22 Nov Day 5 – to market / to beach

We were up and on call at 6am Saturday to finish harvesting & market prep. After loading up the farm pickup and Jiva’s Rav, we were off by 8a to the Kilauea Farmer’s Market, the largest farmer’s market on the island.

We set up our stall and the rush of VERY motivated shoppers began promptly at opening – 9a. We sold out of our pok Choy, a newer item for the market, in 30 minutes! We also sold out of some herbs (oregano, rosemary, basil), green onions, kale, collards, Swiss chard, turmeric, Malama avocados, cara cara oranges, ‘Ulu (breadfruit), and sold roughly half of all other citrus – it’s officially citrus season!

Jiva was really happy with our market skills: chatting up customers, identifying varieties of food, weighing & mentally pricing items, counting up customer’s totals and primarily all cash exchanges – been a while since we were both doing FAST math! But it was fun – we also grabbed burritos, AMAZING fresh sourdough bread, local honey + honey comb, and kefir from the other stalls.

Jiva’s a real character!

After returning back to the farm, we quickly packed our day packs and set off on foot to the closest beach – Larsen’s beach. It was a short walk down the road from the farm, to a red dirt road all the way to the ocean – 45 min total. The sign at the parking lot was a fair warning, though we didn’t need it with the raging wind and waves crashing to know we should be wary of swimming!

“NO SAFE SWIMMING DEADLY UNSEEN CURRENTS HAVE KILLED…”

We made it down the narrow, winding, muddy bluff path to emerge on a nearly EMPTY beach laiden with black volcanic rocks. We got a tip from a local about a nice small protect shallow pool where we could safely set and test the perfectly warm ocean water. After an hour of dipping and splashing and rolling with the waves in the shallows, we packed up to leave. A rainbow over the ocean was our parting view… a perfect beach trip 🙂