19 Nov Day 3 – baptism

After being waterlogged most of yesterday, we were very excited to see blue sky this morning. As we began prepping our breakfast at 7:30, a beautiful double rainbow appeared arching over the entire west side of the farm. For the past 3 days, if it wasn’t raining, it was just finished raining or about to rain. The ground has been wet, our shoes have been wet, our feet have been WET. We were advised on the first day to pay particular attention to our feet and make sure they dry out, so a dry day today was a very welcome change.

After a brief moment of rainbow bliss, we began our morning tasks: learning how to feed the chickens, reviewing the ins and outs of the Sprout House, as well as familiarizing ourselves with the kitchen garden – aka the giant bed of plants just for farmily consumption!

One of the other staffers on the farm, Luna, offered us a ride along to Lihue since she was hitting the Walmart. We gratefully accepted and used the opportunity to get a 2nd COVID test. The county of Kauai offered incentives for transpacific travelers: “We ask that you rest for 3 days, where a mask, physically distance & avoid community contact. Then take a voluntary follow-up test 3 days after your arrival. Enjoy the beauty of Kauai with a negative result. As a mahalo to visitors who choose to pay for the second test, they will receive $150 certificate from a participating Kaua’i Business.”

So we rolled up to the no-appointment testing facility, filled out a little paperwork, got an easy 10-sec nasal swap and picked out our gift certificates! We were able to look up the places while we waited and chose a nice restaurant a couple towns over from the farm and an ATV tour outside Lihue. Our results would be emailed to us by the end of the day and we were finished with the testing process & off to Walmart in 40 min.

After gathering some more dry food supplies, we stopped at the Fish Express for lunch poke bowls — and at Luna’s suggestion, popped out to a nearby Lihue beach for a quick visit – OUR FIRST – to the ocean! It was a beautiful sunny day, we were eating some delicious fresh fish, and we were finally getting our first ocean swim since arriving 3 days ago. It felt like we had finally accomplished the various chores and errands of “settling in” and thus we were now ISLANDERS.

We got back to the farm about 3p and had an hour to putz around until our evening transplanting session with Kristen. We planted roughly 190 seedlings to our 2nd keiki bed (Hawaiian for ‘baby’): two rows of Pak Choy (baby bok choy), two rows of lettuce and 1 row of spinach.

Another great day on Kaua’i…