Maui Farmers United One Year Anniversary Spring Equinox Meeting

Maui Farmers United One Year Anniversary Spring Equinox Meeting
Tuesday, March 22, 2011, 6 - 9:00pm

Pukalani, Tavares Center Pool Room

Localvore Potluck, Produce & Seed Swap:

Bring your home/farm grown produce for display- >>>>> For more on this meeting and it's schedule, go to Magic Maui Farms by clicking the link or this shortened url bit.ly/MauiFarms.

While at the site checking out the schedule for the meeting, take a look at the Chef's Corner video with Makawao's Chef Justin Pardo of the Market Fresh Bistro. Always a favorite part of the meeting.

See you there!

Jim 

 

Whole Foods Comes to Maui This Month

They finally took down the boards covering the new Whole Foods Market located in the Maui Mall where the old Star Market used to be.

I had a chance this evening to get a few pictures from the outside looking in. While not fully stocked and a few things left to be done, they are progressing along.

It should be a good thing for the local farmers and hopefully even more incentive to push the farmers to think in a more sustainable and healthier way of growing the food in the islands, especially on Maui.

Hopefully between the various "Health Food Markets" located on Maui, we will have a better selection of wholesome and nutritious foods to choose from and help to prevent adding too many "food miles" to what we choose to eat.

Here are a few pictures for the blog and I hope to add more pictures and information to my website www.EmpowerMaui.com. Unfortunately, I have neglected the website for awhile and need to get it more up to date. Blogging the info out is so much quicker and easier for me.

With that said, here are a few pictures for the blog.

Volcanoes Can Be Like Living in the City Smog Times Ten!

It has been just over a week since being on the Big Island of Hawaii in Kona and Volcano. The Body and Soil Farm Health Conference went well and was pretty well attended.

Waiaha Farms was an incredible place to hold the Conference and they made us feel right at home.

Raising all their own food, Plant and Animals, offered us up a great array of good food. All Locally Grown and very Healthy. You could tell just in the taste how much effort was put into raising all the food.

The Volcanic Haze (VOG) came and went depending on the weather and wind directions. Some days we had hazy days and a few were really clear. Maui was probably getting the haze on the days it was clear for us.

The effects of the Volcanic output on the plants close to the Volcano were significantly impacted by the high acidity and the people living there reported that they had not seen the plants so yellow and burnt looking in the past. Another aspect is that the Island of Hawaii, despite what the weather maps would seem to show, the rains seemed to pass the area over and maybe drop their precious resource higher up on Mauna Loa.

We were able to visit some Green Tea being grown, as seen above. Also the Kahili Ginger, which tends to take over the under lying floor of the forest and is really more invasive and a bit hard to get rid of. It's very successfull in spreading.

So all-in-all the trip was very informative of a place that is so different, even though it's an Island that sits right next door to Maui. It really shows how each area does need it's one accessment and requirements. Our soils being geologically new and on the acid side is quite different from the soils in the Mainland and Europe, where there may be higher levels of alkaline soil.

Aloha to all from Hawaii. and a big Mahalo to our host and the many people that helped to pull off the conference and the ability to bring the knowledge and education of our excellent Speakers.

Maui Body and Soil Farm Health Conference 2010

Maui Body and Soil Farm Health Conference 2010 is taking place this weekend. Speakers are arriving today!

They speak tomorrow for free at the South Maui Sustainability Meeting 6pm and then Saturday and Sunday are the conference days.

After a quick trip to Hana the speakers will then be flown off to Kona to do the conference there. Although I am going to Kona I will be working in between.

Still time for registrations and even at the door.

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On another note, good thing I didn't go to watch Clint Eastwood simulate a Tsunami in Lahaina last night. I guess tonight is the actual street filming. Last night was at a hotel and tomorrow at a private residence. I wonder if it will be his Makena home???

Aloha Friday and the Lighting of the Christmas Lights In Wailuku

Well I made it to at least the start of Aloha Friday on Maui. Just getting ready to go out the door to work.

Tonight is the Lighting of the Christmas Lights in Old Wailuku Town during their Monthly 1st Friday event when the Main Street fills with People and the Shops stay open Late. The Crafters and Musicians set up everywhere from almost Happy Valley to the other end of Main Street.

I have enjoyed many wonderfully nights just walking the streets, checking out the people and exploring the shops. The bands set up in various nooks and cranny's. One shop La Bohemia near th Happy valley side has got to be one of the classsiest shops. Maggie, the owner (who may have her first child by now, if so Congrats!) She and her staff always keep an elegant second hand shop that makes you feel like your both Down-Home and in High Society at the same time and always some great goodies to taste or mull over, The restaurants like Cafe Marc Aurel are filled to capacity and their music is always great and there are a number of new clothing shops and such, even in a time when most places are shutting down.

Old Wailuku Town was the Main Town in Maui's days gone by with it's Wailuku Grand Hotel. I actually stayed there upon moving to Maui as a kid. While it was more of a high rise generic hotel then, it did offer me my first glimpse of waking up on a Maui Morning and looking at the West Maui Mountain's Iao Valley.
It's now a medical center.

there are some great books describing Wailuku's past, but for now I hope to enjoy Tonights's 1st Friday Events and hope they carry on. Winter tends to shut it down until Summer, but it's the one time of each Month when the essence of Old Wailuku Town seems to come out and like the ghost of Christmas present, makes itself felt.

Hope everyone's December is off to a good start and remember it's the Love you give and not the gifts that hold meaning for a lifetime.

The Swine Flu-H1N1 versus Good Food

The Swine Flu, also known as the H1N1 Flu is in the front page of the Maui News today. It seems to be covered a lot with the upcoming winter and the beginning of yet another flu season.

The part that seems to really be of concern and distinguishes this Flu from many of the others is the death rate levels are higher in the 25 to 49 year old people. Most flu seasons have seen their share of deaths that seem to affect the elderly and the sickly part of the population.

Everyone seems to be stumped about this "new" type of flu and the effects it has on the middle aged population.

The first thing that comes to my mind and could probably be debated, debunked or just cast off as not a factor is the dietary habits that the 25 to 49 year old people have and have had over the years.

This is the age group that has virtually been raised on pre-packaged, highly processed foods. Either from the Supermarkets or just the habit of eating from fast food establishments.

Considering that there are reports after reports of people with the onset of diabetes and many, many other health issues at earlier ages, not to mention obesity, I really wonder how much the diet of this particular group is a factor in all of this.

The foods that are predominately eaten are high in salt and fats, hold very little actual nutritional value and our health system reflects that in the increase of medical costs.

Having and eating food that has been grown in soils that are properly managed and contain the right nutrients and then are consumed by people or the animals that people eat, seems to me a vital part of the equation.

For many years our foods, plant or animal, have been grown or fed in soils that is almost manufactured by the addition of nutrients and then supplemented in their actual production and packaging.

The animals, especially beef have had to adapt to living off food that they were never intended to consume. Watching movies like "King Corn" and seeing the beef "finished off" before slaughter by high doses of corn, and not even the best part of the corn. In many cases corn grown through questionable methods, really opened my eyes to the health of the Cattle. The last month of "finishing off" cattle can erase much of it's nutritional value, even when raised on healthy grown grasses.

The majority of cattle are kept in feed lots for a month or more to be "fattened up" before slaughter, many of
them are on the verge of dying just before they are sent of to the slaughter houses.There are many that are referred to as "fallen" cows, which means they are too sick to even move about on their own.The same goes for many of the other animals we consume.

I am a meat eater and believe that as an omnivour, people were meant to eat many things. An expert on the
subject Jerry Brunetti has presented at the annual Maui Body and Soil Health Conferences, as well as many other distingushed conferences such as AcreUSA and the http://www.westonaprice.org/, brought up the information that scientist found the average human long ago as a forager, was very likely to consume as many as 60 different types of food a day.

Today, we are lucky to vary our diets by very many foods at all.

The nutritional benefits of such a variety of food was probably the basis of their health and medicine.

• This type of eating is still seen in tribes that are isolated from civilization. 
• Except for the encroachment of civilization and the continued rise in toxins from changing their habitats. Such as clear cutting forests. 
• The releasing into the atmosphere viral forms that would normally only exist within that forest. 
• Raising mono crop foods where jungles once stood. 
• The illegal and legal heavy metal and chemical pollution from mining operations in these areas. 

 the tribes would probably still be healthier on the whole.
In summing up, I would submit that taking a ground (soil) up approach to revamping our food supply and getting people to switch to more locally and hopefully organic or close to organic foods, would probably make us all safer as the flu season arrives and this "new" Swine Flue H1N1 sweeps through our schools.

Just expecting to get a new "drug" to counteract each and every flu seems to me like a never ending cycle and will only force the mutation of viruses in the future.

www.EmpowerMaui.com