Mele Nahiku

Folks who are considering visiting, work-trading or becoming members here are often asking, “What’s a day like there at Mele Nahiku?” So I decided to write about a typical day for me. I am a work-trader visting from Portland, Oregon and have been here about 3 months now and this was a day last week in late April, 2008.

I woke today to my usual alarm clock: the morning light, the birds chatting and the sound of Carl, our next door neighbor, softly chopping wood to smoke the food for his roadside barbeque stand that is halfway to Hana from here on the Hana Hwy. After appreciating the new little ocean view from my little garden cottage, that was created yesterday from come clearing that Zeoc and friend Adam did, I walked over to the yoga space for some stretching and morning meditation. On my way out I noticed a new bunch of ripe strawberry guava next to the yoga space, so I brought a ladder over from the garden shed and began my breakfast with fresh little tart guavas right off the tree! Then I headed up to the barn, our community space and kitchen, and had some fresh papaya from our land, followed by a little miso soup. Next I walked down to the garden and did a walk-through while harvesting green beans, potato greens, red and green leaf lettuces, italian parsley and napa cabbage to have ready for a lunch salad. I also pulled up a head of napa cabbage to process for sauerkraut. I brought my goodies up to the cottage and greeted Micah, Jen, Zeoc and Manny for the morning and checked in about how the night went. Not so good for Jen as it turned out that Manny was fussy through the night so she didn’t get much sleep…it’s hard to be a one month old and premature at that, but even harder to be the mother of a one month old premature baby! I felt deep appreciation for Jen, inspirationally patient and grounded mama, getting through last night so Manny can feel safe and met in this exciting new world.

While Micah told me all about his morning, I sat on the deck viewing the ocean and cleaned and shredded the cabbage for the sauerkraut, then sorted through the jungle peanuts I am sprouting to find the good ones to plant as starts today. The rest went into the compost bin for the chickens. And a handful of fresh ones went into my mouth for a mid-morning snack, along with an orange from our friend’s property up in Haiku. These peanuts are an experiment in growing more of what we like to eat here…some of us are kind of big peanut butter fans, so the idea of growing our own peanuts and making our own peanut butter instead of getting it from the store, is enticing. These are Amazonian jungle peanuts so hopefully they will thrive in our climate.

After doing some dishes, I headed back down to the garden to start weeding what will be a new patch for mung and adzuki beans. Grateful for the little drop in temperature today and the breeze, I pleasantly drifted into weeding meditation and my growling stomach was what brought me out of it an hour and a half later. I then had a lunch of salad and our fresh herbed goat cheese, along with some leftover mushroom seaweed soup and brown rice, and a banana from our neighbors Steve and Theresa’s banana orchard, which we help to maintain a couple times a month. After lunch I packaged the freshly made goat cheese then it was back to the garden to finish weeding the bed. While I was having lunch, Micah and Jen came out and made some headway on the bed, so gladly I didn’t have much left to weed. I then turned the soil, broke it up a bit, shaped keyhole beds, and then turned in goat manure. Then I cleared the pathway to it of some overhanging comfrey leaves, used those to mulch the squash mounds planted by our work-trader Sarah last month. Zeoc came down to harvest some yacon leaves for the goats and also took some of the comfrey to feed them during milking. I then watered the seedlings in the garden shed, bucketed up some sifted coconut husk compost, started those peanut seeds and noted all this in our garden journal.

The light was growing dim already! So I hopped up to the barn for an outdoor solar shower, which was just warm enough on this overcast day, then went back to my place to relax a little, write in my journal and read a little from the Permaculture Design Manual. Next thing I was hearing the dramatic and ongoing telltale ringing of the gong by a three year old named Micah, calling me to dinner. Jen had baked whole wheat bread and made a beautiful lentil soup featuring dollops of taro which she had just harvested today from the garden. These tasted like yummy little dumplings! We feasted and talked about the day and our plans for tomorrow and enjoyed Manny sitting up in Jen’s arms and watching all the action at dinner, including some hysterical facial expressions. We talked about making sourdough starter and plans for building an outdoor kitchen next to the barn that will feature a rocketstove, a small, super-efficient wood-burning cookstove. Then we heard the rain start coming down outside and felt relief after these dry days for the gardens getting a chance to drink at last! We cleaned up and Zeoc and I discussed plans for the kombucha batches we’ve been brewing: he likes them young and I like them older and vinegary, so we decided, I think, on each having our own batch to work with, ha ha. I said my goodnights and headed over to the barn to email a friend for tips on getting a sourdough starter started and also to contact my friend who builds rocketstoves for a living to invite him over to build one for us. Then it was off to bed, a little more reading first (I’m sucked into a particularly dramatic Anne Lamott novel at present) and then falling asleep to the sounds of the crickets, occasional bursts of rain and the ocean waves crashing down in the distance.