Hawaiian Islands pt 1: Lydgate Farms

I've recently been to Hawai'i, and I had two goals. One was to tour Lydgate Farms (and a couple others, but this one was the big prize), and the second was to see Anne, who has a farm on Hawai'i as well.

The reason there's a plural on the word "island" in the title is because Lydgate Farms is on Kaua'i, and Anne's farm is on the Big Island.

On the morning of the tour, it was raining, as one may expect in Hawai'i, although it abated in about three hours, as the tour was starting. We drove up to the farm, and sat down to wait for the tour to start. As the rest of the tour gathered, I had a look around where we were sitting and what I could see from beyond the little area where we were situated. The grounds seemed to be quite large, and there was no easy way to tell how far the paths stretched. Our tour guide introduced herself here, identifying heself as a previous botanist who had been working for the farm for a while now. The tour group got some background into chocolate on the whole: a quick explanation of the chocolate process; a little insight into farming in general; and a review of chocolate's terrior.

The first part of the tour consisted of a guide on how to pollinate vanilla. It turns out that vanilla is one of the most labor-intensive crops in the world, mostly because of this pollination process. The pollen is contained within the bean, but separated from the side that needs to be pollinated by a leafy part. The plant is drawn open to reveal the pollen and to-be pollinated side, the leafy bit is pulled away, and the two sides are painstakingly connected. This all has to be done by hand.

There was a brief period where we looked at cacao pods on the tree and were given a brief primer on genetics. The group received some information about the three main breeds of cacao and their properties, as well as the abundance of other varietals in existence. Quick pause here to say that our guide was really, really smart, and as we were walking, she was continually pointing out various plants around us and telling us cool little tidbits of information about them.

At some point, we stopped at an area similar to where the tour started, and there we did some tasting of Hawaiian fruits. The chocolate was to come at the very end of the tour, but I would be missing that, so I wanted to really concentrate on the fruits. There were standard fruits that I knew of beforehand, like lychees, and then there were some other ones that I had never heard of. One such was soursop, which was tangy and sweet, with a fibrous flesh that stuck to the spiky green skin. It was one of those fruits where you just have to leave the fibers be and pull all the flesh out with your teeth.

Another was sugarloaf pineapple, so named because of traditional cone-shaped sugar molds. Several factors distinguish the sugarloaf pineapple from its run-of-the-mill counterpart: its white flesh; the way its entire core is edible; the way its skin remains green throughout the growing process; the distinct lack of any tanginess, leading to it being called the "dessert pineapple"; and its shape, which is wider and more cylindrical than a normal pineapple. It was indeed very sweet, and I think it's well worth the $20-30 price tag.

The next part of the tour was more plant explanations as we walked, and eventually we came to a little area where we received a lesson on grafting trees. Grafting essentially means cutting off a piece of tree in a specific way and sticking another tree onto that part. This sounds unconventional, but when done right, it actually helps breed new varietals and therefore new flavors. While it may not be an exact combination of the two plants, and in fact very rarely is, key characteristics of each plant are retained, allowing the farm doing the grafting to have some level of control over their plant's genetics. If you don't like a certain note that appears in the beans from this tree, then slap on another one and try again.

It struck me then that a common theme in the world of chocolate and cacao is editing and processing, and grafting is such a stark demonstration of the way in which the industry revolves around making something that is distinctly different from the previous step, but still very much the same. In reassembling the tree, you cut its identity in half, but it is wholly up to the person doing the grafting whether the new half is an improvement or not. Perhaps the beans produced will have retained only the negative qualities from both trees, or only the positive ones.

Anyway, after that finished, the group tasted some chocolate. We had to leave then to catch our flight to the Big Island. On the way out, we grabbed some chocolate, a tube of honey roasted macadamia nuts, and two jars of pepper berry honey (sadly, I lost the chocolate and the nuts somehow–a pity: they looked really good).

The tour started in a little outdoor area with this table. There are bars at the far end, and honey and nibs at the closer end.