day twenty two

Ah, the gloves are off, the buzzing noise is finally gone and there is quiet on the farm again. This week has been all about preparation.The trees are starting to burst with lots of bright red cherries which can only mean one thing; time for the 'first pick'. Any day now, a crew of coffee pickers will come in and harvest the ripest cherries for the first pick of the season. Our task for the week was to prepare the fields before the pickers get down to business which roughly translates into, you guessed it, weeding. So far, Eric and I have clocked 42 combined hours of pure weeding. Its kind of been a tough week.

Our days off were well spent. We drove to the Southern end of the Kona Coffee Belt and toured three more (of the 700) Kona coffee farms: Greenwell Farms, Royal Kona, and Kona Blue Sky. We managed to not get a flat tire driving over a couple miles of unpaved lava rock desert and spent a day at Mahaiula Bay. We treated ourselves to lunch at The Coffee Shack- a little cliff side cafe with an amazing view of Kealakekua Bay. We attempted to watch a sunset down at the beach but instead spent an evening wrangling three small cows that escaped through an open gate. We again attempted to watch the sunset at the beach and wow was it beautiful (and much nicer then chasing cows around)!

Although some days are more challenging than others, we help each other get through them. Eric motivates me to go back to work after lunchtime and I save him from falling off a roof (yup, he was tied to one end of the rope and luckily I was tied to the other). Eric weed-whacks for the team while I get the primo job using the industrial size John Deere mower (who thought that was a good idea?). I make Eric grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner and he humanely gets rid of the creepy black pincher bugs from our shack. This must be what marriage is about.

Anyhow, row by row, acre by acre we will continue on for one more day until a much needed, well deserved break.

"Cows in Cowland" 9/25/2012

 

"Old Pulper" 9/22/2012

"Chameleon Found in Coffee Tree" 9/27/2012

"Greenwell Farms Mill and Hoshidana" 9/22/2012

"Lunch at Coffee Shack" 9/22/2012

day fifteen

As we get thrown about, insides jiggling, taking the 'Gator' past the high Rainbow Eucalyptus trees, over the citrus scented grass, past the banana orchards, halfway up the 300 acres of land, we make it to the green fields of Coffee Land. Rows and rows of coffee trees lined along the high hills over looking the sea. That's what this is all about. In the 22 mile long, 2 mile wide Kona coffee belt, it is all about coffee.

Before heading to Kua Bay (the most beautiful beach we have ever been to), Eric and I took Barbie (the only pink moped on the island) out to visit a couple other coffee farms up the road from us. We drove South to the family owned and run Kona Earth and stayed for a private tour given by the owner himself. Then headed North to visit the very well manicured UCC Hawaii, whose coffee is a household name in Japan. These farms are on two different ends of the spectrum but both visits were very eye opening. It seems out here there are some guidelines but for the most part everyone has their own way of doing things and ways of differentiating their coffee from the other farms. I will say, both farms were conventional (not organic), so there was a lot less 'weed-eating' going on than what we're used to. There is definitely something special about the coffee and as we are finding out, something very unique about the people of the Big Island.

The other night, we were invited to a small BBQ- Hawaiian style. Although it was just before the time we typically go to sleep (still trying to get the time difference thing down), the chance to eat something other than a PB&J sandwich was too good to pass up. So, in anticipation for the big event, we showed up right on time. "On time" here is relative, so we were extremely early. There were no plates, no forks and no napkins in sight but there was fresh Ahi sashimi over cabbage, grilled eel and Kala fish, steak, crabs and oh yes, spiny lobsters. People of all different ages and backgrounds gathered around a round, white, plastic, table, sharing food caught on a dive the night before. Now thats a BBQ!  The folks all lived within a mile of us and all had their hands in coffee somehow. The young ones spoke about the farms their grandmothers pick coffee on. The men talked about the Coffee Borer Beatle damaging the crops. Eric and I talked about all the coffee we plan on drinking.

I think we have made it over the hump and are now feeling much more adjusted to the working and living conditions. The days continue to be filled with new tasks and challenges. Today, we started in beautiful coffee land, moved on to planting pineapple plants and ended at the compost pile. There, we emptied a truck filled with buckets of fish parts into a pile of mulch to make new compost (see video below). For this job, Eric got to use the biggest tractor on the farm, I got to use a pair of rubber gloves.

After a nice a hot shower, it feels good to finally be clean again, but more so to reflect on all the hard work that goes into running an organic farm and the effort we have put into the farm so far. We'll see what tomorrow brings, the only thing predictable about our days is that they start with a cup of some of the best coffee in the world.

"Casey on Fish Parts" 9/20/2012

"Eric on Tractor" 9/20/2012

"BBQ" 9/18/2012 

"Coffee Land" 9/20/2012

"Kua Bay" 9/16/2012

    

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

  

day one

It’s 4:22am.  I open my eyes and its pitch black so I can barely make out the frame of our shack, our new home for a month.  There are two roosters crowing on repeat and there is a breeze rustling the trees outside the screen windows.  We made it.  We made it through the first night.  

Albert picked us up yesterday in a big blue Ford diesel truck towing a trailer of mulch.  His hands were dirty but he welcomed us with a smile.  After about twenty minutes on perfectly paved, steep, windy roads, we arrived at our first Kona coffee farm.  We drove past the roasting and packaging building, then the mill, followed by the pulper and continued up the hill.  With a quick “See you at eight”, Albert dropped us off and headed back down the road.  So there we were.  On top of a huge hill, thousands of miles from home, surrounded by coffee trees over looking the sea, we chose our shack- the one with the best view. 

“What the hell were we thinking” crossed my mind a few times as we, well mostly eric, cleared the spiders and hornets out of our lovely 8'X10'.  The perfectly clear view of the neon pink sunset eased our worries as we reminded ourselves that this was what we signed up for. 

Once the sun came up we ventured out into the shared kitchen and found- can you believe it- a bag of fresh 100% Kona coffee.  Eric’s first taste of Kona coffee was had amongst the same trees it was grown from, pretty cool.  Before our workday started we scoped out our surroundings a bit...  Scattered through the trees we spotted wild cows, pigs, ducks, chickens, and yes, that rooster that was still crowing.  After picking and eating a coffee cherry (when in Rome), we were ready to begin.  With open minds and a couple pairs of work gloves we were off to meet Albert down at the mill to start working.

I cannot believe all the things we did in one day.  We eased into things with feeding the ducks, geese, and chickens which was quickly followed by us both being handed gas powered “weed-eater’s” aka weed whackers on steroids and then matching machetes to chop down trees and vines (Eric was in heaven, I was being eaten alive by insects).  One of today’s highlights was definitely when Eric was able, after 13 attempts, to start the 1982 Isuzu with a rusted screw driver and drive us- somewhat- safely up the 300 foot accent, to our shack.  

It doesn’t take long to realize that life on a farm is not a cake walk.  Our backs are sore, our arms are scratched, our legs are swollen with insect bites and stings, but today was a pretty awesome day.   

“Firsts”

-Woke up to roosters crowing 

-Ate a coffee cherry off the tree

-Ate a banana off the tree

-Drank 100% organic Kona coffee

-Picked an avocado off the tree

-Saw wild cows

-Used a “weed-eater”

-Used a machete

-Used a gas leaf blower

-Started a car with a screwdriver

          

"Shack with a view" 9/6/2012

Casey on deck  9/6/2012

First view of "accommodations"  9/6/2012

Ripe coffee cherries  9/6/2012

Eric driving Isuzu  9/6/2012