When and why honeybees sting — and when and why they don’t. At Paradise Meadows, home of Hawaii’s Local Buzz, we have about 25 beehives. Most folks find bees fascinating, and some folks are terrified of bees. We thought it might be interesting to learn about when and why bees do and don’t sting people, […]
At Paradise Meadows, home of Hawaii’s Local Buzz, we have 28 free-range Muscovy ducks. They are (or can be) great farm animals, eating all sorts of bugs, slugs, snails, and even invasive Coqui frogs when they can find them. However, there can easily be too much of a good thing. One thing you learn relatively […]
Looking back through some of our old farm pictures reminded us that we dragged our 1940-something red Farmall tractor up onto the rock wall at the entrance to the farm SEVEN YEARS ago! No, we can’t believe it either. The entire event took several hours of pushing, pulling, figuring, refiguring — and several minutes of […]
Building a brand based on local agriculture in Hawaii is harder than it looks. Building a brand, and building a business, are things we know something about. Scott, our “Big Kahuna”, is an inventor and serial entrepreneur who has had both successes and challenges throughout his long career. Lili, our “Marketing Guru”, has spent most of […]
At the beginning of May we noticed nests popping up all over our banana patches near the house, which is where our mommy ducks prefer to lay their eggs. We assume it feels very safe. The leaves of the banana trees provide good cover from airborne predators like hawks, and the proximity to the house […]
The Last Time It Rained This Much, Noah built himself a boat! (paraphrasing Wilfred Brimley‘s line from Absence of Malice — if you haven’t seen that movie, you really should. But we digress…) This year, February came in like a lamb, and is going out like a very ornery (that is, a very windy, rainy) […]
The greenhouse is looking amazing these days, if I do say so myself. We’re growing many different types of green leafy vegetables, and these just do so well in the aquaponics system. The roots on them are absolutely amazing, and we can keep harvesting from around the edges of the plants for weeks and weeks. […]
We’ve been so busy, and have had so many visitors to the farm stand lately, that we haven’t been able to make much progress on our farm stand expansion and renovation efforts. However, we were VERY fortunate to have been able to finish the majority of the roof replacement efforts before we were hit with […]
One of our first time mama ducks hatched a single duckling yesterday, at the edge of one of our banana patches, close to where we know there are mongoose hanging out. In our haste to keep the baby safe, we tried to move mama and baby to a protective custody pen, but she was having […]
Oh, these mongoose! We’ve had several clutches of ducklings hatch lately, and even our poor matriarch Dee Dee lost a couple of the darling ducklings to the mongoose early yesterday morning. She had five, and then she had three, so we built yet another place to keep the rest of them safe. She wasn’t […]