Category Archives: Hamakua Coast

Hamakua Coast, History

The Story of Hamakua

Hamakua Springs is located in, well, Hamakua, and today I thought I’d tell you a little about the Hamakua Coast of the Big Island of Hawai‘i.

Hamakua is one of the ancient districts of this island. It spreads just north of Hilo for about 50 miles up the coast to Waipi‘o Valley, which is a beautiful, deeply historical valley that was settled in the 13th century or earlier. Several powerful chiefs hailed from Waipi‘o.

The book Place Names of Hawai‘i, citing Nathaniel Bright Emerson’s Unwritten Literature of Hawaii, says “Hamakua” (poetic) means “kuhi loa.” “Long corner.” I’m assuming that refers to its physical location.

Here’s something to chew on: Almost no one pronounces “Hamakua” correctly. It’s properly pronounced HAA-MAA-KUA. There are kahakos—macrons, or stresses—on the first two As, meaning you hold them a little longer.

Few people even know that anymore. It’s as though we lived in Nevada and called it “Las Vee-gus” all the time.

Anyway. If you were to travel the Hamakua coast long ago, you would have walked along winding paths, up and down through gullies and streams. You’d have seen Hawaiian families living here and there, their grass homes tucked into the valleys and gulches, many of them growing kalo (taro).

In more recent years, the crop in Hamakua was sugar cane. The coast had sugar plantations and mills and the plantation villages that sprung up around them, and cane growing seemingly everywhere. And there was a railroad that ran where the main highway (19) is now, but which was destroyed in a 1946 tsunami and not rebuilt.

This island’s, and Hamakua’s, sugar chapter is over now, and now the story is about diversified agriculture. And that’s where Richard, and Hamakua Springs Country Farms, comes into the picture.

Rural Hamakua is a lovely, scenic place of much rainfall and therefore luxurious green rainforest. It is a coast of waterfalls, rivers, springs and streams, with prawns in them for the catching. Hamakua is also a place of swimming holes. Of sweet guavas that squish between your barefoot toes, or taste delicious if you get them before they fall. And waiawi, which are little strawberry guavas, both yellow ones and red ones. Right now the waiawi are abundant and fallen fruit is covering backroads like bright carpets.

On one side of the Hamakua coast are cliffs that reach down to the ocean, where you can watch whales pass by during their migrating season. Along the other side we see Mauna Kea, the volcano that stands magestically over us, and which is sometimes covered with an amazing cloak of snow in the winter.

There are probably other places as beautiful, but you’d have to do a lot of talking to convince me that there is a place MORE beautiful than Hamakua.

Awards, Bike, Hamakua Coast, Losing Weight

Shedding Pounds and Picking up Awards

Richard Ha writes:

I lost .5 lbs. this week.

My goal: To lose one pound per week for 39 weeks

Today’s weight: 200.7 lbs.
This week’s target weight was 201.6 lbs. 
I am .9 lbs. ahead of schedule

Starting weight on 5/23/06: 214.6 lbs.
End goal, on 2/18/07: 175 lbs.
Since 5/23, I have lost 13.9 lbs.

On 5/23, my resting heart rate was 65 beats per minute
Today’s resting heart rate: 57 beats per minute.* (after 2 cups of coffee)

* This goes down as one gets into better shape. Lance Armstrong’s is said to be 32. George W’s was reported to be 47 beats per minute. Out of shape, mine is in the 70s. My best was 52 many years ago.

***

I lost half a pound this week. I started riding my bike, and because of the increase in intensity I had to rest for two days. Based on how rested I feel today, I should be back on track with my workouts this week.

On Wednesday, Rodrigo and I rode our bikes from the farm down to the ocean and back. We went over the highway and down Banyan Tree Road through an open gate–the same one featured on the front page of the Tribune-Herald a few days later because it was blocked with boulders—and down to the ocean access road. We headed north and stopped at the main fishing spots to see what was going on.

The coastline is falling into the ocean there and pine trees with most of their roots exposed are barely hanging on. We saw a few turtles floating on the surface, and even a flock of seabirds gliding in and out of a sea cave as if with the wave motion.

Rodrigo’s comfortable pace is much faster than mine. Of course, he’s a couple of decades younger than me. If he had not stopped to wait for me, he would have been halfway home by the time I reached the top. It was a good reminder that I still have a ways to go with my training.

The week before, Rodrigo had ridden the Kulani trails for the first time, and he commented on how challenging and active the trails were. In Tucson, he used to ride to work on a 15-mile loop several days per week, and he’s been riding a similar trail since they moved to the Big Island a couple of months ago.

He said that the Kulani trails are different in that you tend to be outside your comfort zone. The terrain is varied and the trail is such that one needs to accelerate, decelerate, maneuver though and around roots and rocks and trees and branches the whole way. To make it more interesting, the person he rode with was an advanced rider/racer.

My goal is still to ride in Kulani and have fun. In order to do this, I need to weigh no more than 175 pounds and be in good aerobic shape. I’ve got a long way to go. But I do know what I need to do.

We have some news and here’s even a bit of entertainment:

We were going to wait to announce that Ha Ha Ha! has been selected as a Typepad featured blog and will appear on its homepage on September 1st.

But when we started checking out Typepad’s featured blogs, we enjoyed this one from the San Jose Mercury News so much that we wanted to share it.

It features two Chinese guys lip-synching to Jessica Simpson, the Black Eyed Peas and others. These guys are big in China and they are hilarious. Check it out.

We’ll come back and tell you more about the Typepad thing when it’s time.

Alan Wong, Food and Drink, Hamakua Coast, The Good Life

The Day The Chefs Came Over and Cooked For Us

Richard Ha writes:

Glass_2
Chef Alan Wong is featured in this week’s MidWeek magazine. Jo McGarry, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin’s Restaurant Specialist, writes about Chef Alan’s commitment to island-fresh products grown by local farmers. I’m in the picture with Chef Alan.

In the article, she mentions his bringing some of the staff from his Hawai’i restaurants to visit Hamakua Springs. Let me tell you about that visit, and about them cooking for us.

Tomato
First, it’s pretty amazing how Alan Wong treats his farmers. When our farm personnel visit his restaurants, they are treated like royalty. To Chef Alan, the farmers are the celebrities. He keeps telling us that he cannot make products better; that he is limited by what he has to work with. Although we don’t know if we believe that, it’s starting to sink in. Knowing this, we try to do the best we can.

Once Kimo and Tracy went to the Pineapple Room, unannounced. Restaurant Manager Barbara Stange recognized them and notified her staff that the people from Hamakua Springs Country Farms were in the house.

Kimo and Tracy both said they had never experienced anything like it: It seemed like they were assigned extra wait staff. They were brought extra dishes to sample. People were saying, “Try this, it’s made with cocktail tomatoes.” And, “Here’s another dish.” I’m sure Chef Alan does this for all his farmers. But it makes us want to take special care of all the products we supply him.

A few months back he brought some of the staff from his Hawai’i restaurants to visit the Big Island farmers on the Hamakua coast. He said it helps the staff describe his creations when they know the farmer who grow the product.

When he visited us, we showed him several things we were testing. A few months before, Chef Alan had expressed interest in creating a dessert with a specialty melon cut in half and served with a scoop of ice cream.

Alan_and_melons_1So we have been testing melons. That picture is of Chef Alan checking the melon for aroma. He gave his approval, and so we are now proceeding on to production. The next step is to get the melons to his restaurants and to make sure everything is right. After that we will bring it to the supermarkets. But first things first. We need to prove that we can deliver sweet melons each time, all the time.

We took everyone on a tour of our farm, where I explained our sustainable farming philosophy and how it drives our decision-making. They saw how we use high-tech monitoring of environmental conditions inside of a low-energy-consuming growing house.

We run the irrigation controllers with a few D batteries. We don’t use electricity at the tomato houses and all our water is free. We leave the tomatoes on the plants to ripen naturally for as long as we can. We continuously monitor sugar content of the tomatoes so we are sure they are sweet. I demonstrated how we take leaf samples, which we send to a lab to assess the plant’s nutritional status. Then we make up a custom fertilizer that helps to give it a rich and sweet flavor.

We are mindful of the effect our farming might have on the environment, so we are careful not to over-fertilize. Our tomato houses are surrounded by strips of vegetation that help prevent any excess fertilizer from reaching any streams.

Chef Alan gave us pointers about what he looks for in the various crops we grow, and we showed him how to drive a bulldozer. He and Kimo went in the back and pushed some soil around. Chef Alan got to make a pile and level it off, pack it down and then back blade it for a nice finish. He learned that you steer the bulldozer by locking one brake or the other. In that way you can even spin the machine around in one spot. He had an ear-to-ear grin when he cruised by on his way to park the machine. Now that we know his weakness, we’re going to trade lessons on the backhoe for another cookout.

Chefs_1_2
We put up a tent so we could do this and keep the farm running. Besides the immediate family, our supervisors came. Leslie Lang, our neighbor and future Chief Blogger, was there. Bob and Janice Stanga (of Hamakua Mushrooms) brought their Hamakua mushrooms, Lesley Hill and Mike Crowell (Wailea Agricultural Group) provided heart of palm, Dick and Heather Threlfall (Hawaii Island Goat Dairy) provided goat cheese, we supplied tomatoes and greens, and the chefs brought li hing mui/ume dressing with them, and wine. (We got to keep the extra li hing mui dressing). They also bought loads of stuff from the Hilo Farmers Market.

When they all started into action preparing the dinner, it looked like there were 50 things going on at once. Barbara Stange and Leigh Ito, also of Alan Wong’s staff, were making different kinds of salads that were so nice to look at. The head of the wait staff and Chef Alan’s front-of-the-house personnel were busy doing the finishing touches on dishes never before seen at Hamakua Springs Country Farms.

Chef_alan_and_grandma_ha
Then they fired up the grills and started cooking. Grandma Ha was thrilled that Chef Alan was cooking for us. She told him, “Give me the recipe, okay?” Mom can do that–she has seniority. (That’s my mom and Alan Wong on the right.) Chef James of the Hualalai Grille was on one burner, Chef Neil, Chef de cuisine from the Pineapple Room was on another, and Executive Chef Lance was on another.

The food was delicious and we tried everything. They brought beer and wine and there was animated conversation going on all around.

Chef Alan, Dan Nakasone and I have pineapple-picking stories in common. Tracy and a small audience cornered Chef Lance, who was at a burner demonstrating the finer points about preparing risotto. (You have to keep your eye on it.)

Some of the guys were trading pig hunting stories with the Hualalai Grille staff. Why was I surprised that they would know anything about pig hunting, just because they are associated with a restaurant that has won nine ‘Ilima awards and is the quintessential Hawaii Regional Cuisine restaurant?

The_food
We realized that they are all normal, everyday people, like you and me. But they are incredibly good at what they do. We like to think that we are kind of like that, too. We all live here in Hawai’i, with all of the local influences. At the end of the evening we were like good old friends. And, can you imagine–we got to give all our people take-home plates of Alan Wong’s creations.

Life on the farm will never be the same.

Now we know what happens to the products we grow and how important it is to provide the best quality possible. We used to be concerned about our products until they left the farm’s loading docks. Now we worry about everything that goes on after they leave our farm and until they reach Chef Alan’s door. And that makes us better farmers.

Bananas, Hamakua Coast, Sustainability, Water

Why We Moved to Pepe’ekeo

Richard Ha writes:

In the early 90s, we just grew bananas and were located at Kea’au, where the risk of our farm being hit by Banana Bunch Top Virus disease was high. We decided we needed to develop another farm, in another location, to help spread the risk.

But where? Sugar plantations were closing down and we had alternatives. We could move to Waialua on O’ahu, and that is the advice we were given. It was close to the major market.

There were several alternatives on the Big Island as well. Finally, it came down to Waialua or Pepe’ekeo. Waialua had the obvious proximity to the Honolulu market and it came with a functioning, low-elevation well. Pepe’ekeo had abundant rainfall and not perfect but adequate sunlight.

On the principle of sustainability, we chose Pepe’ekeo due to its free water and adequate sunshine.

Fast forward to 2002. We had developed a new banana farm at Pepe’ekeo and we were looking to diversify even more. But what type of farming would we go into?

There were signs then that China’s strong economic growth would be using a tremendous amount of energy and so it was safe to assume that energy prices would rise. Again, on the principle of sustainability we decided to go into a form of hydroponic production that would take advantage of free sunlight and abundant water supplies. We planned to use the highest tech procedures in a low tech structure. The rationale is: why put in air conditioning when you can orient the house to let the breeze pass through?

Fast forward to 2006. Gas is more than $3 per gallon. In addition to China’s growth, other factors are pushing energy costs higher than we had expected. We are happy that we decided to move our farm to Pepe’ekeo. And boy are we happy we did not go into a high-energy system of production.

There are three streams and three smaller springs on the nearly 600 acres that we bought. The sugar plantation here had been authorized to use six million gallons of water per day from these streams. In addition, the Pepe’ekeo area was, in the past, supplied with drinking water from a large spring that is located on our property. Now it’s just used for back-up in case of emergency. The county is now drilling a back-up well for the community, and the spring and infrastructure will soon revert back to us. This will be another large source of water.

We find ourselves here in this position by following the principle of sustainability. We use it as our primary guiding principle in our business. Whenever we come to a fork in the road, we ask ourselves: “Which fork will take us down the road to a sustainable future?” This has given us a good and dependable compass to follow.

Bike, Hamakua Coast, Losing Weight

There is Hope

Richard Ha writes:

Goal: lose one pound per week for 39 weeks
Starting weight on 5/23/06: 214.6 lbs.
End goal, on 2/18/07: 175 lbs.

This week’s target weight: 207.6 lbs.
Today’s actual weight: 204.6 lbs. 7/9/06
I am 3 lbs. ahead of schedule

I lost 3.8 lbs since last week
Weight loss since 5/23: 10 lbs.

Resting heart rate 5/23: 65 beats per minute
Today’s resting heart rate 55 beats per minute.*
* This goes down as one gets into better shape. Lance Armstrong is said to be at 32 beats per minute. My lowest was 52 beats per minute many years ago.

Baby Boomers, there is hope.

It is now really clear that the heart of my weight loss program is exercise.

If one pound equals 3,500 calories, then all I need to do is move around enough to use up 500 extra calories per day, seven days per week, and I’ll lose one pound. This absolutely works.

It takes approximately 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer to do this. I use the elliptical because it is easy on the joints, it shows the amount of calories used and it’s very time efficient. Get on for 500 calories, do a little extra and get off. Done.

I highly recommend that one record his or her resting heart rate early when starting a weight loss program. This is like a before-and-after photo. You need it so you can feel good about your progress.

Successfully lowering your resting heart rate is actually more important than the speed at which you lose weight. A strong heart pumps more blood with one stroke. It’s more efficient at helping to get oxygen into the system and waste out of the system. This must be good for one’s brain, wouldn’t you think?

New studies are starting to show that fat and fit may be better than slim and unfit in relation to cardiovascular issues. It seems to me that the primary goal should be to maintain a lower resting heart rate.

I don’t worry about dieting. This is not rocket science: Like in the food pyramid, fruits and veggies are good, fat is not good, etc., etc. If the food tastes good and is worth the extra effort it takes to burn it off, go for it.

I rode my bike down to the ocean and saw a lot of changes along the way. Five years ago, everything was open and there was one fenced pasture. Now, there are seven houses in various stages of construction. Many properties are fenced and have a few cows, horses or goats. It is starting to look and feel like a rural small agriculture community.

Flying downhill, maybe more like coasting, I startled a baby goat, which ran bleating back to mama. I passed a temporary canvas dome house on a wooden platform. It looks like the main house will be coming up soon. Pedaled down and across the highway overpass that sugar cane trucks used to travel to get to the mill and coasted down to the old railroad grading intersection. Crossed the paved road onto a gravel section that started looking more and more unused the further down I rode. A barbed wire fence blocked the road at the bottom.

I turned around and started back up the hill when a large dog started running and barking at me from a new house. It was a huge puppy. I need to make friends with him while he’s still a kid. He ran up, bumped into me and slobbered my leg.

The owner came out and we chatted for a bit. At first I thought that he might be a new person from the mainland. But, surprise, he’s a fire rescue guy. Because he flies over in a helicopter, he knows more about the area surrounding the farm than I do. “When are you putting up a farm stand?” he asked. Nice guy.

The last quarter mile is a downhill unpaved section, which runs down to and along the ocean. I needed to get out of the saddle, pay attention, work both brakes and use the suspension. The road along the ocean is still there but it’s not used much and guinea grass crowds in. A break in the fence lets hikers and mountain bikers through.

The old fishing road running along the coast is bordered by 100-foot ironwood trees planted maybe a hundred years ago to protect the sugar cane from wind and salt spray. There was no one in sight. I stopped and did the usual quick scan for fish underneath as the waves built, on top for honu and on the rocks for ‘opihi, ha’uke’uke, ‘a’ama crab and limu. Pedaled down the coast for awhile and then started back up on one of the old sugar cane roads. The dirt and gravel surface was hard, dry and fast but it would be muddy and challenging in rainy weather.

This is a “play now and pay later” kind of a ride. You coast down to the ocean, enjoy the sights and sound, and then climb back uphill all the way. My heart rate monitor is showing 120 beats per minute. A short distance later it’s in the 130s. I make my way back to the old railroad grading intersection and now the climbing starts. I drop it into the small chain ring and second gear. I want to make it to the overpass before stopping, about a half mile further up. Grinding away, my heart rate is in the low 150s.

Five years ago I would ride the whole way uphill without stopping. This is definitely harder work than what I’ve been doing on my elliptical. But it’s very enjoyable, and I know that I’ll get into much better shape. I can’t wait.

I’m keeping everything in perspective. Mike Tanabe and Chris Seymour and the guys could do this short loop that I just did, put it at the end of a 30 mile loop and still be shifting up on the climb. But having fun is all relative. If you’re having fun, you’re having fun.

As our Hamakua Springs tomato houses come into view I cannot help but think about how fortunate we are to live in such a beautiful place, working with good people and growing good food in a good way.

Bananas, Company News, Hamakua Coast

The Name Game

“We’re the same guys that did Keaau Bananas,” says Richard Ha, president of the more-recently-named Hamakua Springs Country Farms. “It might not be generally known that we’re the same people.”

He started Keaau Bananas way back in 1982. Along the way the company took “Mauna Kea Bananas” as its corporate name, and began using the Mauna Kea Bananas name on its apple bananas as well.

But then they started farming in Hamakua, consolidated and expanded operations at their Pepe‘ekeo farm and sold their Kea‘au land.

And they changed the company’s name to Hamakua Springs Country Farms.

While their tomatoes have always been branded under the Hamakua Springs Country Farms name, Richard says changing the bananas to the new name, after decades as “Keaau Bananas,” was a big deal.

“It’s not that easy to just change it one day,” he says. “You wonder about the repercussions. And you get invested in the name emotionally. You’ve got to separate that out.”

logo

 

The new name, complete with its great, highly stylized logo designed by local artist Nelson Makua, includes:

Hamakua -because of the farm’s Hamakua coastline location,

Springs -because there are three springs on the property, and

Country Farms – because the Has think of themselves as small farmers, even though, with almost 600 acres, they aren’t. Richard says that as they expanded the farms’ products, they envisioned a series of boutique-like farms rather than one big corporate identity.

What does Richard most want people to know about Hamakua Springs? That the company’s culture hasn’t changed.

It is still a family farm that takes seriously the concept of sustainable farming. And he says that doesn’t mean just taking a “template” of sustainability principles and applying that wherever they are.

“It was different in Kea‘au,” he says. “Two different environments, two different sets of conditions. The environment dictates how we choose to operate; how to make the sustainability principles work.”

An example? Unlike at the Kea‘au farm where it was mostly rock, at the Pepe‘ekeo farm there’s plenty of soil, and grass grows wild between the bananas.

They soon realized that their tractors would make ruts in the dirt rows between plants if they kept using the same path, so they experimented with widening the distance between banana plants. That lets them mow between rows, which means their machines get traction on the grass and don’t make ruts.

It also means the grass between the plants traps water and chemicals, so they don’t run into the rivers.

“Some people call us innovators,” says Richard. “We’re very adaptable. We like change. It keeps things exciting. We’re always looking for change to make things better.”