My apologies — I inadvertently omitted the link in the post below re: Fruitbusters.
To support this worthy cause, click here: http://www.refresheverything.com/fruitbusters. Remember that you can vote every day through May 31!
Mahalo!
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Organic Farming Tunnel
This is a simple, stand-alone plastic tunnel that people can use to start into covered, organic farming. It’s called a Super Solo tunnel.
The tunnel is 25’ x 200’ x approximately 11’ tall at the top of the hoop. The roller door is 12’ wide. The poly is 6 mil, hi UV Luminance and the door poly is 12 mil poly.
It is stand-alone, and with the addition of a $300 trellis kit it is strong enough to support tomatoes, cucumbers and more.
Kits are shipped in a basket with pre-bent, three-piece hoops that the grower bolts together; there’s no on-site bending or construction training required.
Because of the need to grow cover crops, a Jamaican grower suggested building multiple Super Solo tunnels placed 25′ apart and growing cover crops between them. Then, after two years of building up the soil between the tunnels, you can move the tunnels over 25 feet to cover the “new” soil (using the anchors already in the ground) and grow cover crops on the “old” soil.
The only extra hardware needed to move all the tunnels one “space” to the side would be an extra row of anchors alongside the last Super Solo in the row. After two more years, the tunnels would be moved back to their original position.
We believe in this product and are regional distributors of it.
Hau‘oli Makahiki Hou!
Our very best wishes to you all for a Happy New Year.
Here is something I got a kick out of and wanted to share. Enjoy!
Happy Holidays
We are so lucky to be living here, on the Big Island, among friends and family.
Best wishes to all for a hopeful and wonderful New Year.
Merry Christmas!
We wish you and your families a holiday season full of health and good cheer.
Merry Christmas!
First Light
A few days ago I delivered several pallets of produce to the Waimea stores. At 4:15 a.m. I loaded up, and then I headed north on Highway 19 for the 60 mile trip.
For a year or more, many years ago, I drove and delivered the Kona route and I learned that truck drivers notice a lot of things while on the road.
They know where the “caution needed” areas are, and where the safe passing zones and the horsepower-robbing climbs are. They notice every bridge, every turn, every bump, and even the drivers coming from the opposite direction and their schedules.
One of the more exhilarating feelings while on the road is watching the sun come up. This is especially so when you’ve been driving for some time in the total dark.
When I dropped off the load in Waimea the other day and started back toward Hilo, it was still pitch black. Then a few miles outside of Waimea, I started to notice the sky getting brighter. The land was still dark and the stars were out but the clouds started to look like they were backlit. I thought to myself, no one would consider turning his/her lights off yet though. It was 6:25 a.m.
A few minutes later, trees in the distance started to show themselves in silhouette. And minute by minute the land started to come out of the shadows, but it was still too dark to turn off my lights. The backlit sky was becoming brighter in the east, and some streaks of orange were starting to show. I asked myself: “When is ‘first light’?”
Right at 6:30, a pair of mynah birds flew by. The sky was bright but the land was still not well lit, though now I could see cows in the pasture a couple of miles away. Was this first light? I still wasn’t ready to turn my headlights off, and neither was the oncoming traffic.
A few minutes later a flock of birds flew by. But the oncoming car lights still looked “nighttime-bright,” not “daytime-on.” I think that it was first light for birds but not yet for us.
At 6:40 a.m., the first car passed me with its headlights off but it had its parking lights on. This, I thought, must be first light for humans.
All those “first light” thoughts made me think about how special that time of day is. And how special this past year has been.
This was the year we started our annual Tomato Recipe contest; started working on issues of food security here in Hawai‘i, where we import most of our food; helped our neighbors at Andrade Camp with their water system; had our cocktail tomatoes named Best Tomato by 100 chefs; started our Adopt-a-Class project; testified about superstores on the Big Island (against) and biofuel (for); published an opinion piece in the Honolulu Advertiser about my “Law of Survival;” learned to make salad dressing from Chef Alan Wong; gave the commencement speech at the Hawai‘i Community College about “Not, no can. Can!;” hosted several groups of legislators at the farm; got involved with really talented Hawaiian science and math students through the Keaholoa STEM program; started thinking about how we in Hawai‘i can take care of ourselves as fuel prices continue to soar out of sight; developed our New Ahupua’a project; attended a lot of terrific Farmers Markets; and sat on a yellow school bus surrounded by 5th graders going out into the community to show appreciation.
Then I started thinking about how special my wife June is. She’s the one behind the scenes taking care of all the details. She’s the one who set up and supervises our bookkeeping system. She is always concerned about the workers’ well-being. Without June, and without a doubt, Hamakua Springs would not be a tiny fraction of what it is today.
With all that thinking going on, the next thing I knew the sun was up, it was a glorious day and I was in a great mood.
A very Happy New Year to you and your families, and let’s all have a terrific 2008.
The Big Picture
Richard Ha writes:
Because I can’t exercise strenuously yet, I’ve decided to eat a higher percent of vegetables—nearly 100 percent, in fact, to help me keep my calorie-intake under control.
Last night I made a salad from stuff we grow: Manoa Lettuce, spinach and watercress. Then I diced up three different colored heirloom tomatoes, diced some sweet onion that we grew, mixed in Grey Poupon mustard, minced garlic, alae salt and coarse black pepper, and tossed it with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
It’s really nice to be able to grow stuff we like to eat. We always focus on good taste first, but recently we’ve been looking at increasing nutritional content in our vegetables, as well. In other words, we produce what we feel really good about eating.
I think that my weight, at 205, will start to decline as I become more active. This morning my resting heart rate was 60 beats per minute, instead of the mid-60s as it was last week. I’ve started exercising lightly, and will gradually increase it in the coming weeks.
I was interested to see a Honolulu Advertiser article the other day with the headline Private donations fill gaps at Isle schools. That’s exactly what our adopt-a-class project is all about.
Our “adopt-a-class” project is coming along very nicely, by the way. We only need to fund approximately three and a half more classes, and then every Keaukaha Elementary School class will be able to take school buses and go on excursions during this upcoming school year. It’s beyond everyone’s expectations.
There’s an editorial about our adopt-a-class project running right now on Kama‘aina Backroads. View it here.
Not A Grape
Richard Ha writes:
Two weeks ago I concluded that I need to do more than just exercise in order to keep losing weight, and I said I was going to devise a routine to control my calorie intake. But before I put this plan into effect, I got sidetracked.
Then last week I realized that it was after I stopped loading the delivery van four times per week, with several hundred boxes each time, that I started having a hard time losing weight. Since I like to exercise more than I like dieting, I decided to increase my exercise volume and intensity instead of making a calorie intake plan.
And that brings us to this week. My weight is 196.2 now, and I lost the half pound I wanted to lose this week. But I am now exercising six days per week and losing much less weight than expected.
On four days, I exercise 30 minutes twice a day at a low heart rate of 110 or so. On the other three days, I do 30 minute sessions. On one of those days, I do three or four intervals of 150 beats per minute, and the other two sessions are done at 130 beats per minute or so.
This is improving my resting heart rate, which is now 53 beats per minute. When I’m not exercising regularly and am out of shape, my resting heart rate is usually in the mid-70’s. A low resting heart rate is an indication of an efficient cardiovascular system—a strong heart takes fewer strokes to move a given volume of blood around. I am trying to lower my resting heart rate below 50 beats per minute.
Several days ago, when I was sitting in the doctor’s office waiting for a flu shot, it was 57. This is pretty good since I usually can’t relax enough at the doctor’s office to get my heart rate down below 60.
But for the amount of time I spend exercising, I am losing very little weight. So I am going to try a routine that Leslie is finding successful. Her routine involves eating a reasonable breakfast and a reasonable lunch. Then, around 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. or so, she allows herself a pre-planned snack. After a reasonable-sized dinner she brushes her teeth and doesn’t eat anything more that day. “Not a grape,” she told me. It is working very well for her and makes a lot of sense to me.
I plan to maintain my exercise program and copy Leslie’s eating plan. I need to figure out the amounts I can eat on that plan to accomplish my goals.
Thanksgiving Leftovers
Richard Ha writes:
Today’s weight: 198.3 lbs. This week’s target weight was 194.0 lbs. I am 4.3 lbs. behind schedule. Instead of losing one pound, I gained 2.6 lbs. this week.
First of all, Thanksgiving dinner and all those leftovers did not help my weight loss efforts at all. I didn’t try very hard to control myself. Perhaps I should have.
And last week I wrote about that article that said red wine helps you lose weight. I tried hard to prove that this works, and if it really did work I would have lost lots of weight.
But instead I gained lots of weight. So much for that experiment. I think I’d better limit myself to one or two glasses.
When I started losing weight on May 23rd of this year, I weighed 214.6 lbs. In the last six months, I have lost 16.3 lbs.
This week I must regain control. It will take more than just exercise to continue losing weight. I need to work on controlling portion size, and limiting snacking.
My friend, who is also trying to lose weight, started following the Ha Ha Ha! weight loss plan recently. She said she liked the idea of it being so mechanical—that if she worked off 500 calories every day on the elliptical trainer, she’d lose one pound a week. That was working, but then she told me she noticed if she cut down on portion sizes, didn’t eat as many carbohydrates, and stopped snacking so much during the day and eating after dinner, the weight dropped off even faster.
She admits she got lazy about exercising, but by watching her food intake she kept losing. Maybe I should try combining that approach with my exercise plan.
I’m just the opposite of her. I love to exercise but I tend to drift when it comes to controlling calories. This week I exercised six days for 40 minutes each at an aerobic rate, and once at 90 minutes at a slightly relaxed pace. I thought this would keep me on track.
But looking back, I realize we got takeout from Hilo Rice Noodle twice, and once I ate the gorgonzola cheese hamburger at Hilo Bay Cafe for lunch. And then there was the Thanksgiving meal at Kimo and Tracy’s, plus some take home pumpkin pie.
I look into the refrigerator way too many times in a day. I think I’ll start writing down each time I open the door and what I did. I’m afraid to guess how many times a day I open the refrigerator door.
I guess I should be happy I didn’t gain more weight. But it’s pretty apparent to me that I need to pay more attention to how much and what I eat.
Tonight we go to Tracy and Kimo’s house for Kapono’s birthday. We won’t bring home pie this time.
Thanksgiving Greetings
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!
We’re thankful to be able to say what we want, think what we want and do what we want.
We’re thankful for friends and family. We’re thankful for our workers and our partners who help us do what we do. Thank you, everyone.
Richard and June