Aaron and Vinel Sugino, who bring their products to the Kino‘ole Farmers Market every Saturday morning, run their Blue Kalo Bakery out of the old Fujii store and bakery in Wailea, near Hakalau on the Big Island.

Blue Kalo makes cookies, like their “Mac Poi Chip,” which is macadamia nut, poi and chocolate chip, Mac Poi Raisin Oatmeal Chip, Sweet Potato and more. They also make chips (ulu, taro, purple sweet potato and more) and manju, such as lilikoi, ulu, taro and guava among other flavors. Their stuff is delicious!

When Aaron was just two years out of college, in 1986, he started Sugino and Sugino Inc. with his parents. They grew onions, sweet potatos and various other small crops.

From there he began making his own poi and taro chips, and then expanded into making sweet potato, ulu and cassava chips. He added the sour poi he could not sell into his mother’s chocolate chip cookie recipe.

It all led to the products they sell at their bakery, in tiny Wailea just down the street from Akiko’s Buddhist Bed & Breakfast, and which they bring to the Kino‘ole Farmers Market.

The Kino‘ole Farmers Market is located at 1990 Kino‘ole Street, at the corner of Kahaopea St. (the old Sure Save Market) two streets mauka of Puainako Town Center. It’s open on Saturday mornings from 7 a.m. to noon.

Rusty and Jenny Perry, who farm in Kapoho, have been bringing their Volcano Isle Fruit Company produce to the Kino‘ole Farmers Market since it started a year and a half ago.

That’s Rusty at left, and Jenny on the right. Richard tells me that he and the Perrys have been friends, farming together, for more than 30 years.

Rusty was part of the Farm Bureau group that developed the market. He says that the farmers needed more markets and that “the idea was, is, to give customers local stuff, and make it real clear that it’s local stuff. I think we’ve succeeded in that, and that’s really been a good thing.”

Rusty with a customer

The Perrys started out primarily as banana growers. Back in the late 1970s, along with Richard Ha and three others, they started the Big Island Banana Growers Association.

These days they have fewer bananas, and more of other types of produce. “We’ve always been diversified,” says Rusty, “which I think is a good business model in Hawai‘i farming.”

Jenny with some of their produce and orchids

“We’ve got a fair amount of papayas,” he says, “some apple bananas, citrus, tangerines, tangelos, navel oranges, some lemons. We have about 4000 ft. of hydroponic vegetables, mostly lettuce so far, and about 20,000 feet of orchids.”

Richard says they are perhaps best known for their high-quality papayas.

Those are the crops they bring to the Kino‘ole Farmers Market every Saturday morning, and occasionally some that are a little more seasonal, too. “We bring sour sop almost every time, and right now we have rambutan and longan. The lychee is not ready yet.”

He says the market is a little better every single week. “We get more customers coming and liking our concept, and liking the vendors,” he says. “And they are trusting that our vendors are selling stuff they’ve produced themselves. That’s a real benefit to the customers – getting to meet the farmers. They can ask them, ‘What pesticide do you use?’ or, ‘What’s this thing on my plant?’”

He says that the Kino‘ole Farmers Market is working out well economically. “Both for our customers who are getting pretty good deals,” he says, “and also for the vendors. It’s become a really important part of our business.”

The Kino‘ole Farmers Market is open every Saturday morning from 7 a.m. to noon. It’s located at the Kino‘ole Shopping Plaza (the old Sure Save Market) at 1990 Kino‘ole St (at the corner of Kahaopea St.).

Tom and Luana Beck own Ho‘oluana Ranch in Mountain View, where they raise livestock and native plants. Every Saturday morning from 7 a.m. to noon you can find them at the Kino‘ole Farmers Market, located at the Kino‘ole Shopping Plaza (the old Sure Save Market) at 1990 Kino‘ole St (at the corner of Kahaopea St.).

From left, Tom, Luana (holding plant)

I asked Luana if she’s named after their ranch, or if the ranch was named after her, and she laughed. “I came first,” she said. “Ho‘oluana” means to relax, to be at ease, she explained.

They raise wagyu cattle at their place and sell the weaned cattle. “We’re trying to get the breed out there,” she said. “We’re selling them faster than we can get them.”

They also raise Peking ducks. “The majority of my ducks go to Waipi‘o Valley taro farmers,” she said. “They use them for the snails.”

What they bring to the market every week, though, are their native plants. “We do a lot of ‘ohi‘a,” she told me. “Red, yellow, orange. We also have an Australian ‘ohi‘a. My husband air layers the ‘ohi‘a at the ranch, and then after about eight or nine months, after we make sure they’re established, then we bring them down to the market.”

Baby yellow lehua

She also grows and sells different varieties of native hibiscus. “I have whites, yellow, which is the state flower, a couple varieties of red,” she said. And she raises endangered plants like ko‘oloaula, which she says pigs have almost decimated; ho‘awa, which is a native evergreen; palapalai, kokia and more.

Palapalai

Before he went into the Army, my son Bryan worked with Tom (below left) at the Canada-France telescope.

Luana is President of the Hilo County Farm Bureau, which, along with the County of Hawai‘i, started the Kino‘ole Farmers Market a couple years ago with six vendors. Now there are 20.

Part of what makes the Kino‘ole Farmers Market unique is that farmers (who must be members of the Farm Bureau) can only sell products grown here in Hawai‘i. If they are selling value-added products, those products must use a local product grown here.

Also, it’s really nice that you generally find the actual farmers there with their products, and can chat with them or ask questions.

“And we have a nice area,” she said of the market’s location. It’s surrounded by plenty of parking, and vendors set up tents over their tables. “It’s paved, so it’s really convenient. Some of our customers have been coming in wheelchairs, there are people with walkers, so it’s really convenient for older people to shop. We get a lot of people from the downtown market – I think because of that and also because it’s all local grown. Everything is from here.”

It’s also interesting in that every Saturday morning at 10 a.m. there’s an educational speaker. “Every week a different speaker comes in and talks about an ag-related issue,” she said, “whether it’s air layering, or the coqui frog….” There’s also a free chi gung class every Saturday at the market.

Listen to Mynah Bird on the radio (KHBC, 1060 AM) for information about what’s happening at the Kino‘ole Farmers Market every week. There’s also an email that now goes out to about 200 people every week; ask at the market to be added to the list.

“When we started, there were very few people,” said Luana. “But now it seems like we get probably 400-500 people coming by every Saturday.”

I asked her what her dream is for the market, and she said she’d like to see the whole parking lot full.

“We don’t want to get too big, and run out of space, but it would be nice to have about 30 regular vendors.”

It’s nice now, but that would be even better!