Richard just made a tour of Hilo’s morning radio programs in order to promote our tomato recipe contest (remember to send in your entries before January 31st).
Friday morning he went over to KHBC to chat on the air with Hilo’s longtime radio personality Mynah Bird.
“First I went in and talked to Stephanie,” Richard told me, referring to Stephanie Salazar, who does news and more at the station. “She made me really comfortable. And I was able to look into the studio and see Mynah Bird sitting there. When I went in there was a desk with a microphone, so it was like a conversation. He makes you feel comfortable and it was pretty easy.”
Then on Monday, Richard was on Ken Hupp’s Community Forum radio program at KPUA. “It was basically the same sort of set-up,” he said, “but different equipment. He had a boom microphone set-up. He’s really easy to talk to. He leads you from one subject to the next pretty logically and easily.”
Chef Allan Okuda, the director of Hawai’i Community College’s food service program, went along for Monday’s interview, too.
“That was good,” Richard said, “because he could describe his program in detail. That was really helpful. I couldn’t, in any way, have managed to describe it like he did.”
Richard and Allan talked about the contest’s three categories (main dish, salad, and preserves & condiments); how the top five recipes in each category will be prepared exactly as specified in the recipe by students from the HCC food service program; and then that our panel of six judges will determine the winners.
Richard mentioned, too, that the three grand-prize winners in the state-wide contest will receive a tour of Hamakua Springs Country Farms, and airplane tickets to come to the Big Island if they live on another island.
I was surprised to hear Richard give his cell phone number on the air in case anybody had questions, and afterward I asked him about that.
He told me he likes being accessible. “I don’t have any problem with people calling me up,” he said. “I do get calls. If somebody’s motivated enough to tell you something, it’s important to listen very carefully.
“Once we had a lady call and say the tomatoes didn’t taste as sweet as they used to,” he said, “which actually confirmed something I was thinking. When she called it was dead winter, and I knew what the problem was—too much water. So then when Charlotte started here, we instituted some changes to make sure that didn’t happen again. And we didn’t have that problem this winter.”
Speaking of accessibility, Richard told me another story about being in touch with the public. Once he got a handwritten note that a 90-plus year old man handed to the produce manager at the Waikoloa KTA, who then passed it to the Hamakua Springs delivery truck driver, who gave it to Richard.
“He wrote about how good our tomatoes are. I called and talked to him and he was kind of interesting,” said Richard. “He was a plantation manager of Hamakua Sugar back in the old days. I knew his name. He said he was the only part-Hawaiian plantation manager back then. I was so surprised to hear there had been a Hawaiian plantation manager I almost fell over. He knew I was part-Hawaiian, too. I don’t know how he knew that.”
When people talk, Richard listens. And did you all listen to Richard talk (on the air), too? —posted by Leslie Lang
Allan Okuda, director of the Hawai’i Community College Food Service Program, left, and Richard Ha, owner of Hamakua Springs Country farms, right