Elly Extravaganza, Kohala

Elly and I made it back to Hawi for a couple of days to regroup and check in on the garden. Everything came up so fast while I was gone and I realized how much I missed my little corner of paradise. She came to work with me one morning. She laughed while I got butt checked by the goat I was milking and was a great sport when we did some dumpster diving for cardboard to suffocate the perpetual weeds.

After garden duty, I got to show her one of the most beautiful spots on the island--Pololu. It's at the end of the road in Kohala and is the beginning of the stunning Waipio Valley, actually a series of deep gorges that run into the ocean. The towns in the valley were wiped out in an earthquake in the 80's and since then it has just grown back into jungle. We drove to end of the road, shared a bottle of champagne and took in the vista of the black sand beach below.

I love that my new office is a garden and my uniform is suspenders and sandals.

My New Hood

So this WFOOFing thing is turning out to be a really prime deal. I am staying with a family on the north shore of the Big Island in Hawaii. They have a sustainable retreat with a big main lodge, some beautiful yurts and a spa area (currently under construction). The owners have been building the property from the ground up with their own hands for the past 8 years and it is truly amazing to see the fruits of their labors. They just opened a few months ago and I was their very first WWOOFer! You can check out the resort at here. There's a lot of love that's gone into creating this space and you feel it the moment you step onto the grounds.

I'm there to help put in a sustainable garden to feed everyone at the lodge. It's a small garden with about 12 raised beds, but soon enough there will be fresh vegetables and herbs for a retreat center full of guests. Down in the gulch next to the retreat, it's pretty jungley and there are lots of fruit trees with everything from ice cream bananas to passion fruit.

North Kohala is a rural area of the coast with two small towns, Kapa'au and Hawi. Both are towns in the are "blink and you'll miss it" sense of the word. Seems like there's about 10 stores in each one and maybe about 1500 residents between the two of them. It took me a couple days to realize that they were actually different towns with different names. A little Kohala history: North Kohala is the birthplace of the late, great Hawaiian king, Kemehameha I who united all the island under one rule shortly after Captain Cook discovered them in the late 19th century. There's a big statue of him in Kapa'au that gets decorated with leis and every year on King Kemehameha Day in June. Kohala used to be booming with the sugar industry (i.e. plantations, immigrant labor and cheap wages) up until the 1980's. Then the bottom fell out of the market here and now its mostly cute little shops for tourists. This means of lots of art galleries and restaurants. Ain't it quaint?

About five miles down the road from Hawi is the house I'm staying at with my host family. Its down a quiet lane with lots of cows and grass and mesquite trees.

It's a short walk down to the water and an awesome stretch of coastline. I just walked down tonight to see the sunset and check out the tide pools. Big black lava rocks and beautiful snorkeling water just steps from where I'm staying. Magical is probably the right word for it.