My First Official Book Review!

Word is starting to spread about the farm book. Yay! We took a boxful to the local Natural Farm meeting last month, and online orders have been trickling in. And of course, folks who come to our farm for the tour have been snapping them up!

My friend Sonia Martinez, Big Island food writer and blogger, wrote a great review of my book for Hawai'i Homegrown Food Network. It was published in this month's issue.

Go ahead and take a moment to read the book review HERE. (No worries; link will open a new window.) And then, order your own copy if you haven't already! ;-)

Natural Farm Meeting Tonight!

Sure, they spelled Hubbell wrong (most everybody does) but isn't this awesome?!

We look forward to the Natural Farm meeting each month.  There's always an interesting topic or two and we come away energized to do more on our little farm.  Plus, the ono kine potluck is the best!  Everybody brings something from their farm if they can, or at least fresh and local.

Short post this time because I'm crazy busy today with new guests arriving at the hale, new friends coming for lunch and a farm tour, packing for my upcoming trip to Oregon and Washington, and preparing "ono kine grinds" for this meeting tonight.  Never a dull moment!  So looking forward to a little vacation - I need the rest!

Will Flossie Fizzle?

So... y'all know there's a hurricane headed our way, right?  Actually, it's expected to be more of a tropical storm which means heavy torrential downpours (more than our usual Hilo-side drenchings) and big winds (but not as big as with a hurricane). 

You can be sure we're keeping an eye on the weather charts, NOAA, the NWS Central Pacific Hurricane Center, and the rest.  One of my favorites to watch is this animation from the GOES-West satellite.

Many believe that the Big Island doesn't get hurricanes because of the effect of our huge mountains, Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa.  It's not true though, because hurricanes do hit, just not as often.  And it's the area of colder ocean waters between the mainland and here that acts to dissipate the intensity of the storms as they approach.  Usually.

Apparently, Hurricane Iniki in 1992 fizzled out as it approached the islands, but then it regained strength and changed direction, thus hitting Kauai straight on. That could happen to us with Flossie... or not.  We're preparing like it'll be the full-blown thing though, because it's good practice and because you never know. 

My only real worry, hurricane-wise, is the baby chicks.  They just got moved to their new yard a few days ago and they're still pretty tiny.  I don't know how they'd fare in a real hurricane, and since there are 44 of them, I can't just round 'em up and bring 'em indoors.  Fortunately, the enclosed part of their brooder pen is in there with them so they'd likely huddle inside and ride it out.  Much like we would do in our house.

The piggies should be fine in their barn, but if it looks like it could be terribly windy we'll add more protection for the two pens of piglets.  They've all been weaned now, and the mama sows are in their own pens getting a brief respite.  The piggery is quite full these days!

Meanwhile, we've been having some fantastic weather... a few small showers now and then and vast amounts of sunshine.  Plus, this jaw-dropping sunset the other night!

Not tonight though.  Tonight we have rain... and casserole.  Dinner's ready and I'm hungry.  Aloha!

My farm book is here!

What a process it's been... a steep learning curve!  I never realized just how much extra work is involved in getting a book published, far more than the writing and editing bits.  But never mind: it is printed and bound and is now being distributed!  See links at the right for ordering.  Or, if you're on-island, come see me and save on shipping, and maybe even get a farm tour while you're at it.

Here's the back cover blurb:

The Table of Contents will give you an idea of what's inside:

You can read the first bits on the Amazon page using their "click to look inside" feature.  It doesn't get you to the juicy bits though. (And no, I didn't have any say in that set up, but it is pretty cool.)

It felt like Christmas when this big carton of books arrived, never mind that we already knew what was inside!

In other news:
I have 50 more little chicks (because I wasn't busy enough already, I guess) to add to the flocks.  They will begin laying sometime in December which will help keep our egg supply steady through winter, or maybe even increase it a little.  We are now supplying a local all-organic restaurant as well as my regular customers who come to the farm to pick up their eggs, and any surplus still goes to the big Hilo Farmer's Market (though less now with the restaurant buying up as many as I can supply).

Piggies are all doing well.  Spot had 15 (!!) piglets but that was soon reduced to 10.  (These things happen.)  Those ten are all thriving, almost ready to be weaned in fact.  They are the cutest litter so far with all the multi-colored speckles and spots!

Most of Big Mama's piglets have been sold off already; only two are still with us now.  Getting some loves from Kerry:

The new feed arrived in fine shape and the second shipment is already on its way.  I was a little worried that our egg customers might balk at the higher cost of eggs (since organic non-gmo feed costs more), but only one said it wasn't worth it to him.  All the others thought it was great and many even upped their orders!  And the chickens love this stuff!

 

 

So, it's still busy-busy around here, as usual.  I haven't even mentioned the new coop being built, or the kabocha that's taking over one whole side of the growing field, or the hale being booked almost continuously, or the crops all growing like mad, or the pineapples all getting ripe at once, or...

Newest Venture

Life on a farm is never dull. Well, our life and our farm, anyway. Look how well everything is growing!

We have new piglets, with another litter due next week. Started out with ten babies, now down to seven. Things happen. I still need to update the pig blog about all that.

Kerry passed her massage licensing exam last week. She is now awaiting her license number to come through from the state and then she's officially official. She's already started to gather a base of regular clients by holding Massage Days at the hale between guests. This has branched out to several people hosting similar events at their homes, some on a monthly basis, where she comes in and gets everybody all nice and relaxed and refreshed.

I am done, done, DONE with writing and rewriting the farm book. On to formatting...

And my knee has finally healed enough that I no longer need crutches, brace, or band on it and have finally been able to start walking and even hiking again. We even managed a camping trip to our favorite beach-camping spot, Ho'okena. All is right with my world when I can get outside and move about.

But none of that prompted this post...

What I really wanted to tell you about is our latest venture here on the farm: importing truly organic, certified non-gmo animal feeds.

This endeavor was spurred by a local restaurant owner who discovered our eggs at the Hilo Farmer's Market, where a friend of ours sells our excess alongside her wonderful strawberries and honey. (I generally send 25-30 dozen a week to the market.) This restauranteur phoned up, wanting to buy eggs directly from the farm. His focus is on locally-raised, high quality organic foods. We have been wanting to provide a better feed for the birds for quite some time... and so the search began again in earnest.

We found there is not much choice in organic feeds available on the island. The stuff at the local feed stores is USDA-certified organic, but it all has corn &/or soy in it, and most is distributed by Cargill. Not good enough on all three counts.

So we started looking online. We found this wonderful mill in Bellngham, WA, Scratch and Peck Feeds. It is the first--and, so far, only--mill in the US to offer Non-GMO Project certified animal feeds. Their products come from farms in the Northwest, and since that's where we come from too, it's kind of nice to have that connection. There is a distributor on Maui, but they didn't seem much interested in forming any sort of working relationship with us on the Big Island. No problem... we'll bring it in ourselves.

Since we have to order it by the pallet-load (one ton), and we want to maintain the freshness of the feed, there will be extra to sell. A mention of the possibility on my Facebook page and a couple phone calls to other chicken farmers showed us that there is enough interest out there that this could work.

We'll be bringing in their Naturally Free line of chicken layer feed, pig feed, and scratch grains-- all organic, non-gmo, no corn or soy, high protein, and well-balanced feeds. You can go to their website in the link above to read the ingredients. A side bonus is that, even with freight charges, it will cost less than the "organic" feed from the feed stores.

The first shipment is already on its way. I can hardly wait to start giving this quality feed to our animals! And I'm looking forward to touring the mill while I'm in B'ham this August.

In the meantime, Mike is designing and building a moisture-resistant, rat-proof storeroom for the incoming feed sacks. Because, you know, we really needed another project around here.