Odds and Ends

As surreal as it is for me to say, I only have a week left here on the farm and I think that there is more to say about the corner of the world I have found myself over the past couples of months. Recently I have had the "opportunity" to see more of the island as I have circled it multiple times in the hopes of getting one of the company's delivery vans service. One major disadvantage of living on such a rugged and rural island is that your local Dodge dealer is 2 and a half hours away and on the other side of a 13,000 foot mountain. When I initially went to go pick up the van I was a bit intimated as I had yet to drive in Hawaii and had never driven a vehicle of such girth that I can stand up in the back seat and still have head room. This Dodge Sprinter and I, however, became intimately acquainted once it refused to shift out of park an hour into our drive home in the midst of lava fields (This wasn't as perilous as it sounds -- the lava was not molten).

If traveling the world has given me nothing else, it is my resourcefulness. I tracked down the phone number of the mechanic and in my decidedly un-hang loose attitude, I made him stay on the phone with me for the next hour as I tried to get the gear shifter out of park. To do this, he suggested I stick a pen in a slot below the panel that lists the gears -- greaaat, glad we pay you the big bucks. Regardless, it would have worked like a charm if I had in my possession a pen that day, but no, the unfurled paper clip necessitated a bit more wrangling. The following week I had the privilege of doing the same thing but in reverse where I was going to drop off the van to have them fix it so that we didn't have to drive around with our trusty ball point pen in hand. Since I have become familiar with the drive I was able to stop at Punalu'u Black Sand Beach which is in the middle of nowhere on the south side of the island. It is almost eery to be in the United States and have there be so much undeveloped coastline with the exception of this one little beach that tourists pour out to see for, you guessed it, the black sand. Thankfully I arrived early in the morning before the buses and had the unforeseen opportunity to go swimming with these dudes. There were massive turtles snoozing on the beach, presumably exhausted by the swim from Australia at the ripe age of 105. After checking them out, I went swimming only to find quite a few bobbing up and down along the shoreline -- a pretty magical experience for 9 am on a Wednesday.

While picking up watercress on our delivery run, we drove past this driveway for which my photo does not do justice. The owner must have somehow ground up old green, brown, and clear glass bottles to have soft edges like sea glass and spread it as gravel. It shimmered in the sun like a mosaic and was totally smooth to walk on (I bravely tested it).

The Ohia tree is emblematic of the Hawaiian forest -- they are truly massive trees accented by feathery red flowers. This photo is taken 3 stories up on the roof of my shack which makes my unscientific mind deduce that it is about 70 feet tall.

I always have freshly cut tropical flowers in my room -- a fringe benefit. The rate of growth for flowering bushes is incredible here, especially since it is now rainy season. Seemingly overnight a shoot will turn into a full on branch and then be budding the day after. It's also a little funny to see plant varieties that I am used to seeing slowly dying in the corner of an office on the East Coast thriving and at exponential size outside here.

The avocados practically knock on my door and ask to be eaten. They are huge yet delicious, and yes, the one in the middle is a perfect circle.

This is Hawaii

Earlier today I was in Hilo, the major city on the other side of the island that has fewer tourists and more locals. I was at the Wal Mart which is apparently the hot spot at noon on a Wednesday. I have never seen so many people riding around in those shopping scooters and yes, this really is what the women's clothing section looks like.
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Most definitely not on the East Coast anymore

Since arriving in Hawaii I have been told about the experience that is a high school graduation. Last weekend I got to see the spectacle for myself -- my boarding school graduation, in which white dresses, pearls, and firm handshakes were the order of the day, left me no reference point for what was to come. High school graduation is such a big deal here because for many families it is the highest level of education achieved by a member of their family to date and may be the end of the graduate's academic career. Before the graduates parade into the stadium, proud families and friends fill the stands with balloons, posters with giant portraits of their graduates, and leis made out of not only flowers but candy bars and dollar bills. The ceremony itself was more of a party than a commencement ceremony as the keynote speaker sang a few songs instead of giving a speech and had the graduates dancing around. One similarity I did find, unfortunately, was that the speech given by the student speaker described ad nauseam every possible cliche regarding growing up and moving on.

As the crowd grew restless during the speeches, people started to move out of their seats to get in prime position to attack their graduate as soon as possible with aforementioned signs, balloons, and leis.

It really was a lovely ceremony to see unfold -- the graduates and their loved ones were so proud and at the risk of sounding like the student speaker, I really could sense the optimism and hope in the graduates after having accomplished this milestone and looking towards the future. The celebratory atmosphere was enhanced by the range of people there -- I don't know if there is a more diverse place in the United States than this part of Hawaii. There were men in traditional Samoan dress for the special occasion along with WASP-y New Englanders and Ed Hardy clad Asians, oh, and there were fireworks too.

I now know that if you aren't covered at least to your ears with leis from family and friends, you haven't made much of yourself over the past 18 years.

Lesson Learned: Farming is Work Intensive

Cinnamon -- a food item I have not given much thought to its origin or production. Where does it come from? How does it get into those curly rolls or powder form? Today, however, I was given the task of taking the limbs from one of the cinnamon trees and extracting the spice. I now have a much greater appreciations for whittlers and woodworkers everywhere...

Shaving off the outer layer of bark

Loosening the Cinnamon

My soon-to-be Carpal Tunnel inflicted wrist with Cinnamon bark

Done and Done

After a few days of drying, we will pulverize the cinnamon and it will be ready to use. I chewed on some stray pieces of it and it definitely tastes like a fibrous version of extra hot cinnamon gum -- this stuff is potent!

Where Am I?

As I have been here for over a month now, I thought it high time to give a little description of the area of the world I am in beyond the farm. I am on the Big Island which, true to it's name, is the biggest island in Hawaii. It is very rocky due to its formation by volcanos -- one of which is as active as it has been in years and sends "vog" (a mixture of fog and volcanic ash) upon us on a daily basis giving the rainy season an extra haze and heaviness. Our town, Honaunau, 45 minutes South of Kona, is inhabited by a lot of coffee farms and generally laid back and friendly folk. We live at a rather high elevation, but are only a few miles from the beach. Many of the beaches in this area do not have sand or a clear shoreline, but are volcanic rock abutting the ocean. The closest beach is a National Park called City of Refuge as it has long been considered safe and sacred ground by the Hawaiians.

Due to the way the volcanic rock has formed, there are many little pools that fill at high tide with small tropical fish and provide a nice little perch to keep cool in. The scene between the farm and the beach is not what I anticipated -- to me it looks more like the cattle ranches of central California.

On the way between we also pass several cars that look like they were attacked by the jungle -- in Hawaii it is common practice to drive a car until it just can't anymore and proceed to leave it there...

Last weekend I had the chance to go around the island with Tane as we had to pick up an order from a Kava farm outside of Hilo. Kava is a root that is present in various forms throughout Polynesia and has various social and medicinal purposes. Traditionally, the root is ground up into a powder and mixed with water and drunk in dried coconut shells. It looks like dirty water and doesn't taste much different. Luckily, it is a maaajor muscle relaxant and causes your mouth to go numb almost instantly and thus the taste is not much of an issue. It generally makes you feel relaxed and cheerful while it increases blood flow. The roots themselves often need to be taken out with a tractor as they can be huge and heavy. On our way to Hilo we drove through such diverse terrain including the lava fields which are just black waves of rock as far as the eye can see down into the ocean. I was surprised to learn that the huge billowing clouds over one section of the island was not just the cause of the rainy season, but the pressure caused by the eruption of the volcano below. We also passed through legitimate deserts and ended up in lush Hilo.

After leaving Hilo and the Kava farm, we drove home between the two major mountains, Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, and stopped in a little forest reserve that was packed with unique trees local to that high elevation.

Before the islands were brought into heavy mercantile trading with the British and other empires, Sandalwood was an abundant and prized wood good for building and with a sweet smell. Sandalwood is now all bit extinct except for this little reserve -- one tree had a very staunch looking Hawaiian Queen sitting beneath. Upon closer inspection it was incredible to see how much life existed in the harsh lava beds between two major volcanic mountains. We saw moss growing on many trees, little berry bushes, and birds. Fortunately we didn't have any encounters with the wild goats and pigs that feed off of this terrain.

I suppose I have come to expect the unexpected here -- not much is predictable and if there is a pattern to things, I don't quite get it and I'm okay with living with the mystery.

A Tour Around

Since being up on the farm I've been exposed to fruits and vegetables that I've never heard of or at least seen before processing so I thought I should not tell, but show some of the things we grow here.

Yellow Jalapeno plant in one of the greenhouses

Rats attacking Bananas attacking Peanut starts...'tis a vicious cycle

Salvaged Bananas

Corn Shoots -- we take kernels of corn and sprout them and you are left with the purest, sweetest corn taste in a single thread

Micro Red Basil -- micro greens are the major output in the greenhouse

Pea Shoots -- same idea as the Corn, it's used in restaurants for Spring Rolls and other such light fare. Our Pea Shoot tables are set to kill some rats equipped with bait, cameras, cages, and slap traps.

My babies the African Basil

Okinawa Spinach -- It looks like a waxy, spiky weed but has a very soft, subtle flavor and has pretty purple under-leaves.

A Sea of Kale

Fuschia Plants -- we pick these edible flowers to be used as a wee little garnish on dessert plates

Gotu Kola Attacks!

One of the great things about this farm is the diversity of crops it turns out -- from micro greens and kale to medicinal herbs I have never heard of. One such herb is Gotu Kola -- a plant used in Traditional Chinese Medicine and Indian Ayurveda that does pretty much everything. It is considered an adaptogen as it helps the human body deal with all kinds of stress in addition to being antibacterial, anti-viral, anti-inflammatory, a cerebral tonic, a circulatory stimulant, a diuretic and an anit-ulcerogenic. Which means that you can prevent yourself from going crazy while also clearing up your acne. A nice added side effect is that it leaves you feeling energized yet clear headed. So the other night we sent to juicing this plant and ended up all giggly due to the effects of the Gotu Kola and all of the sugar we had to use to make it not taste like grass. The result was indeed delicious.

Letting our Lemon Balm steep in water

The Green itself

Tane with our tasting glasses

As the juice recipe was figured out rather early on using various ingredients off the farm including Lemon Balm, Mint, and Lemon, we were left with a big bag of Gotu Kola and a girl who doesn't like things to go to waste. The past few days have been filled with me adding this not so tasty, rather bitter, weedy looking thing to wraps, stir fry, and sometimes just my pockets for a little pick me up later on...

May Day is Lei Day

Growing up, I associated May Day with the most virginal girl in the class awkwardly smiling as she placed a crown of flowers on the head of a little Virgin Mary statue. In Hawaii, instead, the holiday is the eclectic result of overzealous Christian missionaries trying to impart foreign traditions to a culture that was already deeply rooted in its own. Today, the result is one of the cutest things I have ever seen -- a pageant takes place at every school in which the elected May Queen, who wears white here too, is crowned and lei'd before the students in each grade come up on stage with a gift for her and then do a hula while singing in both Hawaiian and English in her honor.

The young ones filing in

The kindergarteners lighting it up

The May Queen performing with her Princesses -- all of whom represent a different island

In Celebration of Earth Day

As if caring for the plants that I live amongst and have already developed a fondness for was not enough to commemorate this year's Earth Day, we made our way to Tane and Maureen's daughter Saffron's school to help out in their very ambitious plan for the afternoon. From my recollection, Earth Day was always a half-assed attempt to rake the leaves off of the playground or plant some wilted flowers that would soon be reduced to dried roots. This Earth Day, however, was a symphony of involved parents, organized teachers, and enthused kids. The school already has a working vegetable garden which I am told is the source of great pride, especially for the elementary school, who like to show off the progress of "their" plants to their parents. These youngsters have clearly developed an impressive knowledge of horticulture as evidenced by a comment from one first-grader to another, "Let's plant our tomatoes right next to each other so they can be friends!" But really, it was both heart-warming and encouraging to see kids from elementary to high school so enthusiastic about something so old-fashioned and mundane as gardening. I was with sixth graders most of the time helping put soil and then seeds into various raised beds while in the mean time getting a crash course in the intricacies of the social mores of the age.

The kindergartners piddling around

The sixth graders hard at work

Kylie, another member of our farm team, finishing up the work of the first graders

Adventures with Macadamia Nuts

Like anyone else not from Hawaii, I was enamored of the idea of eating my very favorite nut by simply cracking open one of the many husks that literally litter the ground around here. In my pursuit of roasting my own Macadamia nuts, I came to realize why they cost so much -- the labor! (feel free to laugh at any innuendos, they simply could not be avoided)

First, I collected all of the green husked nuts I could find that had just fallen to the ground. These are preferable to the myriad of brown husked nuts as these tend to have nuts that are too soft are have taken on tiny tenants.

I then pulled out the trusty Mac nut cracker to take off the green husk and laid the hard, brown-shelled nuts out on a cookie sheet to dry off for a few days.

Once the nuts were able to shrink enough to allow cleaner cracking, I had a pile of raw Mac nuts that were delicious all on their own, but were destined for the oven in order to fulfill my vision

Before heading into the oven I tossed the nuts in salty water and roasted them for a lot longer than was suggested, but necessary due to the oven's imperfect sealing...

EAT

In conclusion, this whole process was probably not "worth" the effort and I would probably not undertake this task if Mac nuts were always falling on the ground around me, but twas a novelty and I must say, these are some of the most delicious Macadamia nuts I have ever enjoyed.

Setting up Camp

After only nine days on the farm, I'm feeling adjusted and already in a routine that is both satisfying and challenging. Hawaii is lovely and the family hosting me could not be more darling or welcoming. I do believe that all of my travel in the third world has given me the perspective to really enjoy my jungle shack. In other words, I've already dealt with

cockroaches, rats, bizarre toilet contraptions, black outs, creative sleeping set-ups, etc -- I have never, however, been faced with an opponent whose main interest was eating my underwear. On my first night I experienced proper solitude for probably the first time in my life. I have been in secluded, quiet places before, but never alone, at night, and for an extended period of time. By 8 at night it is completely dark and the only sound is that of the insects -- I find myself at night struggling to read more than a few pages of my novel for I am just too content to lie in peace and drift off to sleep without a care....Until the morning when I find that another personal item of mine has either been tampered with or taken off with all together. There were four days of devastation in which two pairs of underwear were chewed through and a nail file was missing along with my toothbrush -- we deduced that the culprit was a rat, and a kinky one at that.

My lovely jungle shack that I have all to myself!

The view out the front window from 1800 feet down to the ocean

When I envisioned myself living and working on a sustainable, organic farm for a few months, I had images of wearing flowers in my hair while I planted seeds and watched them flourish to harvest under my care. I did not expect to be doing pest control in the form of spearing slugs trying to eat my African Basil and setting up slap traps in the hopes of finding a few pounds of rat meat in it come morning (I've had two big kills and have had a few nights without incident, but am somewhat compelled to string the rats up over my front door to claim the jungle as mine -- that, however, seemed a bit too Lord of the Flies). Alas, this is life on a farm and I really love it.

The farm is owned and operated by a very knowledgeable couple that not only successfully harvests and sells from their own farm, but have a business in collecting from other organic farms on the Big Island and selling their produce through their CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) and directly to restaurants and health food stores on the island. They are committed to creating a balanced agricultural system for Hawaii in which the food grown by Hawaiian farmers is actually eaten by their fellow statesmen, instead of being sent to far off lands as mass exports. I was told that if the barges from the mainland carrying food and other supplies were unable to dock here for whatever reason, Hawaiians would have 7 days before starvation and chaos would take over. On an island where so much can be grown all year, this is a feasible, albeit challenging, task. The farm grows a wide array of specialty produce from Corn Shoots to Micro Red Basil in the greenhouse while the other 7 acres or so is covered in herbs, Macadamia Nut Trees, Avocado Trees, Pomelo Trees....Suffice it to say that this vegetarian is loving the land that provides her with a pound of kale every single day along with other gifts that drop from the trees!

Lovely sunset seen from the main house