Slow News Day on the Plantation

Baby Pineapples

Here kitty, kitty...

John has discovered pineapple plants with baby pineapples on them on the Plantation.... and a feral cat! That makes us have coffee, avocados, macadamia nuts, passion fruit, bananas, papayas, assorted herbs and a gaggle of wild turkeys (I know it's a gaggle of geese, guessing it applies to turkeys)! One draw back, the turkeys like papayas, but so do I and I can cook a yummy turkey...

Looking Back and Looking Forward

"Sale Pending" went up today

With the offer on the house, our counter and their acceptance it is hard not to wander around the house and remember everything we have done here in the last 15 years.... John and his dad added on to our home over a long slow year of hard work, our daughter had her wedding reception in the backyard, we had baby showers for our grandchildren, a retirement party for John... so many great times and memories (thank goodness for scrapbooking)... and now we have a sale pending sign!

Looking forward... we made Macadamia Nut Turtles with the nuts Shadow brought back from the "Plantation". We were just experimenting but it was fun and so yummy!

A Good Day - Let Me Count the Ways

1.) John is now officially in Hawaii as he got his registered and has proclaimed himself a local boy!
2.) A friend suggested I call the farm a plantation, which has a very nice ring to my ears! "Paradise Found Plantation" has an interesting sound....
3.) My sister pointed out that as a "plantation owner's wife" I should know how to spell "avocado". Therefore, I apologize to all those offended but must warn you, dear reader, my spelling is terrible and it won't be the last thing I spell wrong.
4.) WE GOT OUR FIRST OFFER ON THE HOUSE IN SUNNYVALE.
5.) Our realtor took me out for a yummy Japanese lunch.

I wanted to share this little video; John captured the rain and a few random shots around the farm!

So by all reports there has been a little bit of a drought and as a farmer's wife that should be a great concern. John was happy to report heavy rain today as he continues to search every nook and cranny. This shows the macadamia orchard and because the previous owner didn't clear all the nuts you can see all the baby trees trying to pop up. This is John's dream and he tells me he has to pinch himself to make sure he's not dreaming. I am now anxious to go and join him even though I dragged my feet at first, I miss John and want to start this new adventure!

Back on the home front, we had another open house and so we all needed to be out of the house. I went to the San Francisco Zoo with my son, his wife and grand-daughters. It was really chilly but we had fun!

Let there be nuts!

My son-in-law got back from Hawaii very late last night and this morning presented us with a bag of nuts he brought back from the Captain Cook farm! The former owners left some equipment for processing the macadamia nuts; a nut husker, some drying racks and a shell cracker. John and Shadow harvested ~100lbs of nuts, no easy task since you only harvest them once they fall to the ground, and learned to use the husker and shell cracker. John reports drying racks are currently full of macadamias! Apparently the nuts fall in the husks and after a day or 2 the husk starts to dry out and then you put them in the husker and then let the nuts dry out. This is the stage of processing that the nuts Shadow brought home are at. They are such a beautiful and delicious delicacy...Carolina and I shared one after Shadow cracked it open with a hammer. I am going to look forward to doing some baking with theses nuts! I'm fact, if anyone has a good recipe to share, let me know! Avacado recepies, too!

Is there coffee in there?

These pictures and thoughts ran through my head in the dentist's chair getting a root canals his morning... As I showed in my first post, there is a section of 600+ coffee trees on the "farm" (we are going to have to name this new home as I still can't see myself as a farmer's wife). The former owners choose to abandon the coffee and didn't take care of it so John went to check it out yesterday. What looked like a little section of trees in an aerial photo is actually a very large and very overgrown area with a lot of weeds hiding the coffee! A lot of clean up work has to happen.

It is so strange to get to know my new home from afar, thank goodness for smart phone and their cameras. John has sent me pictures and questions about placing things and more pictures as he explores the property. It often strikes me, and it is, odd when I think of the fact that I have only been in my new home TWICE!

There is so much to share and so I'm adding a few pictures here. The coffee field of trees and weeds, the banana grove above the house at sunset and the picture in the upper right, look at the dark blob in the middle of the picture in the tree...that's a turkey! We have lots of wild turkeys and they CAN fly despite rumors to the contrary!

What I'll Miss...

I can tell you what I'll miss, I'll miss how every event is a family

event....today was Valentine's Day, we have a tradtion of heart shaped pizza with the whole family. Tonight, even though John and my son-in-law, Shadow, are in Hawaii we had a Valentine's dinner! With my children, my daughter-in-law and my grand-daughters, one of my sisters and even my daughter's best friend and fiancé who are like my children were here. Opening valentines and playing and eating pizza together...I'll miss this...I love my family. I love that we have "scary dinner " for Halloween, play with parachuting Easter Bunnies in the street after the egg hunt, cooking dinner for 24 for Thanksgiving and I love that we wear matching pajamas on Christmas, all nine of us, Christmas Eve at my sister's, Christmas dinner at my sister-in-law's....all of our tradtions, traditions we created... I wonder what I will do in their place? I'll miss this.

What's Bugging Me Today, Or Not

I'm wondering if those old horror movies with the giant bugs were filmed in Hawaii???? John sent this picture with the subject line "Big Bug". Mind you, the blue thing in the background is his coffee cup to give you an idea of scale and this bug has made himself at home!

On the home front, the termite inspection here in Sunnyvale has shown no termite damage, pretty good for a 70 year old house, yea!

John went on a night snorkle with manta rays last night, I had a microwave hamburger... something doesn't seem right to me (of course, he did have to unload a 40' container of household goods so I guess he deserved it)!

I forgot to say, John sent me a picture of my new office on the lanai (deck to you mainlanders)!

What do you think? I could get some work done there!

How did this happen?

This is my new home, or at least it will be come March 5th!

What happened??? I live in Sunnyvale, CA... my husband has always wanted to live in Hawaii, I knew that... what I didn't know, when we went on vacation in October 2011, was that I would own a farm in Captain Cook on the Mamalahoa Highway with 650 macadamia nut trees, 42 avacado trees and over 600 coffee trees 40 days later!!!

So here's the deal, John said we needed a change, I challenged him by saying if we needed a change to get a realtor to show us some properties while we were on vacation and before I could say "Aloha", property tours were on our agenda. (Note to self: Don't challenge John in the near future). We made an offer before we left the island and closed escrow November 30th.

Then came the craziness of telling family, friends and my employer and starting to get our house in California ready to sell, our belongings and pets shipped and just figuring out the logistics.

Long story short, John left for our new home on February 6th to be there to receive our belongings and I will join him in 3 weeks in time for our 20th anniversary! Meanwhile, our house here in California is on the market. Stay tuned to follow this adventure and the saga of being a farmer's wife and finding out if "island fever" is a real thing! Mahalo for joining me...