Archive for February, 2014

Since the farmers market in Makawao town moved up to the Pookela church about a year ago, there has been a slow but steady evolution of people and vendors. At first it seemed kinda like the shift would be smooth running. The first couple of weeks showed little sign of slowdown and the location, with the exception of the north side weather proved to be ideal. After all, there we were on the serene grounds of a beautiful old church, treading on grassy earth and looking up the mountain at yet another splendid maui vista. But for some reason, and these things are always hard to figure, the traffic dropped off, sales fell by maybe twenty percent and everybody was holding their breath to see what may come next. Over the past half year and particularly in the last couple of months things have stabilized to the point of having a steady flow of folks wandering through and has become the only market with "farmer on sight" requirements. Nice to know that one is buying direct from the grower. It is a form of social networking that produces increasingly positive results and connects us to the most basic elements of caring for each other. I got food, gimme money. Last week some nicely polished folks from America were strolling around and browsing the goods. The woman, decked out in casual finery picked up some bananas for me to weight out. I did so, pronounced the price and handled her the golden hand. As she took them and was about to put them in her bag, she went a tiny bit wide eyed and said, " oh, there's bugs" (commonly known as ants). Without a moments hesitation I said, "yes, we have a farm and there's bugs. On occasion  we take them out for some fresh air and of course, honor the wishes of those wanting to attend church regularly". For the briefest moment she was slightly baffled but then decided that I was just making an attempt at humor and had a chuckle. For me it was a reminder. A reminder of the degree to which people of a certain ilk will always find fault instead of favor. Will take the time to sip the whine instead of praise the grape. Its a bit like the produce wholesalers who, if you bring them banana's with any sort of blemish, look at you as though you should be shipped out to the leper colony on Molokai for rehab because, BLEMISHES. Now, I have no problem with the notion of people wanting the very best stuff they can get. After all, they're spending "good money" on that shit, but the idea that ants and blemishes make a banana useless is a bit like saying "don't forget to throw grandpa out with the trash, honey. He's reached a tipping point on those liver spots." You know who I love? I love the people who see a tangor with mottled skin and mite damage, give it a tender little squeeze, maybe a bit of a sniff, look up, smile and say "I'll take em' all". The kind of people who know that the food that comes to market may not be stacked neatly or pimple free, but that it has been lovingly tended to and presented with confidence in the fact that as farmers, we do our very best and then let you decide. We are not heavily invested in madison avenue marketing techniques. We are not particularly enamored of ourselves as being cool people. We have no particular interest in pulling the wool over the eyes of the unsuspecting. More often than not we are self effacing, sarcastic of necessity and in love with what we do. Cynicism rarely enters in, but I do love sarcasm. BUGS, on a farm? Lordy, what next........ More bugs. We are experiencing something of a repeat performance featuring the innocuous looking lace bug and the high flying fruit sucking moth. They last performed for us a couple of years back when the white sapote trees got weakened by the lace bug and succumbed to the ravages of the F.S.M. (lost 90%). These critters don't actually know each other, but they combine their energies to bring about the onset of "mad farmers disease", the symptoms of which include cotton mouth, spiking blood pressure, club foot, wringing of hands, gnashing, screaming at cars that go by and regretting not taking that job as a lifeguard at a carwash. This past season our Bosworth lychee busted out with more flowers and fruit than ever before. The luscious little nubules plumping up in the summer sun. I saw marathon eating sessions in my future, and a bit of profit to boot. Guess what? Upon harvesting the first of the seasons bounty, I noticed that many of the fruits had small brown spots. Kinda softer and gooey underneath too. Hoo boy. So I'm thinking that the moth has struck. Now I'm standing there trying to avoid a "mad farmer" attack, which I do by bending down, squeezing a bud of the cheese and taking big yogi breath, and as i release the scented terpenes through my nostrils, I see a common wasp land delicately and precisely on the shoulder of a perfectly ripe lychee. In amazement I watch as this little pisher buries its face into the pinkish red skin, deposits its eggy ooze, takes a taste and moves on to the next one. Cotton mouth with a side order of twitchy leg (new symptom). Mesmerized, I stood by as some eighty percent of the fruit got bit and could only be fed to the chickens and wwoofers. Then there's the annona borer (use your imagination), jak fruit fungus, papaya scourge, powdery mildew, slugs, snails, puppy dog tails and the occasional duck or chook who just Must have some greens (preferably the newly planted kind). This is not woe is me, just the way it is. "Mad farmer disease" is no laughing matter folks. It effects upwards of sixty two percent of small farmers and is by far the leading cause of flatulence among vegetable farmers. If you farm trees, pond dwelling creatures and feathered goats like I do you may be among the thirty eight percent who only suffer insomnia, cash pooria, and projectile diarrhea. Consider yourself lucky. So the next time somebody says to you, "how about the price of food these days, those farmers have it easy collecting their subsidies for not growing and then jacking up the price by controlling the supply. I bet those fuckers all drive ethanol mercedes with solid gold fuel injectors", you raise up your hand with index finger pointed skyward, wag it back and forth, furrow your brow and say " oh no you di-ent. You di-ent just say that. Say no to the people who need to get a clue. Say no, you must understand the essential importance of this work. Say no because you can't eat money. We need to No when it comes to busting the illusions that mire us in misunderstanding and dispassion falsely assigned. Part of me wishes it were easier. The rest of me knows it just gets tougher and that the only choice is to gut it out. So here's to guts, without which life would be freakin' SCARY. The more you show, the more we'll grow. Peace, Jp          

Four years. Four years and then some. Four years since miss Natalie Forster set foot on the silly soil of Rancho Relaxzo. And with all of my desire and all of my heart, I tried to win her over and make a start with someone so lovely, so childlike and so very beautiful. Her adventure on maui began in Lahaina. Joining her best friend and ex-patriot Minnesotan in town, she spent the first month on Maui moving between party nights and hung over beach time. She arrived at the Rancho in the afternoon. Came in the back room door. I was in the living room, watching the tube. I turned to my left to set eyes on the diminutive and elfin form of the Natty. She was hefting a pack about two thirds her size which seemed to have no impact on her perky fortitude. For those of you who have yet to gaze into the smiling face of ms. forster, let me tell you that it is an experience which solicits a universal response. Wow, too cute. Picture in the dictionary next to the word kind of cute. Feline features framed by a mob of dread locks raining down on a form of beautiful proportion (a babe for sure). But really, cute is just the cream on top of the beauty bottle, because beautiful is hard to approach, but cute is " what can I do for ya m'aam?" There is no such thing as true love. Only love of truth. Love emerges from truth and the truth of it is, we found it. The mingling of pheromones, the pulse pounding energy, the bottomless desire. The missed signals, the lost moments, the first fight. All the good stuff. The beginning of the endless work. The managing of sensibilities. The transmuting of energy. The avoidance of disaster. The growing bond. All the good stuff. Some people might actually look askance at a couple separated by thirty nine years (really tempted to just round that off to forty for the shock value). Pish, toosh, I say. Time, the great illusion is only there to tell us that it does not exist. Meanwhile, I am utterly amazed that this remarkable young being  will have anything to do with this shar pei  looking relic. It takes years, doesn't it? Even if you start off great guns. Laying it all out. Putting it all on the table. Agreeing to disagree and so on. Then it happens. The STICKING point. The point at which all the little things that in and of themselves don't really seem to mean shit, but combined look like a large pile of cat poop in the middle of your silver grey alpaca rug that you know will never come clean and will never smell right. But you keep trying because, the love. The love is compelling in its need to be fulfilled. And in that need an ending begins. Its hard to just Be. In love. The years roll by. Many pebbles on the pond. Moments of clarity followed by a rippling surface with fish that look all squiggly. The explosive joy of new beginnings seque's  into the sobering thought of graceful exits. Just like life. I don't wanna die, mommy. Tell the boogie man to go away. She got settled in her room, came out to the living room with a box of "stuff", and started doing some crafting. We sat and talked. Music played. She danced in her favorite long flowing dress, moving in a way so natural and joyous that my whole being got a boner. I have oft repeated that had I known there were so many young, enthusiastic, charming women among the ranks of wwoofdom, I'd have signed up as a host before so much as a twig had been planted. Mind you, this is not to say that the young men folk haven't been equally ribald, enchanting and helpful, but they all have peckers and are therefore only of limited use to me. I have been blessed to be in the presence of such wonderful young folk (mostly). My mom, who ran the concert office at Princeton University for nigh on a quarter century is still in touch with many of the students and faculty who passed through her life and were touched by it. Moms pretty cool. And that's a wonderful legacy to have. Natalie was the one in the many. We forged the unlikeliest of bonds. Me, part pain and surging to maintain. She, part dream come true, part taming of the shrew. Hard to know how to live with a person who is in pain all the time. Hard to describe to a person who knows no such pain how to know so much pain. She did a remarkable job of trying. When I found out that I needed a hip replaced I thought, Hhmmmmmm. I'm eating my own cartilage. Not good. I was disappointed on many levels. There's the "woe is me" level. There's the " I'm a freakin' yogi guy" level. There's the "blame it on the 36 trip down the kaupo gap" level. And finally there's the " I don't want to die" level. My sixty fifth birthday was more anticipated than any single digit pool party with all your friends and all the cake you can eat, stay up as late as you want kinda deal. Cause now, I could fly like an eagle to any doctor my wittle heart desired and whip out my shiny new laminated medicare card and with a smug look say, here ya go sucka, check me out. Both hips ended up costing seventy eight dollars. New life. Nurse Natalie had been the leader in our pack of wwoofs, and being tenured in her stay by tethering herself to this rickity old stick, she quickly developed a familiarity with the place that gave me the kind of comfort that comes of knowing that someone is really tuned in, and cares. Five months of travel , on her own through asia brought her back to the rancho a new woman and no longer a wwoof. She'd been working the general store in Makawao before she left and when she returned I suggested that she dig into the garden and see if she could make a go of selling greens at market. She has since become an asset to whatever farm or garden she comes in contact with and has become identified with the splendid edible bouquet's that she sells at market, along with abundant smiles and loads of snide remarks passing through her head. Natalie moved from the rancho the other day. We always knew that the nasty bugger "time" would likely get in the way and that it would be best to be prepared to part company. Hard to do, and in some ways made a gnarly bit of a mess of it. But all in all, I think as the dust settles there will be a growing appreciation of the spirit of the time we spent in auto cuddle. An appreciation born of the knowledge that love is hard work and that the work we have done is part of us. A point of reference forever. Tell you what, I'm not going to go all mushy here. Fact is, she got a place an eighth of a mile away. I can practically piss in her yard from my deck. Love you Natty. The more you show, the more we'll grow. Peace, Jp