Gloria Baraquio called a couple of weeks ago and asked if they could feature Hamakua Springs Country Farms on a segment of Living Local with the Baraquios, which will air on OC16 in January. “Of course, I’d love it,” I told her.
In addition to the TV program, Gloria writes a weekly column in the Hawaii Tribune-Herald and I’m a big fan. One of my favorites was when she described the local protocol for calling people aunty, sistah, bruddah or cuz.
She writes her column about real things on the Big Island. Not about how we imagine things to be, but how they truly are. From her writing, she strikes me as being a very “real” person.
When she and G. Cruz arrived for the filming yesterday, we went down to the tomato houses to do an interview and she asked about our farming philosophy. I told her we try to be competitive in the present while moving our company to where it needs to be in the future. Right now this means preparing for a future of rising energy costs and converting to using our natural resources for energy instead of fossil fuel sources.
Over the course of the interview yesterday I came to respect Gloria even more. That she lives in lower Puna, on “catchment” and “off the grid,” says it all for me. A person who catches rain water and is not connected to the public utility’s electricity grid is someone who looks at life in a very basic way. She loves the spirituality of lower Puna.
We farmed at Koa‘e in Kapoho in the old days. Maybe that’s why I relate to her column so strongly.
During our interview it clouded over and started raining, but I went ahead and asked Gloria if she would like to see where we are developing our hydroelectric project. I told her the grass would be wet and that the wooden plank over the flume was older than we know. But how did I know, rain or not, that she would want to go? She did.
We drove up the bumpy, four-wheel drive road to the mauka-Hilo corner of our property. I pointed out an old plantation flume that runs under the road and down a small waterfall on its way to the ocean. We parked a hundred yards further on up the road.
Kimo led the way and then came Gloria, G. Cruz with the camera and me, carrying the tripod. The 12-foot plank over the flume was maybe an inch and a half thick. You can’t even tell it’s a wooden blank because of the thick moss that grows on it. The far side of the plank is maybe a foot or more lower than the near side. And there is less than a foot of shoulder between the end of the plank and the river.
But Gloria was so interested in seeing what was going on with the flume that crossing it wasn’t even an issue to her.
The flume runs parallel to the river, and she and G. decided they wanted to film at the most dangerous spot. They walked along the narrow path separating the flume from the river and across another old plank, maybe 10 inches wide, over the top of a waterfall that dropped 20 feet to the river below. I was a little worried about rescuing them if they fell. And then they continued to a four-inch concrete lip to a small dam.
Gloria decided she would walk out on the narrow dam, crouch down and do her narrative from there. And by then it was raining seriously.
She knew in her mind what she wanted and she was fearless in its pursuit.
I have a lot of respect for her.