Agritourism comes to Oahu

A few weeks ago, as a guest on the Haleiwa Farmers' Market North Shore Farm Tour, a busload of us headed country for a tour of a few North Shore farms. Haleiwa Farmers' Market (partnering with E Noa tours) hopes to add more farms and tours (i.e. a chocolate tour and Waianae tour) in the future, but for now, it's just this one, running twice a week to Poamoho Organic Produce, Waialua Sugar Mill and North Shore Cattle Co.

Above, Al Santoro on 7-acre Poamoho Organic Produce, which lies between Poamoho Gulch and Mt. Ka'ala. A former naval intelligence officer, he and his wife, Joan, converted former sugar cane land to an orchard which now fruits (when in season) mangoes, longan, lychee, Meyer lemons, limes, papayas, starfruit, tangerines, avocadoes, among others.


Chickens and ducks eat any fruit that fall to the ground, helping to keep the bug population down, while also of course providing eggs.


After Poamoho, we make a stop at the Waialua Sugar Mill, which Haleiwa Farmers' Market manager Pam Boyar likes to include on the tour to give a sense of history of the region, where most of the land used to be in sugar production. The smell of roasted coffee greets us and outside, crates of cacao pods are being delivered. We also sample Island X's shave ice with syrup that's made with real, local fruit like mango and pineapple.


Last stop: North Shore Cattle Co, where Ryan Lum talks of their cattle operations at the top of Haleiwa. We finish with a picnic lunch amongst gorgeous views.

Generally, I'm not one for tours...they often make me feel like I'm part of a herd, and sometimes the experience feels less like a personal interaction with a farmer than a marketing pitch, but I understand the need for this tour and even as someone who's been to a lot of farms, I still learned something new. Everyone did. And given the small size of the tour, we had time to ask individual questions which the farmers answered pretty honestly. The more people that can connect the hard work these farmers put in and the obstacles they face with what's on their plate, the more chance we have in changing the agricultural landscape. We never know what the ripple effect will be...

Grow Community Festival at Wai‘anae High School

Three or four times a year, Ka‘ala Farms and Wai‘anae High School organize a Grow Community Festival for WHS students in the Natural Resources Academy (which includes students studying agriculture, Hawaiian studies, marine sciences, and food service). The goal of Natural Resources Academy is "taking care of the natural resources we have in Wai‘anae," says agriculture teacher Lei Aken.

The Grow Community Festival is kind of a Hawaiian version of Alice Waters' Edible Schoolyard, an organic garden and kitchen classroom in Berkeley. The students learn to build dry boxes, dry fish, smoke meat (in this case, turkey, since it's a week before Thanksgiving), build an imu, pound taro, and use an earth oven to make pizzas.


Above, commercial opelu fisherman Domingo Gomes shows the students how to dry ahi fillets and scrape the meat out of oio which they'll later mix with taro and fry for oio andagi. Though Wai‘anae High School does have an organically-certified garden and some aquaculture where the students raise ogo, shrimp and tilapia, most of the food prepared this day was not raised at the high school.


Uilani Arasato (pounding above), one of 17 interns at Ka‘ala Farms over the summer, takes on an almost motherly role in showing the inexperienced (including me) on how to pound poi. While pounding, she talks of breaking down Wai‘anae stereotypes, the topic of her "I am Wai‘anae 2009" video.


Eric Enos, co-founder and Executive Director of Ka‘ala Farms, putting the pizzas prepared by the students (which includes a few "stuffed-crust pizzas") in the earth oven. Enos says Ka‘ala Farms partnership with WHS is natural. "Our mission is to preserve the living culture...connect families through food. Sustainability [has been] our mission from way back when..But it’s really important that we work with the youth. By empowering youth we really get momentum...Public education really has to be elevated. Otherwise it’s just recruit for the military."


Taro flatbread, made by mixing taro and water.


Taro andagi - the dough is made with taro, bananas, coconut milk, flour, baking soda and sugar, rolled into balls and fried.

Big Island farmers' markets and farm visits

I won't bore you with all the million farmers' market photos that we always take, except for this one, because it's especially unique. This is Sandwich Isle Bread Co's levain, the best locally-made bread I've had on the islands (of course, there are stories of Chris Sy's levain fit for Japan's emperor, but I haven't tried it...yet). The best part is the wood-fired, dome-shaped oven on wheels that allows Kevin Cabrera (the baker who calls himself a "yeast-wrangler" among the cattle wranglers of Waimea) to bake bread on site.

I love traveling with like-minded foodies. In this case, Laurie Carlson, president of Slow Food O‘ahu. With some time on our hands, we went to see the attractions: KTA, a local supermarket chain in Big Island known for its commitment to sourcing locally. It didn't disappoint. Here, behind the poke counter, the seafood man breaks down a yellowfin tuna brought in early the same morning.

Again, Laurie and I are of the same mind...we wonder if we have a pot big enough in our vacation rental to throw this fish head in. Unfortunately, our dining cards are fully booked for our stay, so we have to leave it behind.

A visit to Mauna Kea Tea in Ahualoa. Big Island agriculture seems to be betting on tea being the next Kona coffee. The green tea and oolong tea from Mauna Kea Tea is extremely light, though fragrant, and the tea farm one of the tidiest farms we've seen.

A friend of ours works on Jan Dean's Maluhia Farm and Hawaiian Homegrown Wool Co. as a sheep-shearer (how much more of a country job can you get??). Though Jan's main business is producing wool (for which we're actually eyeing wistfully for the chilly Big Island nights), she also keeps chickens.

We catch one of their hens in the midst of laying.

Unperturbed, she grants us a picture-perfect shot of her nest and freshly-laid egg.

For more pictures of the farm (check out our friend's new living space under the tarp!) and some fascinating pictures of chicken processing check out her gallery.

Return to Frankie's Nursery

Back to Frankie's Nursery for the first time since November. I spent over three hours walking around with Frank, realizing only later that I had become a buffet for mosquitoes. Rubbing citronella grass on my legs was too little, too late. We harvested bamboo shoots and nibbled on the stem of a taro plant, from a variety of taro that's low in calcium oxalate--the stuff that usually makes your throat itchy if any part of the taro plant isn't cooked thoroughly. We probably ate a dozen or so fruits, Frank scrambling up trees to pick them, as lithe as a ten-year-old. Unfortunately, I remember the names of few of them and my hands were too sticky to take pictures.

What I did manage to document: above, nutmeg, flanked by yuzu and a fruit similar to a plum.

A star anise-like variety of spice.

Jackfruit as big as a linebacker's torso. 

Cut open, there's something so primal about jackfruit...so fleshy and large. Tastes of pineapple and cantaloupe. Frank sent me home with a champedek, similar to a jackfruit, but has hints of garlic. As it ripens, it smells like natural gas...Ben kept moving it to the farthest corners of the yard, as far away from our house as possible. Frank has many stories of people who have called inspectors to investigate a gas leak, of valets who are afraid to start a car all because of a champedek ripening inside.

Miracle berry. First heard about it in a New York Times article...still have "throw a miracle berry party" on my to-do list, even if it's so last year. Without thinking, I ate it halfway through our farm ramble, and everything afterwards just tasted absurdly sweet. I went through the citrus grove, sucking on limes and lemons while Frank got a kick feeding me unripe fruit. After an hour, I felt like I had drank a six-pack of soda and was craving something, anything, salty or sour.

Lotus flower...when they open, they're as big as my face.

When the "shower heads" dry up, they open and you can pry out the lotus seeds. Perfect for the next time I make ba bao fan.

Kupa‘a Farms

Kupa‘a Farms is a 4-acre organic farm in upcountry Maui run by Gerry Ross and Janet Simpson. A few of my favorite things about Kupa‘a Farms:

- When we were visiting, Kupa‘a's CSA box contained pineapples (how many CSAs in the country can boast that?!) and red, white and blue potatoes in time for July 4. 

- Like other good organic farms, Gerry and Janet are truly cultivators of the soil; last winter, while heavy rains washed away neighboring farms' crops, so that onions were found rolling around Kula Highway below, Kupa‘a Farms lost barely an inch of soil, a testament to its soil health. 

- In a recent cupping competition hosted by the Hawaii Coffee Association, Kupa‘a Farms coffee placed 7th out of 69 entries. It placed first of all the Maui coffees and bested quite a few Kona coffees.  

- And my absolute favorite thing about Gerry and Janet: with a trap, they catch would-be predators of their crops–small birds and pheasants, mostly–eat them. Gerry admits that sometimes they're kind of tough, but it's all part of eating what the farm provides.

Market Fresh Bistro

A reliable tip when traveling is to ask chefs where they like to eat. Our new favorite idea is to ask farmers where they like to eat and where they send their produce to. For farmer Gerry Ross of Kupa‘a Farms in Kula, Maui, the answer to both questions is the same: Market Fresh Bistro. These days "local" is a favorite buzzword marketers love to attach to food, but the eateries that truly embody the philosophy, such as places like town in Kaimuki, and now, Market Fresh Bistro, capture my heart and palate completely. Here, it's not really about the fancy flourishes and sauces a chef could put on a plate, but rather, letting fresh, local ingredients shine.

Above, Maui organic strawberries on mini Belgian waffles (actually, probably the menu item with the fewest local products, but I have a weakness for food in miniature) and below, Maui Cattle Company shortrib with polenta and fried egg.


The last Thursday of every month, they have a farmers' dinner, showcasing a different Maui farm. We almost made a special trip for the Kupa‘a Farms dinner, having seen all of Gerry's beautiful produce, but we suspect when we find ourselves again at Market Fresh Bistro for a future farmers' dinner, the showcased farmer and food will be just as radiant.

Thoughts: Misleading Advertising, Farm Theft

What's wrong with this picture? A "Locally Grown" sign over clearly imported apples...even if the sign doesn't specifically say the apples below are local, its placement is deliberately misleading. What's most infuriating about this is that it's at the Kapahulu Safeway. Safeway has the least amount of locally-grown produce of all the supermarket chains (I can get more local stuff at Costco even!). This day, in all of the produce section, the only locally-grown items were the pineapples. Safeway obviously sees a growing market in consumers interested in purchasing local, but instead of actually trying to source local produce, they resort to shady marketing tactics.

Other disheartening news: stolen tomatoes at Jeanne Vana's North Shore Farms, right before the farm fair. Not only do farmers here have to contend with year-round diseases and pests, when crops are actually healthy, they're vulnerable to thieves. Based on conversations with farmers here, theft is a serious issue. One farmer talks of needing dogs, guns and alarms to try to protect his property, but is afraid of the fallout should he actually catch a thief. Gustavo Diaz, of Kapalua Farms in Maui, who used to farm in Virginia, says it was never a problem there because of the remoteness, but on Maui, he's considering giving up the fruit orchards because he loses so much to theft every year. Like a lot of crime, it's hard to tell whether the best solution is a reactive (tighter security with government funding because small farms don't have the resources) or a proactive stance (developing community around the farms so to discourage theft? Sounds a little too idealistic to me...would need to see it in practice on a for-profit farm) or a mix of both.