Here at Hamakua Springs we are constantly trying new things.

• Last year we started growing lettuce hydroponically. It seemed like an easy thing to do, but we always expect the unexpected. And sure enough, we had insect, algae, bacteria, temperature, light, nutrition and heat problems.

At first we could not determine what was causing our problems. But because we had temperature, humidity, light as well as oxygen, nutrition and oxygen reduction potential meters we finally figured it all out.

We started with one box of lettuce, and now we are taking seven boxes to the Kino‘ole Street Farmers Market every Saturday morning and selling out.

After a year of experimenting we are finally happy with the green and red leaf lettuce.

• We are getting ready to start making biodiesel from waste vegetable oil. We will be working with Bridget Awong, General Manager of SODEXHO, the people who do food service for the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo. We will get 100 gallons per week from them.

 

We plan to create just enough biodiesel for our farm’s tractors and delivery trucks. We don’t plan on becoming an energy company. We just don’t want to get caught in gas lines when there are supply interruptions in the future.

• We also plan to make biodiesel out of algae. The idea is to use our waste fertilizer to grow the algae, and use the electricity we generate from hydro power to automate the process. This makes sense to us. Picking up nuts from the ground or harvesting palm nuts from trees is too costly and much too labor intensive for our taste.

• We are currently in another expansion mode. We are constructing about 40 new hydroponics houses right now, where we will grow more tomatoes, lettuces and colored bell peppers.

We can do this because we have the growing end of it worked out now, demand is up, and we see a lot of opportunity to provide food for this island in an energy-efficient way in the near future.