So NOW you know what I'm going to do, right? Yup, sit back and wait for some of these freshly baked cookies to come my way! With all those people baking, I don't need to add to the drain of the electric grid.

Although we commonly call them two by fours, they are NOT 2 inches by 4 inches. The 2 by 4 name comes from the size of the wood BEFORE milling. The actual purchased size? 1and 1⁄2 inches by 3 and 1⁄2 inches.

When asked how much people are paid, they usually reply with the gross amount, which differs considerably fom their take home amount, which is more accurate.

Some people will list items on Ebay as being, for example, $3, but then there is shipping and handling of $10. Why? Well, people pay Ebay based upon selling price, not on selling price plus shipping. many stores do the same thing online, just showing a low price and then upping it considerably with shipping and handling. What is handling anyway? Shouldn't that be a part of the companies overhead to do business? No, it's a way to make a few extra dollars. By the way, I never charge customers a handling charge on coffee orders, and often I have free shipping.

Ever notice that the McDonalds Quarter Pounder is a quarter pound of beef (4 ounces) BEFORE COOKING, then it shrinks to 3 ounces after cooking?

Coke lists its sweetness component as sugar and/or high fructose corn syrup. Well, its high fructose corn syrup because it is cheaper. There is only one time a year when Coke contains sugar and that is around Passover when the old formula is sold in the Passover aisle of stores. You can actually feel your teeth rot again!

Some pet food companies are "using the system" as well as human food companies may. Look at the labels and you may notice that they have separated certain ingredients so they do not all appear in one place. The labels are supposed to show ingredients by weight in diminishing order. However they could take wheat for example and grind some and prepare it so they could have wheat, wheat flour and wheat gluten. So you would see 3 different items but when added together the wheat component would be tremendous.

Remember the old Monty Python SPAM comedy routine? "Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam and eggs". "But I don't like Spam!", "Well, it doesn't have THAT MUCH Spam in it". Well, I bought a Hungry Man dinner called "Grilled Bourbon Steak Strips". You would think it odd tha there was chicken in a steak product, but pulling items out of the ingredient panels shows: dehydrated chicken broth, chicken fat, dehydrayed cooked chicken, chicken fat and chicken powder!

French toast is neither from France nor toast (it's fried bread).

Mock turtle soup is an English soup that was created in the mid-18th century as a cheaper imitation of green turtle soup. It often uses brains and organ meats such as calf's head, or a calf's foot to duplicate the texture and flavour of the original's turtle meat. I think I'll pass of the original AND the runner up!

If you are not careful, you may buy an orange drink which tastes like juice yet contains less than 2% juice. You may also find that man yjuices contain apple juice as a filler. Go ahead and look at the container of 100% Juice and see if there isn't apple juice in there. Apple juice is cheap and has little taste of itsself compared with other juices present.

We have the same problem with Kona Coffee where companies sell a 10% blend with 90% of the coffee coming from foreign countries.

Candy bars, coffee, detergents, cereals and so on have all been changing their sizes, even if the boxes or containers stay the same. I have seen Kona blends go from 8 oz to 7 oz to sometimes 6 oz, which makes it difficult for consumers to compare prices. candy bars in machines often seasaw between price and size.

The TV blares "Free Credit Report" but now must add the disclaimer that it is free IF you sign up for Triple Advantage, a product that if you don't cancel will cost you $14.95 a month! The really free credit report is at annualcreditreport.com. Why doesn't the really free site have ads? Well, that $14.95 a month is what pays for the guy to sing the ads and ride the rollercoaster and so on. The credit report companies also have quasi-free reports, but if you go to the real free site, it is all free (just don't fall for any recurring fees).

In your December bills, you may have notices of increased fees and charges. Most people don't look at bills in December and January, which is why the companies add the charges in those months. I recently was charged $40 a quarter because I was not trading stocks in my account. The company (E-Trade) showed that they did not want me as a customers, and I agreed. I cancelled my account immediately.

So as you go about your day, please kep some of this in mind. Things are not what you may think or expect.

For those of you who are searching for deals, I will have a Black Friday (secret) sale. Shhhhh! :-)

I noticed that the trees need lots more water (I'm working on that), because the cherries did not have a lot of muscilge in them. The sugar content will make a difference in how the beans roast.

I can attest that next years crop from these trees will be fantastic! I am quite pleased with my initial tasting and will be proud to offer this new crop next year!

Unlike corn or many other crops, these trees will last perhaps 50 or 100 years. Well, unless the pigs get them first. Coming home from the tasting, I turned into the farm only to see about 6 giant pigs scurry into my new trees! It is time to have the locals start looking for pork dinners :-) You may think I'm kidding, but these pigs make a nice luau dinner!

The beans are quite small as you might expect; these trees being planted just in April of this year. I did not expect any crop at all the first year. There are still many cherry waiting to be picked and in fact, some cherry has already dried on the trees.

Today I cracked open the parchment to reveal the green beans with their silverskin covering. Silverskin is a fine covering that is usully removed in milling. Since I "milled" these myself, there is still some silverskin left on the green beans, but it should burn off very quickly in the roasting process.

Speaking of roasting, I decided to do that today and currently have 4.8 ounces of green in the roaster as I type this. Based upon my calculations, I should have just under 4 ounces of roasted when I am done.

I'll roast past 1st crack, which will take this to a bit past medium, but I have to be very careful as this coffee has not been graded and I have larger and smaller beans all mixed together. There are even peaberries in there!

Minutes later... I just dumped the coffee having let it go 20 seconds after the last pops of first crack. Because there is not much mass in the roaster, I'm afraid I can't calculate how soon 2nd crack would have started, and then the beans get dark and a bit oily. I wanted to avoid that on this first roast of a small sample.

I should know at some point tonight what a first picking of immature coffee beans will taste like. No farmers have told me what their experience has been, because many have waited a full couple years and performed a full picking.

I am sure if the coffee doesn't taste good, next year will be a lot better, as the trees mature and the beans become regular size. However, if the first pick tastes great, next year will be even better!

I'll let you know soon.

Although the clock changes, our internal circadian rythms don't and we can become restless and inattentive. This makes sense and more research will be conducted.

Arizona and Hawaii don't change their clocks.

Can you imagine how many millions of hours have been wasted over the years, changing the clocks forward and backward? How many people have wasted gas driving to church or a store, only to discover they are now an hour early or late?

My suggestion (which makes common sense) is that IF we HAVE to have a difference in our clocks because of the time of daylight, then just move the clocks a half hour ONCE and never touch them again! This seems so easy!

Recently when congress decided to change the date of the beginning of the time change, Microsoft had to issue a time patch for their computers and every computer owner in America had to install the patch just so their clock would be correct. (I use an external website to keep my computer clock correct).

Here in Hawaii, to cut costs, many government agencies and schools decided to take a furlough Friday, where they would close on Fridays. Rather than close on Friday and throw the state into disarray, why could they have not just ended their day an hour or so earlier during the week?

Imagine being in high school again. You have multiple classes during the day and perhaps a 10 minute break every hour to change classrooms. My high school used a one-subject-plan where you took one subject all day (the day was only about 4 to 5 hours) then took the equivalent of gym, etc. Each week you had a test, at the end of 4 weeks you took your midterm and at the 8 week point, you took your final. Then you were off to start your next course. You only had one subject to study and only one homework assignment. The teacher knew exactly how much homework would take you (in our case, 2 hours). You had no excuse that you had 3 courses to work on, etc.

If more high schools had this type of class schedule, you would actually be able to change schools in mid year and not be worried about where the new class was in their schedule. It made so much sense and most students improved their grades considerably.

Calculate how many hours a day are wasted by students changing classes every hour?

Think of income taxes. Many people suggest flat taxes and/or sales taxes be used instead. Certainly any other process has to be easier and more cost effective than the procedure we have now. How many hours do millions of people waste each year collecting, filing and accounting of just their receipts? How many tax lawyers are there? How many years of debates on law changes, deductions, tax rebates and enforcement of tax laws that have grown so complex that even the IRS says that even though they tell you an answer to your tax question, they will not stand by that answer. There has to be a better way.

Sometimes the simple path makes the most sense.

The video shows that one can take old boots, motor oil, sawdust and a handfull of pills and actually have the cooked resultt pass the nutritional criteria of pet food.

It shows that the reason so many pet foods were pulled from the shelves in the melamine poisoning is tha tthey are all made in the same plant. How different can hundreds or thousands of brands be, if one plant makes them?

It shows how even though the label lists meat as the number one ingredient in a pet food, it is probably not.

The video seems quite informative without stretching facts to fool you. I encourage you to watch and do your own research, for the sake of your pet.

Afterall, dogs and cats lived for years on real food before we started feeding them grain.

http://www.viddler.com/explor...

So it should not be a surprise that they can eat chicken (with bones) as long as the chicken is raw. Cooking makes the bones brittle.

To prove it, here is a movie of Koa having chicken for lunch today. youtube.com/watch?v=haJt6rXAOt8

I know what you are thinking, but when I visited my friends kennel today, her big lab had a dead bird in its mouth (well, for a few seconds at least)....

So even if you don't feed your dog bones, he is going to find them elsewhere!

If you want to read more, you might enjoy reading the December 2009 edition of The Labrador Connection. Go to www.nationallabradorretriever club.com and click on "Labrador Connection" link. Then choose the December 2009 newsletter.

Sometimes Word gets special charactgers enabled and my apostrophies and quotes are changed for me, and display online wrong in my browser. Sometimes I'm encouraged to go change my posts to correct this, othertimes I'm not. So I turned off the autocorrect and the next time I use Word, I hope the punctuation will be correct.

I know he can't help, but he needs to understand none-the-less.

The photo is currently on KHON TV-2's website under Weather Watchers. To save you the link, here is the photo, taken tonight at the farm, looking west.

This just in: Two secret diesel-electric Japanese submarines have been uncovered, just off the coast of Oahu, where they were sunk during the war. National Geographic will have a TV special on these around Nov 17th.

As I was saying, close by me, we had a light dusting of snow. It was hard to see on the web cams, but Mauna Kea definitely had snow today early in the morning, then it melted and reformed at dusk. There may or may not be lots of snow there in the morning.

Yesterday we had absolutely fantastic (or should I say FUNtastic) weather. The storm took the vog away and the air was very clear. The nighttime sky was also very clear with lots of stars.

Over at Oahu’s Ala Wai canal, they brought out a boom to contain a small oil slick. It appears some guy did laundry in the water and an oil slick headed towards the harbor.

Lately all you have heard is that the economy is horrible. That is until you realize that this is the highest unemployment since (drum roll… the mid 1980’s). So we just passed 1980’s unemployment rate. Interesting. Still, never trust statistics. Over the years the government has tweaked what being unemployed means. It is not just that these people are out of work; they have to be looking fro work. So, I can go from being unemployed and drop off the radar, if I stop looking for a job. It makes sense, but then it makes it harder to compare numbers now with numbers then, if the rules have changed.

I stopped by the U.S.D.A. office today to go over my farm contract. My administrator will stop by tomorrow to take some photos, and probably Monday I will submit some of my last receipts to close out the contract.

A few days from now, the leaseholder will come by too. I think they will be pleasantly surprised because last time there were no crops in the ground and that was like, April. How time flies!

Now that I have a working mower again, I have already cut the grass in the coffee rows and am now attacking the tall grass, some of which is growing between the coffee trees. This stuff easily grows 10 feet and taller and resembles stalks of bamboo. There is bamboo nearby but I think this is quite different. In any event, I hope to get it under control soon.

As for the trees, we could use lots more rain because the flood watch may have been useful across the state; we got very little rain here. Also, my tanks are not yet hooked up to the roof and may not be until after the beginning of the year. Still, I have picked the first round from the new trees and am ready to go through the rows again. As I mentioned earlier in blogs, the first pot of coffee from the new trees will be interesting, and in hindsight, very, very expensive! Next year I’ll have a really nice crop and the year after will be in full production.

For those of you who use Windows systems, have you been using Firefox, an alternative browser from Mozilla. Since it is open-source, people worldwide have added many options. I like the one that shows me what is up for sale at Woot.Com by adding text to the bottom right of the browser. The Beta version of the software is really fast. That beta version will be a release candidate soon. Also, I have used their Thunderbird email program for years and love it. There is a “gotcha” during install. I access multiple mailboxes as separate identities rather than merge all the mail in one big intray. This allows me to switch between email accounts all in one program. However, when installing a new POP email account, the default is to put all the mail in the global mailbox. The other default is to download all email from the server to the local computer and delete the messages on the server. Since I sometimes want to read the message from another computer or online, I opt to keep the original messages on the server. It is easy to set that option, but generally new users choose the default and then you can’t put the messages back up. You just have to not download the messages into the new account until you have modified the server setting. If people really want to try Thunderbird and not be caught by this, I’d be happy to step-by-step describe how to install and skip this option. The program is really good and stable!

Enough for now, I have paperwork to do.

Dog's son Leland lives here and his bail bond office is in Kainaliu, right next to a small drive in restaurant, laundromat and just above a bookstore and video store. Also in the same little center is a pet store where I met Mary to get a computer she wanted me to work on.

So tonight Dog and crew are helping Leland nab a guy who was down in Naalehu in the Kau district. That is one of the most southern towns in the country. When I decided to move here, that was one town I look at as a residence. I found a farm that was reasonably priced, but had a driveway that looked like a ski ramp. I passed, however, it looks like a nice place to live if it wasn’t so far to COSTCO!

Anyway, they finally captured the guy and took him to the Kau police station. I recognized the station having passed it a few times on my way to the volcano. Also, the next day, Dad and son and the rest went to the beach. From the quick view of the cliffs in the distance, I knew they were about 3 miles from here, down near but south of the Captain Cook monument and probably over near Keei Beach or even a bit farther south.

So it appears that whether you are famous or infamous, you end up here J

On TV Channel 2 out here, KHON does a "Happy First Birthday" where they show photos of children celebrating their 1st year of life. As I understand it, this used to be a major accomplishment here and their is often a baby luau celebration. Because many of the children have Hawaiian heritage, their official names are often quite long. Along with their birthday announcement, will be listed their like and accomplishments, such as "He enjoys strained peas and carrots and keeping his parents up all night".

The other day I was trying to get the mower onto the back of my truck. I turned the tractor around, raised the mower up and tried to back the tractor to the back of the truck. This would allow me to slowly lower the 800-pound mower onto the bed of the truck. Afterwards, I would disconnect the thing and drive the truck away. Well, to do that requires the truck to be on a slight incline so the bed is as low (compared to the tractor). There just is no easy way to lay the thing there unless that happens. When I could not get it in, I decided to lay the mower on the ground and lift it with the front-end loader. This turned out NOT to be the best way. In a perfect world I would take the loader off the front of the tractor and replace it with a fork list attachment; that is, IF I HAD ONE! I don't, so I wrapped a chain around the loader and attached it to the mower deck. I lifted the load but there was too much slack and I had to lift the deck very high; something you don't want to do as it makes the tractor very unstable.

As I swung around, I found I was on loose gravel and a slight incline. The tractor started sliding and tipping and at one point I was poised on what felt like 1 wheel! I know I hollered "No" 5 times in a row and my heart was beating very quickly as I realized I was seconds away from tipping the tractor over onto the rocks. Altough there is a bar over my head to protect me in a rollover, it does not give you much protection.

I was stretched out, held by the seatbelt and pushed the lever to lower the load, thus taking much of the unsteadiness out of the situation. Talk about shaking! I came inside fro a while to calm down. I was able to drop the mower off late Friday before they closed, but not in enough time that they could fix it then. They are closed all weekend so Monday night is the earliest I can get it back.

Well when my friend told me she was borrowing a small trailer to take her ATV in for repair, I got on the "bandwagon" so to speak. With the mower repaired, I rolled up Monday afternoon, strapped the mower down and headed home. In just half an hour and with no incidents, I was able to get the mower off the trailer and onto the tractor. In the next hour I was able to get a good start on the growth.

One of the problems I have is there is very tall grass (like bamboo) on the southeast side of many of the rows, right next to the trench. If you remember, the trench was open, willed with pipes and I was unable to drive the tractor over it. Thus I would back the tractor down each row and try to cut this tall grass and backtrack on each row. That did not work well. So when Rusty came last week, he filled most of the trench in and now I am able to drive down each row, cross over the pipes in safety and drive down another row.

The single thread theme for this was is to get paid for the last part of my conservaton program. I have to have the property inspected. That means I have to have the trench filled in, which required me to get the mower fixed. Some projects can be simultaneously running, but with only me doing most projects, and considering that I can only do one task at any given moment, I tend to switch tasks, work on a new one for a while and switch again. In early windows versions, that is exactly the way the computer worked, you were not multi-tasking, you were task switching. Only one thing happened at a time, then all the work was suspended, new work brought out and some time was spent on that task, then it was put away, etc.

So today I will cut more of the tall grass, then gather my paperwork and receipts and sit down with the agent about my progress and payments. Then I take the trailer up into town and get the ATV and take it up to be repaired. Then, if the thing will be days to repair, I'll take the trailer back to its owner and head back to the farm

I am trying to work quickly today because of the other part of the blog total; the weather. We are expecting heavy rains and possible flooding. Because of cooler air, we may also get thunder and lightning. THAT always indicates very cool air at the summits, so, here is out weather forecast for the Big Island today. It almost makes you think you live i n the northeast mainland :-)

The National Weather Service this morning updated its statewide flash-flood watch to include Hawaii County starting this afternoon, which could begin to see heavy shower activity this afternoon, creating the potential for flash flooding.

Craig said today is likely to be a mostly trade-wind day, but the rest of the state will encounter increasing rain as the evening progresses. The heaviest showers probably will come after midnight, he said.

The weather service says the upper level low will also bring much colder air to higher elevations and has issued a winter storm watch for the summits of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa.

The weather service says there is the chance for heavy snowfall, lightning and strong winds with drifting snow.

A flash-flood watch means conditions may develop that lead to flash flooding.

Residents in low-lying areas, or areas near streams, should be prepared to evacuate in the event of flooding.

Flash floods AND heavy snowfall; gotta love these Hawaii forecasts! If we do get snow, you will be able to see it here: www.jach.hawaii.edu/weather/

So there you have it, whether or not I get the grass all cut today, the weather will definitely be a factor.

On another ongoing note, I saw "Mac" yesterday as I drove the tractor back. Mac is the name I gave the guy who walks along the road and looks like the guy from the MacDonald’s "What can I get for a dollar" ads.

My common score in 10 pin was 130 to 150 and every once in a while I bowled 190. However, there is a story I should tell.

Decades ago I was in the Washington DC area helping at the Great TV Auction, a televised fund raiser for Public Television. I bought a bowling coupon that allowed 20 of my closest friends to come and have snacks and bowl a few games. It was also my birthday as I remember.

As people gathered to play, some had bowled before and some had not. One person had knocked down 5 pins (but it took him 3 or 4 frames to do that). I gave him a couple of pointers on how to stand and what to do and he instantly began bowling 7's and higher per frame.

I was tearing up the alley. By the 8th frame I was bowling a perfect game! I was exstatic but knew it would not last. I was never that consistent with my games. I kept looking to see if there was a piece of fishing line hidden at the pins that someone was pulling to knock them all down for me. There was none. It was me and my skill.

In the 10th, I started raising my arm back with the ball and was almost to the point where the ball was at its apogee, when the guy behind me, the one I had helped inprove his game, hollered very loudly "LOOK OUT!". My thought was I was about to hit someone in the face with the ball. I twisted quickly and almost dislocated my shoulder because of the heavy ball and the height I had it. I felt pain in the shoulder and throbbing.

As I turned, the guy was laughing. It seems he thought it was funny to have me stop in mid motion. He didn't realize the position I was in and what it meant for me to have a perfect game, on my birthday, in front of friends, all of those witnesses...

My final score was something like 276, certainly not the 300 I had hoped for. I didn't keep the scoresheet and I can't even remember who specifically interrupted my game. It turns out the game was just not as memorable as it could have been.

At the time I was living in Maryland but had always had a fascination with space. I was quite happy to have been allowed to atend the launches as a member of the press.

Even though the launches were dacades ago, many of the events stuck with me. I have press packages lso to help me remember.

Having been there at the beginning and being within 1/2 mile or so of the actual shuttles (while they were fueled), yo can imagine how I felt, years later, when the Challenger accident happened. Like many others, I stared at the screen for hours while the commentary went on and the networks continued to show the accident film. I could not stop watching, yet secretly wished they would stop showing the video.

As you may know, one astronaut was Ellison Onizuka, the first Asian American in space. He also grew up a few miles from here in Kealakekua on the Big island.

Because we are a rural location with few if ny lights on at night, it is very easy to look up and see stars all over the horizon. It appears I am not the only one who did this.

Note in this article, that Ellison also would sit in a coffee field and look up. http://archives.starbulletin....

I like to think that I was at a shuttle launch before him, but he was in a coffee field before me.

If you even come t oHawaii's Big iland, there are three places you miight want t ovisit. The first is the Onizuka Center at the Kona Airport. Thesecond location is a bit generic, but stop by the chool in Kealakekua and be near where he sat in the fields and went to school.

Finally, at about the 10,000 foot mark up on Mauna Kea is the welcome center, named after Ellison. Here you are very close to the heavens and the stargazing up there is spectacular!

This is obviously part fiction but based upon a true story where the U.S. military tried to use mind power to control the enemy.

My first thought was that the people who though this up must have lived in California. I’m sorry, but many people I consider “nuts” live in California. However, the story can now be told that Jeff Bridges is playing a character based upon Jim Channon who lives (drum roll) about 75 miles north of me, up in Hawi on the Big Island. The website for the movie is at http://neweartharmy.com. Jims wikipedia page is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

So that goes to show you, if the story is just too crazy to be true, part of the answer may lie in Paradise J

I sent the tractor and mower up to get fixed. The tractor was fixed under warrantee, but they didn't touch the mower. They had said they would remove 4 bolts, replace them with heavy-duty bolts, add lock washers and locktite and it was a pretty easy fix.

They do not normally carry this mower, but ordered it and delivered it with my tractor. I'm sure they mad a profit on it. Then they have already fixed it once (under warrantee). That time I had to maneuver the tractor back to the edge of the pickup and carefully lower it into the truck. When they fixed it and put it back in the truck for me, it was not in the same position and it took me ½ a day to get it out at home and hooked back up.

I may have to go through that same process tomorrow to take it up where it was today. This mower attachment is like 800 pounds or more and you don’t just lift it and shove it in the truck. When I removed it last time, I used the loader bucket and a chain to lift it out.

I just can’t get a brake. I was hoping to get these weeds cut beginning today. This is another setback and it may be another week for them to get to this thing.

I left them a voicemail message. Perhaps they will feel badly enough that they will stop by and fix it. I don’t think so, but wouldn’t it be a nice gesture?

I have been collecting unemployment for the past month, since my previous company let me go. They say I am eligible for rehire, but time will tell. In the meantime, I'm applying for jobs online and via resumes in person. I see a job in my line every once in a while, but it is perhaps 40 miles away or more. The cost of gas alone would negate the amount I would get.

I sent my tractor and mower up into town to be repaired; the tractor is under warrantee and the mower too, but the company fixing the mower is not the manufacturer. My trench-filling guy, Rusty, took them into town for me on his trailer. He is picking them up in town today and bringing them back here tonight and then will pick up my riding mower and take it with him. The mower is partial payment for filling in my trench. The trench is a bittersweet issue with me.

The way the new coffee area was laid out, the rows run horizontally across the property. Each row has a water drip line (the size of a finger, running across to the south side on the property. It looks like a comb with the ridge on the right and the tines pointing to the left. I need to drive the tractor down each row to cut the grass and weeds. When I get to the right side, I would have to cross the big heavy water pipes going vertically on that right side. To keep from running over the two 2" pipes, I decided to have a trench dug, put them in and cover it up. Just digging the trench (through the rock) and then filling it with sand, has cost upwards to $10,000. It probably would have been cheaper to bury the last 20 feet of drip lines on the right and make my turns before the heavy pipes, driving over the drip lines instead. I would not have had to bury the drip lines as deeply and would have only had to dig 80 small trenches a few inches deep, instead of one big trench 1,000 feet long, 2 feet deep and 2 feet wide. The sand is expensive too to bring to the site. At least it looks nice.

So with the trench now mostly filled in (the final 2 zones will have to wait until next year due to cash-flow, I can fill it myself with my own tractor. Now that I’ll have the tractor and mower back tonight I can start cutting the rows again. Some of what I have to cut is very tall stuff, which looks like bamboo (also a grass). This stuff grows quickly and reaches 8 feet or more in height in just a few weeks. Anyway, this stuff is growing near the trench and I have been unable to cut it easily without the tractor and mower. In desperation, I had purchased another weed wacker and bought and jerry rigged a regular saw blade on it instead of those wimpy string things. That helped but still took forever. In a day or two I should now be able to cut every row and then hire some guys to weed between the trees for me. I seem to be getting a lot of morning glory type growth that twists around each tree and tries to smother what is below. As I cut the rows, this should diminish quickly and be more manageable.

The leaseholder wants to make an inspection to see how the trees are coming and is expected after the 15th. They came in April just the week before I had the trees planted. The property was free of all this growth because I had no water lines down. All you could see was rows of holes and two big areas with trees waiting to be planted. In the weeks after the last inspection, I had guys clean out each of the 1600 holes, fill them with dirt and a handful of fertilizer, the rolls of weed mat were laid out over the holes, an "X" was cut over each hole and the trees dropped in. Then the drip lines were laid out along each row and hooked up to the main water lines and tested under pressure.

In the months since then, many of the trees blossomed and I was able to do my first picking from these trees a couple days ago. I did not get a lot of coffee but still, a picking the first year is very amazing.

Since the trench is about done, I can now gather the last of my receipts and submit them for final payment on the contract. Briefly, in order to conserve out fresh water out here, some farmers agreed to not use county water and use rainwater instead for irrigation. The NRCS/USDA helped by engineering a system for me, and upon my successful completion of each section, repaid part of what I spent. The drawbacks are that under the contract I had, I needed to spend considerable amounts over a variable timeframe before getting my reimbursement. At the time, I had money enough to do that somewhat easily, but as the economy got worse and my bank accounts dwindled, it was very difficult to mnage the shuffling of tasks and money and still be able to eat. I picked a number from memory, but as I recall, this last payment is at least $10,000 to $14,000, so you can see that I really need to get this darn thing finished and submitted. Of course, part of the holdup on my part is that every foot of drip line and every connector and valve is listed on the forms or I don't get paid for them. When I say every connector, realize that there are not 100 line items listing 1 connector each, still I have to account for a bag of 100 connectors.

This week is the Coffee Festival and I have had to pass on most if not all of the activities. In the past I have attended some of the events, the parades and the Kona Coffee Farmers Association annual dinner and auctions. I have even been auctioneer a couple of times. However, this farm must take front seat until I get this final section finished, the inspection done and receipt for the last leg of the project. I have mounting credit card debt that I want to pay down.

To get the farm to where it is today, I have (almost) maxed out the credit cards, taken a loan from my 401K and taken money from my IRA under a special IRS ruling that allows me to withdraw money early with no penalty (I just pay taxes on the income). However, with the farm and rolling depreciation and startup costs, even with the part time job I had, I should not have to pay anything.

In January, I get my next infusion of cash from the IRA and that will help me finish up other projects here at the farm. By then I hope to have a part time job again at least for the next year. After that I believe that the farm will help carry me for the most part. I worked my last job fro 18 years, was asked to retire and then used my retirement money to fund the farm. I took a part time job top carry me while I worked to make the farm viable and soon hope to retire again (as much as being a farmer lets you retire).

It has been a difficult time trying to work the farm and work in town 4 days a week. I would lose 4 days of farm work because by the time I got home each workday, it was already dark. At one point they changed my hours on Saturday from 8am to 5pm over to 2pm to 9pm. That gave me another morning to work on the far each week. Saturdays became a lot longer but I got lots more work done.

I do not yet have the roof directed into the water tanks and that will take a bit of time, engineering ideas and some money. I expect that can be done just after the beginning of the year.

All in all, I think I have passed the hardest part of this. Now that the trench is filled in, my mowing time will be cut in half and be much easier. I can spend time getting the second part of the farm ready to plant, but should not be pressured so much to get it down. All of my irrigation for the whole farm is in (it's just disabled for the unplanted area). Once I get the rainwater diverted into the bottom tank, I can begin considering giving tours of the farm.

Since I took possession of the farm, it has changed dramatically. There were 500 macadamia nut trees in a forest of weeds. An old junked track sat down the driveway past the trees I labeled McDonalds. You could not see the property lines nor the ocean from anywhere on the land except for a peek-a-boo view from the house. Now as you enter the property you see the expanse of the Pacific with the house down below. As you approach the house and look up mauka, you can see many miles along the ridge of Hualalai volcano. I have to admit that the weather changed a lot here also. In early Google satellite views, the trees gave off lots of moisture and you would see the whole area cloud-covered. Now it is not, although Google seems to have reverted back to an earlier view of the farm after I cleared it but before planting it. They seem to automatically review the images and choose whichever one has the least cloud cover.

I need to start growing my own trees to replace those, which have died. I have had some die off during planting and while I was getting the irrigation going fully. Those problems should also be manageable now.

So there you have it, a review of where I am and why things have not quite gone as quickly as I had hoped. To do it all again would take very little time as I now know all of the stumbling blocks. Except for punching holes initially at the lower level of the farm and digging that expensive ditch, I have not made any really poor decisions and none that have cost me in missteps. Ohm I could have easily made major erros that would have cost me dearly, but I didn't. To start fresh I could probably do it in a year instead of what, four?

Perhaps now I'll have to time to sit back and reflect!

Sometimes they are stunned and recover, but I am not hopeful.

This one is grey and does not appear to be a spotted dove which are common at this altitude.

Today's program works well at removing images from photos and fixing scratches, etc. In just minutes I was able to remove a person from a photo. With a bit of playing and moving the area the program will use to fill FROM, photos can be magically transformed.

By the time you read this, there may be a new program offered, but if Inpaint is still offered, download it and install it quick from http://www.giveawayoftheday.c... and check back every day to see what's new.

I'll create a couple of photos to show you what it can do, but somewhat of an example is already on blog photo page (at the bottom http://blog.itskona.com. The photo is of me and Sulu fom Star Trek.. I took the photo (before signature) and removed a woman behind us. Then in a different program, added text and did a bit of cropping.

Enjoy.

Yesterday a mass evacuation drill took place on the Hilo side of our island. Over 800 children walked to the Hilo Airport (where flights had been suspended) and then the children were loaded into waiting school busses. The drill happens yearly, however the children must make the walk only once every 3 years.

We have recently had three tsunami watches but no actual waves to be concerned with and often these watches are cancelled hours before any wave would strike. being situated in the middle of the Pacific, the possibility of a tsunami is ever present. Over time we have had a few disastrous strikes here. In the 20th century an estimated 221 people died; more than any other local disaster.

In 1946 a 7.1 earthquake in the Aleutian Islands created a tsunami which hit the Big island on April 1st. Hilo was the hardest hit with $26 million dollars in damage and 159 deaths.

In 1952 a tsunami was generated in the USSR. No lives were lost here but an estimated $1 million dollars in damages was noted.

In 1957 an 8.3 quake in the Aleutians created a tsunami, which hit here. The wave was 24 foot elsewhere and 12 foot here. $5 million dollars damage here was noted.

In 1960 an 8.3 quake in Chile created a 35-foot wave in Hilo causing $23 million dollars damage and causing 61 deaths.

In 1975 a local earthquake off the Big Island killed 2 campers and injured 19. The first wave was 5 feet tall but the second was 26 feet.

In 2006, the Big Island experienced a 6.8 earthquake followed soon thereafter by a 6.3 quake. These quakes were centered about 14 miles from shore and just north of Kailua-Kona. These two massive quakes did not create a tsunami! I understand that since the quake was well below the surface and so close to land, there was no space to create the wave.

As you may know, these tsunamis are not giant "tidal waves" shown in movies that tower over giant ships and can be seen approaching land, but rather a pressure wave under water that draws water from the shore and then pushes massive amounts of water back onto the shore.

Living like a target in the middle of the Pacific is a strange feeling. You hope that a local quake will not create a wave because it would appear almost instantly. Thus if you were at the shore and felt an earthquake you would immediately head away from the water ASAP. Our coast is very rocky and it might not be easy to immediately run, but in most cases, you would not have to travel far to be well above the danger line.

In current times, we have created a field of buoys spanning the Pacific to tell us of impending tsunamis. We have sirens along the coasts and the telephone books contain maps of evacuation areas. Luckily the island rises quickly from the ocean and thus sometimes 500 feet from the ocean you would be above water levels. In most cases, driving 5 minutes puts you out of danger.

Recent tsunami watches have been more than 4 hours of prior warning because the earthquakes are so far from us.

So, although tsunamis are an ever-present danger to those of us who have chosen to live in "paradise", we know that we will probably have many hours advance notice and are pretty well prepared.

For years I have heard about the decimation of the rainforest. I have yet t ohear WHO is decimating them (I assume developers) and WHERE these rainforests are.

Here in Hawaii we have rainforests and they appear to be doing pretty well, thank you. We have a tendency of not doing that much development here. We try but are stopped by all sorts of issues. There have been cases of development stopped by finding bones, rock walls (religous sites), birds, rock carvings, land ownership going back to the King and so on. Out island is 4,000 square miles and mostly undeveloped.

So I guess South America has these rainforests. Yes, of course we can help save them, but what are the local communities doing to save them and do they really want OUR help? Sometimes our "do good" mentality is not always welcome around the world.

There are starving jids in Africa and other places overseas. We send food and people to help, yet their own rulers ignore the peoples need.

Then I keep hearing about "carbon footprints" but some of the information is babble. For example, read this:

Air travel is a major source of the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. A single cross-country plane flight burns about 100 gallons of fuel per passenger. That's as much as most people use in four months of driving.

Ok, so lets look at that statement. It all makes sense on the outset, but they divert your attention to make their point and get you to donate to their funds. So let's take a closer look at what they are saying.

To travel across country by plane burns 100 gallons of fuel per passenger. OK, I'll assume their numbers are correct for the sake of this argument. They then say that is the equivalent fuel that people use in 4 months of driving. OK, I'll assume that too is correct. EXCEPT and UNLESS those same people drive across the US instead of taking the flight!

They talk about flying cross the country vrs driving locally, but those people flying across the country would make a lot larger footprint if they had driven instead of flown. This is comparing apples to oranges.

My truck het 15 miles per gallon. (I wanted to trade it in in the clunkers deal, but had just bought a tractor and could not afford a new truck). Anyway, for me to drive across country in my truck I would use what, 188 gallons and fuel cost would be $565; so it seems that the airline may do a better job at getting me there than driving.

As for going green and saving earths resources, as a Ham Radio operator, I used a solar panel to power a radio before most peopl know what they were. This was just a year or so after Solarex started making panels in Maryland.

I specifically joined the NRCS and USDA project to capture and use rainwater to irrigate crops rather than use valuable county water and deplete our aquifers.

I'm not perfect and don't always do the same thing, but at least for the past few decades I have mnaged my trips to town and shopping. I can tell you it costs me $8 or more to drive to COSTCO and back, thus I bought a freezer and try to stockpile food to avoid extra trips. I renew my prescriptions via mail and have cut down on the massive amounts of junkmail I used to receive.

I have begun feeding my dog real food instead of packaged kibble. It is healthier for him and there is a great deal less processing that has to be done to it.

I have 1 air conditioner running to keep my coffee beans dry before roasting. In the next month I'll switch to special grainpro bags which don't need special air conditioning or humidity controls. Other than that, I have the windows open 24 hrs a day. Only when the temperature drops do I close them to hold in the heat.

So if you want to help the environment, here are a few simple things to consider. Some will help alot, some a little, some just help you think each time you do something.

If you keep turning the A/C up and down, consider adding or removing layers of clothes. Use shades or curtains (lined if appropriate) to keep out heat.

A skylight might help bring in light without having to use electric.

A solar-powered exhaust fan could remove hot air up at the ceiling and exhaust it.

Limit hot water useage and perhaps see if an on-demand heater might save you money. Why heat water all night when you only need it for short times during the day.

Appropriately cover your water heater and pipes. Have the water tank drained (remove power source while draining and filling). That will clean out sediment and make it work better.

If you can, switch to CFL's or LED lights. Unplug power charges that are not being used.

Brush your teeth with cold water.

When replacing an enclosed bathtub or jacuzzi, perhaps insulation abound the tub might reflect heat back in.

Fix dripping faucets.

Carpool. Call stores to see if items are in stock before driving there.

Consider flinging instead of driving :-)

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is that there is a guy who lives in Kealekekua (half way between here and town) that looks like, but has a few pounds on, the TV guy. I see him walking back and froth, probably going between the store and home. However, there is a McDonalds in Kealakekua... I wonder...

As a piece of trivia, THAT McDonalds is the furthest south Mcdonalds in the U.S. There is one on the Hilo side but it appears to be a bit further north than ours. Keep in mind that the southern poin on this island is equal in latitude with Mexico City. We are THAT far south!

Yesterday I took Koa down to the Place of Refuge for a few hours. Although a National Park, we are allowed to take dogs if they are on a leash. I also took some plastic bags, just in case. Since Koa is on a raw meat diet, the need to follow him with bags to "clean up" is GREATLY reduced! It seems dogs who eat kibble don't digest most of the corn and wheat, so why do they put it in there?

Anyway, as we aproached the toll booth, the ranger saw Koa sitting on the passenger seat and reached into a jar and handed me a small treat for him! He didn't even have to dress up or knock on her door for a Halloween treat! Cool!

We drove back behind the Visitors Center to the area with the grills and I parked at the far end. I took Koa on the lead to a spot he had been to before where there is often pooled water in the depressions in the rocks. As it was low tide, we had to do lots more walking. Still Koa enjoyed splashing in the ponds and got in up to his chest. This is neat since last time we went he was barely able to get in the water. He is doing a lot better as a water dog now.

We walked along the trail up past the lava tubes and across the bluffs until we finally reached the edge of the parkland where there is a gate across the path. There is no sign saying Kapu (forbidden) so I guess you can continue along the path to the south until you reach "civilization" to the far south. Entrance to the park is $5.

The coffee festival started the other day with a hula, but I have been using my free time working on the farm and other tasks. I'm not always efficient, but am trying to stay focused. Coffee festival buttons are $3.

Today I went down each row and did my first picking of cherry from the new trees! There was not a lot of coffee worth processing yet, but to have ANY cherry the first year is amazing to many of my neighbors and I.

Because my blog was down for a few days, I have extended the HALLOWEEN special at ItsKona.Com. The deal is 10.31% off (October 31st). So you still have a week or so to get that deal.

Yesterday I noticed that my drivers license has expired! It was SUPPOSED to be valid for something like more than 5 years, but it was 2 years. I have no idea what is up, but have limited my driving until Monday when I can go to Kona and find out.

That's all I can think of at the moment.

Today, Rusty started bringing in material to fill the trench. He and his crew will start filling in the trench in the morning. I also will have one other small trench dug so that one other pipe can be buried.

A neighbor asked me to look at her old computer, as it would not boot. The problem was pretty easy to find, and it took all of 5 minutes. The system has 1 memory card and it was in the wrong slot. I dunno how, but she thinks her son may have done it. It looks like they did a backup to DVD and them shut down the system. I saw some popup ad software and I’m sure their system was very slow. Perhaps they bought the new computer, the son tried to add more memory from the old system and it was not the same type. Then he may have put the memory back in the computer in the wrong slot. That is my guess. There is yet another system she wants me to look at, but it will be a day or so before I can get to that one.

Recently, I had coffee roasted for a Halloween special I am running on my website. I am offering 10.31% off roasted coffee beans (not ground). I have a small grinder but prefer not to use it for customer orders. On occasion I have coffee roasted and ground and offer that on the website, but when you grind your own coffee it can be a bit fresher.

Speaking of the website special at http://ItsKona.Com, the woman who roasted my coffee roasted all I gave her. I was hoping she would hold off a bit, but y message missed her. Thus, I have LOTS of freshly roasted coffee at the moment and would love to have it enjoyed while it is fresh. So please consider stopping by my website and take a look. I know you will be happy with any purchase. Make sure that y use the checkout coupon HALLOWEN in step 2 and that it reduces your price.

Next year I will begin to have a lot of coffee to sell and will start going to farmers markets here and selling in stores. I will need to pay pickers and buy lots more fertilizer, etc. The cost of the coffee, which has pretty much remained the same for 4 years, will have to be increased!

Speaking on coffee prices, the Kona Coffee Farmers Association (which I helped form), performed a investigation of coffee prices around the islands. The prices ranged from $31.95 to $78.00 PER POUND! Granted, the higher prices are for Peaberry, and any of the prices were captured at the airport or resorts. Still, you get 100% Kona Coffee from me at less than $22 a pound!

Those of you who have never tried 100% Kona coffee, it is mild and smooth and unlike the coffee you drank all your life (unless you grew up here). In my other job I often had a chance to have people try Kona coffee for the first time. Many said they don’t like coffee because it is bitter and has an after taste. They tried my coffee (without cream and sugar) and most ended up buying a bag and going back to drinking coffee. That is a great testimony. I have a couple comments on the website from customers:

KH: Best coffee in the world!! I was not a coffee drinker although I have tried many different varieties. I bought Pele's Passion for my husband last Christmas and tried it myself...and love it!! Shipping to Texas was unbelievably fast, and Mark is a sincerely nice person with excellent customer service! Thanks so much - I will be back again and again!

HM: This is by far the best coffee in the world. I have choked down many cups of store bought coffee just to stay awake for a long drive, and even gone to starbucks to get the 400 calorie cups of whatever it is they put in there with espresso to make it taste good, and now that we visited Hawaii and got turned on to Kona I will never again do anything but thoroughly enjoy every last drop of my coffee. If I go out to breakfast I take my own Pele's Passion with me in a travel mug because I won't drink anything else. We toured around the entire big island trying coffee from every regional Kona farm we could find (all of them better than any coffee I had ever had in my life) and Pele's Passion was leaps and bounds above even the best Kona coffees. Buy with confidence that you will soon be enjoying the best coffee of your life!

BW: My husband was strictly a "Maxwell's House" coffee drinker for many, many, MANY years until I introduced him to Pele's Passion! He now begs me to find him Kona coffee. Of course his taste buds have been forever spoiled by Pele's Passion. Though he will drink other "premium" coffees, it is Pele's Passion he longs for!

So there you have it :-)

Tonight I was switching channels and I saw a scene that looked familiar. As mentioned in another blog today, I sometimes see scenes that trigger a memory. The show was Super nanny and the background was very familiar. It looked like Georgia with pine trees and mountains in the background. It looked like up near Cleveland Georgia. Guess what? It WAS Cleveland, home to Babyland Hospital (where Cabbage Patch Dolls come from). I used to go to the Cleveland area to go gold prospecting. I learned about gold prospecting on the same satellite system. The Gold Prospectors Association and the Lost Dutchman Mining Association had a "Gold Fever" show up on one of the channels each week. Soon they created their own channel and now it is the Outdoor Channel, available on cable systems and certain satellite system.

I often tell people that gold prospecting is interesting and that there are some things I can tell them that can make finding gold very easy. I'll pass those suggestions along to you, not that I expect you to go look for gold, but more of an experiment in learning. I usually start by telling people that there are two places to look for gold. They are: where it is and where it isn't. "Is there gold on this table here?" I ask. They say, "Of course not" and I say, then don't look for gold where it isn't, look for it where it will be, or at least CAN be".

Gold is very heavy and is often found in streams where the water carries it downstream. So, if it is heavy and is carried by water, it will get pulled along until the water slows enough that it will drop. There are parts of a stream where that happens and if you watch a stream it will be obvious. Look at curve in the stream. Think of it like a bicycle wheel. The outer side turns very slowly while the part near the hub turns very quickly. So if you were to look at a curve, you would want to look at the outside of the curve. Then since gold is very heavy, it will drop to the bottom muck and over time, drop down until it cannot go any further. That is usually something like bedrock. So there you have it, I have, in a minute or two, helped you understand how to start reading a stream that might carry gold, and determine where it MIGHT be, if there is any.

You should now be able to answer the question; "I have two American coins in my hand. The total value of them is 35 cents and one coin is not a quarter. What are they?". Think about the table and the gold. The correct answer is that I have a dime and a quarter in my hand. You may say "But you said one coin was not a quarter..." and you are right. One coin was not a quarter, it was a dime. The OTHER coin was the quarter.

I used to watch other satellite channels and my favorites were the raw news feeds. After a massive earthquake in San Francisco, I watched hours of raw video of cars lining up to cross the bridge when it reopened. Often I could watch news feeds and see how they were edited before they made it to air. This is a far cry from what people now see on the small tv dishes.

I gave a somewhat technical explanation of satellite TV to Sandra on our way back from the Vet the other day. It probably would have made more sense if I had been able to draw diagrams.

For those who don't know, your TV signals come from satellites in geosynchronous orbit where they appear to hover in a specific spot in the sky. A signal is transmitted to that spot in space, the satellite copies the signal and sends it back down to recipients. Depending upon the satellite, those recipients may be consumers or TV stations or one specific site, depending upon the "footprint" the signal transmits onto the earth. The location of the geo satellites has a name; it is the Clarke Belt, named after Arthur C. Clarke, the famous sci fi writer who described such a system of orbiting satellites in a book. It appears another person originally described the idea in 1928, but it did not receive wide publication at the time. The belt is 22,000 miles above the equator. Since the area in the sky is small, expired satellites must be moved out of this orbit to a parking area and then either ejected into space or allowed to re-enter the atmosphere. To move a satellite into another orbit must be a very careful dance involving moving it into another orbit (allowing it to speed up or slow down) and then drop back into proper orbit.

Although the satellites in geo orbit appear to be exactly in the same spot in the sky, there is actually a bit of slop there. If you were to accurately track each satellite, you might notice that they actually do a figure-8 in the sky. I'll explain why that is in a bit down below, so read on.

Once that I remember, there was a major problem moving a satellite. They forgot to turn it off first. As it moved in the other orbit, its signal wiped out the channels on other satellites as it passed. This is kinda like driving along the highway listening to classical music when a car passes you playing loud music with that deep bass thumping going on.

You know that although I get a bit technical here, you will not be tested on any of this (well, except for the quarter thing above). I mention things to get you to think about things you might not otherwise think about. Once I was listening to a TV show and heard part of an explanation of Quantum Physics and actually followed some of it.

Sometimes the idea of measurements comes up. In some cases, measuring something affects the outcome. (This is not a discussion of Schrodinger's cat by the way). Assume a test tube of cool water is somewhere near 35 degrees. You know this because it was frozen and recently melted. Now assume that in it you place a thermometer. The thermometer reads 35 degrees. If you think about it, the water was not at 35 degrees when you first started measuring it, especially if the test tube is small and the thermometer was not near 35 degrees when put in. In an extreme example, assume you place a thermometer probe, which is 200 degrees, into water that is very cool. The thermometer will warm the water and the water will cool the probe, until they come to equilibrium somewhere in between. Thus the act of measuring the temperature affected the answer. If you wish to not effect the outcome by much, have a large item to measure with a small probe, or have them approximately at the same temperature if possible.

They say that a small magnet in your hand can affect the magnetic flux of the planet. HOWEVER, the flux of the earth is very strong compared to the flux of the magnet in your hand. Thus you will not affect things by any measurable amount. With that said, and believing that a magnetic flux so strong that it can twist the needle of a compass, some people believe that the minerals and moisture in your body might be affected by the magnetic force of the earth. They suggest sleeping in different compass positions until you find that you are healthier and sleep better. I'll leave that experiment up to you.

Often on the C.S.I. episodes, they may not know what caused a death, but they can tell you what didn't cause it. Sometimes when you eliminate things, the answer comes to you.

Back to the satellites and why they do a figure-8 in the sky. Any idea why? If you don't know, think about the quarter and the dime. The satellites are not doing a figure-8. The earth is wobbling on its axis below them!

Keep thinking and I bid you Aloha for now!