My brother-in-law, Steven Tyler, and me eating ice cream!
Here we are on a recent family trip to visit relatives in Hawaii. They have a 20 acre farm growing lettuce, romaine, cabbage, and onions. It’s only 20 acres, but there is a lot of hand labor involved especially at harvest which is done 3-4 days per week 52 weeks a year. Everything is loaded onto a flat bed truck and driven into town to a farmer cooperative to be further distributed. I was suprised to find out that most of what is grown on the farm stays in Hawaii.
At first glance it seems like you’re going back in time. There’s no 45′ cultivators or 500hp tractors, no GPS steering and mapping, but there’s just as much science going into growing these crops as there is in large scale farming. They have disease, bug, and weed problems just like everyone else. If anything they keep a closer eye on their plants than we do on our 2300 acres. The name of the program eludes me at the moment, but two of the men working on the farm are part of a global exchange program, one being from Kenya and the other Cambodia. They live and work on the farm for one year, and then take what knowledge and skills they’ve learned back to their homes. Just goes to show you don’t have to have a huge farm to make a big impact.
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- There’s a lot of bending over to harvest this!
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- That’s me “unloading” but where’s the grain cart and the semi and the auto steer? Not the harvest I’m used to!
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- Setting up another round of boxes
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- Pretty simple, but a lot of work!
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- Ready for transport
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- My brother-in-law, Steven Tyler, and me eating ice cream!
