We’re very pleased to have an article about our vanillery in Kauai Traveler magazine! Read the article here…
Full Article…Kauaʻi Traveler magazine features our vanillery
2019 Harvest Season Begins!
Went out to the vanillery and was greeted with the sight of ripening beans! You get used to the beans growing for months, then all of a sudden…they’re turning. This year seems a bit earlier than usual, but that could have been expected since the 2018 flowering season also started early. The flowering season in Hawaii starts in January and extends through June. April and May are the peak normally, but trips to the vanillery every morning need to happen for a full 6 months! Picking the Ripe Beans When the beans ripen they need to be picked right away because they develop quickly once the yellowing starts. We search the vanillery for ripened beans every 3 days or so to… (read)
Full Article…The 2018 Vanilla Harvest is Ready for Sale
It’s finally time to start selling our 2018 vanilla harvest! I’m putting together the retail packages today and soon we’ll have them in the store to sell. I’m pretty excited about the vanilla we have to offer this year, it is without question the best quality vanilla we have ever produced. This year, we will be selling the beans two ways: First, for the best, largest, and most beautiful beans, in small priced-by-the-bean packages of 2. We’ll also be selling our grade A and grade B beans by the ounce, so even if there are a few smaller beans in there, you’ll know you’re getting all the vanilla you’re paying for. The quality is just excellent either way. If you’re… (read)
Full Article…Sorting the Cured Beans
As the beans complete their curing, they need to be inspected, sorted, and packaged for long-term storage. We’ve been doing this for 2 months now, and some of the earliest beans to go into storage are ready for sale or to be made into one of our vanilla products, such as extract or syrup. The beans are initially sorted into three groups: Grade A, Grade B and Extract. This is according to moisture content and appearance. They are then vacuum-packed and will be aged in that state for 1–6 months. This year’s harvest is our first big harvest and we’re not quite sure how it’s all going to get marketed. Of course there will be online retail sales, and perhaps a… (read)
Full Article…Mo’o in the Vanillery
I see a lot of these guys in the vanillery. It must be a great environment for them, a million places to hide and hunt, with convenient walkways so you never have to touch the ground. Mo’o is the Hawaiian word for lizard or reptile…it gets a lot of use since geckos are so common here. Mostly the ones I see in the vanillery are the green anoles. They look like tiny dragons, and they have a lot of personality…certainly when compared to a gecko! Their typical green color matches the vanilla foliage perfectly. They can change color, so they’re often referred to as “chameleons” and though they do have eyelids that are a bit like them, they aren’t chameleons. I… (read)
Full Article…Ripe Green Vanilla Pods
We are at the peak of the harvest season, and during this time, we are harvesting about a hundred beans out of the vanillery every two to three days. Choosing which beans to take requires some pretty sharp observation: the color change can be hard to see in the shady tangle of vines. The beans were pollinated almost a year ago, and a lot of vine growth has taken place since then, burying many of the brooms deep within the growth. In the dim light, it’s easy to mistake the gentle lightening that takes place as the bean matures for the clear signal of true ripeness. Choosing the moment to harvest any one bean is a bit of a game… (read)
Full Article…2018 Harvest Season Begins!
This is the first year we are getting a full harvest out of the vanillery. It’s been a good year, growth-wise, maybe even too good. The vines are growing so thickly now, it’s hard to see the beans for harvesting. This harvest season actually began on January 3, we missed a few early ones, but on that day I harvested 3 dozen beans. It seems to be coming in much earlier this year. Last year’s first harvest was in February sometime. I can only guess that the onset of the harvest season moves around a lot. Today’s harvest was particularly bountiful in terms of bean size. In the photo, I’m holding one of the biggest beans I’ve ever seen, 240mm in… (read)
Full Article…Our First Full-Scale Flowering in the Vanillery
The vanillery is exactly 3 years old now. This Spring, for the first time, we’re seeing full flowering on all the rows. This is great news for vanilla production here, our last two years have seen fairly small harvests. At this rate, there may be many hundreds of pods in here for next winter’s harvest. Having this many flowers does require a significant time investment to get them all pollinated. This is the peak of the flowering cycle, and we’re seeing 1 — 1 1/2 hours of pollinating each morning, and that will keep up for 2 — 3 weeks. You definitely have to plan your morning around that.
Full Article…A Natural Vanilla Nursery
In the first season of fruit in the vanillery, I let a couple of beans ripen naturally, as I sometimes do when they’re too small or overripe. When they ripen on the vine, they split open, turn black and eventually the tiny, tiny seeds come out. I guess if things are just right where those seeds fall, they will germinate and grow into new vines. This is, in my experience, pretty unusual. Most of the time none of those seeds sprout, and the little vines that emerge aren’t tough like full-grown vanilla, they’re extremely delicate. It wouldn’t take much going wrong for that sprout to not survive. Near one of the bamboo posts in the vanillery, it looks like the conditions were just… (read)
Full Article…Grading the 2016 Harvest
Took the beans out of their box today: it’s time to grade the harvest. The last beans came off the open-air drying racks two months ago, and they’ve been conditioning in their box since then. The beans are graded at this point, divided into the two grades by size, moisture content, and appearance. The grade A beans are bundled and placed in the conditioning box for another 7 months, so there is a total of 9 months of conditioning after the drying is complete. The cured beans are sold to the culinary trade for direct use in recipes. They are brown in color and filled with fragrant, oily “caviar,” the seeds and pulp of the vanilla pod after curing. This is… (read)
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