Hakalau Chocolate News February 2022 |
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| | We're having a great harvest this year! This is our oldest tree, around 13 years old. It had a big pruning last year and set a lot of beautiful fruit. When ripe, the fruit do not fall, we have to clip each one off. We judge ripeness by color, texture, and by personally knowing each tree! | | |
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| | Kulike Farm donates a portion of our proceeds to One Tree Planted, a highly effective nonprofit with a mission of reforestation worldwide. They plant native trees in cooperation with local groups where it is needed most. In 2021, our donations resulted in around 400 trees being planted. In a small way, this helps make up for things like printing labels and shipping via airplanes... ie, it's an offset for us and for you! https://onetreeplanted.org/ | | |
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| | Granddaughter and her friend help Vanessa (our new fermentarian - if that is a term) turn the ferment. Each ferment box holds up to 100 lbs of beans. The beans are turned nearly daily, with fresh banana leaves added every other day, until we determine that the ferment is done and ready for drying - with current conditions that is around 8-9 days. The new electric lifting hand truck makes it possible to lift and lower the boxes out of our heating cabinet safely! | | |
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| | Fresh beans, cracked out of pods and drained for a day, ready to go into a ferment box. The lightest color is freshest, but they are all beautiful and properly ripe beans. The sugary white or light pink "aril" starts to darken as the pods age. Yeasts that naturally live on the pods and on the banana leaves we use to line the boxes help digest these sugars, producing ethanol and fermenting the beans. | | |
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| | Leo Nani Farm is our primary partner in supplying fresh, organic beans. They also sell our finished chocolate at the Hakalau farmers market and online. Janne and Rhiannon are great cacao farmers! | | |
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| | Rhiannon poses with a tree a few months ago when we walked through their orchard together to talk all things cacao and assess how the harvest was looking this year. Looking Great! https://www.leonanifarms.com/ | | |
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That's all for now. Aloha, Rachel and Dan https://www.kulikefarm.com/shop |
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