVED it. We took a chance and looked at a few properties, and explored a bunch of different towns and different parts of the state. And then we came back to Maui, happy that we had found a place that might have potential for a future homesteading site. We still weren’t sure what our timeline would be, but it felt really nice to know that things were beginning to align.
And then when we went to visit our friends, Daniel and Alohi, and stayed at their farm, a lot of things shifted into place in our minds. I’m not sure if it was the time playing with their kids or seeing the beautiful community environment they had built with their farm, but Lou and I both got this feeling that we needed to start building something for ourselves… soon. We wanted to be on our own land, investing our time and energy into growing our own food, building our own home and raising our son in nature. And so we decided to go for it even if all the details weren’t sorted. Within a few weeks of that visit, I had flown back to the mainland, we’d found a short term rental in Upstate NY, hired a new midwife, said goodbye to all our friends in Maui, and after a long week of hustling to sell all our stuff, get our truck shipped to the East Coast, and our beloved dog onto an airplane, Lou and Freja arrived exhausted, but relieved.
It’s been quite a crazy last few weeks for us and we can’t wait to share more about getting settled here with you soon!
