Whales and other noteworthy happenings

Yes! We saw a whale yesterday! Paddling out from Kahuluu beach area we saw the water spout so we stopped and watched the tail several times and then a full breach. Beautiful for such a large mammal. Whale season is here as they come to the warm Hawaiian waters to birth their young and some to breed for next years return. Ron is absolutely excited as he picked and pulped our first very own round of coffee. Picking season is basically over and the former owners received the whole crop already. Since se needed stock to continue selling Kona Lisa Coffee we are buying what is called the parchment from them (very expensive way to do it). Anyway there are pockets of areas where the trees are still producing ripe beans that the pickers missed or felt the area too small to bother. Ron picked 113 pounds Mon and 126 pounds Wed. We did our first pulping by ourselved (successfully). Yesterday after the last batch fermented we rinsed them and loaded them off the converyor and on to the drying deck. Mondays coffee is already there drying (takes about a week). I had saved this blog to draft to finish later but this is now way later. At least a week has passed. Last Thurs. I was rear ended by a flat bed coffee truck. Luckily I am okay. They took me to the hospital as I had quite a whiplash and did xrays. I was plenty sore for about 5 days but again I feel very lucky. Now,Dick, you know why I haven't blogged in a few days.
Meanwhile, we have bagged the coffee (it looks beautiful) Ron picked more, that is now drying. We got about 26 pounds of parchment from the 113 cherry. Then you loose more when it is milled and roasted. And that is from a full day of picking. You can see why we will be hiring a crew to pick next year for picking season. We are still moving in and unpacking. We knew we brought too much and now we are lookin for places to put it all, but we love being down here now. Last night we ate our first dinner out on the lanai and celebrated. Oh my, less than one week till Christmas and very, very few cards went out. Well, there's always next year! Hard to believe Christmas is already here sitting here in shorts and tank top. Winter is here though, we don't need the fans on and I did pull a blanket up during the night a few nights (windows are always open). We will be sharing Christmas cheer with a few freinds on both Christmas eve and day and will be thinking of all of you (our friends and relatives) and wish you could be here too!!!
p.s. One more thing, our coffee WON 1st place "Peoples Choice Award" at the Sat. market coffee tasting 2nd anniversary. There are seven coffee vendors there and the customers vote. We are new there so we were very excited to win. Today I'd better get busy making a sign for the market and getting something ready to put up on our website. Always something isn't there..............??