23 Nov Week 2 – Monday: Sunburn (finally) and Kitchen Wins

We’ve made it through a full week basically! The downtime was much appreciated yesterday and we were ready for our full morning today. We started with an hour long meeting with Jiva, Myrica (Jiva’s partner), Kristin (fellow volunteer), Aaron, and myself. First up on all team meetings is a short but lovely meditation lead by Myrica – a brief time to sit, appreciate what we’re doing here, listen to our surroundings, and feel calm before we dive into a new week’s worth of tasks.

After the meditation we all take a time to share anything we’re feeling, needing, grateful for, etc. After Aaron and I got to fill in the others a little about our biking success story — Kristin shared the news that she’s leaving Kauai for Colorado on Dec 1st. With the departure last night of Luna, the 16+ month-long resident of the farm (just for the holidays to see her family) — Aaron and I are now going to be the veterans running the show from Dec 1 – 29th. NO PRESSURE! But seriously, we’re feeling fine and Jive & Myrica have been very gracious for our motivated help and enthusiasm, so we’re feeling up to the challenge.

The morning was spent in the sun clearing and weeding 3 beds. Aaron got the rundown on the weed whacker, while I learned the compost tasks for readying new beds for planting. The morning was so nice we pushed through for about 4 solid hours before breaking, and I even got a little sunburnt! I finished up my farm work by thinning seedlings in the Sprout House and cleaning up the pulled micro greens for our lunch!

Aaron cooked us a skillet of turmeric, ginger, spam, jingle bell peppers, Hawaiian chiles, garlic, peanuts, lime, with coconut oil & lime juice. Served over a bed of green leaf lettuce with avocodo, and topped with micro greens of kale, arugula, cilantro, celery, pak, and collards. SO YUMMY! It was amazing how each micro green really tasted like a full flavor version of the adult plant. With roughly 9x the nutrients!

In other culinary adventures — I made our 2nd pitcher of fresh squeezed juice yesterday; we have TONS of leftover fruit from the market that’s basically all up for grabs! My version turned out a little lemon-tart but with some additional water it’s still quite yummy. Today Aaron whipped up some nut butter in the resident Ninja blender with some cheap unsalted peanuts & mix nuts from the store, with a pinch of honey, coconut oil and salt. He also took a Malama avocado (giant and VERY buttery) and made a round of guacamole, using cilantro, Hawaiian Chile, green onions and lime from the farm (also added garlic of course).

We’re eating well! Lots and lots of fruit – we eat it for breakfast and snacks daily – tons of greens, and Aaron picked us an ‘ulu (breadfruit) today so we can test out making something with that soon!