eggs & tea

When Deb and i were on Kaua’i last month for the ‘Youth Leadership Food Sovereignty Gathering’ called Ho’oulu’Aina, on the last day, we drove down to see the tea at the Kealanani real estate development.  This is a number of big luxury lots, just north of Kapa’a.  It’s the only other Tea planting i know of elsewhere in Hawai’i (other than on our island.)  The developers say “the primary agricultural activity at Kealanani will be tea cultivation and processing”, thereby keeping the area agricultural.  Driving through the area, it looks like it’s still empty lots, but at the top of the hill, we found a field of tea, which is apparently a ‘demonstration’ or ‘test’ field:

I had hoped to meet the people doing the tea (and also the folks potentially doing biochar with Albizia at ‘Hawaiian Mahogany’), but the meetings didn’t happen.  We did get to meet with groovy sustainability guy Ken Stokes, though.

The soil at Kealanani is very, very orange-red powdery clay, like we saw in many parts of Kaua’i.  It looks like they planted directly through white ground cloth.  The baby plants don’t look too happy, very exposed to the hot sun and wind in a big flat open field, but tea often looks that way when young, maybe they will pull through.  I’m guessing there are irrigation lines running under that cloth.  Here’s a detail of some of the healthier plants:

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