the christmas that wasn't there

it's the day after christmas, and if it weren't for facebook and a message from my dad, I wouldn't have remembered what yesterday was.  Oh, and the fact that everything in town was closed yesterday, except for the No.1 Chinese BBQ, thank god.  Mmm, chow mein and broccoli with beef.  Nothing says merry holidays like greasy chinese before you go to put some elbow grease on a old, cruddy bathroom.  I guess I converted the food grease into elbow grease, huh.  

Apparently, Arthur, Scotty and Rachael celebrated Christmas by turning Eustice into a deformed reindeer - aka Eustice the Unicorn.  He and Arthur took turns battling each other with the homemade mystical feature.  

Hard work, got paid, came home.  Came home to roasted suckling pig, baked ulu, brazilian cherry cobbler and brews and good wine, no less.  I love my neighbors.  Scotty and Rachie, you're the best!  They made the whole thing and let us enjoy it with them in their neighboring cabin.  Oh, and fresh salad made with mostly aquaponically grown ingredients from the system they manage next door at Dragon's Eye.  

So at dinner, we reinacted our own unicorn fight scene.  How's that for the Christmas spirit?!

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Today, I stayed in bed enjoying the weightlessness of my exhausted body until 10am!  I sure did.  The rest of the day has been comprised of coffee and talking to family and friends on the phone, sending our day-after-christmas greetings and updates.  


Arthur made sausage today!  His first attempt.  Made with pig killed by bow-and-arrow courtesy of the fantastic "Captain Kirk"!   Added Sage, Rosemary and Pepperoni leaf (all grown right outside the cabin) and black pepper and it's DEE-LISHUS.  


Just finished lightly burning some popcorn before we retire to a good movie and so more relaxing.  Ooo.... and after I eat this fresh egg, homemade sausage and gravy sanny that Arthur just started making me!!  could I ask for a better life?  I think not.  


I'm so proud of myself.  I said when I woke up that I wasn't going to do anything today!  And I'll be damned if I didn't not do just that.  Ann called to say she was going to be planting ferns in the forest this morning, which I've been wanting to help with for a while, but I said No, sorry, today is my day to rest, but thank you and keep me in mind for next time.  Then I wanted to go to Maku'u market to do some gift shopping, but made myself stay home instead.  Then our neighbors were thinking of going to Hilo, and I thought, Oo, that might be fun, but instead, staid my course and kept my ass in my chair.  Then I thought about processing wax for tomorrow's hive dusting, but said, NO, I'm relaxing!!  Damn it.   Funny I have to fight with myself more than anyone to get a day off.  But I did it, and am glad for it.


Now it's the coqui's serenading me into an early bedtime, but not til I finish my fresh sanny and slightly crispy popcorn.  :)


Happy Nothingspecialdays.

bees, Ili, ferns and dinner

Finally got out to tempt the weather and the bees.  
Bad idea.
Got all my under-hive beetle traps checked and emptied, then got to doing a dusting in the brood box of one hive, checking frames for eggs and larvae and the general state of things.  Just barely got 3 frames removed and replaced by 2 top bars with starter strips when the rain came down in droves and so did the girls.  Man they were pissed at me.  Can't blame them one bit.  I got the super back on and got out of their hair so they would get out of mine as fast and carefully as I could.  Not before several stingers made their way through the suit.  So I'm a little puffy, and learned my lesson about staying the hell out of the hives when it's even thinking about raining.  


Got done counting dead beetles just in time to run home for a scrumptious pig casserole Arthur made for lunch.  Yum.  Then rode over to Dragonfly to pick up Ili for our play date.  We rode our bikes back to the house where we played a version of hide and seek she likes to call "Spy", started making beaded mermaids, went to harvest lilikois, walked up to the top of the farm, visited with one of the cats, checked out the top bar hives being built in the barn and came back home for a few more rounds of "Spy".  We were about to make some killer oatmeal cookies when I realized our flour was pau. Oh well.  Then we rode back to her house to say hi to Kaika and Maiog, who sent me off with some pig for compensation for cement work from last week, the back meat, at that!  Then went to watch Waiele teach an aerial fabrics lesson.  She's been doing aerial fabrics since she was 6!  Amazing.  I'm seriously considering having Waiele teach me how.  It looks like climbing trees/monkeybars/yoga and flying all rolled into one, but better!  Then Ili showed us some of her skills on the fabrics.  Wow, talent, talent everywhere.  Oh, and while we watched the lesson, Diga serenaded us with his beautiful marimba-ing.  You gotta love the neighbors.


Came home and managed not to let yet another day of drizzle inter-spliced with downpour ruin my motivation.   I finally planted all the Hapu'u ferns we gathered in the forest last week!  I planted them all up and down the trail to our cabin and around the cabin.  But I need more!  They're so beautiful, I would love to have them all around our place and then some.  


Now I'm baking 

Ulu - "Breadfruit"

Tahitian squash & ulu in hazelnut milk and cream with a scoop of nutritional yeast and some salt
and...
Pig that's been dry rubbed, seared, drizzled with honey and is baking in pineapple vinegar and coconut oil


Now I'm going to read a few more chapters in my new book and probably watch a movie.  


A day I feel good about.

would-bee day

Why is it that every time I plan a day to work in our beehives, it decides to rain and drizzle all day?  So then I end up inside processing wax, making starter strips on top bars and making a big 'ole waxy mess in my kitchen.  Pretty soon I won't have any non-waxed dishes or pyrex.

this old house...

Ain't half bad.  An old plantation home was dissected and transplanted from Maui to Puna, Big Island in the 70's.  Huge rooms with high ceilings, wooden floors and that smells that says, "I've been around for a while and seen more than you can you imagine...".  Big glass windows with solid wood framing weigh more than I do, give every room that sunroom feeling.  Situated within walking distance of downtown Pahoa, this house was used by Antherium farmers for, who knows, decades?  


One of my wonderful teachers now owns this house and has made it even more glorious with her feng-shui taste.  Each room is accented with a different color...dining room is all white, $3,000 glass chandelier (a gift) with a lipstick red screen door that leads to a small lenai overlooking the back garden and coi pond.  Yes, it has a coi pond.  Kitchen has teal countertops, lipstick red shelving space for shelves that reach the ceiling, half of them have huge glass cabinet doors.  The front room is yellow with gold trim and big round chinese lanterns hanging from the ceiling.  This room looks like it could be a dance studio, lots of open space, huge windows and smooth wooden floors.  There's a small side room painted lavender, perhaps used to be used for processing antheriums, has a sloped ceiling.  There's the sky blue room, used to be a bedroom, more big windows and copious warm sunlight.  The bathroom with small black stones for the shower floor, old porcelain tub and antiquated built-in linen closet and drawers.  The side room with dark brown hardwood floors and a parasol in lieu of a ceiling fan, with decorative opening at the top of one wall connecting into another, smaller side room.  Other small room has same flooring and big half wall of drawers, looks like it could have been an herbal clinic.  


Pictures coming soon.


Cleaned the dining room and kitchen from top to bottom - almost literally - scrubbed the ceilings, walls, counters, shelves, chandelier, window frames, window cills and everything in between.  No floors because they're being replaced.  It was a long, but satisfying day.
Arthur worked on fixing up the landscaping around the house.  Cut down some overgrown weed trees, weeded beds, cleared around property line.  Slowly but surely we're getting it ready to be rented out it full state of loveliness.  

this is why we love sundayzzzzz

Arthur's fertilizing the chives and sage and okinawa spinach and tobacco in his underwear.
It's cloudy.
It's cool.
Ryan adam's is harmonicaing in my ear.
The cat is all stretched out and lazy-eyed.
I'm sipping a local porter and frying seasoned breaded ulu pieces.
Arthur has breaded fish baking.

market's pau

Mmm...
Market day is done.  As much as I love doing market and representing our community and my stupendous neighbors, I'm glad for the 2-week break from our weekly markets.  The next two Saturdays fall on Christmas and New Years day, so we won't be back in Seaview until the second week of January.


Market was lovely today, as it always is.  The Collective has made over $1,000 since we started in November.  I would call that a success.


Came home today, unloaded the truck and got all the market stuff put away and my accounting done.  Now I'm eating a pig sandwhich, follow-up to seared ahi from a local fisherman.  I love meat.  I love local food.  I love this.


goodnight.

market prep day

It's Friday.
Friday = market prep day.
Today is the day I make my calls to the farmers' who send their extra produce for me to sell at the farmers' market in Seaview, S.P.A.C.E. (Seaview Performing Arts Center for Education).  First thing, I send out a reminder email to everyone on the Koa'e Community listserv to try and enlist new market contributors and remind regular contributors that I'll be calling to check in.  Then I make arrangement for any harvest/pickups that need to happen today, for people who don't live on Papaya Farms Rd.


Just got back from Akua Ike, Tom's place.  Enjoyed some casual talk story time before hitting the orchards.  Checked on the fruit fly traps in the citrus orchards and made some adjustments.  The fruit flies seem to like the oranges, the navels, in particular.  Harvested: grapefruit, tangerines, navel and "regular(?)" oranges and acerola cherries.


Came home to a turkey sandwich and black butte porter for lunch.  Mmmm hmm.


Still have to go harvest lilikois from the 10 vines on this farm.  Clip the stems.  Wash in the catchment.  Then load the truck up with all the stuff for market tomorrow: tables, buckets, boxes of fruit, signs, scale, fabric, etc...


Then I'm pau.  Tell 5am, tomorrow. :)

Eustice!

yesterday....


Arthur and I got a call from Scott saying that a grazing animal had made a buffet of the nursery.  The most probable culprit is Eustice.  He's managed to escape about once a day for the past month.  We've put off fixing the fence because it would require putting up a whole new line of fencing in a new, yet uncleared area.  It also kept falling back on our list of priorities to make way for farm work, market stuff, bee stuff, garden stuff.  But, the phone call was our kick in the pants.  So....we walked the area to pick the new fence line so it wouldn't be surrounded by gaps in the foliage to make new escape routes.  We then cleared the line of over-grown mature cane grass, thimble berries and a take-over-everything ground cover (this is the most labor-intensive portion of the plans).  Then we cut fence posts from Strawberry Guava saplings.  Then we rolled out a few feet of fencing, and pulled it a few feet, rolled out a few more feet, pulled those few feet, and continued until the fence line had fencing running the whole length.  Then we staked the fence in.


Then I felt motivated to clear the rest of the cane grass in the newly expanded pasture.  So I went to work with my machete.  I got a bit too excited and chopped away most of the natural barrier we were relying on to act as a big portion of our fencing.  Well.....shit.....


So, I had to extended the fence line some more to meet up with the paddock so it would once again be a contained, hopefully escape-proof, pasture.  Got the fence line cleared and extended and the fence up and staked, with the new gate entrance further down our trail.  So far, Great Success!  And it looks so nice.

in the forest

Rode with some friends of Malama O Puna to rescue some native Hapu'u ferns from a timber forest that is about to be logged. The ferns are tree ferns, full-grown will tower over your head. Make beautiful unfurled, furry babies. There were 7 of us in the forest clipping leaves and uprooting ferns which were piled into old dog food and feed bags to be relocated to a forest reserve near Black Sands community. Talking story and enjoying the peacefulness of the forest, the shade, the sounds, the shadows, the smells of cool, damp earth. Ground covered in tiny tiny fern-looking grass, make me want to plant it in my living room floor, so soft, cool, lovely.

After working hard, shared my tasty key lime-lemonade, tangelos and lilikoi, received baked sweet ulu and bananas. Stood around, talking more story with everyone. 

Home now with a bag full of fern roots ready to plant around the back of the house under the Ohi'a and Hala trees. Can't wait to have my own little Hapu'u forest.  

neighborly

I helped our neighbors pour concrete for their up and coming chicken operation. They'll raise hens for meat and eggs. Started at 10am. Hard work, been a while since I worked that hard in the hot sun. Felt good. Gald to "prove" myself to some folks I think have underestimated me. I know cement, I enjoy working with it. We made quick work. Forgot the J-bolts til it was almost dry, but we got 'em in in time and all smoothed out. It looks good. I helped, I had something to offer and it felt good. After the cement was done, Diga and Kaika brought down a cooler of beer, homegrown cabbage/chive salad, baked pig and tomatoes.  Sat around with the guys talking story and enjoy the buzz of a few beers. Talkin bout climbing coconut trees, farming on blue rock and making shows about pirates. Gonna get paid in fresh, raw milk and pig meat. I'm so happy this is my life. I wouldn't change a thing.