Pigs, Goats, & Lavender Oh My!
Aug 8, 2007 |
Farmer Richard Clark of O'o Farm.
‘I feel like we’re in Peter Rabbit’s garden,’ Liz says.
Farmer Richard Clark does indeed have a Mr. McGregor goatee, and there is a certain childhood nostalgia to O’o Farm, with its faded wooden sign and freshly sprouted beds of spinach, arugula and ‘volunteer’ radicchio. But this is hardly Beatrix Potter’s England, for when you look up beyond the tree line, Maui stretches from flat-lying sugarcane fields into crowded Kahului and out to the Pacific, where Lana’i is faintly visible in the haze.
Kula, Maui, has long been known for its volcanic soil, mountain mists and soft yellow sunshine. The clouds seem to drift onto the hillsides as if the demi-god Maui had barely managed to hold up the sky with his fingertips.
The farming of Kula today was built by entrepreneurial immigrants who had completed their sugar company contracts and set upcountry to start their own farms of sweet onions, tomatoes, herbs and, most recently, flowers, especially the furry proteas.
Flower farms still dominate the market, but newer ventures have sprung up–organic farms, goat farms, lavender farms. Like most farmers in Hawai’i, they struggle to make ends meet. But perhaps the entrepreneurial spirit got stirred into the soil. The four farms Liz and I visited on our day in the upcountry have cultivated a new revenue source–agricultural tourists.
Fresh from the farm
Liz and I have decided to discover Maui’s growing agricultural tourism market. Liz, officially Elizabeth Bell, lives in Lahaina where she is surrounded by the famed Ka’anapali beaches that most visitors think of when they plan a trip to Maui. Few tourists, in fact only 3 percent of all culinary travelers, actively visit Hawai’i for ag-tourism.
Then again, there aren’t a whole lot of culinary travelers in general, only 17 percent (or 27 million) of overall leisure travelers, with about 10 percent into food-related travel and nine percent into wine-related travel. There’s a 2.6 percent overlap of people who want it all. Either way, Hawai’i’s manicured beach resorts are hardly threatened by farms.
But at some point, with almost 60 percent of Hawai’i travelers on repeat visits and with an average length of stay more than nine days, someone somewhere will venture upcountry for something different–and they’ll be glad they did.
Liz and I gladly left crowded Kahului behind us as we turned up Haleakala and watched sugarcane fields and oleander turn to rolling hills and dried-up, cactus-filled river beds to grassy slopes lined with trees.
‘It’s so country up here, it’s like another world,’ Liz says.
We park in the red dirt lot at the bottom of O’o Farm and walk past a quiet tree swing to the top of a grassy knoll where the farm spreads out in a colorful garden.
Founded in 2000, O’o Farm is 8.5 acres at 3,500 feet and produces food solely for its restaurants, Pacific’O and I’O in Lahaina. There are no signs on the farm that warn of dangerous chemicals because after the owners’ son was born, they decided to go organic, and the farm expects to pass its organic certification in January 2008, even though Maui County water contains chlorine.
O’o, which means to mature and ripen like fruit, is also biodynamic. Richard, who has already given us the sustainability spiel that even he seems a bit tired of, lights up when he talks about biodynamic principles. He says humans, with an average lifespan of 70 plus years, are ‘temporal chauvinists’ who like to use solar years to measure time. But plants and bugs only live a few weeks, perhaps a month or two, so solar years are pretty silly to them, like talking in gazillions for us. Biodynamic farming uses lunar cycles with a bit of astrology and mysticism thrown in.
Richard steadily walks us through the farm, picking our lunch as he goes. We taste pungent arugula leaves and smell soapy kafir lime leaves used for seasoning –the limes aren’t really the part to eat. Pretty white butterflies flutter past, and Richard gestures with his sickle at them. ‘Public enemy number one,’ he says.
These sweet winged creatures lay the eggs that house the worms that gobble the leaves. The insects are mainly kept away by lemongrass, which gives off a natural scent that acts like a citronella candle. A dirt road serves as an extra buffer zone.
Open-topped nets keep birds and moths from fruit trees; the tops are open because birds don’t like to land vertically like helicopters, they like to crash in diagonally. Cloth keeps pheasants from the lettuce beds, at least until the last few days before harvesting.
O’o has only three full-time workers, having just lost two of its long-time employees, and Richard has his hands full managing lunar cycles, butterflies, composting, which by the way, if the pile starts to stink is a poorly executed anaerobic fungi environment, and more than 45 fruits and vegetables constantly in rotation to meet the restaurants needs.
Seth Christensen, the chef de cuisine at I’O and today’s host chef at the farm, says having the farm has refocused him on where food comes from (and he’s a chef!). Relying on a local supply rather than imports has its downside, Seth says, and he’s had to get creative at crunch time when he’s short on tomatoes or gets thrown an extra crate of eggplant. But he says the creativity and taste and, yes, the sustainable farming, are worth it. He’s started spending more time at the farm, doing more research on his own and learning more about food production–a real-live example of the values ag tourism at its best espouses: education and reconnection.
Seth sits with us as we eat on the wooden table housed under a vine-entwined bower overlooking the fields and the sea. Richard has settled onto a stump, changed into a black beret and pushed the bandanna fetchingly around his neck. He gently strums the guitar in the background. Ah ha! There is a tourism aspect, after all.
And yet, the six guests–Liz and I, a Seattle couple on their second Maui visit and a Mililani couple on a day trip–all feel a short-term sense of family. We talk of children and jobs and travel. Seth tells us he grew up in Washington and wanted to cook all over the world, but fell in love with a local girl and is now a Kula resident.
‘It’s like the saying goes,’ he says. ‘The longer you live on Maui, the further up you move.’
Goat country
It’s 1pm. Liz and I have had a small mishap to start the trip. I flew over from O’ahu this morning and arrived in Kapalua while Liz waited patiently at the Kahului baggage claim. But no trip that has any chance of being memorable starts off without a hitch, and the serenity and unflappability of our recovery has made the day float a bit. Time is ours to catch with Maui’s sun.
So, on a quick impulse, we decide to dash down to Surfing Goat Dairy and open up precious moments to visit Maui’s only winery later in the afternoon. Our Internet map has not yet led us astray, and we head back down the way we came for what should be a five-minute drive.
At the four-way stop past the Ace Hardware (directions in Kula are still by landmark), we turnÖwell, we’re not sure. I look at the map from one direction. Liz grabs it and circles it around. We turn right and are, of course, wrong. We ask directions from a cowboy who seems to have popped up from Texas–’That’s how things are on Maui,’ Liz says. ‘You never know who you’re going to getÖ’–and find ourselves descending into a hot, dry, dusty land a world away from O’o’s lushness.
Kula has been fairly strict on signage. Signage and zoning are contentious issues in ag tourism with a recent brouhaha on the island of Hawai’i over Kona Joe’s Coffee and questions of what exactly and how disruptive ag tourism is or should be. Often farms are near residential neighborhoods, and Liz and I feel like we’re simply driving in circles around people’s homes.
We’re about to give up the hunt, when we call out to a friendly neighbor on the way to his mailbox, and he tells us we’re almost there. Minutes later, regal palms rise out of the kiawe and halekoa, and bright bougainvillea bracts explode along a well-paved stately drive ending at the goat farm, where the pavement stops and the dust and rocks begin. Goats like it dry and warm. We park at a wooden fence with funny goat signs–’Old Goat Parking Only–All Others Will be Rammed’ and the company slogan–’Da’ Feta Mo’ Betta’.
Liz and I wander in, early even after the detour, for our scheduled appointment at 3pm. Thomas Kafsack, the thick-calved German owner, seems to dislike our early arrival and says he’ll be with us after he makes his latte. Liz raises her eyebrows and goes to take a scenic picture of a gray cat sleeping in the sunshine and a portrait of a pot-bellied pig whom we’ll learn later is named Charlie.
Thomas warms to goat talk. All of his goats have names, and they learn those names in less than a week. But it’s ag tourism that finally brings a smile to his face and lets him lean back in his chair, for that’s what makes his goat farm possible. Over 50 percent of sales come from the on-property retail. Surfing Goat Dairy sells more than 30 goat cheese flavors, plus chutneys, truffles, soap, T-shirts and more. The cheese has won national awards, but the farm just breaks even on wholesale and still loses money on sales to hotels and restaurants, which are mainly used as a marketing tool to get foot traffic. Thomas needs milk, cheese and tourists to be a goat farmer.
Goats basically cost the same as cows to raise while producing only one-third the milk, and the farm spends more than $2,000 per month on irrigation alone. He’s happy to tell us more than 30,000 visitors came by last year and that he expects 40,000 this year, including new Superferry guests.
Thomas grows even more jovial after I devour the ‘Garden Fastasia,’ or goat cheese with herbs, from our olive boat tasting tray–’Won first place in 2006,’ he says. I finish up the ‘O Sole Mio’ with sun-dried tomatoes–’First place in 2005,’ he adds gleefully. I’m feeling a bit proud myself, thinking perhaps I’ve missed my calling as a cheese taster.
Searching for a real cheese connoisseur question, I realize my career hopes may be premature. I’m at a loss, and end up with: How often do you develop new recipes? ‘If you ask me, not enough,’ he says. ‘If you ask my wife, too often.’
His wife never makes an appearance, but it’s obvious Thomas is the showman. ‘My wife doesn’t let me make deliveries,’ he notes. ‘I spend two to three hours talking.’
Luckily, once he gets on a roll, he’s pretty animated and entertaining. He gestures outside the plastic-shaded shack to bunches of bananas, the first some visitors have ever seen live. He points at the barn and talks about a woman who cried with nostalgia for her childhood when she held a one-day-old kid. He tells us about a family from New York who e-mailed him that their daughters’ favorite experience during two weeks on Maui was watching Charlie the pig pee. ‘Pot-bellied pigs can pee for minutes on end!’ he says.
The color purple
Lavender is ladylike and uses very little water because she doesn’t like to get her feet wet. Lavender attracts bees for pollination and serves as a natural repellent to other insects, except the spittlebug, which grows between its leaves like hanabata and looks disgusting, but does no harm. Spanish lavender has rabbit-ear leaves and a slightly peppery taste; French lavender has French-braided leaves and is used in scones and tea.
Ali’i Kula Lavender is 10 acres filled with more than 25,000 lavender plants that are in full bloom from June through August. The whole farm is awash in flowers: camellias, weeping bottle bough, hydrangeas, agapantha, jacaranda, bromeliads, lemon verbena, hen-and-chick succulents and king, mink and banksia proteas.
Ali’i Chang originally purchased the land as a protea farm in 1989 and grew tropicals, but when his friends handed him some lavender, Ali’i’s experimental nature got the best of him, and soon he was flying to Washington and Oregon to buy his new crop, which the farm now uses to produce lavender-inspired products, such as jellies, scones, soap, teas, chocolates and even pet shampoo.
Lani Weigert, the farm’s tall and tenacious marketing and public relations director, says the farm’s philosophy is to form partnerships with local businesses to build a stronger economic and social community for rural Maui, and many of the products are produced by Kula businesses, including some lavender goat cheese.
Ali’i Kula Lavender exudes purple. Every employee wears a purple T-shirt, apron and Crocs. They tie purple ribbons to fence posts like fairy tale bread crumbs to lead guests to the farm–an inventive way to stay in compliance with Kula signage rules.
Lani’s goal is to move more sales online. The farm already has 20,000 online subscribers, with a good balance between online, on-property and wholesale sales. So far, the ag-tourism traffic has not had any damaging impact on the farm or the community–some Kula residents don’t know the farm exists–and tourists who do visit tend to buy more because of the experience; they also tell friends.
Roberts Hawai’i offers a Royal Lavender Journey and in July launched a Back Roads of Upcountry Maui bus tour, which will include Surfing Goat Dairy and Maui’s only winery Tedeschi Vineyards. No motor coach will make this drive, though, only a 21-seat mini-coach. Roberts is estimating about 15 people per tour.
They will be treated to tea and scones, with a product show in Ali’i’s charming white house and then a tour of the farm, which is so scenic, it feels almost like the grounds of an estate rather than the working farm it is. The hand-harvested lavender even hangs decoratively to dry in the eaves of the gift shop.
Liz and I finish our own lavender tea and scones and slowly wander back along the well-patterned dirt paths. We drive away with a vision of purple-clad workers amidst a profusion of flowers, misty green fields and a blue horizon dotted by Lana’i, Moloka’i, and ‘Zucchini,’ which is what Liz’s kids call the volcano Molokini.
Maui’s winery
Plumped up, lavender-lotion scented, dust-covered and almost preternaturally happy, Liz and I set off down the winding road, well-disposed to marvel at the countryside filled with old rock walls covered in lichen, cattle crossings, kukui nut trees and a much-neglected park filled with lion statues, a tribute to Sun Yat-sen. We nearly crash into a time warp–a bare-chested, long-haired, bearded easy rider on a Harley weaving his way across the double yellow line.
We manage to arrive safely at†Tedeschi Vineyards, enter the grounds and walk along a path amidst greenery, stone cottages and towering trees, many of which are from the 1850’s, including a tall and twisted Norfolk pine.
Tedeschi was established in the early 1970s on ‘Ulupalakua Ranch, a sugar plantation and cattle ranch purchased in the mid-1800s by a Scottish whaling captain named James McKee. King Kalakaua was known to frequent the ranch where he hosted poker games and parties flowing with champagne.
Today, most of the 30,000 cases produced are pineapple wines, with Maui Splash being the bestseller. Two 20-something couples visiting for a wedding bought a case and seemed genuinely pleased with the novelty of wine from the islands. Still, it’s good the winery is making some changes.
Two years ago, the company hired Chris Markell, a winemaking consultant formerly at Piper Sonoma Winery. The vineyard was recently replanted to replace much of the original Carnelian grapes with new varietals, such as Syrah, Chenin Blanc, Pinot Gris and Chardonnay, and the winery is building a new cellar. Although there is a great deal of charm to the above-ground outdoor steel vats which are housed in green clapboard under corrugated tin roofs, this Hawai’i cellar is probably not quite as climate-balanced as a Napa Valley wine cave.
The new wines are not yet available, which is probably just as well since with rock fall and road construction on the road to Wailea, Liz and I can’t indulge anyway. We take the long way home and watch for motorcyclists.
Lucky we live
Kapalua airport is almost empty, and an old security guard smiles and wishes me a nice flight. My fellow passengers remind me of my ag-tourism trip with their mix of slippers, hiking boots, running shoes and business loafers.
As the plane takes off and turns toward O’ahu, I look out my window to watch the West Maui mountains fall away, their valleys spackled green tributaries with plateaus scarred from former farming. But what comes to mind is not verdant paintings of Hawai’i nor even photos of farms and flowers, but my own flood of memories as if time cannot be contained.
And it can’t, can it? Time spent in the farms of upcountry Maui is not stamped on a calendar or pasted in an album. Maybe it’s what this small reconnection to the land provides tourists and locals alike–a sensory movement between present and past, reality and dreams, new experience and nostalgia, all ramming into each other like goats.
