Tag Archives: Hamakua Springs

Contest, Video

Did You Win Our Caption Contest?

Richard Ha writes:

Announcing the winners of our photo caption contest, which we announced last week.

First, here's the video that the caption was for:

We had four winners. Here they are, in alphabetical order:

 

Richard Gozinya:   A lot of magical stuff happens and then…poof!…out comes the biodiesel.


Rico Reed:   Fresh running photo-shop!

 

Baron Sekiya:   Ho brah! Check out da video I went shoot of dis faucet. I bin watchin' dis ting all week in da office…UNREAL!!! Da bucket neva even ova-flow once wit water! How dey do dat?

 

Brendan Shriane:   Sherwin-Williams' invisible paint might just work a little too well. 

 

I got a real kick out of these.

The prizes? Rubbah slippahs, of course! At one of the recent PUC hearings, a friend of mine donated three grocery bags full of rubbah slippahs.

To our four winners: Give me a call on my cell phone, 960-1057, to claim your prize. Please really do call, because I would like to talk to each of you.

Bananas, Big Island

Yogurtland Calls Hamakua Springs Bananas ‘Best in World’

Look at this video that Yogurtland produced, which features Richard.

It's from back when they sent their "flavorologist" to find the "best bananas in the world," for their new Yogurtland flavor "Bananas Foster."

They found the "best bananas in the world" right here at Hamakua Springs!

It's kind of ironic that there is talk about importing bananas from the Philippines, when Yogurtland thinks Hawai‘i has the best bananas anywhere.

Take a few minutes and watch this video, which is really so much fun. What a total kick.

And make sure you watch to the end. I almost missed that short little scene right at the end, after you think it's over. Great ending.

– posted by Leslie Lang

Alan Wong, Government, Tomatoes

First Tomatoes

Richard Ha writes:

When I went to pick up Professor Charles A.S. Hall and his wife Myrna at the airport Wednesday, I noticed a plane that looked like Air Force One. It reminded me that President Obama and his family are on O‘ahu for vacation.

Barack and Michelle Obama ate at Alan Wong’s, with friends, on Wednesday.

From the blog Obama Foodorama:

A long day of Hawaiian golf on Wednesday gave President Obama an appetite for dinner at what is regarded as his favorite island fine dining establishment: Alan Wong’s Restaurant in Honolulu. The chef himself told Obama Foodorama last month that he was expecting a visit from the President and First Lady Obama during their Christmas vacation.

“They’re adventurous eaters,” Wong said of the Obamas. The acclaimed chef, who sources locally and sustainably for his modern Hawaiian cuisine, cooked the special APEC Leaders Dinner the President and Mrs. Obama hosted in late November at the Hale Koa Hotel in Honolulu….

 Read the rest

Here’s a fun look at when Alan Wong and his chefs visited the farm and cooked for us one time.

Last Friday, the Obamas dined at Morimoto restaurant in Honolulu.

Before opening his Waikiki Restaurant, “Iron Chef” Masaharu Morimoto had visited us at Hamakua Springs.

Tomatoes from Hamakua Springs are on the menu at both Alan Wong’s and Morimoto. Tomatoes fit for a president!

Community, Food Safety Certification, Lowering Electric Rates, Our Story, Water

Master Gardeners Visit Hamakua Springs

Richard Ha writes:

The master gardeners came to visit Hamakua Springs yesterday. I told them their entry fee was that they had to listen to my pitch about the Big Island Community Coalition, through which we advocate for lowest electricity rates in the state.

We all laughed, and then I handed them flyers to post everywhere they can.

The Master Gardeners, solely as volunteers, help staff the University Extension Service. Somone pointed out that when they are not there, the Extension Service office is empty.

It was great to talk with people who grow things and have hands-on experience with insect and disease issues. They peered under leaves and asked lots of questions. Many of them grow tomatoes, so we had a lot in common. We feel a special closeness to them.

Mastergardener

Master Gardeners decided to do their vegetable shopping while on their tour.

My daughter Tracy
explained our Food Safety program, which involves nearly 60 line items for the field operation and 60 more for the packing operation. Everything is documented.

I pointed out that
smaller growers have a very difficult time both farming and maintaining the
detailed paperwork necessary to become Food Safety-certified. The Food Safety program evolved as large retailers pushed the liability down the chain. It is neither good nor bad – It just is.

Someone asked how long we have been at Pepe‘ekeo and why we chose this location, and I explained that we started looking at different possible locations 20 years ago. Plantations were closing down, the market was on O‘ahu – there were many factors in play.

What it came down to were the physical resources. At Pepe‘ekeo, which is located close to a deep water port, there is deep soil, and most of all, there is an abundance of water. Our average annual rainfall here is close to 140 inches per year. More than 1/4 of the volume of water that goes to the Ewa plains on O‘ahu flows downhill through our farm alone. And there is a 150-foot elevation difference in the water flow.

That water was free, and would be free for as long as we could imagine. We made our decision based on free water.

Uncategorized

Why Some Tomatoes Taste Bad, & Why Ours Don’t

3 Comments

Richard Ha writes:

We select our tomato varieties specifically for taste, and once we find a variety that tastes delicious, then we look at its other characteristics. For instance, we do not grow white varieties, because we have not found one that tastes good.
Once we find a variety we like, we control salinity and water volume to enhance its taste even more.
It is interesting to read what has happened to tomato taste over the years.
From UPI:
Published: June 29, 2012

WASHINGTON, June 29 (UPI) — The reason bright, uniformly red tomatoes in supermarkets lack the flavor to match their intense color is genetics, U.S. plant researchers say.

A gene mutation that makes a tomato uniformly red, favored by farmers as it produces a visually attractive product, stifles genes that would contribute to its taste, scientists said.

The chance mutation discovered by tomato breeders has been deliberately bred into almost all tomatoes for the color it provides.

Researchers writing in the journal Science report the gene that was inactivated by that mutation — resulting in a brighter uniform color — plays an important role in producing the sugar and aromas that are central to a flavorful tomato. Read the rest

And here’s another interesting article on the same subject from NPR:

June 28, 2012

by DAN CHARLES

Notice how some of these tomatoes have unripe-looking tops? Those “green shoulders” are actually the keys to flavor.

The tomato is the vegetable (or fruit, if you must) that we love to hate. We know how good it can be and how bad it usually is. And everybody just wants to know: How did it get that way?

Today, scientists revealed a small but intriguing chapter in that story: a genetic mutation that seemed like a real improvement in the tomato’s quality, but which actually undermined its taste. Read the rest

We are great fans of heirloom tomatoes. They taste great. I like them simply sliced and chilled with sea salt – sometimes with mozzarella cheese.

June and I loved to go to the Carmel Tomato festival, where we once had the chance to evaluate 200 varieties of heirloom tomatoes.
Contest

Caption Contest Winners!

2 Comments

It’s blog editor Leslie Lang here with the winners of our caption contest.

Here is the picture for which we asked you to supply a caption:

Screen shot 2012-06-28 at 9.14.26 PM

You’ll recall that Richard asked me to choose the winner, ostensibly so he wouldn’t be swayed by friends or family. But now I’m thinking he just remembered how hard it is to pick a winner!

We had lots of entries, and there were some really clever ones. It was hard, but I narrowed them down. I stripped the names off my top four, showed Richard and tried to get him to help me decide which one was the best one.

He read them, laughed and announced a four-way tie.

So here are the four winning captions and the winners’ names. They are not in any order (except alphabetical):

• And the four little piggies cried ‘Auwe!’ all the way home  – Maia Nilsson

• Dinner on the run – Patrick Kahawaiolaa

• Finally, Porky was able to fulfill a lifelong dream: to recreate the cover of the Abbey Road album – Baron Sekiya

• Hey Ralph… are they stopping for us, or did that oil thing peak out? – Wally Andrade

Congratulations to Maia, Patrick, Baron and Wally. If you are on the Big Island, please call Richard at 960-1057 and make arrangements to pick up your prize: a box of fresh, mixed Hamakua Springs vegetables.

If you are not located here, then we send you our heartiest congratulations, and unless you have plans to come to the Big Island we’ll have to leave it at that (as we mentioned in the first post; sorry!).

And thanks to everybody for the submissions. It was fun.
Community, Schools, Tomatoes

Pahoa Elementary: Tomatoes All Around

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Richard told me they took tomatoes down to Pahoa today, and gave some to every kid in the elementary school there.

There was an unexpected spike in production, he said, and he wanted to give them to the kids and their families.

3tomatoes

“We’ve done that over the years,” he said. “We just kind of made our way down the coast to the elementary schools. Kalani‘ana‘ole, Ha‘aheo, Hilo Union, Kapi‘olani, Waiakea Elementary, Kea‘au Elementary, ending up in Hawaiian Beaches at Keonepoko. So the next one was Pahoa Elementary.”

The farm first started handing out tomatoes and bananas at Keaukaha Elementary, back when the Thirty Meter Telescope adopt-a-class project was new and there were a lot of extras one season.

Over the years, he said, he’s been floored by the response. “There are so many people, I have no idea who they are, who come up and tell me they were so happy to receive the tomatoes.”

“We decided elementary kids because it’s a prize they can take home to their parents,” he said. “I feel pretty good being able to do it.”

Big Island, Hamakua Coast, Peak Oil, Sustainability

Sustainability in Hamakua

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My worlds collided on Saturday, when I led a tour that included a stop to meet Richard and see Hamakua Springs Country Farms.

Along with Hilo historian and anthropologist Judith Kirkendall, I lead van tours around East Hawai‘i. Right now we are doing a series of five tours that focus on agriculture and sustainability – what people are doing right now to be more sustainable, and how we can support them and also be more sustainable ourselves. The tours operate through Lyman Museum.

Our tour this past Saturday was called “The Garden As Provider,” and we focused on Hamakua. First we met at the Lyman Museum and heard a short talk by Sam Robinson about Let’s Grow Hilo. That’s the program she started that has volunteers planting edibles along downtown Hilo streets and in traffic medians.

“Anyone is free to help themselves to the fruit or vegetables once it’s ripe,” she told us, and she invited anyone interested in the project to come help plant and tend. They meet every last Sunday at the East Hawai‘i Cultural Center at 2 p.m.

Then we visited Barbara and Philip Williams, who live just outside Hilo near Pueopaku. Barbara grew up in Kenya, where they lived 50 miles away from the nearest railroad and so had to be self-sufficient. After she and Philip married, they lived on a plantation in East Africa. Now on the Big Island, they still grow and harvest everything they can. They have animals, including goats, and every fruit and vegetable you can imagine. “We retain the habits of being self-sufficient to the present day,” she told us.

From there we headed to Pepe‘ekeo, where Richard met us at Hamakua Springs.

IMG_0537

Richard is such an interesting speaker. He told us the story of how he started in farming (after flunking out of UH and consequently serving in Vietnam, he returned home and helped his father on the family’s chicken farm; then traded chicken manure for banana keiki and started farming bananas). He talked about how they decided to move the farm to Pepe‘ekeo and why (hint: free water; the farm alone has one-third as much water as supports agriculture where 234,000 people live in Leeward O‘ahu). Our tour group was totally engaged.

He told about how he started noticing prices going up (on fertilizer, boxes, all the things they were using on the farm) and how he realized it was due to oil prices and decided to attend Peak Oil conferences to learn what was happening. And how he felt bad and so didn’t tell the others there that he would return to Hawai‘i and wear shorts throughout the winter, and grow his produce throughout the winter; nor how we have geothermal to provide us with energy – which we don’t even fully take advantage of.

He spoke about how he has been positioning themselves for how conditions will be five or 10 years from now, and about the hydroelectric project that is getting going on the farm very shortly, and how since his workers first asked to borrow money for gas to get to work he has started what they call the Family of Farms, working with nearby farmers. And about how they are experimenting with how they can produce protein on the farm by raising tilapia, and giving their workers fish (and produce) every week in lieu of monetary raises they cannot afford to give right now.

There was more, and as editor of this blog for all these years, none of it was new to me, but I, too, listened intently and enjoyed it thoroughly. It was fascinating to hear Richard pull all the pieces he talks about on this blog together into one, interrelated, narrative that tells such a real, on-the-ground story of how things are (and how they are changing). The people on the tour were really interested. We all were. Afterward, I heard people talking about what a great thinker he is, and how much they enjoyed meeting him.

That Richard, he’s all right!

We also went to Hi‘ilani Eco House in Honoka‘a, an amazing house being constructed to be as “green” as it gets. Wow, that’s a fascinating place (they say it should last for 500 years!) and they are very open to groups visiting, if anyone is interested. And we stopped a couple other places as well.

It was a neat day (the upcoming tours are listed here if you’re interested), and Richard’s information really made it so good. We were all wowed. Thanks, Richard!

Geothermal, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources

Talk: On HECO, ‘Time is Running Short’

Yesterday I gave a talk at the Sheraton Outrigger in Keauhou. The talk was for the Water Works Association of Hawaii, which is the umbrella association of all of Hawai‘i’s water departments.

The Water Works Association meeting agenda. 

I started off by describing all the different hats I wear: Farmer; Co-Chair of the Geothermal Working Group, and Chairman of the Board of Ku‘oko‘a.

I talked about the Hawaiian Electric Company (HECO) operating with one hand tied behind its back. HECO has a fiduciary duty to its shareholders and so it cannot do all the things it might want to do to help Hawai‘i’s people. For instance, it would have a difficult time lowering Hawai‘i’s electricity rates – by closing its oil-fired plants and bringing on significant amounts of geothermal – without hurting its shareholders’ stock price.

HECO is under much pressure lately. Ku‘oko‘a wants to untie HECO’s hand so it can be the utility all its people want it to be. We don’t want to take HECO over; we want to empower HECO for the benefit of Hawai‘i’s people.

The main point I tried to make in my talk was that time is getting short. And that there is more than enough evidence to show that oil prices will rise in the future. It is not about whether or not one particular theory is right or wrong. The evidence we see all around us is compelling enough.

The reason I know about this is that I have attended three Peak Oil Conferences, and this subject has been on my radar for more than five years now.

We know that the peak of oil discovery was in the 1960s. For the last 20 years, we have been using twice as much oil as we have been finding.

We also know that all oil fields decline eventually. In fact, the natural decline rate of all the oil fields put together requires us to find a Saudi Arabia every two to three years. Clearly we have not been doing this.

Oil exporting countries will use more and more of their own oil. This means less for the rest of us. They must do this, in order to keep their people happy, or the dictators will get thrown out of office.

China and India use much less oil per person than we do, yet their economies keep on growing. The Honolulu Star-Advertiser points out that our electricity rates are approaching the high point of 2008. Our people are suffering, and yet China and India can pay this oil price while their economies keep growing.

And we have not even passed the peak of oil supply. Trying to be safe by doing nothing is no longer safe. We need to think different.

More on all this in my recent editorials for Civil Beat.