 Aloha and welcome to your favorite part of your Thursday afternoon. This is the Hawaii Food and Farmer series. I'm your co-host, Justine Espiritu. My co-host, Matthew Johnson, is knee-deep delivering chard right now across the island, so he can't be with us today. Today is exciting, though. The power of peer pressure brought to people we've been trying to get on the show for a while. So we're really excited to have them. Again, the purpose of the Hawaii Food and Farmer series is to bring on all the individuals and organizations that have a place in our food system to kind of get the background and the history, see what people are doing, see what motivates them, and kind of get their perspective on what's next and what's coming up. So today we have Alina Harris and Nick Rapoon. Thank you guys for joining us. So Alina is at LCC. Go ahead and say your title. Sustainable Agriculture Specialist and Lab Manager. And Nick. I'm the farm manager at Kakao Owebe. Awesome. And in addition to that, you guys both work on your family's farm. And so you both have, I think, unique backgrounds. And I'm excited to bring you on to kind of talk about the different positions you've had and your background of what got you interested in agriculture and what's kind of brought you into these positions in Honolulu to kind of be leaders that are guiding people and talk about the work that you're doing in agriculture. So why don't we start with Alina. So you actually have a degree in sustainable ag and food production systems from University of New Hampshire. You got it. And so that was a new degree at the time. And it's kind of a new degree all around in terms of a field of study. So if you kind of want to talk about what got you interested in that and what that kind of looked like and what it prepared you for. So I first fell in love with farming. I just started woofing. I'm sure you've talked about woofing on your show. Worldwide opportunities for organic farming. So I started doing it in Sweden when I was 18. I started farming as a work trade, just as a way of traveling for chief, actually. And then fell in love with farming and was like, wow, this is totally it. And did that with my best friend. And at the time, I was already enrolled in business school at the University of New Hampshire. So I did that for a semester. And then I was just like, you know, I need to move more into the biological sciences and then just kind of made a pact with myself. I'm going to only study classes that I'm truly interested in. So then I moved into only agricultural classes and then never looked back all the while, was working on farms and getting in the dirt and soil, actually. And so definitely there's a lot of important science to be had in the books, but you also need to be also learning that alongside in the field. And so that was really, really important to me. Everything that I was learning and getting A's on in my tests, I was also learning in the field. And if I didn't have that. In the program, did you have a hands-on experience during the program at the university or was it up to you to go find that experience? I did a little bit in the university, but I was lacking that at the time. I think they've definitely stepped their game up since and they've gotten a lot more place-based since and it's a much better program now, I would say. But I think I searched for that more at the time. And- You were the guinea pig. I was the guinea pig. They didn't, they were- Because you were literally the first co-worker of this. Right, so at the time they didn't have that major so I thought I was going to have to create my own major and then luckily right as I graduated they were like, oh, sustainable agriculture food productions major. So I just slipped through. So yeah. And then right around that time is when I met Nick. And then- In New Hampshire? No, I met him in Hawaii actually. Oh, okay. Yeah. And then that's when I managed to land a job in New Hampshire and I got his- Lured him ever? Lured him over, got his amazing resume on a piece of paper handed it over to the guy across the table and said, I think you ought to hire this guy too. And- Okay, what was the name of that farm? Sanborn Mills Farm and that was in Loudoun, New Hampshire. Okay, and then so why don't we back up a little bit here and talk about your background. So you have this resume and talk a little bit about your experience and you didn't have a degree out of college but let's talk a little bit about your upbringing in your family farm. So my dad and his brother have been farming for my entire life. So I was raised on our family farm. And so like, as you said, I have no formal education in agriculture. I mean, I've taken science classes here and there throughout but everything that I've learned about agriculture has been through osmosis just by being on the farm, being around my dad, my uncles. And what about them? Did they get any sort of formal training or they just started the farm themselves and learned as they went along? My dad was an English major and he actually taught English for a little while and then when his brother Paul graduated he had a degree in botany, I think. And they decided that they wanted to kind of play around with farming and they met some people who got them into growing taro and so they were given a whole bunch of hooli to plant out some of their first patches. And one of the things that was taught to them at the time is that you always keep planting so that you have sort of, you're always planting and always harvesting. You create a crop rotation cycle. And as they say it, they started doing that and then all of a sudden, 30, 40 years later, here we are today. And they kind of just like got caught up in it. Was there a particular impetus? They were just interested in starting to grow things or they interested in being more food secure, like providing for themselves and their family? Was there like a something in the community? This is about the mid-70s. So there was, that was kind of at about the midpoint of the back, what they call it back to the land movement which happened basically after the, after a lot of the sort of consciousness awakening of the 60s, a lot of people were trying to get back to the land, get out of the cities. And so it was kind of like part of that way. So a lot of their peers were doing similar things or other folks in their community? There were a lot of other people kind of looking to do similar things. And they kind of describe it as like, they kind of came in on the tail end of it. And so, you know, there was a big push for a while and a lot of people went back to the land, so to speak, and stayed. But a lot of folks kind of tried it out for a while and then realized that, you know, they were other, they've moved on, but they've kind of, my dad and his brother kind of stuck with it. Cause they're really, from what I've heard of the, of the Rapoons, they've really been this example of a successful farm, a successful family farm. And they are someone that these programs like GoFarm constantly hear from, they do the presentations in the, I'm curious, people do a lot of field trips to their, their farm or your guys' place. Is there anything particular that, that you can think like stands out about your family farm that really makes them this kind of prime example of sustainable agriculture and walking? I think one, one of the aspects that is attractive for a lot of people is that we have a diversified farm system. So one of our main crops is taro, but there's, I mean, there's a list pages long of different crops that we grow. Some of them are more for commercial production. Some of them are just for more like a homesteading kind of thing, just fruit trees and a handful of them where there's, we only have one or two of each variety. So not enough for market, but enough for us to eat at home. And so I think that that, the, the model of a diversified system has been something that's attracted people to that's their style of farming. Okay. Our family farm is really in, in the spectrum of agriculture as a whole, it, it's on the micro scale. We've got about three acres of taro and maybe about 14 acres total. So there's like orchards and mixed crops and some small dry land fields. But in comparison to a lot of other people farming, even in Hawaii, there's most farms are a lot bigger. So it's kind of like a interesting mix of kind of like a homesteading lifestyle way of farming, but there's also commercial production. And both of their spouses have always had outside off-farm jobs to supplement farm income, which is one of the other reasons why we've been successful, I guess. So, and then how did the Rappoon's Farm compare to what you've seen in, in your woofing across, in New Zealand and Sweden? In what way? Okay. So the diversified Agui, the homesteading way that, that idea of having the commercial side as well as providing for yourself is that it's kind of unique here. How is it from your experience in the farms through woofing? Yeah, I would say probably worldwide, unless you're really large scale and kind of, yeah, unless you're really large scale and have large equipment and are more monoculture than you have to have an outside job, it's the harsh reality. So unfortunately part of being sustainable is being financially sustainable. And so much of the time we forget that in a diversified system. So many of the organic and small farming systems are not truly sustainable because they're not financially sustainable. And those are the ones that are so near and dear to my heart and the ones that I want so much to succeed and the ones that I, yeah. The ones that I believe in the most, but. There's a mix. I mean, even within the US and outside of the US, I think there's quite a mix. I think every country has a little bit of an agricultural industry. But there's a lot of small farms and most people don't hear about them because they're small farms. And so they're kind of like under the radar. I feel like we are hearing about it more, right? Aren't there more kind of studies showing that small farms can be successful but it's about being diversified. It's about getting creative. It's about value added now. It's about agro tourism. Are those kind of things that you guys have been incorporating for a while at the Raccoon's Farm, right? Or are there some new developments to try to. We do value added products and kind of, that's been a big part of it, making poi out of the taro. That's one of our main ones. But as the farm, I mean, the farm has evolved over the last 40 years. So, you know, you kind of have to adjust depending on, you know, we can't really grow bananas anymore because of the bunchy top virus and we don't want to spray for aphids, which are the vector, because it's organic. And so we hardly grow any bananas anymore. That used to be one of our primary crops, like when I was a little kid. So there's, I think that's another key part of small farms is the ability to evolve and adapt to environmental conditions. What's taken the place of a banana for you guys then? Cacao, probably. We've been planting cacao for maybe 15 years. And are you selling that to folks, buyers here on Oahu or is that getting exported or it's all? We sell it all locally. Everything we sell is sold locally. Madre chocolate is one of our primary buyers. And so then I want to ask, so coming from your different backgrounds, what kind of projects did you have or what did you guys do with this sand-borne mills farm? So there we grew mixed vegetables, pretty much every vegetable that you can think of. We grew there. And also maple syrup. We tapped during the winter months and boiled. And then we also grew lamb and experimented with some small beehives there. So another diversified system. Cool, we're actually gonna take a quick one minute break and then kind of get back to your projects that you had over there. For a very healthy summer, watch Viva Hawaii. We are here live on Mondays at 3 p.m. And we bring guests like our best health coach, Elena Maganto, eat well and follow her tips. Viva la comida saludable. Aloha, how you doing? Welcome to Viva Chitak. I'm here at Gordo the Tech Star on Think Tech, Hawaii. I'm here with my good old buddy, Andrew, the security guy. Hey everybody, how you doing? Aloha. Good to have Andrew here in the house. Please join us every Friday from one to 130 and follow us up on YouTube. And remember, as we say at the end of every show, how you doing? Hello, my name is Crystal. Let me tell you, my talk show, I'm all about health. It's healthy to talk about sex. It's healthy to talk about things that people don't talk about. It's healthy to discuss things that you think are unhealthy because you need to talk about it. So I welcome you to watch Quok Talk and engage in some provocative discussions on things that do relate to healthy issues and have a well-balanced attitude in life. Join me. I feel like I'm too much. Aloha and welcome back to Hawaii Food and Farmer Series. Today we have Alina Harris and Nick Rapoon who have various capacities and roles. Right now, Alina is at Leeward Community College and Nick Rapoon is at Kaka'ololivi. So we're really quickly kind of recapping your experience on the farm that you're working out on the East Coast. So again, just briefly if you could say some of the projects you led or what you worked on and then curious about the transition to coming back to Honolulu. So this farm was kind of the last one that you were kind of actively in production. So again, what were kind of your favorite projects there that or yeah, that you had your hand in? We tried to do a diversified system. So as Alina mentioned before, we were growing a lot of different vegetables and we would go to farmers markets and we had a small CSA, we did wholesale. So again, the theme as much diversity as possible. For me, it was really different being there and growing for just the climate is so much different. Right. Yeah, I'm curious about that. You had to jam in everything during the summer and then it's like you do it all one time a year and then you're done and you kind of like take a break a little bit in the winter. Does it give you more time to have a nice like plan in place on that kind of like off time? Yeah, it gives you that time to plan a little bit, buy your seeds for us. We had lambing season and then we were boiling the maple syrup for a lot of the winter time when Nick was still going surfing in his wetsuit. It's like, do you miss some of those things? I mean, because maple syrup, so that's not something you can do here. Is that something you miss? Oh yeah, we miss it, although it is very boring. Yeah, it was fun, but you're literally watching sap boil for like two weeks straight. It was a unique experience though. The really cool thing about Sanborn Mills is that we use draft power, so meaning animal power. So a cow is a female cattle and then the male is the bull and then if you, an intact male is a bull and then if you remove the testicles, it is, well if you train a bull that has its testicles removed, it is an ox. And that's what we used. And so we used oxen to plow our fields. As opposed to like large, heavy machines. Yeah, so sometimes we would use tractors to do the really heavy work, but besides that we used oxen, trained animals, as well as draft horses. Does anyone still do that in Hawaii or that was pretty unique to that farm? That was one of the main things that that farm was trying to do is it was kind of like a historic. So that Sanborn Mills farm was run by the Sanborn family for I think over a hundred years. And then this guy ended up buying the farm and did a lot of building resurrection. There was some old water powered mills. And that was kind of his thing is basically creating like an old timey farm rehabbing it. And so they wanted us to use the draft animals because that's a traditional practice there. It was actually pretty fun. I mean, definitely a lot of work, but it was really cool. It was really unique, really fun and definitely a skill that shouldn't be lost, especially when we're like looking at global warming and oh, what if we don't have gasoline? How are we gonna plow our fields and what are we gonna do? And so pretty refreshing. And instead of your tractor breaking and having an awful gas spill in the middle of your land, it's like, oh, there's some manure, big deal. Okay, so then I wanna talk about coming back to Honolulu. And so what kind of motivated your transition away from actual production to kind of the roles you're in now if you can kind of talk about your stint as the go farm coach and then what you're doing in your current position? So Nick was wanting to come home to Hawaii and so I supported that. So then I got the job that I could with go farm. So rather than just, do you have the option to like, oh, let's just continue doing this, working on your family farm, but you wanted to kind of pursue a different path. Right, well, we had... We traveled between New Hampshire and Hawaii. We traveled for a good six months. So when we got here, we were pretty much broke. So we're like, we need to get kind of real jobs so we can refill our bank accounts or whatever. But, and then it's just also, coming, stepping into my family's farm, they've been farming for so long that like almost every corner of our property has been planted or, you know, they're using like everything. So there's, I mean, there wasn't like a lot of, it wasn't like there was like a whole couple of acres that we could start our own new thing. And like you said, your father and uncle are still managing it. That's their full-time thing. So there wasn't, I guess, there wasn't even really room for you guys too. Yeah, and we could, you know, we could squeeze in here and there, but... And they're always open to it. They're always encouraging us to, but we wanted to go out and get our own jobs. But then you're, so taking that position with GoFarm, if you can kind of talk about what you think of that kind of focused training program versus like a degree, would you say like the degree you got is something like someone who wanted to farm should take? Or... Well, so I would say it depends. So if you are just looking to be an entrepreneur and farm and just have your own business farming, then GoFarm could be for you. If you have the full drive and are willing to just do your own reading and own studying and can do your own observation and are just really dedicated and have that drive, then that could be for you. And if you're just willing to stop there or if you wanted to be maybe a farm manager or if you wanted to be a farm laborer or something like that, then GoFarm would be great for you. But I think that if you wanted to work for the USDA or the NRCS, or if you wanted to work for a university or be an educator... I guess it's more like administrative or academic. Right, or if you wanted to be a soil scientist or an entomologist or if you wanted to be a farm consultant, then you would need to get a degree. You would need to at least have a bachelor's of science or a master's of rethinking about a piece. But then it's like in that topic area, there's so many of those little pieces that you do wanna know as a farmer. Right, and so there's so many people that think about, farmers, there's this stigma that farmers are stupid and you don't need to know very much to farm, which is completely... Everything. That's just completely not true at all. But, you know, so. And then, okay, so what's your current position? What are you doing in that position? In that position, right now I'm managing, so I'm considered a lab manager or academic support. So I'm supporting classes that are place-based learning. So a lot of these classes have labs and the labs are outdoors and my labs are gardens. And so I'm making, so right now. This isn't the GoFarm students, though. This is just folks in the mid-class. Yeah, these are accredited courses. So these are photos being shown right now. This is the horticulture class right now that's, and they're planting in the raised beds right now. They're planting some cucumbers, they're labeling their seeds that they're planting right now. And so, and this is actually a GoFarm. We were in community college right here with their chart. And yeah, so it's just supporting those classes and the instructors can't do everything. They can't put together the PowerPoints, grade the tests, as well as do the irrigations, as well as do all the pest management, as well as do all the, there's so many little nitty gritty things to keep track of. Basically, my job is to be taking observations every day and catching things and nipping them in the bud right as they happen or right before they happen. And so these are, are some of these people going into food production or just like gardening in general and you get to kind of guide them in that hands-on experience and. A lot of these people, well, a lot of them are trying to steer into the plant biology and tropical agriculture program, which is an associate's degree. And then they can move on. It's a fully articulated program towards U.H. West O'ahu. And then that's a sustainable community food systems degree. But not everybody does go that route. They could just get a certificate or they could just take a singular class. If they wanted to just get their, some people just need to take a lab course or they just want to get their science credit out of the way. And they could just take a class like that. I'm just think, a lot of times I'll, if I'm trying to sell the class to them, I'll say, oh, it's a nice way to get your science credit out of the way and go outside and do something place-based. Yeah, get your hands dirty and grow some things. That's cool. I like that versus the working on a farm, being out there helping, helping kind of other folks guiding them with like growing something. I like it. I really enjoyed the production farming a lot. It was really fun for me, but after a while, it definitely, as you can see in this picture, breaks your back. I love it, love it. But after a while, it becomes strenuous and you can only do it for so many years. And so then you have to move on to a different job and then eventually I'll be a mother and I just, I can't just be like out there being a laborer. So I have to put on my big girl pants. We actually only have a minute and a half left. So really quickly, I wanna give you some time to talk about what you're doing at Kakao Eevee. And- Sure. So we're kind of, we do like three things there. Kakao Eevee literally means to support native. So we try and do that in three ways. By doing traditional agriculture through taro farming. We're working on wetland restoration, which also happens through taro farming and then also cultural education, which we do a lot of formal programs with schools. But we also have sort of community days where people can come and get their hands and their whole bodies muddy actually. And we're actually gonna start doing a farmer training class as well, which is, will be similar to what Go Farm does, but really geared towards traditional Hawaiian crops, particularly taro, because that's what we can grow at our site. And what kind of duration is that timeline? It'll be a four month program. Okay, and you're gonna be leading that? Yes, I'll be one of the teachers. Our other lead educator at Kakao Eevee, we're gonna co-teach it, and then we'll bring in a lot of specialists as well to do the stuff that we don't know. Awesome. Well, we're out of time. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your experience, sharing what's going on with your family farm, and love to hear what people are doing related to food production. So thank you guys. Thank you.