Good-bye to the Farm!

Friday was our final day on the farm before heading to a B&B for our last few days in Hawaii. We finally got to work the big weed-whackers, which are extremely messy and fun. I wish we had before and after pictures of the giant elephant grass that was taller than we are that we cut down to nothing!

  This is me halfway through the morning...                          and Dave pre-weed-whacking

     Threw these clothes away yesterday                     These puppies followed us all over the farm!

After our last day on the farm, we finished the evening down at Pu'uhonua o Honaunau (Place of Refuge). I wrote about it in a previous post and had pictures of the beach, but we hadn't gone to see the ancient structures. This is the place where people who broke sacred laws could go to be absolved (if they could make it there before being caught and put to death).

The lele (tower) where the offerings were                   Ki'i (wooden images) stand watch over the

placed                                                                      mausoleum that holds the bones of 23 chiefs

Here we are with Bob and Beryl, our coffee-farming hosts. Every Friday night they gather with friends at the Place of Refuge for a potluck. They're in their 70s and bought the farm 10 years ago!

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They have 2 studios attached to their house, one downstairs that their daughter was staying in, and this second one around back. It may not look like much, but there were NO BUGS at all! That's more than I can say about the luxurious in-town condo we're staying in for our last couple of days...ehem..way too many ants.

The separate twin beds, reminiscent of the 1950s, were awesome for about a week. It was also fun learning to live minimalistically in the studio. We both realized that packing five shirts was still too many for three weeks.

And a few more pictures for the heck of it...

And of course, another beautiful sunset at the Place of Refuge!

Dave has one more coffee post that he will be putting up soon. We got to work with ripe coffee cherry, fresh off the trees, so we have finally seen the whole process. After that, more vacation-y things. I'm most excited about going up 14,000 ft to Mauna Kea!