day seven

The sun is glowing above the giant Monkey Pod trees leaving a bright path across the ocean as another day comes to a close. The breeze is still and the farm is quiet.  Day seven.  It feels like we have been on this farm for months as things that were all so new to us a few days ago have quickly become familiar.  Spiders, I am still working on, but dirty hands, muddy boots, sore muscles and the smell of decomposing compost, at this point we are all pretty well acquainted.

Our work schedule is 8am to 4pm (with a highly anticipated hour lunch in the afternoon) Tuesday through Friday.  There is an endless amount of work to be done around the farm which means we are kept busy.  On Friday, I mastered the art of gas powered machinery- mowers, leaf blowers, weed-eaters- and Eric successfully tore down dead branches from a towering, old Monkey Pod.  The fact that he fell in a hole up to his waist, grabbed an electric fence and got electrocuted all before lunch time is neither here nor there.

To finish out the week, we strapped 25 pound belly buckets around our waists and picked coffee in the cool afternoon rain.  Right now, most of the coffee is still ripening but there are a few ripe cherries on the trees so it is important to pick the bright red ones and leave the green ones. We took it nice and slow for our first time.  We were picking alongside a man that can pick over 500 pounds of coffee a day!  He gave us a few helpful pointers but we didn't even come close to filling up half of our buckets. Don't worry, we will have many more opportunities to sharpen our coffee picking skills in the upcoming weeks and months.

The three day weekend gave us time to relax and see more of the area.  We caught a ride into Kailua Kona, a busy town about ten minutes away from the farm.  We checked out the shops, had local sushi for lunch, body-surfed in the clear blue salty water, and made our way home.  By "made our way home" I mean we walked a 1,500 foot ascent with our thumbs out, nervously attempting to hitchhike.  We (Me, Eric, and another WWOOFer) walked single file, drenched with sweat, thumbs out, up steep roads with no shoulders for an hour and a half before a woman in a small red car picked us all up and drove us a tenth of a mile to the bottom of our farm. The next day, Eric and I purchased a moped.

As we continue to acclimate and shake off the remaining jet-lag, we are so thankful to have each other out here in this new frontier.  There is so much to learn and so, so many weeds to pull....

"Firsts"
-Hitchhiked
-Got electrocuted by fence
-Ate mango off tree
-Ate lilikoi (passion fruit) off tree
-Bought a moped
-Drove a moped
-Drank lilikoi shots
-Swam at Hawaiian beach
-Hand picked coffee

"Old Kona Airport" 9/10/12

"Eric and Bounty" 9/7/12

"Coffee Picking" 9/7/12

"Barbie" 9/9/12

"Sunset over Shack" 9/12/12