I didn’t have constant or any internet access for a week or two, so I apologize for the lapse in constant new pictures of my Hawaiian experience! I can tell you’ve been ANXIOUSLY awaiting them!

I had the opportunity to work exchange on a farm called La’akea Gardens, and here is their website. Below are some photos of the beautiful farm where I got to stay!

This is the main house with the “kitchen garden” in the foreground. They grow all sorts of salad greens like kale and lettuce and mizuna and mesclun and all sorts of things I barely recognize. Very yummy though! Fresh organic salads at each meal!

This gate is open during the day, but closed at night. Otherwise the wild pigs will come and eat all the salad greens! No joke! I heard one in the brush near my tent one night and almost shit my pants! Not that they’re dangerous, but because I’m a wuss.

This is the pond in the meadowspace. It’s quite lovely, but I never quite figured out if it’s functional or what it’s function might be.

MMmmmmmm! Ripening cacao! I’m not exactly sure what the cocoa bean harvesting and fermenting process is, but I sure like the results! I’m actually sad to miss that process on the farm. The residents are new to it too, I believe. There’s actually a few local chocolate makers in Puna, so I’m sure they can find out some tricks.

They had the cutest baby sheep, but they were super skittish unless you had the bucket of grain. They don’t like humans, and I don’t blame them!

I mentioned harvesting avocados earlier. It’s like really fun. You climb the avo trees and pick them by hand or use this long bamboo picker thingy, which I should have taken a photo of. In any case, I love climbing trees, and getting a bucketful of avos out of it is a really rewarding feeling! Avo season is almost over, so this is like the second to last batch.

ISHTAR THE ONE LEGGED CHICKEN! This fine hen has only one sexy leg. Ya jealous? She lays eggs like the best of them, however, proving that partial amputees are just as functional as the able-bodied. I’m not sure where she lost her leg, but it’s sort of amusing to watch her hop around eating worms and crumbs and bugs.

This is the outhouse where I would sometimes make poopie. Quite a nice shitter, yeah? Even though it’s outside and a composting toilet. That just means you pour sawdust on your “gift,” and it eventually decomposes. It actually doesn’t smell either, for an outhouse. Unless it’s very full.

This is the outdoor showers, which use solar heated water. Right in the shade of some banana trees! I actually didn’t shower out here ’cause I didn’t want to get my feet all dirty. They need to put a platform in that shit!

This is the lovely path to and fro the main house to the meadowspace. It’s lovely… in the sunshine. It rained for a week straight at one point and then nothing really seemed pretty to me, that and the cold/flu I had.

That concludes my farm tour post! Stay tuned for the next photo batch!