Our lives have been very busy since we got back from our summer trip.

We sprayed BotanicGuard once in July as soon as we got our life routine back. Then we noticed that some coffee was ripe and need to be picked, that was end of July, we started our first round picking.

It was so early, we couldn’t get help from our picking crew, most of them still on the mainland. Terry, Sonny and I picked the first 7 days without any help, we were slow but we cleaned up some areas. Through a friend, we met a couple who used to take care 15 acres of coffee farm, we paid them 1 dollar per pound for this first round. They are wonderful people and excellent pickers, they picked over 300 pounds a day between them, and Terry and I only picked 80 pounds together. I couldn’t imagine how they can picking so fast, hope they didn’t make a mess of the farm. One day, I went to lower garden, walked through the area they picked. It was nice clean, no broken branches, bamboo poles prop up some branches after they picked. I  was really pleased by their work.

We picked second and third round of coffee in August and September, Beatrice and her husband helped us on second round, our picking crew came to help us at the end of third round. We just finished our fourth round, it was a big round, our picking crew were too busy to finish the job, we had to do it ourselves, it took us long time to finish this round. It started on 13th of October, ended on 7th of November. Our pickers picked two days and they told us they couldn’t come back in a week, so we started picking ourselves. If Beatrice and her husband helped us, it wouldn’t take this long, but their lives caught into some other issues, they couldn’t come. Luckily we had some friends who came to help on their off days, even we were not fast pickers but we got some coffee harvested. Now we can have a break for a couple of weeks before next round picking.

Wet coffee on drying deck.

We usually let coffee dry on deck for a few days, then load them into drying machine, it is not only to dry coffee but also kill the CBB living in coffee beans. Terry picked these ripe Hawaii chilli pepper, they will get dried with coffee at the same time.

School started in August, we signed up swimming practice for Sonny, he had to practice one hour every afternoon, and we took a few trips to different swimming pools for swim meets on the island.

Meanwhile, Terry’s grandnephew Callum came to live with us, check out the island life style and help out with farm works. So far he likes here, and found a steady job in our neighborhood, works five days a week, he doesn’t see himself move away for a while.

Sonny likes to have a big brother living in our house, another person to hang round except parents.

Terry and I both are very happy to have Callum around, he take over some labor intense jobs, like empty trailer with coffee skin, spray BotanicGuard. Callum and I threw last round of fertilizer in September, we did the whole farm in one day, the last hour it was pouring, we were soaking wet and tired. I was so exhausted, all I could do was watching movies on coach at the end of the day. We’ll take 2 days to do this job next time, make it a litel easier.

I told Callum many times, how great we can have him in the house, we all benefit from him been here.