Friday, May 28, 2010

So what's the farm like?

The 8 acre farm is located in Honaunau (population 2000), a small town in the South Kona region of the island of Hawai'i. Hawai'i is almost always called “Big Island” to differentiate it from the state proper. South Kona is sunny in the morning and overcast and drizzly in the evenings, perfect weather for the coffee that grows so famously here. We are about 1000ft above sea level, so it's not super hot here. Maybe an average H/L of 60/80F throughout the day and night.

The current owners bought this farm land a few years ago. At the time, the farm was derelict; tropical vines grew over the entire acreage and you could only get around with a machete. They have an album of before/after photos and the difference is amazing. A recent visitor commented on how the farm “looks like a park,” which we'll take as a compliment as we do so much damn weed-whacking (pic is rows of young coffee trees).

Most farms around here do mostly coffee, but our place is far more diverse than the average farm. In addition to coffee, this farm grows bananas, at least five types of avocados, dragon fruit, lilikoi (passion fruit), pomelo, mango, papaya, mountain apples, macadamia nuts (second most grown crop in this region), Haitian star apple, lemons, Surinam cherries, limes, “Buddha's hands,” pineapple, cacao, at least three types of sweet potatoes and onions. The owner is also beginning to experiment with growing a garlic from Molikai'i, the only garlic known to grown in Hawai'i. And a bunch of other things we are still learning to identify.

This type of farm is often referred to as “agro-forestry” because nearly all the crops are grown in trees , hence the park like appearance. These pictures aren't great, but they give you an idea of how things are grown here.

There's also two gardens on the farm. One is the farmer's “market garden” in which she grows things for the farmer's market: lettuce, collards, peppers, many herbs, etc. The other garden is referred to as the “intern garden.” We take care of that one, and use it to practice our gardening skills. We are trying to grow onions, leeks, bok choi, broccoli raab, tomatoes, asparagus and a number of other things. This garden is always tended by WWOOFers. Because there is a high turn-over in WWOOFing, we are eating what the previous WWOOFers planted, and the next batch of people will reap the benefits of our gardening skills. Or suffer from it, depending on how well it goes.


Everything is organic. There is a tremendous effort to keep the plants happy through proper soil cultivation and maintenance and well-planned planting (more on these topics in the future!). And through cheap labor (that's us!)

And, finally, what you've been waiting for...pics of our coconut tree and a giant mango:

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

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.

Monday, May 24, 2010

The Arrival

The bus on the Big Island is similar to the bus in Ypsilanti. It doesn't run frequently, it's never on time and the same type of people ride it. Foreigners, working poor, teenagers and the local crazies. The Hele-on Bus (Hawai'ian for “get moving”) is, however, free.

We took a taxi from the airport to a Kmart, the closest bus stop on a route that went as far south as we needed to go. From the store, it was an hour bus ride along the one main road, Ali'i Dr., to the Manago Hotel in Captain Cook, where we agreed to meet our host, B. We arrived a few hours early and had to wait. After fifteen minutes, we had already seen everything there was to see. There was a baseball diamond and a general meeting house, Yano Hall. And there were no other buildings except for the Manago. The lobby looked like something out of a bad western plus an adjacent potato chip factory. And by “factory” we mean storefront without a store. It was a far cry from the giant shopping plazas and beach front resorts that lined Ali'i Dr.

We called B. She didn't expect us early but was free to pick us up and wasn't long in coming. On our way to the farm, she gave us a driving tour of Honaunau. We passed the post office, the road to the beach, the beer store, the elementary school...and that was it.

When we arrived at the farm, B showed us around the place and gave us a box of food staples before leaving us at our cabin to settle in. We started unpacking and realized we didn't have any soap.

We headed up a steep foot path to “town.” There's really only one road in Honaunau and everything is on it. The health food store is called “Bong Brothers” (everyone swears that's really their name) and is near the edge of town. It took us an hour, walking on the narrow shoulder, to get some Dr. Bronner's and get back home. We also stopped to get some beer, which may not have been necessary since we were offered pakalolo by a sunburnt hippie walking the other way. We declined and instead picked up some of the mangoes littering the road. They're everywhere.

Back to our unabomber cabin. The place is about 10x20 and screened in. It's simply furnished with a futon, loft storage and little wall table. We have cold running water, a mini-fridge and a propane stove. The fridge doesn't work yet and won't until the electric company comes to hook the farm up, which is expected early June. Til then, we keep our food in a cooler and have generated electricity for about two hours every evening.

We are surrounded by macadamia nut trees. B had warned us about nocturnal creatures (uh, rats, really) that live up in the trees and crack nuts all night long. This is apparently why she suggested we bring ear plugs, not for the power tools as we had assumed. We didn't notice anything in the evening but the GIANT cockroach on a pillow, but after disposing of that, we slept soundly. It's really dark here at night.