Written By Omer, Mikayla, & Andrew
From more goodbyes to ocean time to bees, this week has been all the buzz!
We began Wednesday farming with our new friends, the interns at the local organic and regenerative farm. We loved having another day getting our hands dirty and connecting with the earth, planting and picking different crops. We then met Jennifer, an incredible woman who singlehandedly created a department of agriculture for Maui. She had began by going to people’s properties and collecting otherwise rotting fruit and donating it on her own, and by now her small organization is donating 42,000 pounds of fruit to charities a year. We all appreciated getting to learn about food sovereignty directly from someone who’s made such a big impact. After, the crew drove down to a neighboring farm for a tour. It was interesting for us to see how different small scale farms operate. There was a huge carrot.
Thursday was BEE DAY! We saw bees. In the morning, Evan shared some of his beekeeping knowledge with us. Fun fact: a queen bee is created when a worker bee feeds an egg ~royal jelly~. And then we got to suit up and meet the bees in the flesh (do bees have flesh?) at their hives as they swarmed around us angrily. They were not happy with us… but that’s okay… there were not that many stings… Courageous Lana picked up a rack out of the hive that was covered in bees with her bare hands and didn’t get stung! We were also able to process some honey, scraping it directly off of the rack as we all admired the dripping honey, mesmerized. We ‘accidentally’ kept spilling honey on us that we then just had to snack on. Needless to say, very delicious. Following some work in the fields, we played an impromptu game of kickball with Evan and his son. The game was riveting… intense… feral… there was no holding back.
Friday was our last day at the farm, it was a very sad goodbye as we’ve grown fond of those lovely humans. We had our closing circle with Evan in which he had us each find an object from the farm that symbolizes our time there. By the end of our circle, we had a pile of all the flowers, leaves, and Wynn’s dirt in a very happy pile. We packed up everything, cleaned everything, and moved our condiments and bins to a storage unit under Evan’s house. Since our campsite no longer had any food or shelter, we then went to town and had a really yummy dinner followed by massive ice cream cones. That was some good ice cream. We went back after dark and sat around a fire with all our farmer friend, we played games and laughed.
Early Saturday morning we packed our tents and went to the farmer’s market for breakfast. The group got crepes, acai bowels, and Delia indulged in a vegan pumpkin taco (interesting brekkie choice). The market had really cool vibes and there were so many stellar local businesses. Before we said our final goodbye, we threw the seed-balls we had made around the place our tents were. Hopefully, beautiful flowers and herbs will grow in our place, along with the banana and avocado trees we planted. Gigi happily hugged a lot of trees this week. We then were airport bound. It went surprisingly smoothly. It was night by the time we got to Pineapple Park Hostel in Kona, an eclectic and cozy place we easily settled into. This was our first time in six weeks to have beds! We were going crazy. We had lots of fun playing chess and scrabble and appreciating our couches in our wonderful space. We then went to sleep in our bunk beds. We slept well. It felt like a sleepover!
Sunday morning we hit the waves, or rather the waves hit us. They were so much bigger than Maui’s!!! Insane. Everyone caught awesome waves- except for Omer, who had some spectacular tumbles. Jk, everyone was kinda falling. Twas a very chill day indeed. Books have been bountiful in the group, all of us reading a ton! We’ve spent hours enjoying our books next to each other and have gotten to share the books we brought with the group. The evening brought more intense games of chess- Andrew and Max going head to head for hours.
On Monday we had a very late breakfast at 5:30 AM- the perfect wakeup present for Emily’s birthday! Surfing once again- and the birthday girl casually caught some major waves! The ocean was beautiful and warm as it shared its waves with us, deep blue magnificence. Everyone was a little better than the day before. Though, Mikayla and Luke spent a lot of the time goofing off and laughing as they tipped other people’s boards over. We went back for lunch and then visited Pu’uhonua o Hōnaunau, a cultural site and burial grounds. Being there was a very intense experience for all of us, as we shared what we’ve learned as travelers respecting the land and culture. We’re so lucky that we’ve been welcomed into these communities and have been able to feel the mana. One of the park rangers was kind enough to share his work and family story with us. Emily’s birthday finished off strong with breakfast for dinner, a well loved treat.
Tuesday rolled around with another morning of surfing. We absolutely smashed it today. Easily the best ones on the beach. Pros. We went out farther into the ocean to catch some bigger waves (as pros, we needed some more extreme stuff). Then, we had some down time and town time. We got bubble tea and ice cream and frolicked around.
Now we write as the frogs sing and the stars twinkle on our last night in Kona. We’re all pretty tired from our three day surfing extravaganza and 8:30 is most of our bedtimes. We’re super excited for the adventures ahead (though a little weary to say goodbye to our beds). The unknown presents us many paths to be tread (but we do know that we’ll be sleeping in our tents instead).
Warmest Regards and Greatest Affection,
Omer, Andrew, and Micky
