Changing Farms

I think we're going to go stay at a different farm. There's nothing wrong with this place and we're Unhappy here — but we're not really happy either. Also, we're not learning anything useful for our lives, nor are we enjoying the people that we're meeting very much. Hawaii is filled with people our age, who have been here for years, with no goals except to get by doing the least amount of work they have to and smoking a lot of pot. Pramod and I are too goal driven to live here.

The 2 months that we're here is seeming a whole lot less daunting thinking of breaking it up with a different farm. Before we go, we're going to try to see everything we can on the Hilo side of the island before heading off to the Kona side (which is where we flew into and left immediately).

Chanting

A large part of our time here has been spent at another farm. Some of our food comes from this other farm because we go over at least once a week to help them harvest for their farmers markets (of which they go to 5 a week!).

This other farm is beautiful with something like 17 acres and 15-20 people working on it. They aren't on the WWOOF program though, they get their workers by word of mouth. If the farming was all of it, Pramod and I would probably love living there and helping with the gardening. However, the farming is only a way to sustain them. The main point of this place is that it is for spiritual growth. All free time is spent studying the Bhagavad Gita or chanting on their mala beads. They chant every morning and every night.

“Hare Krishna Hare Krishna

Krishna Krishna Hare Hare

Hare Rama Hare Rama

Rama Rama Hare Hare”

We go, along with the other farm (who has the Saturday morning yoga and soccer) on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. They have chanting for over 30 minutes, dinner (which is always great! There is a professional chef living among them), then a spiritual talk led by the guy who owns the farm. Sunday is the Rama Pizza Party which is open to the public and lots and lots of people come (some just come for the dinner part).

Check out this video of the chanting, it's different than any kind of chanting either of us have ever done before. There's only one glimpse of the dancing but you can hear the music (I was trying to hide the fact that I was recording). I left in the beginning of the 2nd call and response so that you can see that with every time the leader sings he is noticably speeding it up. It's awesome. The chanting is a lot of fun! Everyone is singing at the top of their lungs and dancing like we're at a rave. At home I wind down the day relaxing, watching TV. Here we're dancing and singing like there's no tomorrow!

Noni work

The farm here deals with Noni growing and juice making. The owner owns every part of the production--from the tending of Noni plants to mailing off the packaged juice bottles. Pramod and I get to take part in all of it.

Noni plants grow on this island and they seem to flourish in volcanic rock. Though the climate here is similar to India, there are no Noni plants growing there. There are some other countries that grow Noni but not many.

The Noni juice is no apple or grape juice. It isn't consumed for its great, refreshing taste. It doesn't taste very good but it is medicinal. I have heard many rumors about the benefits of drinking Noni juice: 1.) some WWOOFers who used to work here drank lots of Noni juice daily and apparently it showed. 2.) People who drink it say that they feel really good afterwards (and they're pretty sure that it's not just the tiny bit of alcohol present in the juice due to fermentation--this is all boiled out before it is sold to the public). 3.) Someone told me that this juice is being given to cancer patients in China. 4.) A Hawaiian local has "died" 3 or 4 times from stab wounds or gun shots and his grandmother brought him back to life by giving him noni juice!

It is interesting stuff. It sells for like $30 a bottle on the main land. With all these benefits, it seems like they would outweigh the bad taste. We are in a perfect position to benefit from this juice for free. That is true; however, being a part of the mass production process brings me close enough to it to never want to drink the juice again.

I am considering making my own juice, however. It's easy. All you need is the fruit and a container to keep it in. It only needs to sit for a few weeks. We'll see how that experiment goes.

As for the mass production: we go out to one of the 4 farms owned by these people daily to pick up the bags of fruit that have been picked that day by someone living here. These bags, full of hard fruits, weigh like 60 lbs each. Pramod and I ride in the back of the truck while driving to each spot where the bags have been kept. When we bring the fruit back to the factory (I call it that as I consider our work to be factory work rather than farming), and load them into these huge, 500 gallon barrels. As the fruit sit in the barrel, the release the juice. We leave them in there for about 2 weeks. After letting them sit for a couple of weeks, the juice is drained out and we unload these much lighter but much stickier and messier bags into a compressor. There, the fruits are squeezed. The juice is filtered multiple times then pasteurized then bottled. Pramod and I have helped in capping and cleaning the bottles, putting labels on them, shrink-wrapping the lids, and boxing them. That is what our 3-4 hours of daily work will entail.

Tide Pools

Snorkeling at the tide pools. We definitely are loving our waterproof camera.

Check out these pictures. We're still looking for turtles though!

Sunday Surfing!

Shankar goes surfing every Sunday with some of the people living in his house. For our first Sunday on the island, we went with him. The waves weren't great--which was perfect for learning. I only used a Boogie Board, but I caught a couple of waves and had a ton of fun. The kids who grew up here are crazy! I saw an 8 year old boy also with a Boogie Board, the difference was that he actually stood up on his board and was steering it too!

Pramod tried the surf board. I guess he caught some waves too. But like me, he was on his stomach most of the time. He did get onto his kees as some point with Shankar holding the board for him. It's all part of the learning process.

We both had a really good time. We will definitely try to go again!

Saturday Soccer!

Another farm in the area--who we have spent some time with--has Saturday morning activities. From 9:30 - 10:30, someone living on their farm teaches a yoga class and then after there is a soccer game.

The yoga is taught by one of a couple of yoga teachers living on that farm. When I say yoga teacher, I mean someone who has taken a yoga teacher training course. I guess a few years ago, someone came in and gave a teacher training course for anyone who was interested. From our experience in this class, it didn't seem that these people necessarily had their own yoga class. Regardless, it was yoga asana. It felt good to stretch under someone else's guidance and we took it for what it was.

After the yoga there's a soccer game in the park! It's pretty informal--barefoot with as evenly divided teams as possible. I didn't play, but I was excited for Pramod to have other people to be active with. It's good. Pramod even scored a goal!

Beaching it up

On most days, the farm work goes from 2-6 pm. This leaves our mornings totally free to go to town or to the beach or... anything else we may want to do. It seems pretty sweet although I bet it could get old after a while. Since this is our first morning out, it hasn't yet!
This morning, Pramod and I decided to go to the beach which is 6 miles from the main road. Hitchhiking is supposedly really easy here, and since we have no other form of transportation, that's what we decided to do...
One mile later... we're still walking and we have been ignored by several drivers. Our thoughts are moving towards having to walk the whole way AND back every time we want to go to the beach or the possibility of buying cheap bicycles. Finally we were picked up by a nice man from Washington State who retired to Hawaii.

He showed us some sights and then took us to the beach. It's a black sand beach which is “clothing optional” – slightly surprising to see. The water is so warm, but the waves are incredible and it makes swimming difficult. After getting on the other side of where the waves crest, it's easy, but getting back to land from that side was hard! It was a lot of work and of course I got stuck right under a wave. We both made it in and out okay, but I'm not a big fan.

Pramod on the other hand continues to play in the wave as I write this. Whenever I look over he's 1.) diving from the beach into a large wave and when I next see his head pop up, he's been taken way up to shore; or 2.) he stands there to let the wave pass him by but ends up falling and being dragged, spinning, up to the beach. Hey as long as he's having fun! He says that he enjoys the feeling of tumbling in the wave. I don't like that. I think I need to be in control. When I want to breathe, I NEED to breathe. When I want to get out of the water, I don't like the feeling that a force much more powerful that I am is pulling me back in.