It feels like the seasons are starting to change. This, the rainy time of year, is when the plastic covers on our growing houses are advantageous. Our crops grow, without interruption, all the way through February. During the shorter days, the ground stays damp because there are less hours of sunlight to dry up the soil.

Finally, in this past week, the stream is starting to increase in volume. We’d been starting to worry about the spring water flow. Coming back from Kona on the Saddle road recently, we noticed the pastures are starting to turn green. It feels like the dry period is over for some parts of the island.

Here are some more pictures from the farm. This is the first kalo crop grown at Hamakua Springs and it looks really healthy. Tom Menezes is the farmer, and he really knows what he is doing. Among other things, he is a taro breeder.

This is the first ‘ulu tree growing at Hamakua Springs. It wants to grow tall and we will have to constantly prune to keep its fruit within reach. We would rather plant a variety that is shorter in stature.

We transplanted this ‘ulu at the farm a few weeks ago. Instead of fertilizer, we used the spent coconut media that we use for our hydroponic tomato crops. The tomato plant is a volunteer that germinated from the coconut media. There is one flower cluster, and the plant is very healthy even though we did not give it any conventional fertilizer.

We found this kalo growing in the river and we are growing it on the hydroponic solution we use for green onions. To my great surprise, it has thrown out runners. I wonder what Jerry Konanui will say?