My days are starting to take on a rhythm. Not so much in the sense that I do the same thing each day, just that I am tuning into the rhythm of island life.
Work is part of that life, but the work just feels different. I love what I am doing! I am stimulated and learning, plus, it's just fun to spend your morning picking veggies. Yes, it is still hard for me to hear the alarm at 6:15 each day (4:45 on saturdays) but I always give myself time to go to the communal kitchen and make a stout and thick to gritty cup of cowboy coffee (the secret is to let it boil for a few) and, lately, a gigantic pancake. I am living in the midst of a pancake epidemic at the farm. We are all hooked, and so anytime that one arrives at the kitchen, it is likely that pancakes are being cooked. And that's just a tough thing to ignore.
The harvest starts at 7am (5:30 on saturdays) and Marta can be found at the work station taking daily orders on her cell phone for local restraunts and natural food stores. There is also the farmer's market produce to harvest, and she makes the call on how much to send with Josh in the old white dodge caravan. All of the seats in the back are out, and five days a week Josh sets up the tables out the back in different towns on the north and east shores of the island, and sells the produce to the people!
But it all starts in the early morning silence of the fields, the sun's first golden rays piercing the sky, Kauai's many wild roosters making their announcements, my new farm friends and me shuffling along the rows, snipping and clipping and laughing or just thinking. I like to let my mind wander as my feet do, searching out the perfect leaves on each chard plant, allowing the others to stay and soak up sun to fuel the next young beauty. It is very meditative time.
Thirty-five chard bunches later I bring my load to the wash station -two large tarped areas with a long bench, wash tubs, and so on. The wash station is a hub of activities, the best spot to look or wait if you need to talk to someone who is out the in the 29 acres of veggies and fruit orchards. The local radio station is usually on, a lot like KBOO in Portland, a gem that helps me tune into the pulse of the community I am living in. Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman, hawaiian music of all varieties, local events, and the surf report are a sampiling of things I like to hear on this station.
Everyday I get to learn how this farm harvests and preps the food for delivery: how big to make bunches of things (beets, chard, kale, cilantro, basil, oregano, mint, rosemary, arrugula) how much the bagged items should weigh (green beans, baby greens, corn, broccoli), how to cut and shuck the corn, how to hut for bright green worms on bright green broccoli (people still have a hard time with the idea that their organic produce might have non-dead organic bugs on it, but that is totally healthy as long at the pest population isn't unhealthily high)
The wash station is where I have gotten to know the people that I am sharing this space with too. It is such a mix of flavors and that suits my spicy taste just fine. There is Holly, the surfer chick from England who just recently graduated from MTSU; Greg and Margaux, fantastic and unique humans; Josh, Morgan, Zaph, Ned and Marta and their two kids Si and Iesha, Cody, and as of yesterday Caroline and Phil who arrived from BC, and will stay until the end of the month....Phil wants to try to catch a wild chicken and eat it. He'll have to do it at his camp though, the kitchen is vegan...
