When we prune coffee trees, usually we keep 2 to 4 young branches each tree; in that way, these branches have space to grow and plenty food to get healthy and strong.

There was a whole cloudy week and then the rain came, the first round of coffee blossom followed right after the rain. I took these photos two weeks ago, it was in the morning, when the sun just climbed over Mauna Loa  mountain, gentle warm sun rays shone on the farm. Coffee flowers look so fresh, tender and pure, I tried to capture their beauty with my camera. I was totally lost in their world, didn’t see a neighbor just walking by me.

We see the flower bloom every year, but I won’t get tired of taking their pictures. Seeing their beauty brings a good feeling to my heart, I love to share a few pictures with everyone.

Terry and I threw the first round of fertilizer when the ground was still wet, farm looks very good, coffee trees looks pretty healthy. We did our job, now we can relax, sit back, and watch coffee trees growing.

We had 2 inches rain last weekend, the trees looks even happier than before.

May day celebration is a big event at Honaunau school. All of the kids worked hard to practice dancing and singing, teachers and parents worked together to prepare for this day, since it’s fund raiser event for the school too.

One week ago, I went to school to help making mango pickles. It’s a very big job, need many hands to do it. Picking mango, peeling, cutting into 2 pieces, digging the seed out, slicing into small pieces, salting, adding warm sugar water with food dye, one week later we can buy yummy mango pickle on May day. It brings good money to our school.

On mango pickling day, there were teachers, parents and community O’hana volunteers. Peeling and digging seed are easy but take time, cutting and slicing are harder, need good tool and strength.

I volunteered for this project last year too, I got two blisters in 2 minutes after I sliced mango with small knife. I learned my lesson, good tool can do better and faster. So I had my big cleaver with me this time, I sliced lots of mango; got one blister at the end. I wasn’t feeling well that time, could feel the cold was approaching to me. After I did it for 8 hours, my hand and fingers were so sore; my cleaver didn’t listen to my mind, cut my finger instead of the mango I was holding. I knew that’s the time for me to quit.

Last Friday evening, I volunteered making sushi. There were 4 ladies making musubi, they made 200. We had 5 ladies rolling sushi, and we made 150.

They always had someone making lunch and supper for all of volunteers.

Most volunteers were local, same faces showed up last year too. Worked with them, I experienced truly aloha, working together and get thing done. While we were working, their conversation seems always involved family, friend or community member; once a while, someone threw in a joke or comment, made everyone laugh. Even at quite moments, the atmosphere was light and loose; I don’t know most of them and had very little to say, but I felt comfortable with them. How should I describe my feeling? Through those community working party, my participation helped me entering the door of community O’hana; they saw me and acknowledged me as a new member of O’hana. They are easy, big heart, not complicated people, I love them; to understand them, I have to see things from their view.

On May day celebration, I took lots of pictures, share some with everyone. All of the kids are so sweet, they look so lovely after dressed up. Be a young child is a wonderful thing, and I’m glad to be able to see their pure beauty, cherish those moments, my eyes filled up with their sweet faces.

When I was a little girl, we celebrated May day too. But I don’t have any pictures to remind me how my friends and I look like, except my memory can tell some stories. Think about it, it’s kind of sad.

Well, let’s see those happy faces, and appreciate their presence, be the beautiful ones around us.

We went to a beach wedding on Saturday,the bride is Terry’s goddaughter, she is gorgeous. This was the first beach wedding I have been to, I thought it’s the best way to get married on the island. Clear blue sky, mountains, ocean with non-stop waves, they witness the special moment of their life. Magic power of the nature, along with family and friends’ blessing, the new couple’s love and happiness will continue to grow and get stronger.

Wish them with many many years happy life together.

It’s coffee harvesting season in Kona country, from November 4 – 13 is Kona Coffee Cultural Festival week. Usually we are very busy at this time, picking coffee every day ourselves. But not this year, our coffee is ripening very slowly, and we haven’t gotten a big round yet. Well, it turned out to be the best opportunity to attend coffee festival event.

Yesterday was cupping competition – preliminary round, from 9:00am to 2:00am, we went in the this morning. We didn’t enter our coffee this year, we just going to have some fun. We went there with our friend Tom, Trudie and her son Orion. Before we met our friends Jack and Sara, we were a pretty good size group to taste the coffee sample and exchange opinions.

Terry saw the calender which our friend made to promote estate Kona coffee. She used photos of male coffee farmers as there already is one with only women.Terry is the August farmer.

I imagined there would be lot of people inside the cupping room, but there were few people; it was around 10:00 am, we were not really too early. We were there and got to try some coffee samples. OK, here is how coffee tasting went with me.

There were only three farms sample on the table. I poured some coffee from the middle thermos, inhaled the steam from the cup, captured some coffee aroma but not very strong, bitter then sour, the more I drank the stronger the acidic became.

Coffee from left side thermos, a very strong cooked sweet potato smell, first I thought that I like sweet potato, so smell like sweet potato is OK with me. Next second I thought, well, when anyone drinks coffee, they might prefer coffee aroma than sweet potato aroma. Detected acidic right away, and get stronger.

Coffee on the right side, no coffee aroma, acidic was stronger than second one.

Later, another sample came, fresh brewed coffee, captured some coffee aroma, taste mild. Mean while, We sat around a table chatting, coffee cool down in the cup. Tried again, it hardly had any taste, even acidic.

Between those tasting time, I took some pictures and watched judges cupping some coffee. It’s a very interesting scene and I wish I had more knowledge about cupping.

I noticed they’d been tasting from the same coffees for a while, longer than I expected. One judge was a young lady, she always gave a friendly smile to people. With a few questions, I learned something from her. Tasting fresh brewed coffee to identify good quality; tasting again when the coffee temperature come down, at this stage, some good quality disappear, some bad quality show up. Be a good coffee, good quality should remain without adding bad quality.

Hooray! I learned something today. As a coffee farmer, except trying our best to take care the farm, I’m going to learn more about tasting. And I will love to share my learning experience with everyone.

Tom treated us lunch at Huggos’ on the rock, wonderful meal and happy group. It was a satisfied morning, we didn’t know something was waiting for us, kept us busy.

On the way home, a friend need some help to take care of some fish , about 25lb of fish steak needed to be dried or smoked, his dryer broke down so Trudie and I will care of this fish.

Trudie Burnham is Terry’s long time friend, she has lived in New Zealand over 25 years. She is visiting and staying with us for few days. She is a great cook, published 2 cooking books. << Innovative Soy Cooking>>, and <<Secrets of a Sauce Queen>>. With Trudie in the house, I feel very confident to take care this big pile of fish.

I cut up fish, Trudie made sauce, we made 4 batches with different recipes. It took us 1 hour to do the work. We are going to smoke them tomorrow, well, actually it’s first time for both of us to make smoke fish.

Our fishing man friend recommended that hang the fish in the air for a couple hours before smoke them, so outside of the fish will dry a little bit and firm. I took his words, suggested to hang the fish stripes on laundry line over night. Cool breath from mountain will dry the fish a little bit, and no flies at night. But how to hang them, there are hundred pieces of fish.

When things come up to you and you never did before, you just have to deal it with your own way. If it works, then it’s good way for you. Here is my way to solve this present problem.

I used a chopstick, poked a hole at one end of fish, pushed through a cotton string ( we use the string to tie coffee bag ); then Trudie tied them on laundry line. After tied few pieces, she suggested we tie the fish strip on our wooden hanger, it will save us lot of trouble to move it into smoke box. Good idea!

She said, this was the craziest thing she had ever done in 6 months.

This is my first time doing it too, I will remember this for ever. There are many first times in our life, give it a try, we might find some surprises. Who knows, from this first time, I might learned a good recipe for smoke fish. Ha ha ha!

What a day!

There was a community event at Keoua Honaunau Canoe Club on Saturday afternoon, with music, dancing, food, and more. I enjoyed the music and dancing most, took some nice pictures. I recognized one Hawaiian song, which was first introduced to me by Terry back to 2000. At that time, the music formed lot of images of Hawaii in my mind, helped me to get know and close to  this paradise in my heart.  On the CD there was a hula dancing cat. Oh, I need to find the CD and listen to them again.

We went to a little boy’s birthday party on last Saturday. Look at this picture, you can tell they had a great time.

We have a very easy day today. In the morning, Terry fixed the garden fence when I was transplanting some green onion. There is not much growing right now, too much rain in last couple of months, and killed my beautiful tomato plants. But cabbages are growing very fast, not only we enjoy them, our chicken do too.

See the black soil, that’s compose from last year’s cherry skin with two truck loads of mac nuts huskers.