Crop Share: Sharing our backyard abundance with our community

A regular Crop Share participant harvests a leek from Mala‘ai: The Culinary Garden of Waimea Middle School.

Depending on the season, the fruit trees and gardens in our backyards are overflowing with more food than we can consume.

Crop Share is an innovative project designed to gather these surplus fruits and vegetables from our communities and share them with individuals and families in need. Newly created non-monetary exchange markets, where no money changes hands, can serve as distribution channels for surplus backyard produce, and provide a welcoming environment where residents can share and trade community resources.

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Food for Thought: A lawn or a pasture?

Hair sheep grazing in Ka'u citrus/avocado orchard.

Imagine owning a lawnmower that makes its own blades, moves itself around the lawn, requires no gasoline (it runs on grass), makes very little noise, replaces itself every year or so, and you can eat it as a delicious high protein food. All you need to provide is a fence around the pasture, a small shed, some water, and mineral supplements. Sound like a crazy fantasy? If you have some land with grass on it, and you can afford to put a fence around it, tropical hair sheep are a viable option.

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Crop Share!! at Mala'ai Culinary Garden, Summer 2011

The Crop Share!! at Mala'ai Culinary Garden at Waimea Middle School will continue every Saturday (12:30 to 3 pm) until August. See our Farmers Market & CSA website page for details and contact information.

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Newsletter 23 - January 2011

Aloha!

Your growing and purchasing local food shows your personal commitment to a sustainable future. Given our current food system, it often requires more time and money to live consistent with what is right, pono. Thank you for your support of local and sustainable food in 2010. Continue Reading

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South Kona Green Market

South Kona Green Market in Captain Cook.

The South Kona Green Market (SKGM) is located on a little bluff above and behind the Kealakekua Ranch Center in Captain Cook, at the third level behind Choice Mart and Ace Hardware on Mile Marker 109.5 of Mamalahoa Highway. Its motto, which the vendors take to heart, is “From The Land, By Our Hand,” and the market includes all local, farm produce, art, crafts, sustainability oriented items (LED lights, solar power systems, etc) – mostly all made by hand, as well as a wide variety of freshly prepared foods for eating at the market or for take-home.

The market tries to keep a balance by not over-saturating any particular product, especially among the artists and crafters. The market was two years old this past August and some of the vendors who have been there from the beginning are the most passionate when speaking about it. The SKGM market is composed of about 78 individuals accounting for 35 vendors on any given Sunday.

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Getting Protein in Hawai'i: What's for Dinner?

Poultry are far more efficient at converting their food into protein for human consumption compared with cattle.

Before Polynesians arrived in Hawai’i there were no amphibians, reptiles, or freshwater fish, and only two mammals, the ancient Hawaiian monk seal and the small Hawaiian Hoary Bat (Ope’ape’a). Early Polynesian settlers brought key plants and animals with them and after their arrival well over a thousand years ago these new species gradually but significantly changed the native Hawaiian environment. Though Hawai’i still provided the seafood protein that the Polynesians had depended on in the Marquesas and Society Islands, the Polynesians introduced protein sources that included taro, chickens, dogs and pigs.

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Crop Share: Sharing our backyard abundance with our community

Food for Thought: A lawn or a pasture?

Crop Share!! at Mala'ai Culinary Garden, Summer 2011

Newsletter 23 - January 2011

Aloha!

South Kona Green Market

Getting Protein in Hawai'i: What's for Dinner?

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