Hawaii: Big Island Blues Part Two

Filed in archive Exotic on August 20, 2006

Not twenty minutes into my first morning on the Big island I was clinging to the back of a tractor, camera around my neck, dodging overhead tall shrubs and low-hanging trees as they snapped back against the tall metal frame of the ultimate farming tool.




I was getting "the tour" from a gracious host who allowed me to see what life is like working on a coffee and fruit tree farm. It's not easy work. Especially when it could rain literally at any point of any day. That's 365 days a year the forecast has some sort of percentage of rain in the Captain Cook area. This provides for a fantastic, almost mythical land to gaze upon as rolled up to the top of the property in first gear.




Papaya trees, merely a year or two old, already were producing a plenitude of fruit harvests. Banana trees were freshly planted. But the money crop, the one agricultural bonanza of the coffee tree. We plucked a ripe berry and eat the flesh, then I held the bean in my palm and contemplated the vast industry that is the coffee business. Kona Coffee was a wonderful treat each morning while traveling through this land of many faces.

ER Harris