Current Status at the Vanillery

It has been far, far too long since I have post­ed news here!

Yes, as per our last post, we went through a peri­od of major con­struc­tion, which includ­ed our house. It was high­ly dis­rup­tive as any­one who has tried to live in a house that was get­ting a refurb or remod­el knows. Our old plan­ta­tion-style home need­ed some major work, and over the last more-than-a-year, we’ve been get­ting that done.

Major con­struc­tion on the house was com­plet­ed sev­er­al months ago, but that is only the begin­ning of the work for me, as I am tasked with the fin­ish work: plumb­ing, paint­ing, post-con­struc­tion cleanup, etc. In short, all the things I can do and did­n’t want to pay a con­trac­tor to do.

Things take a lot of time because we also con­tin­ue to have busy dai­ly lives, I’m sure this is not unfa­mil­iar, and so drop­ping every­thing else to get the Vanillery open as soon as pos­si­ble was­n’t how we want­ed to do it. So, I’m sor­ry for all the missed tours, I enjoyed that part of it immense­ly and I know from all the requests I had to say “no not yet” to, it was pop­u­lar with vis­i­tors and Hawaii residents.

About the Vanilla

Really, of course, the whole rea­son we have a vanil­la busi­ness is because of the vanil­la. Well, while we were build­ing, a dev­as­tat­ing set­back was unfold­ing in the plants: a fun­gus over­whelmed our abil­i­ty to fight it off and killed most of our plants. This prob­lem had been gain­ing momen­tum for the last three years, and as any­one who has grown plants inten­tion­al­ly knows, some­times it takes a while to final­ly fig­ure out what the hell is going on. By the time we knew, it was beyond stopping.

The thing about this par­tic­u­lar fun­gal dis­ease is there is no cure. You can avoid it (maybe), but you can’t stop it once it takes hold. Many vanil­la grow­ers have sim­ply gone on to grow oth­er things, and in fact the entire vanil­la indus­try of Costa Rica was destroyed by this fun­gus. Most vanil­la is grown by sub­sis­tence farm­ers, and so of course, they have to quick­ly move to anoth­er crop that can feed their families.

We have decid­ed to per­se­vere, how­ev­er, in the trust that what needs to hap­pen is to embrace a slow recov­ery and stay the course. There are no treat­ments for this, chem­i­cal fungi­cides are not an option for our organ­ic operation…besides, fungi­cides destroy the soil micro­bio­me (which is most­ly made up of bac­te­ria and fun­gi) and every­thing we know about grow­ing plants tells us we should be doing the oppo­site of that.

On the advice of our local per­ma­cul­tur­al­ist Ray Maki, we are now feed­ing the soil micro­bio­me week­ly with loads of com­post tea. A lot of you will know what that is, but in short, it is a way to inten­sive­ly grow the com­mu­ni­ty of microor­gan­isms that exist in the spe­cif­ic envi­ron­ment of the farm. This is grown in a liq­uid medi­um that also includes a full spec­trum of nutri­ents and micronu­tri­ents. After 24 hours of aer­o­bic fer­men­ta­tion, the liq­uid is applied direct­ly to the plants and soil. This has the effect of load­ing the grow­ing envi­ron­ment with diverse forms of micro­bial life, with the intent of reestab­lish­ing the sym­bi­ot­ic bal­ance of organ­isms that vanil­la depends on.

After sev­er­al months of this reg­i­men, we are begin­ning to see recov­ery in those plants that sur­vived the fun­gus. New roots that were shriv­el­ing before are now grow­ing vig­or­ous­ly. In the green­house, we have fresh vanil­la starts ready to plant out as soon as we are sure they won’t be imme­di­ate­ly infected. 

In the world of vanil­la, every­thing moves slow­ly, so even if it is clear sail­ing from here on, it will be 3 — 4 years before we’re up to full pro­duc­tion here.

In the Meantime, We Have Vanilla

Our busi­ness mod­el has always includ­ed cur­ing beans grown by oth­er vanil­la grow­ers on the island. This has­n’t been a major suc­cess yet, this is a new idea in Hawaii, even if it is a com­mon arrange­ment in oth­er vanil­la-pro­duc­ing areas of the world. For back­yard and small-scale grow­ers, the price is good and so it becomes a worth­while thing to grow for a lit­tle extra income.

We have con­nect­ed with sev­er­al folks on the island that have vanil­la vines that are pro­duc­ing pods, which we are buy­ing from them green. We are in the process of cur­ing and fin­ish­ing these beans, and so we will con­tin­ue to sell vanil­la on a lim­it­ed basis. It is still local, still organ­i­cal­ly grown.

We are also begin­ning to offer tours and on-farm retail sales on a lim­it­ed basis, so con­tact us if you’re interested.