The Plan

The Plan was Originally Posted on June 24, 2013 by lavarock

Here is a trivia question for you. Which song has the oldest lyrics ever to hit the rock charts? Most people get it wrong and then even when you mention it is a religous song, they choose something by the “Singing Nun” or guess the Lord’s Prayer.

The answer is “Turn Turn Turn (there is a season)” by the Byrds. The lyrics may be quite familiar to you.

To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn)

And a time to every purpose, under Heaven

A time to be born, a time to die

A time to plant, a time to reap

A time to kill, a time to heal

A time to laugh, a time to weep

Many of you are shaking your head because you recognize the lyrics. A few of you recognize they come from the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible.

Yes, there often is a season for things. From when to plant and when to pick to when to buy a house (summer so the kids can start at a new school at the right time).

Here on the farm, I know I will need a plan of when to pick certain crops. Take fruit for example. I have a few fruit that have a very unforgiving skin when ripe, such as the Sapote. The mamey sapote is termed a “soft fruit” and they are not kidding. When ripe, just slightly squeezing the fruit will cause the skin to break. The inner flesh is very ripe and can be eaten with a spoon. It behaves much like pudding.

Figs can be troublesome. As they ripen and are ready to pick, birds can beat you to the picking by a day. Thus you need to watch closely and pick then just before the birds get to them.

Coffee also has a season and schedule if you will. Heavy rains bring “Kona Snow” which is a fragrant blossom and soon green and then red, ripe cherry. The trouble is, coffee can be labor intensive t opic. It is not unusual to have many pickers descend upon a farm to pick, then go away for a a while and return to pick again. This happens all picking season. Because coffee does not all ripen at the same time, the pickers must go to each tree, pick the ripest beans and leave the green ones for another time. In Kona that is easy because we hand-pick the coffee. On Kauai they have a large coffee farm that is mechanically picked. Thus the machines pick under, ripe and older coffee at the same time. Our Kona pickers look at each cherry and decide to pick or not.

Now what might have brought about this idea for a blog? Real estate! I read an article about what turns off home buyers now-a-days. One item is landscaping. I’m not talking about a big grassy yard because that seems to be a selling point. What the article suggests is that a giant garden with paths and manicured trees, bonsai sections and so on is a turnoff. Today’s buyers don’t have the time nor inclination to be gardeners of massive intricate gardens. They are not alone.

A couple decades ago I was relocating to Atlanta and while looking for a house found one that seemed quite nice. We had come in the side entrance. Then I got to the living room. There I came upon what could only be described as a convention presentation. There were two or three large poster boards with a diagram of the property showing circles and kidney shaped designs. This was a diagrams and listing of all of the flowers and plants, explaining when they came into bloom, what colors they would be and what shapes and sizes they would be.

My first thought was “OMG” who was so anal-retentive to put this much work into a home garden. My second though was, what would this guy do when he came by a while after I moved in and saw that I have taken a lawnmower to the whole garden area?

Two other thoughts came to mind. Either the guy who planted all of this had just died, or he graduated to a larger property where he could right all the things he found wrong with his current venture.

Few people even then would have taken the time to follow his schedule of pruning, fertilizing, landscaping and picking, to keep that design as nice as it was. I am sure that house remained on the market for a long time.

The article also mentioned that buyers were now turned off by pools. You know the definition of a pool, it’s the same as a boat (a hole in the ground/water that you throw money into). A pool may sound fun and perhaps in certain climates it is, but it is also a lot of work. First there is the filling of the hole. It requires water, lots of water. Some jurisdictions give you a special water rate because you will use lots of water. Also, when emptying the pool (and empty it you will), that water does not need to be treated as regular household waste water would. Remember that the pool is (usually) not treated as a toilet. Thus some water companies do not charge you a sewage fee for pool water. You may have to place a separate water meter on the pool line to show how much non-treatable water you are using. By the way, that meter could cost hundreds to a thousand dollars to install if not there already.

Then there are pool chemicals, constantly checking the PH (don’t want algae to grow), adding chlorine (don’t want bacteria to grow) and the required fencing and security (you WANT little kids to grow and not die in your pool). Then there is the seasonal draining or conditioning of the pool to keep leaves out and prepare it for winter.

As you can see, some items around a house or farm require a schedule be followed.

As with the pool, a coffee and fruit farm also has a schedule and not just with picking. There are certain times to fertilize for best crop development. After picking the coffee cherry you must prune the trees and one type of Kona pruning causes you to prune only certain trees and leave the others to be pruned another year. There are also times we spray the trees and times we can’t. For example there is a schedule for spraying a fungicide based upon the growing season. You should spray during a certain part of the day but not when there are blooms on the trees. This protects the bees that are pollinating at the time.

So if you plan upon looking for a new house, you may consider these items along with how many bedrooms there are, etc. You may not have to consider these things very carefully because you may this narrow it down to “WHO exactly is going to do this?”