The Ono Hua Moa

The Ono Hua Moa: The Delicious Chicken Egg

Recipe for Dutch Baby

By Brittany P. Anderson

A clamor of loud cackles and squawking erupts from the pasture. The flock of egg-laying hens continue their vocal display for the next 15 minutes letting everyone know that an egg has been laid. Just as they seem to quiet down and settle into foraging, another hen emerges from the nesting box, pausing to shout her accomplishment, raising the flock in a boisterous round of celebration. Hawai‘i Island used to be relatively self-sufficient in egg production. In the 1980s, the state of Hawai‘i produced 85 percent of the eggs for the local market, with more than 20 commercial growers. Over the past several decades, however, the state’s egg industry has struggled, cutting local egg production nearly in half. The good news is backyard egg producers and small farms are making up for the loss of commercial growers. Hard shells, rich golden yolks, and fresher eggs are all benefits of purchasing local eggs straight from the source. Imported eggs take around three weeks to be transported from mainland distribution centers to Hawai‘i Island grocery store shelves. If you’re purchasing eggs from a small local farm or neighbor, you’re getting a much fresher product that hardly had to travel. Eggs come in many sizes and colors. Different breeds of chickens lay different colored eggs, however, the shell hue does not influence its flavor or the color of the yolks. When a hen lays the egg, it is covered in something called the bloom— it’s a protective layer that prevents bacteria from getting inside the egg. The bloom can also alter the color of an eggshell giving it a purple, pink, or even grey tint. In the United States, the bloom must be washed off for eggs to be sold. Springtime is when hens are prolific layers. Even in Hawai‘i, egg production is seasonal. Some hens lay more eggs than others, but generally, a hen will lay somewhere around 150–200 eggs per year. If the weather is too hot, egg production slows, and when days are shorter in the winter months, it stops altogether. Besides being delicious, eggs also have high nutritional value and are easy to incorporate into a meal. Think of the yolk as a pantry stocked with all your fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K. The yolk also has all of the choline, lutein, and zeaxanthin you need to keep your eyes and memory healthy. It’s also packed with protein. If the yolk is your pantry, the egg white is your refrigerator, supplying more protein, potassium, Vitamin B2, and selenium. Contrary to popular belief, the egg yolk does not turn into a chick. The egg yolk functions as the primary food source for a growing chick, while the egg white, called albumin, is an antimicrobial cushion keeping things in place while also serving as a backup food source. Even if a rooster fertilizes an egg, a chick will only start to develop if it reaches a specific temperature. Gathering eggs daily helps to ensure that no chick develops within an egg destined for an omelet. Eggs are versatile in the kitchen for savory or sweet dishes and can be eaten at most any time of day. Known in the Pennsylvania Deutsch community as a “Dutch Baby,” this simple recipe comes together quickly and is excellent for breakfast or brunch. You could also easily dress it up for dessert. I serve my Dutch Baby with a generous helping of semihomemade blueberry lemon yogurt and drizzled it with honey for a summery brunch version.

Ingredients

5 Tbs butter 1 cup flour Pinch of salt 6 eggs 1 cup milk

Blueberry and Lemon Yogurt

High-quality plain yogurt of your choice 1 cup frozen blueberries (or berry of your choice) Zest from half a lemon

Method

Put butter in a 9x13 dish or 10-inch cast-iron skillet and place in oven to preheat at 425F. In a bowl, mix flour, eggs, milk, and salt until smooth. Pour mixture into heated pan and bake for approximately 30 minutes or until puffed and golden brown. In the meantime, mix yogurt with frozen berries and zest then place in refrigerator until Dutch Baby is done. Allow it to cool slightly before serving in slices, with a generous helping of blueberry yogurt, and garnish with more lemon zest.

By Nancy S Kahalewai

here are few things as unique as

the feel, shape, sound, texture, decoration, source, and even lineage of a Hawaiian ipu drum. Pahu (drums) are part of the bedrock of traditional Hawaiian hula traditions, dancing, and chanting—thus oral storytelling itself. Ipu refers to the gourd or fruit of the Cucurbitaceae (squash) family Lagenaria siceraria. Although not edible, this gourd was so valuable to Polynesian culture that it was one of the original voyaging canoe plants of Pacifica, where its bowl shape was very handy at sea for serving food, holding bait and fish, catching rainwater from the sails, or bailing out water from the canoe hulls. The historical uses of this plant’s fruit include diverse purposes such as water vessels, storage containers, rattles, and ceremonies. For centuries in the Hawaiian Islands, the decorated bowl-shaped ipu ‘umeke was also inverted for use as a ceremonial headdress, while the double ipu heke drums became invaluable as percussion instruments for ‘oli (chanting) or hula kahiko (ancient hula). Also used are the smaller ‘ulī‘ulī gourds for rhythmic accompaniment. All steps of growing, cultivating, pollinating, harvesting, cleaning, decorating, playing, sharing, and overall appreciation of ipu drums are full of meaning, as well as challenges. For example, the weather may ruin entire crops and the bugs love to bite the fruits, which ruin the development of the gourds.

Establishing Relationships

In Kona, Keauhou farmer Kalim Smith calls this whole process “from seed to stage.” For him it is a very personal and intimate journey that includes knowing where and who the seeds came from, how to save and plant seeds, noticing if they grow happily or not, where in the garden they thrive, if they need water or more shade, and basically deeply observing them for at least nine months as they ascend the trellises he builds over them. Ipu seed stocks are valued and shared based on the desired sizes and shapes, as well as their source. Kalim prefers to plant his seeds directly into the soil. Because Kona is so rocky, this includes adding mulch and a bit of animal fertilizer. “It’s very hard to transplant young plants as their roots are so sensitive and timing has to be just right,” he says. “I also like to hand pollinate my plants.” Once mature, the gourds are harvested, cleaned, and prepared for their next destination and purpose. Kalim is known for his ipu heke, which for him includes matching the shapes and sounds with the kumu hula who chooses his

Young Hawaiian gourds growing on the farm in Keauhou. photo by Nancy Kahalewai

drums, and personal delivery of the ipu from his hands into theirs. He also has developed amazing relationships with the Hawaiian black pigs, starting with “Beefcake” who he caught and hand-trained in one day with the calming help of one of his tame ranch pigs. Now half a dozen of these native heritagebreed pigs live on the farm, eating farm scraps and fallen fruit. Other wild Hawaiian pigs roam through occasionally, yet seem to have an unusual relationship with the farm. “They rarely bother my gourds,” notes Kalim. “Unbothered by my presence, sometimes they pass right by me as if they know I respect them.” He compares harmonic relationships on the ‘āina to the legends of Lono’s deeply nurturing relationship with agriculture, the kukui tree, the gourds, and the pigs.

Mo‘olelo (Origin Stories)

Ipu gourds and their seeds have collectively developed their own legends and mo‘olelo over many generations. Kalim’s own gourd-growing journey began in the vicinity of San Diego, California, where he was born and raised. His father is from Tennessee, and was stationed at a San Diego military base. A retired Navy Chief, Kalim’s father is of Muskogee Creek ancestry and was a leader in the Native American community of Tennessee for many years. He took Kalim to the family farm as a child to see the farming heritage of the mid-South. Lighter than pottery or metal pots, Kalim’s father’s family used gourds to carry water until recent times. Growing up near many reservations in the southwest, Indian elders and the late Dale Phillips, his hānai father and tribal ceremonial leader of the Cocopah Nation, took him to tribal gatherings and taught him how to make ceremonial gourd rattles that were filled with native palm tree seeds. For five years now, Kalim and his wife, kumu hula Lily Kahelelani Lyons Alohikea-Smith, have been living and growing gourds, animals, and food on the six-acre farm and property of Hālau Ka‘eaikahelelani where they reside in mauka (upland) Keauhou-Kona. The farm was very overgrown with walls of invasive plants when Kahelelani’s hālau acquired the lease, and right away they began clearing and planting. The property also has a tropical fruit orchard of mature trees including starfruit, starapple, lychee, abiu, mountain apple, jackfruit, ice cream bean, white guava, dwarf wi apple, avocado, and mango. Living here feels very natural and sacred to them. Kahelelani and her sisters have family roots on this Keauhou ahupua‘a

Small bowls made from rare gourds discovered growing wild and now being propagated on the farm.

photo by Nancy Kahalewai

(ancient land parcel) that connect them to Queen Keōpūolani and her son, Kauikeaouli, Kamehameha III. “Queen Keōpūolani was my ancestor’s cousin and gave birth to the king just below the farm at Keauhou Bay,” Kahelelani explains. “I am a senior descendant of my great-grandfather, hereditary Ali‘i (High Chief) Alfred Unauna Alohikea who was a composer and state representative for Kaua‘i. It is not only a personal calling to accept and embrace this kuleana [responsibility], but a wonderful and sustainable lifestyle that we truly cherish. I am supposed to be here. I felt my kūpuna [ancestors]; then later I gradually grew to understand it.” The farm is the location of after-school hula classes on

Kalim at home with ipu heke destined for the stage. photo courtesy of Kalim Smith

Wednesdays, and Kalim teaches the children about the farm and how to grow food. After class the children pick fruit to enjoy from the orchard, taking some home to their families each week. Kalim adds, “We are using natural, indigenous methods of living and growing on this ‘āina, and following the traditional

ways of the kūpuna who guide and shed light on our ongoing purpose and activities in life.” As well as sharing seeds and learning how to grow ipu gourds, the ways to tattoo and decorate them is another whole topic, and in this way the mo‘olelo deepens and is perpetuated generation after generation.

Kalim visiting Aunty Momi Greene and her ipu pawehe at the craft fair, Merrie Monarch 2022.

photo by Nancy Kahalewai

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After hula practice, the keiki savor the orchard’s fresh tropical fruits. photo by Nancy Kahalewai

Many Mentors

Kalim’s mentors also included his late grand-aunt and uncle, Aunty Donna Mae (Hopkins) Jensen, remembered as the “Ipu Lady” of Waimea, and her husband Uncle Roy Jensen. “The genealogy of how I was trained is that my grand Aunty Donna and Uncle Roy first asked me to grow large Hawaiian style ipu. After bringing a successful crop back to them, they then taught me to make ipu heke. Years later they gave me the permission to teach, which I have been doing for years now with students from all around the world,” he recalls. “My relative from O‘ahu, entertainer Kama Hopkins, encouraged us to grow ipu as a family. I also have received seeds from other growers and have been fortunate to find many ipu growing in the wild.” Another mentor of Kalim’s is Aunty Momi Greene, who took on the challenge of farming on six acres of lava. Along with planting 800 commercial plumeria plants for flower lei, she got started growing gourds with her first 40 seeds from nowretired Dr. Bruce Kaimiloa Chrisman. Thanks to his research

A lidded ipu ÿumeke notched and decorated by Kalim. photo by Nancy Kahalewai

The students in the after-school Mauli Program of Hälau Kaÿeaikahelelani. photo by Nancy Kahalewai

and dedication, he invited local farmers to help restore ipu growing in Hawai‘i in the 1980s with assistance from Bishop Museum, where 400-year-old ipu drums are housed. “Ipu don’t like to grow in containers,” Momi learned as one of these early farmers, “as their roots hate to be bound. Once they start to flower, I pollinate by hand. The female and male flowers grow right next door to each other on the vine. It’s an amazing plant.” An artist of Hawaiian, German, and Maori descent, Momi also learned how to decorate ipu in the lost Ni‘ihau method. Dying the gourd is done from the inside out— an almost forgotten ipu pawehe (tattoo method) endemic to the Hawaiian Islands. The gourd is picked while still green, yet after the leaves and vines have dried out. Momi cuts a small opening and removes the stem and seeds. Artistic patterns and traditional designs are created by peeling (like an apple) and carving the young, green skins before they are dry and brown. Then dark dyes such as coffee or brews from tree barks are added inside the gourd where they remain for about a month. Through osmosis, the dyes permeate from the inside to the outer skin wherever the skin has been removed. Thus, the contrasting patterns emerge as the carved areas darken. The fermented pulp and liquid are then cleaned out. Traditionally, the gourds are taken to the beach where the crusty exterior is hand cleaned with seawater and scrubbed with damp sand. Filling them with seawater for one week to help minimize bugs and mold precedes drying them out thoroughly for several weeks.

Deep Dedication

The journey from planting to finishing gourds takes a good year of care and dedication that is “like raising a child,” as one kupuna remarked. Ipu farmers, artisans, dancers and musicians share a deep appreciation for this humble plant. From seed to stage and beyond, this is an inspirational part of a culture where their own roots thrive and where they can cherish the intimate traditions of pre-contact Hawai‘i. 

For more information: facebook.com/ipufarm facebook.com/momi.greene

ince the dawn of

agriculture, honeybee

keepers have braved the swarm in search of that coveted golden nectar. The sound of an open hive is intimidating—a buzzing roar which connects with some ancient, instinctual human sense that simply yells: run! But beekeepers learn not to fear this hair-raising sound, to stand firm against the barrage of stingers, and in time they learn a sort of dance—to pull out frames, shake off bees, harvest honeycomb and restack hive boxes with a gentle, graceful yet deliberate flow. The raw products they’re after— honey, pollen, beeswax and others— have played a vital role in the evolution of human society, their use dating back to ancient times when Egyptian pharaohs like

Tutankhamun were buried in tombs lavished with, among other treasures, jars of honey.

Local Beekeeping

Hope “Bee” Anderson gives the beehive frame a firm shake and a sticky blob of honey-covered bees drips off and falls to the ground. Most of them take flight all at once, instantly exploding into a chaotic, swirling cloud of blurred yellow stripes on black. The sound of their buzzing gets louder, and the air around Hope’s backyard apiary grows thick with the swarm. Some of the temporarily displaced bees congregate in clumps on Hope’s bare hands and arms, while others creep up her shoulders and crawl across her back. She works shirtless, so there’s no cloth to trap and panic them into stinging. To the untrained eye it would appear that Hope, the beekeeper, is running the show. She is quick to reject this notion. “Each hive is different,” Hope says. “They all have different expressions, different ways of doing things. So, it’s really about not being in the head but coming back to the heart, because the moment I start to think that I know what I’m doing, they tell me otherwise. It’s like this constant, ‘I don’t know anything, just tell me what to do, show me the way.’” Some of the harvested honey and beeswax will make its way into products for the company Hope founded as its “Bee Guardian.” She runs the business out of her Puna homestead—a verdant clearing in the middle of dense jungle that’s flush with planted food forests and seemingly endless bee forage. Its products include raw, hand-squeezed honey and sweetly aromatic candles made from single-filtered beeswax. Hope sees getting more people involved in what she calls “pono [righteous] beekeeping” as a force for immense social good on Hawai‘i Island, from bolstering local food security to providing new livelihoods to creating more bountiful crop yields. “By inviting more people to leave behind the commercial mentality and become backyard beekeepers,” she says, “we’re teaching people how to come out of their heads and into their hearts. That will have a huge impact; it’ll create more food sovereignty, and it is a cash crop. As long as we can bring awareness to the sacred and healing properties of honey, if people were more aware, there would be a huge seeking for this natural golden nectar. To make a movement like that on Big Island is impactful financially, it’s impactful on our spirit, it’s impactful on our food and on our biodiversity.”

Island Beekeepers’ Uphill Struggle

Although bees have the potential to play a leading role in a greener, healthier, and more ecologically diverse Hawai‘i Island, beekeepers today nonetheless face threats to their way of life from seemingly every corner. A decade ago, a perfect storm of invasive bee diseases converged on the island, bringing pests like Varroa mites and small hive beetles, along with the insidious, hard-to-kill microscopic fungal parasite Nosema ceranae. Researchers estimate that these combined threats killed 55% of honeybees on the island in a single year—more than 2,500 colonies in 2010. Jen Rasmussen had just started getting into beekeeping at the time, and out of the 40 hives she tended that year, she lost 36. While other beekeepers leaned into chemical pesticide-

based “solutions” to control these new, devastating invaders, Jen doubled down on her own organic beekeeping practices, which she sums up in one word: hygienic. Her methods revolve around an astonishingly simple albeit highly effective disease management technique called “checkerboarding.” This is where, during hive maintenance, a beekeeper will place an empty frame in between two already established combs, creating a sort of old-new-old-new checkerboard. “By doing this it tells the bees that they need to make a new brood comb there to fill in the gap,” Jen explains. “It’s kind of like with humans, we change our sheets, we wash our dishes, we do these things to be hygienic.” In its simplest sense, Jen’s philosophy focuses on disease prevention rather than treatment. “That’s what chemical beekeeping is all about; treating the symptom, not the cause,” Jen says. “And my beekeeping aspect is all about foresight—all about cause. What is it that I’m trying to avoid from happening rather than how do I deal with it once I have it? That’s what made it easier for me to deal with the kinds of things that got introduced to our area.” Tragedy struck again several years later when Jen’s bee farm was covered by lava during the 2018 Lower Puna Eruption. Luckily, she and a team of friends managed to rescue the majority of hives beforehand, and after more than a year of bouncing around and trying to manage hives scattered across multiple East Hawai‘i properties, she and her family moved onto a nine-acre farm in the Wainaku neighborhood of Hilo and went to work rebuilding. Unfortunately, a new threat started to crop up shortly after getting the apiary reestablished. Many of the farms

Closeup of a frame from one of Hope Anderson’s Langstroth hives about to be harvested. Bulging honey-saturated comb with capped hexagon shaped cells can be seen on the bottom. These types of frames provide a hard border for bees to gradually fill in, making for easy removal and replacement. photo by Stefan Verbano

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C H E C K U S O U T

Backyard beekeeper Hope Anderson squeezes a handful of honeycomb to extract the golden nectar while her roommate and assistant Charlie helps. They take great care to step around the mass of bees crawling on the floor whose wings are still too sticky to fly. A few hours later they will all have cleaned themselves and

returned to the hive. photo by Stefan Verbano

surrounding her plot were using large amounts of toxic herbicides for weed control. The bees started dying off again— at one point she lost eight hives in 48 hours after a heavy spray. Within two years of moving to Wainaku, her 67 hives had been reduced to 13. “I had some hives where it was just boom, they went down, there was no chance,” she recalls. “They just brought in way too much of the poison. Then I had other hives that brought it in but they didn’t bring in so much that they couldn’t identify it. So, the more herbicide they got hit with in small amounts, the more aware they became that it was bad. Now they jail certain bees that obviously have poison symptoms, and they’ll dig out huge sections of their combs that you can tell have been contaminated.” Such a dramatic and protracted loss left her feeling discouraged. On the other hand, the fact that the bees had figured out by themselves ways to mediate the herbicide’s harmful effects came as a glimmer of hope. “There are certain hives that have fully identified these changes,” Jen says, “and now they’re trying to be proactive to get it out. That to me right there shows an amazing amount of intelligence and awareness.”

Bee Defenders

Harry Holm is the president of the Big Island Beekeepers Association (BIBA). After a few decades of little activity, BIBA began to ramp up its political ambitions partially due to the frustrations felt by small-scale beekeepers like Jen. These days, BIBA rallies support for prospective legislation that offers greater legal protection for beekeepers, including from threats posed by toxic spraying. The group is also actively pushing reforms to County of Hawai‘i Ordinances related to beekeeping under the banner of its “Save The Bees Hawai‘i” campaign, which began a few years ago when a BIBA board member’s beehive became the target for the scheming of an unpleasant neighbor. “He ended up having to remove his hive,” Harry recalls, “and there were many others in the neighborhood who had hives, but he’s the only one who got complained about. That’s not right. That’s what kicked us off looking into it.” As the law stands today, honeybees can only be kept on land zoned for agricultural use. “Our main goal is to make sure that wherever people have bees, that they are compliant with the law,” Harry says. “If you’ve got a hive, and you’re in a commercial or residential area, and you’ve been there for years, you don’t have to worry about a neighbor causing a problem like that.” BIBA recognizes that there are beekeepers here who’ve been operating on non-agricultural land for a long time, and it strives to educate the public and local lawmakers about how their bees benefit the island and how sometimes—like Harry says—they become victims of legal technicality. After considering the hopes and frustrations of beekeepers like Hope and Jen, and the barriers faced by activists like Another frame of mature honeycomb from Hope Anderson’s hives, this one held up to the sun to show its golden, translucent hue.

photo courtesy of Hope Anderson

Harry, it becomes clear that Hawai‘i Island’s bees need real, tangible legal protection. And for an insect which some scientists believe is responsible for 80 percent of the island’s food crop yield, our collective love of papayas, citrus fruits, macadamia nuts, coffee beans, passionfruit, and yes, honey, along with so many other tropical island delicacies, should be all the motivation we need to come to their aid. 

For more information: Hope Anderson: honeybeesensual.com Jen Rasmussen: facebook.com/buzzon4ever bigislandbeekeepers.com