Category Archives: Community

Sustaining

April 30, 2008 Richard Ha

Yesterday was very interesting. I drove from Hilo to the Outrigger Hotel at Keauhou to give a thirty minute speech about sustainable agriculture at the third annual Kuleana Business Conference and Trade Show. It was part of the Kona Earth Festival, which has the slogan: “Island Self-Reliance Through Sustainable Living.”

A native Hawaiian speaker described us as floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on a little life raft. It is hopeful to see that people are coming together to find ways to make our lives here sustainable.

Right after my talk, I was interviewed for a video documentary about sustainable agriculture issues, then participated in a 30-minute talk-story session on the radio station Lava 105. It was all very interesting and promising.

The most interesting thing I did yesterday, though, was a talk-story session with the interns in the Keaholoa STEM program at UH Hilo, which I rushed back to Hilo for. The students are preparing for next week’s ho‘ike, where they will report on their research projects. Some of the projects: the study of coral health at Vacation Land; alternate insect pollinators, other than bees, of the Big Island; the cultivation of edible limu, and other interesting topics.

These are our best and brightest native Hawaiian students of Science, Tech, Engineering and Math. We had a short discussion about bio fuels, genetically modified organisms, hydro- and geothermal power. It doesn’t get better than talking with the students. It was very stimulating and I am left with an encouraging feeling that our future is in good hands.

Community, Schools, Tomatoes

Tomatoes for Education

April 28, 2008 Richard Ha 1 Comment

I’ve been reflecting on what it means to participate at the Kino‘ole Street Farmers Market.

The most touching and rewarding moments have been when teachers I’ve never met have come up and thanked us for giving them Hamakua Springs tomatoes.

It was especially meaningful to them, I think, at a time when newspapers were reporting that this or that school was in danger of restructuring under the No-Child-Left-Behind federal program. We knew morale was at a low point, and that was exactly when we wanted to make clear that we thought they were the greatest!

The gift was not much monetarily, but we felt the gesture was important. We feel strongly that teaching is the most important profession. And we wanted to tell each teacher that we support them 100 percent.

I am really partial toward elementary school teachers. The most impressionable time of my life was when I was between 8 and eleven years old. That’s when my belief system was formed and it has lasted all my life.

This is what motivated us to do the Adopt-a-Class project at Keaukaha Elementary School, and it’s why we support teachers like Karyl Ah Hee at Kaumana Elementary School.

Education really is the great equalizer.

On the east side of the Big Island we have disproportionately more than the state’s average of low income families.

Hawai‘i Community College Chancellor Rockne Freitas explains it best: He says that the best predictor of children’s success is the family’s household income. And the best predictor of a higher household income is education.

Hawai‘i Community College is one of the most important institutions of higher learning here in East Hawai‘i, because it has “open enrollment.” In other words, there isn’t an entrance exam to keep students out. Also, class credits are transferrable to the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo.

This is the pathway to higher education for students who might not otherwise have qualified.

HCC was ranked thirteenth in the nation at bringing higher education to its students. This in spite of having the most dilapidated classrooms and structures in the entire community college system.

This is an extremely big deal, and Chancellor Freitas and his staff deserve a big round of applause. These people are doers, not talkers. We respect that!

Community, Where We Live

Merrie Monarch Week 2008

April 4, 2008 Leslie Lang

I love Merrie Monarch week in Hilo.

Hilo absolutely shines every year during Merrie Monarch week, which started Sunday. Hula dancers and hula fans

descend upon this town from the other islands, from other states and even from other countries, for our annual, huge, week-long celebration of hula.

During Merrie Monarch week every year, when there are so many more Hawaiian people than usual around town, I feel like I can squint my eyes and almost see what it was like here a couple hundred years ago.

And there is hula everywhere. Here is the halau of well-known California kumu Mark Keali‘i Ho‘omalu practicing outside one of the hotels on Banyan Drive yesterday morning.

And I love the craft fairs with beautiful Hawaiian products, and the food, and the demonstrations and talks and everything Hawaiian.

Here are some of the other things I really enjoy about Merrie Monarch week in Hilo:

• Hearing lots of people around town speaking Hawaiian

• Hula performances everywhere!

• Seeing all the beautiful, woven lauhala hats people wear

• People wearing amazing flowers in their hair. And lei. And beautiful, genuine smiles.

• Seeing the living traditions that people still practice. Such as this hula by Halau O Kekuhi, who performed at Wednesday night’s Ho‘ike, a free performance every year during Merrie Monarch week. It was a thrill to see this renowned halau dancing in the open-air Edith Kanaka‘ole Stadium with Mauna Kea behind them.

• Hearing Hawaiian music

• Seeing Uncle George Na‘ope around town

• People who spontaneously stand up and do a hula because they’ve just gotta dance!

This was unplanned. This woman in the audience was sitting, doing the hula from her chair as she enjoyed this familiar anthem to Hilo, and then just cast aside her cane — really — and got up and danced, to great applause. It was wonderful.

• Seeing cultural traditions survive, and thrive

• Little 3-year-olds up on stage with their elders, dancing hula

• Seeing how many people—young, old, male, female—appreciate hula

At the Hilo Hawaiian on Tuesday, Iwalani Kalima’s halau performed. At one point, the students kneeled on the stage and pulled two sticks, which they would use in the upcoming hula, out of their waistbands. The kumu (teacher), Iwalani, was at the ipu, but suddenly she stood up and climbed on the stage.

She kneeled down next to the tiniest girl — could she even have been 3 years old? Maybe only 2 — and started fumbling around with the girl’s outer skirt. “She lost hers,” she finally said to the audience, and we realized the girl’s sticks had slipped inside her costume. Iwalani had to lift up the outer skirts and hunt around inside the elaborate costume for the little girl’s sticks. It went on for quite some time and was cute and hilarious. Here’s that performance.

There are a hundred other stories and photos and videos I could show you. Search “Merrie Monarch” at YouTube if you’d like to see more.

You can also watch tonight’s Merrie Monarch program live on KITV’s website. It’s Hula Kahiko, traditional hula, and it runs from 6 p.m. to 11

p.m. The final night, which will also stream live on KITV, is tomorrow and runs from 5:30 p.m. to midnight.

And then you can start making your plans to be here in Hilo next year!

Community

Feeling Good

March 28, 2008 Richard Ha

Whole Foods Buyers Jeff Biddle and Claire Sullivan visited us yesterday, and we spent more time talking about our interaction with the community than about business. We talked about Chef Alan and the Keaukaha School sixth graders, the Andrade Camp water line project, our Tomato Recipe Contest, the farm’s “hanai”-ing Nawahiokalaniopu‘u School, and our plan to grow more products that make up a balanced diet in order to benefit our community. And, oh yes, our hydroelectric project.

It’s not just about our farm—it’s about the community. It’s all of us. You know how sometimes it’s just not appropriate to discuss these kinds of things? With Jeff and Claire, they were the most comfortable things in the world to talk about. We all need to take care of each other, and from my conversation with them I got the impression that Whole Foods feels that way, too.

Although we did do the business thing—Whole Foods knows we are all about good quality, dependability, food safety, etc.—the more important, and most satisfying, thing today was talking about how we interact with our community.

Then in the afternoon it was on to a meeting with the staff of Kalaniana‘ole School, where I volunteered to coordinate the Hamakua Coast farmers who will set up booths at their fundraising bazaar.

I stepped out of that meeting to participate in a phone conference that Dwight Takamine arranged with the USDA, Board of Water Supply, officers of the Andrade Camp Community Association, Senator Inouye’s liaison and a consultant to the Board of Water Supply. We discussed the final steps that will occur before construction begins to replace the old, plantation-era water system of the tiny former sugar plantation camp next to the farm with a new, county water system.

It’s been an amazing process that started a couple of years ago, and with everyone’s cooperation we have been able to make it work. At our next meeting we will be planning the groundbreaking ceremony.

I stepped back into the Kalaniana‘ole School meeting, and then home to see Keaukaha Elementary School on the PBS program “E Ola Pono.”

It all makes work fun, and it sure made for a “good feeling” kind of a day.

Adopt-a-Class, Alan Wong, Community, Tomatoes

Chapter 3 – Keaukaha Morning

March 10, 2008 Leslie Lang

We watched Chef Alan Wong cook something up the other morning at Keaukaha Elementary School in Hilo.

He was there in conjunction with Richard’s Adopt-a-Class program. Chef Alan had adopted the 6th grade, and then asked if he could go speak to them. So when he was in town last week, he did.

The students chanted a Hawaiian welcome to him.

That crew is from PBS. They filmed the whole morning for a Chefs Afield episode they’re doing about Alan Wong, which will air sometime next year.

He is just wonderful with kids. Very down-to-earth, very open, very real. He’s a natural-born teacher and the students really responded. They were amazingly engaged.

He and Richard both spoke to the kids. Chef Alan told them, “If Alan Wong can do it, you can do it.” He told them that he grow up thinking salad dressing came out of a bottle. They, too, can achieve anything, he told them. “You just have to work hard,” he said.

Richard told them that when he was their age they were kind of poor, and they had a picnic table in the kitchen for their dinner table. He said his father would pound on that table and say, “Not ‘no can.’ ‘CAN!” Richard told those kids they could do anything they want.

Chef Alan showed the students how to make mayonnaise and also a li hing mui salad dressing. As he cooked in front of them, he kept pointing out what part of what he was doing had to do with reading, and what was math, and what was science, and made the point that if they wanted to do that kind of job they’d better stay in school.

When he started, he asked how many kids hated tomatoes and most raised their hands. By the time he did a taste test with them – they tasted a piece of Brand X tomato, and then a piece of a Hamakua Springs tomato – they were believers. At the end, some of his people walked around with platters of cut-up heirloom tomatoes and the kids were actually lunging for them, trying to get tomatoes to eat.

Afterward, some of the students showed Richard and Chef Alan their kalo (taro) patch.

The principal of the school told me they never get people of such celebrity speaking to, and inspiring, their kids. Richard says that one of the teachers told him, too, that no one comes to Keaukaha Elementary to tell the kids they too can do it. He says the teacher had tears in her eyes when she told him that.

It was really an incredible morning.

Alan Wong, Community, Food and Drink

Chapter 2 – The Cookout

March 7, 2008 Leslie Lang 1 Comment

If the Tomato Recipe Contest was Chapter 1 in our interesting times of this past week, here’s Chapter 2.

You already read about Chef Alan Wong judging at our Tomato Recipe Contest the other day. Now let me tell you about something else he just did in conjunction with the farm.

Chef Alan, who is based on O‘ahu, regularly buys produce for his restaurants from Hamakua Springs as well as a few other farms here on the Hamakua Coast. And every year he flies his staff here – chefs and other staff from his different restaurants – for a couple days.

The purpose of his annual visit? To visit the farms, and the farmers, who produce the fresh, delicious ingredients they work with every day. Chef Alan has a personal connection with the sources of his food, and he wants his chefs and other employees to know where the food comes from too, and who grows it, and how, so they can take that knowledge back with them. So they visit each farm, see how the food grows and get to know the farmers a little.

Then the culmination of their visit is that all his restaurant people and all the farmers gather at Hamakua Springs for an absolutely world-class Alan Wong cookout using ingredients from those local farms. It’s Chef Alan’s unbelievably gracious and generous (and delicious) thank you to the farmers.

This year for the first time there was also an imu. On Monday afternoon Kimo and his good friend Al Jardine prepared the imu, filling it with pig, turkey, beef, taro, sweet potato and more.

Chef Alan put some nontraditional ingredients in the imu, too. Lesley Hill and Michael Crowell, of nearby Wailea Ag Group,
brought big long “trunks” of heart of palm to put into the imu as an
experiment (they were delicious).

Here’s how it looked after they opened the imu the next day and were taking the meat and other foods out. That’s Mrs. Ha there, Richard’s mom. She’s great.

Here they are, chopping up the cooked meat. That’s Al in the blue shirt and Kimo in the red.

We all gathered at the farm’s recently reclaimed green shack. We’ll tell you more about that historical building on the edge of Hamakua Springs later – it has a story, too. For now we’ll just say that it was the HQ for food preparation. See all the beautiful old photos of former plantation days? They tell some of the story of what plantation life used to look like.

So everybody gathered the food from the imu and took it inside, where tables were set up and Chef Alan and staff cooked and set up the long serving table. There were some amazing dishes made with Hawai’i Island Goat Dairy goat cheese and local Hamakua Mushrooms, and Ka’u coffee and Big Island Candies and more.

It is absolutely amazing what Chef Alan can do on a portable gas burner.

This was a shrimp, olive and tomato concoction. Is your mouth watering?

The serving line. There was even more food around on the other side, too, that doesn’t show here.

Richard thanked everyone for being there and talked about why Alan had brought us together, and then Richard’s grandson Kapono said a blessing in Hawaiian and English. And then we ate. And ate.

There was also a PBS crew present, taping the whole thing. They were following Chef Alan around taping a Chefs Afield program, which will air next year. There was a lot going on.

It was really a terrific evening. From the reason we were all there – because Chef Alan has such respect for, and such connections with, his farmer friends, and thanks them with such an incredible feast – to the new connections as restaurant folk and farmers got to know and appreciate each other, talk story and eat and laugh together. It was a fun, delicious, boisterous event where everybody seemed to be enjoy the food, the setting outside under the big tent, talking, the company.

A huge mahalo to Chef Alan and all his employees, who prepared such a tremendous feast and also created such a wonderful, memorable gathering.

Community

To Market To Market

February 25, 2008 Richard Ha 1 Comment

The weather was beautiful Saturday morning, slightly breezy, no rain, and it was a nice day at the Kino‘ole Street Farmer’s Market.

Rocky Freitas came by. Since our first annual Hamakua Springs tomato recipe contest last year, when he was a judge, HCC Chancellor Rockne Freitas has been a big fan of heirloom tomatoes. He told me he didn’t eat tomatoes before that. At the Farmer’s Market he’s always first in line and our biggest customer.There was a talk on jatropha this week—its use for biodiesel, and its place as part of the solution to importing oil for transportation. We were told about a company working on cloning a high-yielding jatropha plant that is uniform in stature, so it lends itself to mechanical harvesting. They have plans to grow millions of jatropha plants. The speaker said Kamehameha Schools is planting 2,500 acres of jatropha plants in Ka’u. He said there are 130,000 acres of land on the Big Island suitable for jatropha cultivation.

I asked how much farmers would make, and he said that there are many steps along the way where farmers could be compensated. I offered this simple analysis to help him:

If oil is selling for $100 per barrel and there are 42 gallons in a barrel of oil, then a gallon is worth $2.38. There are approximately 8 pounds in a gallon, and therefore each pound of oil is worth 30 cents. If it takes three pounds of jatropha to make one pound of oil, the maximum a farmer can earn for the jatropha is 10 cents per pound. I told him farmers would not farm jatropha for that price.

He said that jatropha likely would not make enough money just as an oil. He said its usage as a byproduct, for plastics, etc., is key. I told him our market is too small to justify a byproduct production plant. I told him that I admired his entrepreneurial spirit and that I was not against his project, but that I just wondered if farmers would be motivated to grow jatropha for biodiesel. I don’t see it.

Last week, David Ikeda gave a class on simple hydroponic lettuce growing. Once planted, no more care is needed. This absolutely works. I can attest to it.

More people are discovering the Kino‘ole Street Farmers Market. We had record sales this week and last. Since we started there, we have tripled our sales.

We’ve been focusing on heirloom tomatoes for the last several weeks and now lots of people are buying and enjoying them. Maybe they will buy them at KTA now, too. And we have found that people are very comfortable with our living lettuce, but it really is about freshness. When the lettuce is fresh and crisp, people buy it. When it is wilty, they don’t. We now know what our job is.

Adopt-a-Class, Community

Welcome Chant

February 18, 2008 Leslie Lang

We were interested to see that when Keaukaha Elementary School students visited ‘Imiloa recently as a result of our Adopt-a-Class program, they did a traditional Hawaiian chant for permission to enter, and then Hoku‘ao Pellegrino responded with a traditional ‘oli komo, or welcome chant.

Hoku‘ao works at ‘Imiloa as Cultural Landscape Curator, caring for more than 50 types of native plants found on the ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center’s nine acres.

He graduated from the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo’s Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikolani Hawaiian Language Progam last year. Besides his passion for kalo (taro) and other native plants, he considers his role to be sharing and increasing understanding of the Hawaiian language, culture, music and values.

Here is a glimpse of the traditional greeting and welcome between students and Hoku‘ao, who of course represented ‘Imiloa.

Big Island, Community, Water, Where We Live

Hilo Flood 2008, postscript

February 8, 2008 Richard Ha

Altogether, the farm had 31 inches of rain over the weekend.

Granted, it was a long weekend (from Friday to Tuesday morning). But still, 31 inches of rain is an awful lot.

It was 873,000 gallons per acre, or 499 million gallons of water falling on the entire farm. A half billion gallons of water. Amazing.

So here in Hamakua, we’ve had to rethink some things. Like our choice of pets:

And, also, our fashion choices:

Hilohighheels

Big Island, Community, Water, Where We Live

Hilo Flood 2008

February 4, 2008 Richard Ha 10 Comments

Kapono and I had the truck loaded with lettuce, bananas, Japanese cucumbers, green onions and five types of tomatoes, and we were just about to leave for the Kino‘ole Street Farmers Market Saturday morning, when we heard a Civil Defense weather alert announcing that severe flooding was imminent.

We looked at the weather satellite image of the Big Island and it was bad.

Here’s how it looked at 9:35 a.m. Hawai’i time Saturday morning. The blue shows the remnants of the moisture-laden air that came up from the south and dropped on land as it was pushed inland by the northeast tradewinds.

Outside, there was pounding rain with thunder and lightning. Lightning always makes me concerned for my employees’ safety. I had to make a decision: Should we go to the Farmers Market, where customers might be waiting for us, or go to the farm to see how our workers were doing? No choice—we drove to the farm.

Along the way we saw streams that are normally dry but were running at very high levels because of the storm. Roads were closed, warning lights were flashing and water was flooding across the main roads. Police and public works personnel were out in yellow rain gear directing traffic.

(All photos by Kapono Pa, except #6 and #12 were taken by Richard.)

When we came to the Bayfront Highway, we could see a few vehicles standing in water halfway up their windows.

The soccer fields and Pau‘ahi Street, which runs down from the County Building, were entirely flooded and blocked off.

We drove across the singing bridge and looked upstream. The Wailuku River was an angry beast. It looked like serpents were writhing downstream, their smoke shooting in the air.

At the farm, everybody and everything was okay. The Soil Conservation plan we follow, which retains all the former sugar company’s diversion berms, diverted the storm water just as planned. The sugar industry was on that land for 100 years before us, and they knew a thing or two about coping with heavy rains.

In 24 hours, 11 inches of rain fell at the farm, or 297,000 gallons per acre. This means 177,309,000 gallons fell on our 597-acre farm in 24 hours. I tried to explain to the County Council that the drainage is good in our area and we do not need special rules on flooding.

After checking everything—such as noting where the water was high and where we need to shore up the berms—we drove back to Hilo along the winding, scenic route.

The river beneath the six-ton bridge was raging. It was clear to me that if the bridge gave way and we fell into the water, there would be zero chance of survival. For a moment it entered my mind to turn back. But, I thought, this road has been here for more than 100 years and it was once the main route to Kona. We
drove across it, but it was unnerving.

Waterfalls down a hillside on the scenic route

We took the cutoff to Wainaku so we could drive across the second concrete bridge and look at the Wailuku River up close. Kapono took a picture of a couple of kids at the park in Pu‘ueo, doing what comes naturally in a big, flooded yard—running as fast as they could and seeing how far they could slide.

We parked and walked on the bridge. One had to speak up to be heard over the river. It was kind of scary.

Then we walked up to the third bridge; the one alongside the river and behind the Federal Building. There were lots of people out doing the same thing. There was mist in the air from the churning water careening over waterfalls and bouncing off the river walls. The next bridge upstream looked vulnerable, and I wondered if there was even a remote chance that the concrete supports under us could be undermined by the tremendous force of the water. It was a humbling experience.

We humans think we are in control. But witnessing the force of nature makes us realize that we are just passing through, and that we need to keep in mind that we aren’t in charge here.

At the very best, we are caretakers. We need to pay attention to what we’re doing.