Coffee harvesting season is over, but our daily life seems still very full; I couldn’t find much time for working on the computer, or when I had time in the evening, I was too tired to turn on the computer.

Pruning is the hardest job of coffee farming, at least, to us.

Every year, after harvesting coffee, we need to cut down some old branches and extra young shoots, leaving 3 or 4 nice branches to grow. Then, chop up those old branches one by one with machete.

Why don’t we use a chipper ? Well, some parts of our farm are very rocky, not flat, lots of branches have to be dragged a long way to reach the road where the chipper is. One year, Terry rented a chipper, and two friends helped him. At the end of work, they were too exhausted to eat any food, which one friend’s wife prepared. Ever since that experience, Terry doesn’t want to use a chipper for this particular job.

I saw Terry pruning with a hand saw many times, it’s doesn’t seems very hard. I tried, and gave it up right away when the saw stuck half way through a big branch. I stick to chop branches with machete, I’m pretty good with it. I still remember some moments, at that time, I was pregnant 4/5 months with Sonny, and chopping  coffee branches. That year, Terry’s university friend Bill was visiting, he helped  with the job too. He thought it’s a hard labor work, not a retirement for an old guy.

Terry was very busy with our project, so I managed to take care the farm work.

One of our coffee picker needed some work, and he knew how to prune coffee trees. I hired him and worked with him the first day, he seems like a fairly hard working guy; next day, I hired his friends too, another of my coffee pickers. They did the most pruning and chopping, I feel so grateful about their work, helped us get through this big job.

It’s my first year of pruning, I felt so good to cut down some old ugly branches, next picking will be much easy. I used hand saw, it’s not hard at all, I didn’t meet any of challenging branch. I told Terry ” I’m much stronger than before, thanks for 8 years training “.

Second day of my pruning, my spirits were very bright and high. I felt so happy to learn a new thing, and be able to work.

Right now, I’m in middle of stripping the coffee tree, picking all dried, or red, or green cherry off the tree. The picture shows my tools: clippers to snap extra young shoots, hook to bend some tall branches, machete and hand saw, bucket to pick cherry, one glove and small shoulder bag for picked cherry. Since I’m on the job alone, it will take me some time, but I’ll carry the job to the end.

We had some rain last week, and some cool cloudy time this week. It will do the coffee trees good, they need it. On my morning walk, I noticed lots of coffee flower buds.

Look at the picture. Can you imagine? An excited energetic fairy live inside each of those tight closed buds, waiting for the blooming moment to see the world, and sent forth their sweet delicate fragrance to the coffee country.

What an excited moment they are living in!

What a lucky life we have! Be able to slow down our pace and pay a close attention to the things around us, observe their amazing transformation.

Yes, I feel very lucky already.

The week before Terry was sick, he was down for the whole week. Without normal Terry around, I felt a little low too even though I tried to keep myself busy. Sonny missed dad being his morning chauffeur, wished dad getting better soon. Now we are so happy daddy came out from his sickness; silly, funny and playful normal dad is back to our life.

In 2010, we had a bad drought, coffee borer affected some farms badly, but our farm was doing fine and hardly noticed any coffee borers. This year, we have less than half crop compared with our normal year, coffee borer is not easy to deal with. We will try our best to keep borer’s number down, hope next year will be better.

This week we have some coffee pickers picking the last round coffee, I asked them to pick everything off from the tree, black, green, red cherry; then I put the coffee into black garbage bags on the drying deck and tie it up. Hope it will kill the bugs living inside, if not, we can burn them. In this way, at least we destroy some food and places in which the bugs are living .

From the picture, you can tell there are some ripe cherry too. I was hoping to process this round ripe cherry, then couldn’t find pickers since there were not much ripe cherry to pick. That’s how we end up with these mixed coffee. I even thought to pick the ripe ones out by myself, Terry stopped me. He said that it take as much time to separate them as to pick them from the tree, since three guys are out in the field picking, it will take me longer time than I expect to finish the job.

Hanging a trap for the bugs on the tree is another solution too, we will get more traps after pruning.

With the coffee borer problem, farming the land seems harder than before. But we love the life the land provide to us, we don’t have other option, except facing the problem. I’m pretty optimistic about it, we will make it if we try our best.

Yesterday Sonny had his piano lesson, he got a Chinese fortune cookie as a prize from his teacher. He ate the cookie and handed to me the piece of paper, I asked him to read it. It says ” You love life very much “. I amazed the words matching with my Big little boy so much. AND we bought a toy riffle with one dollar at a garage sale on our way to home, he was super happy.

My late new year wishes

To friends and family and people who we haven’t met

Happy

Healthy

Love and be loved

Enjoy the life you are living in, (if not, be able to find it)

In the year of dragon.

We are picking coffee this week again.

Ama is our good friend’s son, Iraq and Afghanistan veteran. Becky is his wife, graduated from University of Puget Sound and got a degree of psychology. They both are unemployed now. Last round, they heard that we couldn’t find any coffee pickers to help,so they came to help for one whole week until we got a crew. They both are very mellow and seemed to enjoy their picking time. If we had more people who don’t mind doing some farm work, we wouldn’t have to rely on Mexican workers so much.

Finding a good crew to pick coffee is not easy for a small coffee farm,  like us. Farms with an extra house, can provide a place for coffee pickers, so their coffee is guaranteed to get picked  first. We have used a friend’s crew for over 10 years, they are very good pickers, clean and fast.

But last year was a different story. This friend didn’t have enough pickers and couldn’t take care his coffee, or our coffee. Terry and I tried our best to pick as much as we could. Our good friends, Jack and Sara came to help at off work time, and picking coffee was totally a new thing to them. Jack worked in office with numbers before he retired, Sara ran a coffee shop on the mainland. Their contribution showed a true friendship toward us, we accepted it with appreciation. Here, I’m talking about our friends again. How can I not to talk about it? After all, friends wave in our life all the time, they are part of our life story.

Coffee cherry are getting ripe, from red turned to purple, from purple to brown, some fell on the ground, some dried on the tree. Terry phoned this friend about coffee pickers, he said the picking crew would be here this Monday. But the crew showed up on Wed, picked two days, then have to go some place else.

Before the crew came, Becky, her mom and I started picking on Monday. Her mom is visiting her from Washington for two weeks, so she wants a little coffee picking experience. After two days picking, she is more appreciate the work we are doing.

Yesterday morning I was picking near the house, Terry yelled to me, he had to go to town because the pulper’s chain just about to break. So that set my mind to work, how can I take care all those problems alone when Terry is not here anymore? Well, I need Terry to show me how to maintain the machine, I will learn if I have a interest.

Around 2pm, the picking crew quit. We just had our lunch, finally we got a chance to sit down and rest. Half deck was covered with coffee, a wore out blue round barrow set upside down as a small table, radio, flashlight, lighter and Terry’s items lie on top. I was tired from picking alone, slow progress; Terry looked tired too.

We had a little talk, I put out my little worry about farming the land alone in future. Terry had a long breath, said:” well, time like this, you need to sit down and rest, think who is the best person to ask for help. Eventually something will happen.” Then he lift his eye lids, looked at me with that grin on his face, said:” I know you, you have now ideas about mechanic.”  I couldn’t help to laugh, because he is right, said:” I can learn, just necessary things to keep the machine running.”

We had 20 minutes rest, he went to pick up Sonny, and took him to a gathering at the beach for our friend Berny’s dad who past away last week. I stayed home and pulped 6 bags of coffee.

A day of our coffee harvesting season.

Terry and I cleaned the orchids patch yesterday, planning to add more different kind orchids. That was the biggest job we did yesterday, well, it still took us the whole morning.

Today Terry cut the grass and I harvested some food.

I picked some string beans, gave some to our friend and going to make some pickled bean. Talk about pickled long bean, I have a little story to share with you.

I met an Ahka lady on a cargo boat which carried full load of garlic on Mekong River from China to Thailand, she was the cook for the boat crew. Our transportation fee included 3 meals with the crew, those meals were very simple, but they were sure taste good. I’ll never forget those meals.

We were the only two women on the boat, so we chatted. It only took us a few minutes to find out we speak same language, I felt like a sister toward to her.

There were always a dish of pickle on the table every meal, she made it. It was so good, I had to get the recipe, she taught me her tricks. Back to Hawai’i, it didn’t take me too long to start experiment her recipe, and I succeeded. Terry give me a new nick name ” pickle lady”.

Later I picked some Po ha ( goose berry) and trimmed the bush.

Then I went to look for some Avo under the tree, nothing on the ground but lots on the tree. During Avo season, we can find a lot of Avo on the ground everyday, and we always tried to give them away. We are so used to have them around, now we can’t find any, kind miss it.  So I picked some from low branches, their skin are not too shinning, hope they will ripe.

I walked by mountain apple tree, it was loaded. I picked some for Sonny, he likes it.

This morning Terry asked me:” what are you going to do today?”

“Don’t know, maybe work in my garden for a little while.”

Quiet often this is our early morning conversation, and usually we don’t have big plan for the day, just do something around the house or in the farm.

After I visited my garden, I weeded one orchid patch by the house. Orchid and Bromeliad are planted together, it was hard to weed. My arms got lot of cuts from Bromeliad’s sharp leaf edge, didn’t finish the job.

When I was working, my mind took me back to an old memory.

My dad worked for rubber plantation when I was young, he took care about 5 acres hill side land. He and my mom cleaned the jungle land, planted rubber trees. Weeds grow very fast on tropical land, my parents built a working shack on the field, it was built with bamboo and thatch roof . There are about 5 meters space between two rows of rubber tree, so my family planted corn, upland rice, soy bean, peanut, sorghum on those unused land; planted pumpkin, bean and veges in the valley near the shack, and flowers around the shack. Of course, we kids all helped planting, weeding and harvesting when we were off from school.

I remember the days of harvesting peanuts. Beginning my parents and elder sisters pulled the peanuts from the soil and piled them around my younger sister and me, and my younger sister and I picked peanuts off from the plants. Early mornings were pretty cool ’till around 9 or 10 O’clock when it got hot. My dad would tie an umbrella on a bamboo pole and stick the pole on the ground beside us to gave us good shade since we just sat on one spot. At the end, everybody would pick peanuts with us.  We girls were talking, joking, singing, laughing, like a flock of chirping birds. The whole valley was filled with our happy voice and laughter, nobody lived in the valley, so the valley became our private little world.

At that time, not only my dad, but also lots of Chinese men didn’t kiss or hug  their children to express their love, or say “I love you” to them. I’m sure lots of them do love their children, and I’m pretty sure my dad loved us too, we girls all understand his love now from lots of his small deeds.

Sometimes field chores could be hard for us, especially for me and younger sister. I cried many times without anybody seeing my tears, but now those memories are priceless. I can find them inside my mind,  so warm and fresh, just like yesterday’s life. I’m really happy with my childhood which my parents gave to me, it taught me a lot without me knowing it.

I  never thought I would be a farmer before I married, now I’m a coffee farmer.  I’m fitting in farmer’s life pretty good, and I’m still learning. The most wonderful thing is that I’m happy to be a coffee farmer.

In Honaunau coffee cherry is start to change their color, from green to pink or yellow, then red. To me, red cherry is a happy color, and it also says “Coffee harvest season is here”.

Like any other kind of agriculture crop, harvest season means farmer’s life getting busy and have to work extra hard than other time, as ripping crop won’t wait in the field for ever. And only harvested crop can refer to be this year’s crop, crop in the field is still belong to mother nature.

Terry and I picked the first round of ripe cherry. First round coffee is not much fun to pick for coffee picker who is picking coffee for living at this season, but it’s a very important job. Only a little bit cherry are ripe, but when you pick the ripe one also pull some tight growing branches apart. It makes future round picking easier and save more cherries on the branches.

It took us 20 days to finish picking the whole farm, and we picked 1353 pounds cherry together. It’s not a lot, but we are very happy to get the job done.

Coffee harvest season.

Yes, we are ready.