The Week That Was (and Is)

The Week That Was (and Is) was Originally Posted on November 12, 2005 by lavarock

This week is our annual Coffee Festival Week. If you love coffee or perhaps even LIVE coffee, this would have been the week to be in Kona. Starting with an evening lantern parade and continuing through coffee tasting and farm tours, coffee took center stage.

On any other 1st Friday of the month I would have been at the KonaWeb picnic over at the old airport park, but I was at Hale Halawai selling coffee and Kona Coffee Council apparel.

Then on Thursday I was called upon to be the auctioneer at the KCC dinner and auction. I guess they felt that my DJ background was sufficient to be an auctioneer. Little did they know that I also used to do a bit of auctioneering and product pushing over on Public Television in Richmond and Fairfax Virginia. With Thursday approaching, I began doing some research on the items to be auctioned and on pronunciation of some of the Hawaiian names. I also came up with a few humorous stories and jokes, just in case there were lulls in the action. I only got to use a few to both my and the audiences good fortune!

Early on Friday I took some green coffee up to be roasted and came back home. Usually they clean the floors and do maintenance early in the morning and then turn to roasting later in the day. I can usually pick up my coffee at 4pm. To my surprise and chagrin, I got a call 2 hours later to pick up my roasted beans. I now suspect that because it was a Friday holiday that they were closing early. To avoid making extra trips into town, I cleaned out the truck bed and threw in a few tarps and some rope. After picking up the coffee I proceeded to get gas at COSTCO and then stopped at Soil Plus. There I got two loads of nursery mix (with black cinders) and brought it home.

I backed the truck into position under the mango trees and dumped the dirt on a tarp. Then I went to a neighbor’s house to add some memory in her computer. What should have been a 20 minute stop turned into a 3 hours problem, which ended up with me bringing her system home with me to work on until early in the morning. This morning I took the computer back to her and headed to the Post Office to mail some coffee out.

Upon arriving back on the farm, I started filling plant bags with dirt and placed them on the pallets under the canopy. I got 120 of them filled before I ran out of steam. In the very near future I’ll plant coffee parchment beans into the dirt and start watering them. Soon, little sprouts will mark the beginnings of 5 acres of new coffee trees.

As the regular reader knows, I’m pretty cheap. To that end, I try to save money at most steps yet try to add technology whenever possible. I can’t take credit for all of the innovations, but here is how the project was assembled.

To water the plants I could have just stretched a hose or two over to the clearing, but instead I bought an automatic watering valve, not unlike one you would use at a home underground watering system or on a golf course. You add some power from a timer and the valve opens for an amount of time. I hooked this up under the house and above ground ran some PVC pipe to a spigot. Then I assembled a couple of self-supported canopies (common here for garages). As the plants mature I’ll want them to get out intothe sun. Rather than move the plants, two people just lift up the legs of the canopy and move it. In seconds, all the plants are in the sun.

Islands are great for pallets. Much of what gets shipped here is load onto pallets and these wooden things are left outside stores for the taking. I would guess that on any particular day I could drive into Kona and find 20 free pallets.

The area under the canopies is not level; in fact, most of the island is not level. Rather than buy gravel or level the rocks, took the easy way out. I took a pallet, laid it on the ground and put a level on top. Then I just cut some wood and nailed it on each corner until the pallet was level. Granted, I can never move these things because there is only one spot here that all 4 legs would hit the ground just right and level the pallet. Then under and over the pallets I placed a mat, which will control weeds and give me a bit of support.

To fill the black plastic plant bags with nursery mix, I borrowed an idea from a fellow farmer. If you get a piece of PVC large enough to fit the opening of the empty bag, you cut the opposite end at a 45 degree angle and use that as a scoop to get dirt into the bug. Just put the square end of the PVC into the bag, hold it and shove the tapered end into the pile of dirt and turn it upright. The bag is now filled. As I say, I got 120 of them done before quitting today.

Photos of the nursery can be seen at the following link itskona.com/photos/thumbnails.php?album=12