Moonglow

While driving in the early morning taking the winding Napo'opo'o route last week, I seemed to be in full daylight. This, of course, was due to the full moon that night. The moon was glowing onto the water of Kealakekua Bay and shining on the slope surrounding the Captain Cook monument. I don't believe I ever understood the meaning of moonglow until that morning. What a way to start the day!! I was on my way to paddle up at Keauhou Bay and hoping to spot some whales. Friends have been telling me of seeing the whales out paddling and even from shore. So far the only one I've seen was before Christmas and it was way out. But it did breach for us! Reports are that there are numerous whale spottings up at the Mauna Lani beach. So we are going to take a drive up there soon so I can report on the whales.

Saturday turned out to be a remarkable day at the market. We sold out of everything. We have been trying to estimate how much to bring each weekend. But each weekend brings a different crowd and we never seem to out guess our customers. We always take stock back and that is carrying coffee in and out. So it would be nice to figure out a pattern. Last Sat. we thought we had plenty but sold it all. Sure was nice not to have to bring merchandise back. The first 'Chef Series' was the draw. The market is promoting a 'cooking & eating Hawaii grown foods' series put on by local chefs and using foods sold at our market. There were bigger crowds there last Sat. and all the vendors said they did better. We will be looking forward to next months chef and will hopefully be better prepared. Check out the coffee at
www.konalisacoffee.com.

I am such a whimp. Because it has been cool the last few mornings I have not gone up to water jog in the ocean or paddle this week but I did walk 3 miles yesterday. Fortunately I ran into a neighbor I had not met yet and walked with her for awhile. That's the reason I scheduled a massage appt. for tomorrow. She pushed my pace up a bit and my back is squacking at me today. Or was it the 50# bag of coffee I lifted later that day. No matter Keri said she would fix me up tomorrow.

Ron's pruning is continuing. He says it will most likely continue for awhile. Like the next month or two. We finally got a few good dumps of rain. One good one Sunday eve and one yesterday. Amazingly we had a couple drops of hail with the rain. It started out raining hard but the sun was still shining. Pretty soon some dark clouds came in and it cooled down really fast. After it rained I headed up to the store and my car showed 66 degrees and that was at about 2 pm. but the store is at about 1500ft. We are at 800 ft. Next we are finding out about tropical pests. TERMITES! We were warned about them in TN but never had them. It's a given here. You just constantly treat for them. We have them and we are getting our house tented Friday. We'll be spending the night up in a cottage at Ka'awa Loa Plantation while those critters get fumigated. Al loaned us his pet crate as the kitty goes with us. We don't want him fumigated as his job is to keep other pests away. So goes it for life in the tropics as we learn more about it every day. One thing Ron is looking forward to is blossoming. The story is that after a good rainfall you get new coffee blossoms which starts the cycle for the nexts years coffee cherry. Although we hear it's either 5 or 7 months after blossom that you harvest. I think it depends on elevation so we will be counting.......

Extraordinary learning morning here...................

...........at the market today. Kawiala, who is a solo singer slack-key guitar player at the market every week, drinks our coffee and chats with us on break. He is a chemist by trade but now does what he enjoys a bit more. His music and CD's are beautiful. While talking about dehydration processes here he mentioned that he worked on the mainland for a company 'Coffeeberry.org' that dehydrated the whole coffee fruit. Coffeeberry.org now has a patent on this process and freeze dries it for health food and drink additives. Coffee fruit is full of polyphenols and anti-oxidants. My what we do by accident!?!! Ron & I love to just pick our coffee (berry/cherry?) and bite into the whole fruit and after chewing the sweetness out of the pulp which you can either eat or spit out but leave the beans in your mouth and suck on them as they have a sweet coating. Sometimes visitors ask if you can eat the cherry and we show them this process. Now we have a health food angle to tell them about, too!! All this and I remind myself that I didn't even know how coffee grew until about a year ago. I saw Juan Valdez picking it on TV, but his trees seem short and I didn't know if they were trees or vines. Maybe this has been an extraordinary week but I also experimented with the coffee by having another coffee roaster roast my coffee. All the coffee I sell is roasted in a drum roaster which gives it the smooth smokey flavor. So I tried his air roasting method and roasted it medium. Couldn't wait to bring it home and try it. Well I absolutely loved it even more than the coffee we now roast. Ron is not sure as he says I always brew it stronger than his liking. Now I am thinking about adding this roast to our line. It will take awhile but it will be fun thinking it through. Next I am going to try the air roasting to a darker flavor and then a lighter flavor. Hey, all that experience in wine tasting is finally paying off.

Today........................

was, we believe, the coldest day we have seen since we moved here. We now sleep with a light blanket but with the windows open. This morning we closed them for awhile. I also decided to pass on water jogging. We are going to reflect on today when next summer comes as it was totally perfect. Soon it warmed up and we were off to town to shop for a few things. We stopped at Fujimama's for lunch and did a little town people watching. Town was busy today as a cruise ship was in and we decided we enjoy town even more now that we don't live there anymore. Have to recommend Fujimama's. The resturant is from Tokyo and they have opened a second one here in Kona. I had a green curry with MahiMahi and carmeled onions, shitake mushrooms and peppers. Whalla!! Should have tried the shushi but what can I say when Ron ordered a burger. (They do have one of the highly rated burgers in town, so there was reason to try it). We stopped by a fellow coffee farmers place on the way back for Ron to take a look at his operation. He does much more marketing than us and has much more equipment to do it with and he is always ready to help and add some advise. We get local honey from him and sometimes sell it at the market along with our coffee. Our coffee for this week got roasted today so when I came home I packaged up the beans. We haven't had any rain since Christmas Day so Ron decided to do some irrigation. (This is supposed to be the dry season anyway.)We are not sure when to irrigate as Ron claims, just like running the New York marathon, everyone has a plan on how to do it best. We feel like we are experimenting this year and hopefully find some of the better methods and employ them. Do those trees need moisture now or not?? We will see how much they need when we get that water bill....right?? I think I hear the dinner bell ringing! See ya another day....

A few of my favorite things

I've been told that I'd better get blogging. Yes I know I have been slacking haven't I? Well I continue to enjoy it here so I suppose I should share some of the whys. We have our sign "Cornerstone Farms" out on the road and when we put the open sign up we seem to immediately get guests. We are amazed and flattered that so many visitors want to see the farm and get a small tour of how coffee is grown and processed and we enjoy showing them around and talking up the Kona coffee area. It's fun meeting people from all over the world. So far we've had visitors from several European countries, Japan, Quebec and other areas of Canada, plus many states back on the mainland. We always feel home has come to us when we get tourists from Michigan and Tennessee. We find even more things to talk about and catch up on.

Continuing to paddle and jog in the ocean is still on my list. Altough I was soooo glad that they started a winter paddle at 8a.m. instead of 6:30. This morning we saw several whale spouts but the whales were out quite far, not so the dolphins. They were swimming right next to us.

Ron mentioned the other day after having dinner with Linda & Al how glad he was that I met Linda while working down at the pier. Al is a new coffee farmer just like Ron. So we all understand that we need to take a break together and enjoy some beers and talk some story.

Our backyard, I believe, will always continue to amaze me. Last week Ron saw a large white bird high up in a tree. Using our binoculars we were able to get its markings and determine that he is a Hawaiian hawk. They are on the endangered species list but we think he lives in our yard because we have seen him fly over before. Hopefully he is doing his job and keeping the varmits away. Today I was reminded by a friend while paddling about our spectacular sunsets. Denise says she is going to start making her own postcards with the shots she has taken and I thanked her for the idea. Sunday we watched an outrigger, cruise ship, wave runner, more single paddlers, fishing boats, and smaller dinner cruises all go by us. What fun!!

So those are just a few of my current favorite things. I sure am glad I have them to rely on because I do get lonesome for my family, kids, grandkids (especially), sister. The trips back to the mainland are already becoming special to me and I am looking forward to the spring/summer visit already.

Happy New Year..........and Sharks!!??...

The new year rolled in here just like everywhere else with fun and lots of noise. Fireworks and firecrackers seemed to go on for hours. Long after we celebrated with the Keauhou Canoe Club. NYeve we partied with the paddling group and dropped the ball at midnight (New York time, that is). Our ball consisted of Katy standing on the shoulders of the biggest guy there and dropping a coconut as we all counted down. We're Hawaii, we have to improvise!! Earlier that day I took a jog in the ocean. As Debbie stopped to talk on her swim back to shore she told me about the shark sighting near Keauhou Bay and the closure of Kahaluu Beach the previous day. I felt a little freaky being the only water jogger that day and hurried back to shore. Thinking about it though, really there are always fish in the water, maybe sharks too. I love the ocean and Ron loves to bike. So I'll continue to go in the water hoping the sharks stay away from me and Ron will continue to ride his bike hoping the cars stay away from him. I also couldn't believe the morning radio news. Must have been a slow news day as the local station here reported about a shooting at the Hooters in Knoxville. The story they told was the shooter then would not put down his gun when cornered by police and was also shot dead. We seem to miss so much news was out here in the middle of the Pacific and was surprised to hear that snippet. Our new friends Al & Linda have become Hawaii football fans and wanted us to meet them at the Oceans Tavern to watch the game and share pupus. It was a good time but a sad ending to the one to the teams best football seasons. Ron was just happy that Michigan finally won a bowl game and so did TN. Therefore not a bad football day afterall. We heard MI got 15in of snow in places in Oakland & Lapeer Counties over the New Years night. Snow is beginning to seem surreal to me but have heard there has been a bit on and off on Mauna Kea. In fact, most disturbing, but a Michigan family is still searching for a lost relative who was hiking on the mountain during one off the snow storms. An last but not least Ron is out picking coffee again today. He spead some fertlizer during the last week and both times we got some rain afterwards which was a good thing of course. The trees are looking beautiful and we look forward to blossoms soon. Did I tell you that coffee trees are a relative of the gardenia family and when they bloom scents of gardenia prevail?