Aloha! This hammock makes a nice spot to relax at the front of the farm, check out those coconuts hanging from the trees! |
So here’s a basic rundown of our daily routine thus far. We
wake up nice around 6:30ish and slowly get ready for the day. I have never been
one to allow more than 15minutes or so to get ready when I have to be up early
so having over an hour is an amazing luxury that I feel like I missed out on
when I was younger. I guess that’s one bonus of going to bed before 10pm every
night, we can wake up slow, have a cup of iced coffee with almond milk, pick
out what to wear, fill up and drink down an entire water bottle and fill it
back up again, and eat a little breakfast. Oh and then spend about 15 minutes
applying that all-important sunscreen.
At 8, I head over to the house to hang out with my little
buddy K, while Dylan heads off to move the mobile chicken coop, feed all the
chickens (there’s a second much larger coop with free-ranging fenced in area),
and start his projects. K and I sometimes tag along and help with the chickens,
she likes to toss them some grains and watch them peck around for a bit. Then
we usually head back to the house and read some stories, or splash around in
the water table or whatever else she feels like doing.
Check out that nice mulch work Dylan's done under the mango tree, lots of shoveling, he's doing all the trees on the farm. |
This week, Dylan has gone from planting a border of
lemongrass and comfrey around the perimeter of the garden, to mulching the
mango trees. Since he spends much of his morning working independently, he’s
started taking his phone out and listening to NPR podcasts while he works and
zoning out in nerd-heaven. At some point in the day, little K decides it’s time
to make “salads,” an activity consisting of ripping up pruned and discarded
leaves from the front bush, and using them to fill a salad bowl that she
delivers to Dylan so he can take a break from mulching to pretend-munch on her
carefully prepared lunch. She loves this activity that came about as an attempt
on my part to positively redirect her desire to rip the pages of her books, and
now we bring Dylan about 2-4 salads a morning. It’s so cute to hear her say
“Dylan” (sounds more like Dalyn) when I ask whom her salad is for.
When noontime rolls around, K heads in with her mom for some
lunch and a nap while Dylan and I retire from the intense midday heat for a
nice long sit, some reading, more iced coffee, and lunch. Every other day or so
we brew a big pot of really delicious Kona coffee, put it in a big mason jar
and pop it in the fridge so that we always have some of the precious black gold
on hand to cool us down and replenish some of the energy the sun has inevitably
drained away. Dylan makes the coffee on the weaker side so I can actually drink
it (watered down further with ice cubes and a few tablespoons of almond milk)
and so that the coffee lasts longer. Coffee is expensive here even though it’s
harvested and processed next-door to us in multiple directions. Coffee flowers
fill the air with a sweet, light fragrance all over the island; it is really
lovely.
Coffee is a big part of our morning, accompanying our
granola, or quinoa with VT maple syrup (thanks mom!) and a fresh mango, papaya,
or banana. At lunch, we pair our deliciously nutty iced coffee with a garden
fresh, mixed-green salad topped with some combination of garlic greens, red
onions, canned tuna, quinoa or brown rice, pumpkin seeds or macadamia nuts (my
latest island obsession) When they eventually ripen, we’ll add some avocados
into the mix. It is so hot that the idea of anything warm at lunch time is
enough to kill anyone’s appetite, so we’ve stuck with daily salads to munch on
as we sip our coffee and read and write for a few hours under the shade of our
kitchen awning.
I love this part of the day. It is much like Europe’s Siesta
I imagine, and it suits us quite nicely. Noontime hits and just as we all feel
like we’re melting in the sun, everyone heads off to their respective spaces
for a few hours of relief from the heat. Dylan rinses off since he gets pretty
dirty working on the farm, and plops himself down at the table, chugs a bunch
of water and opens his book (he’s already read 741 out of almost 900 pages of
the Huey Long biography since we’ve been here!). Since his work is far more
physically draining, I have taken on the role of lunch prep and pour us a cup
of iced coffee, go out and harvest some greens and make our salads while Dylan
gets his energy back.
I have been using my Siesta time to catch up on my
Pinteresting, to upload pictures, and do a little education research and
writing for K and the preschool project as well as for my other blog, Searchingfor Sparks. This week I also created a
professional page on Facebook for my Ed. Blog so I can post more pictures,
share links, quotes, and more of the resources I’ve been accumulating now that
I have a few hours every afternoon to dedicate to it. Have I mentioned yet how
much I LOVE being self-employed? I feel so much more productive than I have
ever been! It’s great to finally be able to get caught up on all the reading,
writing, and projects I was forced to put off when I was working at the
preschool because I just didn’t have any energy left after an 11 ½ hour day.
Dylan, too, has taken to farm-life with great relish.
Being able to work hard for a few hours and make a ton of visible progress,
brainstorm and prep food projects, cook dinner and have plenty of time to read
and write and philosophize, or whatever it is he does while I’m working away on
my laptop, really suits him well. We’ve already been daydreaming and
brainstorming ideas about making this kind of life possible once we get to
Maine. Neither of us is particularly interested in being full-time farmers
trying to make a living from farming, it’s too much work and our love of
farming comes from our love of eating well, not necessary from working the
land, though that is an enjoyable part of the process, it’s not the motivation.
I don’t want to get ahead of myself so I won’t share the results of our
brainstorm sessions quite yet (Dylan is constantly calling me out for doing
this) but fear not, I doubt I’ll be able to keep my excitement under wraps for
very long.
Anyway, once we’ve had our fill of reading and writing, or
rather, once we’ve cooled off enough (usually around 3-4pm), we head off to do
something fun before it’s time to feed the chicken, collect all the eggs from
the day, and start cooking dinner. Monday we headed off to the super shaded
part of the farm to do some yoga, that’s right, I got Dylan to do a full hour
yoga session with me and he actually enjoyed himself! Tuesday we headed into
town in search of some items we needed, like flip-flops for Dylan, a nail-brush
to get the garden out from under our fingernails, and a bottle of white wine to
sip on. We lucked out and found a shopping plaza (after a lot of stressful
driving and searching) that had a drug store that happened to have a decent
wine selection. Rather than our typical preference for oaky, buttery,
California Chardonnays, we opted for a light and refreshing Chennin Blanc, on
special for 7$, perfect for our state of financial hibernation (thanks Dan
Eling for coining that phrase).
Every Wednesday there is a farm pot-luck dinner and the
theme for this week was “Greek,” though it was really more Mediterranean because
I think only one dish could claim it’s culinary roots to Greek cuisine but, but
everything was so delicious. It was cool to hang out with everyone on the farm
for the night and get to know everyone a bit. Dylan made another batch of our
farm-variety caponata, a tangy roasted eggplant relish, since we had an
abundance of those delicious purple vegetables this week, and a big plate of
sliced and grilled kalamata olive bread to accompany it. Others made humus,
baba ganoush, whole-wheat pitas, beef kababs and yogurt chicken skewers with
big slices of red onion and whole mushrooms. I stuck to the chicken and it was
stunningly tasty, but Dylan raved about the beef kababs. We ended the night
feeling satisfied, sleepy, and full of good food and good company. I think I am
going to like this tradition and I know Dylan is happy to show off his culinary
skills to an eager and appreciative weekly audience.
Harold H. Higashihara Park |
Yesterday, being Valentine’s Day and all, we decided to head
out on a little adventure. There is this giant, amazing playground and park we
kept driving past on our way into town that I wanted to check out and
photograph for Searching for Sparks, so
Dylan offered to take me there. We wandered around this incredible play
structure, with the ocean down the hill in the background and played like
little kids, imagining how hard it would have been to drag us away from this
place had we come here as seven year olds. It was a ton of fun and Dylan even
agreed to snap a few pictures for me since I’m always the one behind and never
in front of the camera.
After we got our fill of playing and photographing, we
headed off to search for a bottle of Hawaiian rum to mix with the spectacular
array of tropical fruit we have accumulated this week. We headed to Island
Naturals, the local natural food store that happens to be closing its doors at
the end of the weekend. We got a great bottle of rum and stocked up on a lot of
basics like olive oil, granola, mixed nuts, and a few other things that were
seriously marked down as part of the closing sale. We also picked up a ½ gallon
of milk since our hosts are going to teach us to make Kiefer, a fermented dairy
product similar to yogurt but more drinkable (and sour) and full of even more
healthy bacteria. They make it all the time and mix it with the tropical fruits
of the farm and it’s perfect for smoothies, not to mention the insane
nutritional benefits. More on that once we get our first batch going.
This was the best cauliflower I have ever had! |
We ended our trip to town with a delicious gelato at a cute,
islandy sweets shop next to the market. We split a cup of “Moka Mudslide” that
was Kona coffee flavored with mac nuts and chocolate chunks. It was so, so
good, especially since it was the first sweet treat we’ve had since our
arrival, except for all the fruit of course. Back at the farm, we made a tasty
dinner of sesame fried kale and blackened chili cauliflower, both of which we
harvested only a few minutes prior to cooking. We celebrated the day with blended
rum cocktails with the papaya, mango, and passion fruits we gathered earlier and
watched a cute romantic comedy called Switched with Jason Bateman and Jennifer Aniston. It was a lovely Valentine’s
Day and filled with Dylan’s favorite joke, “hey, want to go to Hawaii for
Valentine’s Day?”
So now it is Friday afternoon and it’s time to start the
weekend off with a trip to the beach. It’s about 3:30 here now so here’s hoping
we’ll avoid another sunburn! Who knows what we’ll do this weekend, so far
making pesto and going for a hike are our only plans but I’ll be sure to let
you know next week what kinds of adventures we ended up on!
I actually got Dylan to smile for a picture! Happy weekend everyone :) |
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