A few weeks ago Ivy and I made a trip up the coast to check out the local farmer's market. On the way back we made a stop at a friends house who happened not to be home, but as luck would have it, another friend, Johnny Boy, was waiting outside for them to get home. Ok, this is worth the explanation as its an interesting interaction/relationship of individuals. Johnny Boy is a 5th generation Cane worker, and although he no longer does it, since the industry no longer exists on this island (Maui has the last operating Sugar Mill), he was raised in this old Cane town and knows just about everyone in the little town. Johnny Boy is who we ran into outside Chooks house. Chooks is a great gal we met a while back and have come to be pretty good friends with. Chooks is an avid garage saler, and so naturally was out having at the good deals the morning must have been offering. Johnny Boy, as I said, grew up in this small Cane town and although he lived in a number of the houses there through his life, it was this house, Chooks, that he grew up in.
We learned Chooks wasn't around, and told Johnny Boy what we were searching for;Local Clay. There are deposits of clay on the island, but usually small and with lots of impurities. Johnny Boy wasn't going anywhere fast since he was waiting for Chooks husband to have a look at his truck, so he decided to come along and show us a few spots he knew of.
We climbed down into a river gulch to get a very pure sample of the native "Alae" Red Clay. I was expecting Yellow ochre from what I had heard was in the area, so this was really exciting. This red clay turns pink when bone dry, but moist it is almost the color of blood. It's really impressive stuff. We took a very small portion for tests and always viewed it with respect as it is very important and prized by Hawaiians.
We went on with the search to another location where a larger sample might be found. Again another river gulch was involved, and this one was beautiful. Walking through dense overgrown pathways,Shampoo ginger and woodear mushrooms sprouted from the leaf cover and we were knocking coffee berries off their spindly branches. This coffee was pushed into these river gulches a hundred + years ago when sugar began to take over as the dominant monocrop on this wet side of the island. Years later these coffee plants would be resurrected and taken out of these very gulches to be grown on the dry side of the island as the world famous "Kona Coffee". Johnny Boy tells us stories of how when he was a boy, he would come pick all the ripe Coffee Berries from these trees and take them to the mill for processing so he could then roast and sell the beans. What the hell has happened to kids these days? No kid I know of would ever even consider doing that.......It's sad.
We pass an old grinding stone that the Ancient Hawaiians had used to pound taro, a beautiful little cascade down into a culvert that took us to a small freshwater pond. The whole trip was beautiful. We found good clay samples to run some tests with, and got Johnny Boy back to his Truck at his old house. He brought some sweets out of the house (It did use to be his house) for us to share before we left.........Sweetened Lemon peel! Basic; Lemon peels, Brown Sugar, Water- Set in the sun for a few weeks. Delicious.
Many gracious thanks to Johnny Boy for taking the time with us that day and sharing as much as he did. Mahalo.
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