Beaches

We've only been to 2 spots so far, but they are so different compared to east coast beaches! More diversity to come as we travel to other beaches next week.

These first 5 images are from Pu'uhonua, or "Place of Refuge," which is a national historic park less than 5 miles from our farm. If an ancient Hawaiian broke kapu, or sacred law, they could be put to death. If they reached this safe zone, however, a ritual would be performed where they were absolved of their crime and could return to society. Its a real life game of tag with a base where you can't be touched.

Side note: Look at the horizon in the picture below. It's hazy because of the sulfur dioxide from the active volcano Kilauea. They call it "vog"- volcanic smog.

 These sea urchins are absolutely everywhere. These small ones are in the tidal pools, and in the deep water they are a hundred times bigger and spikier.

The next two photos are from the beach right next to the Place of Refuge. It's called 2-Step Beach because the lava actually forms steps into the water (2 steps, if you can believe it), making an easy entrance for snorkelers and divers.

We saw this guy washed into a tidal pool before even entering the water to snorkel!

Finally, another beautiful sunset from the lanai (porch) at our farm.

The Coffee Process (Part 1...sort of)

This is only "sort of" the first part of the coffee process because it is not currently harvesting season and Mollie and I will not be able to document the cherry-picking. Of course, I could have begun also with planting.... Ok, so this is just the first post I'm making about the coffee process, not actually the first part of that process. Moving on.

The process you'll be able to see below is hand sorting beans--what Mollie and I have been doing the last two days. The beans are already in their green state, which means they have already been dried and hulled. All that is left is roasting. First, however, we have to sort them by hand. Before taking a step further, I want to emphasize that we spent an entire day and a half panning through only about 30 pounds of this stuff. Our necks hurt from basically looking at our navels hours on end. When we close our eyes, all we see are beans rolling around in an old pie tin. It's the most tedious and mesmerizing kind of work we've done so far.

When we sort, we are looking for three main things:

This is your happy and healthy typical coffee bean. Nice and smooth, having two even halves (which will pop at different temperatures during roasting! But I'll come to that in another post...).

This is an example of junk. Also known as crap. While we toss good beans into one bucket, we are also tossing this fine specimen into another. What has happened to this poor bean is the bore beetle, a plague on most of the farms around here. You can see where the beetle has had a meal. This affects about 25% of the crop. Interestingly, local studies show that the bore does not adversely affect the taste of the coffee. But, come on, who wants to see this when they open a bag of 100% Kona coffee?

NOTE: One former WWOOFer collected a pile of junk from Dragon's Lair and put it up against Starbucks coffee in several local blind taste tests. Dragon's Lair junk won hands down every time...

And then there's this gem. This is Peaberry. It's smaller and rounder than the regular bean. During development, only one half of the bean grew, and without the other half, it was able to grow all the way around the center. The result is a denser bean with more concentrated flavor, caffeine and nutrients. About 5% of every crop is Peaberry. This stuff sells for about 50% more than the regular bean.

During sorting, one of the only things that could keep our sanity was to start imagining the cliches that might arise from the process. For example, to describe a misfortune you might say, "Oh, that's like finding beetle bore in your Peaberry!"

And here's what we can roast and ship!

First Days on the Farm

This is the view from the porch where we eat breakfast every morning with the owners, Bob and Beryl. By Dave's second cup of 100% Kona coffee, he's in a place of absolute ecstasy. The rest of the day has a hard time measuring up.

We found this chameleon in a banana tree. He did not like Dave as much as this picture suggests.

Can you guess which Muscovy is a Sith lord?

The view from our studio apartment. Over ninety other WWOOFers have seen this.

Marmalade, whom I mistakenly and continually call Marshmallow.

This is in the coffee processing... place?... it's like a shanty. All the coffee making machinery is behind me (more on this to come!), but here you can see just how at home the chickens and ducks have made themselves. We regularly find a new eggs here, and this pretty Muscovy rarely leaves her nest under the table saw.

The journey from unripe coffee cherries to medium-dark roast beans is about three feet.

 

Had no idea what this was--it's a cacao tree! Perhaps I'll try to make some chocolate.

This tiny little tangerine tree is my favorite thing to eat off the farm, but I only get one about every other day. There are, however, tons of fresh pomegranates and papayas and literally hundreds of avocados. The bananas and passion fruit are green and won't be ready anytime soon. The trees that are not fruiting this time of year are mango, lime, lemon, and macadamia nut. I heard there are guava trees somewhere and I have no idea what that looks or tastes like, so potentially another thing to eat! (and the garden spiders are absolutely everywhere, along with ugly brown spiders that look like little transformers)

My favorite place on the farm, all the Muscovy ducks and chickens gather under the pomegranate tree to sleep and, occasionally, give us suspicious looks.

Hawaii for a month!

We're in Hawaii! Dave graduated from Duke last week (summa cum laude, no big deal) and I start PA school at Jefferson College in Roanoke, VA in August(!!). So, we decided to go to to the Big Island to work and live on an organic Kona coffee farm, spend some time at the nearby world class snorkeling sites, and maybe, just maybe, get a bit of a tan.

After 16 hours of traveling and a 6-hour time change, we arrived at Kona International Airport yesterday afternoon. Our farm is called Dragon's Lair Estate, that red star over there, which is staffed by the couple who owns it and WWOOFers (that's us). They have 2000 coffee trees and an assortment of macadamia nut, banana, mango, papaya, etc. Not sure what our work will entail but our first day of work starts in a few hours. Lots of pictures to come!