Blowin in Philly and Maui

Aloha from chilly Phila. its been blustery here as in Maui I hear. Only difference is its about 40 degrees colder here.
I leave for ACRES conference tomorrow, in the meantime I wanted to share a couple of things going on.

We at Ma'a are in the process of writing a grant for the Wailuku Banyan Tree Park to develop an educational center in town that will highlight programs and workshops on sustainable growing of food, along with workshops with its relationship to our own health and well being.


By our having a farmers market there for the past five months we have been challenged in making it go financially.
Even though the community loves us in being there, especially all of the elders that walk there to shop and share the prepared foods they make from what they purchase.
The rent is too high for us to sustain it in the way we have it set up.
Bringing in Maui Aloha Aina Assoc. a 501c3 organization (www.mauialohaaina.org) to develop an educational center there around sustainable practices will take the pressure off the market in paying the rent since Ma'a would take over that aspect.
Its been a struggle though to develop the concept in a way that can make it feasible for Ma'a to fund and sustain the lease of the park.
Well I just got word today that our market was dealt a blow, literally from the kona storm that has been hitting the area, the sign that hangs over the entrance to the park landing on top of our tents rendering them a tangled mess of bent metal. My question is what metaphor is this representing in all that has been happening?
With this challenge to keep the market going let alone having the effects of the windy and rainy weather over the next few days Irene is potentially not going to being able to open. So we shall see how this is all going to unfold.


One bright spot in all of this though is Irene and I were given a large sweet potato which we let sprout and then took out to her family land in Kanaio a wind swept dry area of Maui that was known to have been a good place to plant sweet potato in times past.We planted this just before I left away from any ability to care for it on a daily basis.
With the advent of the rain Kanaio has been receiving planting it before coming here turned out to be fortuitous timing. (I saw in the weather report that just south of Kanaio in Kaupo they have received about 7 inches of rain in two days, so I'm sure Kanaio got its fair share of the wet stuff too.)
There are cows that graze in the area and would love to chomp on these sweet sprouts so we planted it in an area that is remote and cows can't get to.
What we are counting on is it taking hold and then being supported by winter rains and our getting out there from time to time to check on how its doing while facilitating its ability to spread out once it grows outside of its hole. The energy of this storm has been destructive to our market yet supportive of our planting. Based on the result of what that means pragmatically for making a living, well doing the math one would think the blow that the market took is where the focus needs to be, in our development as a business.
I just wanted to share that the planting has a pragmatic side too in planting of seeds that seem on the surface to be remote and unproductive in making a living for its face value yet have a potential to produce abundance in the long term of food and spirit. (By the way the sweet potato is planted under the sedge I'm standing in front of)
A year from now we will see what this planting yielded not only in produce but in the spirit of a deeper appreciation of the natural forces that drew us to plant and bring us back to care for this planting out in this very spiritual place called Kanaio Maui.

I'll check in again tomorrow nite from Louisville Kentucky at the ACRES USA conference and share with you my experience there, Be Well All. Aloooha...