This is the second week in a row that we’ve been a vendor at the Kino‘ole Street Farmers Market. Now that my grandson Kapono and I know the routine, it’s easy.

Early in the morning Saturday, at 5:30 when we were getting ready to leave for the market, there was a very heavy, pounding downpour. It reminded me of monsoon season in Vietnam, where in two to three seconds, one could fill up a two-cup canteen with rainwater running off a one-man tent. It was faster to catch the rainwater than to remove the cap and pour water from a canteen.

When we arrived at 6:30, it wasn’t raining and we hustled to get the tent up. It was fairly clear during the early part of the day. But around 10:30, there was a major downpour and everyone stayed under the tents for several minutes.

One would expect Hilo people to carry umbrellas. But only one person had an umbrella handy, and he was the only one walking around from booth to booth. It frequently happens like that where no one seems to have an umbrella. I very rarely carry an umbrella, even though Hilo is supposed to be the rainiest city in the U.S.A.

The rain didn’t dampen anyone’s spirit. Here in Hilo rain just comes and goes and it just “is.” No problem.

Farm Bureau sponsors give talks on Farmers Market days. This past Saturday’s talk was on yellow jackets.

It reminds me of when we were in elementary school. I don’t know if these are the same yellow jackets Dr. Foote was discussing, but my brother Robert and I would go down to do battle with the yellow jackets, which made nests that hung from the roof of an old abandoned building during the summer. The plan was that I would throw dirt at the hives to get them really mad. Then we would use a short guava stick to whack them out of the air.

Someone told me that bees cannot recognize a person—that they mostly detect movement. So I figured we could whack at them and then freeze. And then do it again, until we won. But we lost our nerve, got a few stings and ran away screaming.

The next summer we resolved to win the battle. I threw dirt at the hive with both hands. To our horror, bees came out in a cloud. We whacked as many as we dared out of the air and then we froze. Those bees were really mad, and we pretended we were fence posts. They were mad for a long time and one even attacked—he came at me like he recognized me. But I kept pretending to be a fence post and he flew off and circled instead. We did not dare move around, and we ran for home, throwing the guava sticks in the air because they slowed us down too much. But we didn’t scream.

The best thing about the Farmers Market is that one gets to meet and chat with many people. Some are friends from long ago and others are friends of friends, or relatives of relatives. No wonder people come back week after week. It’s fun to meet and chat with people. We met one couple who introduced themselves as parents of our friend Darren Akiona.

I hadn’t seen Ralph Lee for a long time. I asked him, “By the way, how did it come about that you had a 1961 Chevy 409 in 1961?” It was the talk of the school and the whole island if not the whole state at the time. It turned out that his dad was friends with Chuchu Kanuha, the manager of Hilo Motors, and was told of this brand new model car that was coming out. So Ralph’s dad ordered it. It cost a little over $3,000 then. I always wanted to know how Ralph ended up with the hottest car on the island.

Earlier I chatted with Janice Crowl, who told me that she was in a group of Master Gardeners who recently visited our farm. She wrote about that visit here on her blog.

The Kino‘ole Farmers Market is located in the parking lot in front of Kawate Seed Shop. We grew up calling the sweet and sour Chinese seeds one can buy there “crack seed.”

Cyrus Wagatsuma, a Farm Bureau member and diversified farmer from Papaikou, brought a wide selection of vegetables. He has a loyal following of shoppers.

People you don’t expect to meet: Tom Beck worked with our son Brian as an electrician at the Canada-France telescope on Mauna Kea. Brian respected Tom and talked about him a lot. Tom is retired from the mountain now and is selling Wagyu cattle and specialty native plants as a hobby. He looks and sounds like he’s very happy. I thought I saw a bamboo coqui trap. It was a gadgety-looking coqui trap, where the frogs would go up the bamboo pole and into a compartment to lay eggs. I have to go back and take a closer look.

Rusty Perry and I have been friends for more than 30 years. He is very active in the Farm Bureau now. Way back when, we started in the banana business together and then he diversified into papaya and orchids. He markets his products on the Internet. His booth had a sweet smell from his orchids.

Aaron and Vionel Sugino run three booths. They make fruit pies, lavosh, taro, sweet potato chips, poi and all kinds of other products.

Vinel operates the incubator kitchen located in the old Fujii Bakery at Wailea, on the old road that goes by Kolekole Beach Park, and she has opened up its storefront. It’s still a well-kept secret at this point—they’ve only been open one week—but people are going to flock there.