First day of work

Getting up at 5:30 AM is easy when you have “good” jet lag – the kind that happens when you travel west so you feel hours ahead, not behind.

Among the staples we were provided was oats, so that's what we had for breakfast. The working day starts at 7 AM and despite the fact that our “commute” is 20 yards, we managed to be late to the morning meeting.

Every morning, everyone at the farm meets to make a game plan for the day's tasks. On our first day, we met our fellow WWOOFers, X & Y. They are childhood friends here to work for the summer. They are about our age. (This blog is about us, not them, so we will be vague on their details to keep their privacy.)

Despite the previous day's tour, we were totally disoriented and had no idea where things were on the farm. Thankfully, the plan was to shadow X & Y in the daily chores to learn the ropes.

Our first task of the day was to feed and move the chickens. Move the chickens, you ask? Yes, move the chickens. There are four “chicken tractors” – hen houses on wheels – that are moved through crop rows throughout the day. This gives the chickens new ground to scratch, bugs to eat from the things we grow, and a new place to “fertilize.”

After moving the chicken tractors, we collected eggs and opened their cages to feed them. Despite being hale, hearty and the progeny of K Sr., K Jr. is nervous around chickens! C cleaned the water while K tried yelling, “Bad chicken!” or “Down” at the chickens, to no effect. You have to “be the rooster.” Firmly but gently move them aside or hold them down. That's all you have to do to manage chickens. You can't reason with them.

Weeding the pineapple patch proved considerably less dramatic for K than feeding the chickens. For the next few hours, we learned weed identification and what types of grass can be cultivated as ground cover. C found this task rather annoying, as the pineapple patch is grown into a'a lava on a slope. The ground is really uneven and the lava rocks tear your shoes up. Steel toed boots and knee pads are super helpful.

The owner of the farm is quite punctual, and expects us to be the same. This is especially nice for breaks. Neither of us had a watch, so she came to remind us when 9:30 rolled around. Back at the cabin, we ate PB sandwiches before heading back to work at 10 AM.

Everyday after the break, two people go “fruiting.” Fruit flies are a big problem in the tropics, especially at a fruit farm. To help curb their population, we collect any fruit that has fallen to the ground. Oranges, mangos, avocados, papayas, breadfruit, mountain apples (not really an apple at all), lilikoi (passion fruit) and a bunch of things we have never heard of before. Anything that's good, we keep and eat. Anything kind-of good gets fed to the chickens (they really like papayas). Anything infested or previously sampled gets thrown in a compost tent (more on that later).

While picking up fruit, we also look for ripe bananas to be chopped down later in the day. You pick bananas at the first sign of yellow. There are a number of different kinds of bananas here: Cuban red, blue and apple bananas. Today, we found several bunches of ripe apple bananas.

Last task of the day was to gather macademia (or just “mac”) nuts. In a previous life, this land was primarily a mac nut farm, so the trees are everywhere. It's not yet mac nut season, but good nuts fall to the ground that need collecting. On our hands and knees, we pawed through dried leaves and dirt to find the good nuts. It's a buggy job and the mac nut leaves are sharp, so we get fully dressed and wear knee pads for this task.

The day normally ends at 12:30, but after work today we had a special banana harvesting session. There were two bunches to cut out of the trees. We do this with an electric battery Sawz-All. While chopping, C wasn't watching and hit K in the face with banana leaf and was almost hit in the head with a trunk herself as she sawed away. Once the trees are felled, we take a finer knife to cut the "hands" from the bunches. We hung the fruit from a line and hosed them down, as banana sap stains everything brown. And no foo-foo organic market wants brown stained bananas.

We got to keep the imperfect fruit, 10 apple bananas out of maybe 70. These were some of the best bananas we'ver ever eaten. Apple bananas are shorter, firmer and more tart than the kind of bananas you see sold in MI. Freakin delicious.

In the evening, we tidied our little cabin and made our first “all farm” dinner. Every ingredient (except the vegetable oil) was grown on the farm: fried Okinawan purple sweet potatoes with Brazilian spinach and fresh scrambled eggs. K wasn't crazy about the spinach (it's tough and a little bitter) but was pleased with the purple sweet potatoes.

After dinner, we read and relaxed. We were scheduled for “slug duty” (more on that later) that night but heavy rain kept us inside.