This weeks musings & coffee update

Funny how when you know what you are looking for it is much easier to see isn't it?? Heading out on an early morning paddle our captain steered us out further from shore. The purpose of our float plan would be to see more whales out there. Between us and shore at about 10 o'clock a blow spout when up as there was several whales between us and shore. Our stroker lost count he was so excited so we stopped and watched until they dove of with a wave of their tail. I believe it is called a fluke. I learned that once you see that they are diving and will be down for about 20-25 mins. before they come back up and you see the blow spout again. Ron was wondering why we hadn't seen the whales from our lanai but Sunday morn during breakfast he pointed to several spouts and with our binoculars watched as they entertained a boat of either whale watchers or snorkelers. Whichever they got a great show and so did we. The boat was actually a big zodiac style which is a large tube looking boat somewhat like the river rafts only with an outboard motor and much larger. From our vantage point you could see the whale as he was underwater near the zodiac and he was much larger than the boat. Now these zodiacs carry probably 20 people or more so you can imagine how large our humpbacks are.

I also want to mention that we do coffee farm sometimes. Well Ron more than me. Well, I mean he is out there pruning (yes, his buddies are teasing him that he really is running the farm 'one handed'). But the pruning is for next seasons crop. We are also getting another blossom in another area and more on some of the trees that already had a blossom. We can only hope that this means a good crop this year as we are already running low on parchment. Parchment is what we take to the mill to get milled and roasted for retail. We are not sure but it looks like we won't have enough to take us thru to the next picking. We will be coming to the mainland for awhile in June-July and hope to bring some back with us but maybe not. Moral of this post is if you are thinking about ordering any coffee from now until August or Sept. let me know now so I can save it for you. We only sell coffee grown and processed from our farm (some farmers will buy cherry or parchment from others and sell it). The former owners had picked their crop and we bought the product with the farm so we don't know how much we will have next year when we produce it ourselves. And sometimes, as all farming goes, it depends on the seasonal weather conditions. So far we seem to have had ample rain. We only irrigated a bit in Jan. and then the rains came and right now the trees look healthy and beautiful. Ron is doing a topnotch job pruning and the orchard looks great. There are coffee berries, green, and about the size of a small pea already growing. We can hardly wait till picking season. More fun!!