lovely pics!
when i lived in the big island of hawaii, the biggest (legal) export was tropical flowers, especially anthuriums.
huge shade houses everywhere, chemicals a gogo.
the most money was in orchids, where incomes of $130,000 to $150,000 for a single farmer were reported.
to combat expensive and extensive infection, there were state rules making regular preventative sprays compulsory.
so they had nice shiny new suv's, those orchid farmers, and flash fishing boats, but there was a problem...
life expectancy. ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
being in a supermarket queue in hawaii was the most tragic experience...
the blood mixes of korean, chinese, maori, samoan, hawaiian, japanese, portugese, filipino genotypes made a new race of golden children, who were promptly tortured by the appalling dietary ignorance of the parents.
so many angelic faces...but when they opened their mouths they had all metal teeth sometimes!
the fatter and unhealthier the parents, the more junkfood in the trolley...
and when it comes to junk food america takes the betty crocker-full-of-poison prize for sheer inventiveness in creating diabolically clever ruses to start the kids as quickly as possible on the road to disease.
the rule of junkfood is near absolute, and the soda flows all year round from the baby bottles.
it was like watching a rubens painting getting slashed, seeing so much beauty despoiled...
especially as hawaii was where i learned to appreciate the importance of choosing what goes into making your daily new blood.
raising children not to go that route was the most challenging trial i've ever faced, you feel so outgunned by the corporations that cynically narket this evil to children, shamelessly using characters like ron mcdon to ruin young lives.
most of the flower farmers tended to be japanese...who eat a lot less junk food.
to see the diets of those least tainted by the nightmare, i used to like to amble through the saturday morning mamo st market in hilo, where you'd see vegetables that were completely off the regular map, and taste really novel and surprising works of nature....
like fried gobo...(burdock root)....wow!
and razorthin slices of pickled pink baby ginger root, for tucking into sushi...
and big yellow-fleshed sweet-potatoes, and gorgeous orange yams that oozed caramel when baked, and whose skin was so sweet and chewy, and tasted of fire and ashes, and jackfruit chunks, and the seeds boiled like chestnuts..
the seven (at least) different types of avocado, purple-skin, hard, like from down napoopoo road, soft, buttery, small-seed, watery-kine, spotted, all in different seasons and all so different, and all so good...
we'd hike into the jungle and find a 30ft avo tree in the waawaa area, with a spoon and a bottle of herb salt, with hundreds fallen on the florest floor for us wild animals to munch.
and sitting under the hayden mango tree with some mosquito netting to squeeze fresh juice into the coconut cup, with some fresh tangy acerola cherries thrown in for the colour...
backpacks full of passionfruit and papayas, spending an hour beating a coconut against the lava rock until all the husk was off and then chewing the meat and spitting the white fluff on each other, sucking the sweet oil.
and the little red juicy mountain apples that grew right on the treetrunk and tasted like spring...and the purple flowers that preceded them...
and the little rose apples that tasted a bit like shampoo, but grew on you, with their big white pompom flowers that smelled like magic and tickled your nose...
and putting a sprouted coconut overnight in the campfire embers and eating the spongy centre for breakfast, turned mocha flavour from the slow roast..
and the chocolate guavas,...and the white pineapples, so much sweeter than the yellow, and without the woody pith...
tender, coral pink mangosteen flesh, so strange and precious..
and a big ripe strawberry papaya filled with thimbleberries and a dash of lime....
and to think how much i used to miss stonefruit like southern italian white peaches while i lived there!
anyway, now i see papayas and mangoes here in yurp, but they don't even begin to think about coming close...
vapid, rubbery, off-tasting...
on kauai we camped for 6 months in a litchi orchard, in a commune called valley house.
there was an old haole farmer who'd sell organic oranges right off his trees outside his door, up mauka from kapaa.
his name was jack, and i thought he had a wonderful life.
sorry for the delirious nostalgia hit....
hawaii is a blessed place, a huuuge part of my heart never left. ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
The tropical fruits and Asian veggies are indeed very very different. Sounds like you tried a lot more of them than we have so far.
If your Valley House commune was up the Keapana Valley you'll be sad to know the land was sold to a Hedge Fund owner. At least he built a fairly modest house (so far) and has been pretty kind to the land from what I've seen. The place is really developing a bit too fast (says one of the causes of the problem).
