Aplenty

A few people have asked me to give a little bit more background information on our situation here, which we omitted because we didn’t expect so many people to read the blog. I’ll give you the short version: We found Konacopia Farm through a web site where organic farmers list work-exchange opportunities for willing volunteers. Usually these exchanges include a set amount of farm work per week in exchange for a place to stay (ranging from anything from a tent to a room in their house).

We’re not quite sure exactly how we chose Hawaii, but it was a very spontaneous decision…and besides, who wouldn’t want to be in Hawaii? After putting all of our stuff in storage (thank you, parents!) we took off with minimal luggage and a one-way ticket. At this point it’s hard to say how long we’ll be here, but we loosely agreed to a minimum of two months. Our future plans include: wake up tomorrow. And probably lots more travel, especially since we’re so close to Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. If you still have unanswered questions for us, feel free to post them in our comments section. We can’t guarantee that we’ll have answers.

Now that that’s over with: Today was a work day, and a buggy one at that due to last night’s heavy rainfall. There’s a large avocado tree near our platform and we kept hearing plump avocados fall throughout the night. It took us a few nights not to imagine rabid animals circling our screen house every time we heard overburdened trees releasing their fruit.

Steve had a dentist appointment today, so he gave us instructions and then headed out. He also left us with his work philosophy to “work steady and not kill yourself.” Steve said that he takes this from Japanese farmers, who don’t strain themselves or work too quickly.

Pete and I were given the task of constructing a new compost area since the existing one was getting to be too small for the farm's needs. We used lava rocks to build the walls, and it took us a little over an hour. When we removed the old compost, we were greeted by at least a hundred cockroaches, including the biggest one either of us had ever seen (Pete beheaded it with a shovel after he claimed it was charging toward him). They’re everywhere here, so you can’t escape them, but it’s not as scary as running into one in your apartment in New York City because at least here they’re in their natural habitat, so it’s not really unexpected. Here’s a picture of our handiwork (minus the roaches):


After that was finished, we weeded the area between some of the coffee trees. Here’s a photo that Pete took of a coffee tree.



You can see the coffee cherries, as they’re called, in various stages of ripening. The dark red ones are ready to be picked. After picking they’re pulped, fermented, and then dried in the sun (this is usually done by hand in Kona). Now you have coffee beans. The beans are sent to a facility where the outer shell area, known as parchment, is removed. It is then that they are ready to be roasted. All of Konacopia’s roasting is done off site as well, but some farms hand roast their own beans. This is an expensive and time-consuming process, which is the main reason that Kona’s world-renowned coffee can cost the consumer as much as $30 per pound.

Being avid coffee drinkers, Pete and I were excited to be living on a farm that produces so much of it. To our chagrin, the current crop is not ready for harvesting yet. In a fit of desperation we bought a bag of “Hula Girl” brand coffee at the grocery store yesterday. And since we don’t have a percolator, we heated water and then poured it into the filter while holding the filter over a cup. The saddest part is that we’re too cheap to buy the real Kona coffee—the stuff we bought advertises on the package that it’s “10% Kona Coffee!” It still does the trick, but the irony is painful.

One of the highlights of our day was the bounty that we collected for ourselves. First, Peter cut down a jackfruit for us to eat. It’s the largest tree-borne fruit in the world, and can grow up to 36 inches long. Pete took this picture of one of the jackfruit trees—I’m resting my hand on one of the fruits so you can get an idea of the scale of it.


The fruit is a little complicated to eat. It contains a very sticky latex that coats your fingers and anything else it touches. Basically Pete just hacked it in half with a giant knife and then we worked on extracting the fruit. It looks a little bit like a pineapple, with a hard core surrounded by soft fruit “pods.” Here’s what the meat of the fruit looked like after we extracted it (each piece contains a large seed, which can be roasted and eaten):


The taste is difficult to describe, but I would say that it’s a cross between a melon and a banana, with a slimy, stringy texture. As you can see, I enjoyed eating it—partly because it took so much effort to get the meat out.


We also got a ripe pineapple and some greens from the garden, which we ate just after picking them. And cherry tomatoes are pretty much considered a weed around here because they grow wild everywhere, which make them a good, quick snack. If that weren’t enough we also ate a ripe fig and Pete got a cashew fruit, which looks a bit like a red pepper. It’s obvious why they chose to name this place Konacopia.