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The Honolulu Star-Advertiser The Buzz column [The Honolulu Star-Advertiser]
[October 29, 2014]

The Honolulu Star-Advertiser The Buzz column [The Honolulu Star-Advertiser]


(Honolulu Star-Advertiser (HI) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Oct. 29--Imagine, you buy land for a country vacation home near South Point on Hawaii island for rest and relaxation, and wind up running a 75-acre farm on the property, raising honeybees, coffee, macadamia nuts and horses and cows and dogs, oh my.



Scott Buske and Megan Collins bought the property in 2004 while both were living on Oahu, and 10 years later they are back on Oahu in the form of their products including honeys, macadamia nuts, chocolate barks and award-winning Kau coffee, marketed under the brand name Hawaii's Local Buzz.

"We spent two years rescuing" the land from an overgrowth of grass that obscured citrus trees, avocado trees, pretty much a full orchard, Collins said.


Selections of their products have been available at Foodland, military commissaries on Oahu and Hilo Hattie locations, but now for the first time, all the fruits, nuts, coffees and chocolates of their labors are available in a single Oahu location.

Hawaii's Local Buzz opened a concession this week in the flagship Hilo Hattie store on North Nimitz Highway.

"It's very exciting," said Collins, who said the shop-within-the-store represents their full Big Island farm stand, just an Oahu version of it -- with air conditioning.

Temptations include various coffees including "peaberry" and unroasted green coffee; flavored macadamia nuts including vanilla, caramel and cinnamon bun; as well as savory flavors such as smoky garlic, garlic Parmesan, "sweet 'n smoky" or the provocatively named "Nuts in the nude." The chocolate bark flavors include dark chocolate vanilla, milk chocolate caramel and white chocolate cinnamon bun, while the chocolate-covered macadamia nuts also offer a variety of flavor combinations including a white chocolate variety. Honeys include seasonal blends, lychee honey and something called "wild hive" honey.

The concession offers a 10 percent discount to shoppers with a Hawaii driver's license or military ID, when paid for at the concession's register.

"We also have other deals for folks," Collins said, such as a gift with purchase, or daily specials on certain items. And, if shoppers don't want to lug their purchase around, "we'll be happy to ship it from our farm, and if they spend more than $100, we'll do that shipping to any address in the U.S. for free," she said.

All but the chocolate bark products bear the Hawaii Seal of Quality, Buske said. The seal is bestowed by the state Department of Agriculture once it certifies the integrity and value of Hawaii-branded farm and value-added products. Because the bark products do not contain at least 51 percent Hawaii-grown chocolate, they didn't qualify for the Seal of Quality.

That said, Buske and Collins are serious about the provenance of their "moan-a-licious" products.

"We grow our own stuff, but also work with a very small and select ohana of farmers, partner-farmers," Collins said, including two coffee growers and one macadamia nut grower.

Part of Buske and Collins' mission statement is that their partner-farmers will be fairly compensated for their products and also will benefit from the success of Hawaii's Local Buzz.

"The reason we selected them is, they grow fabulous stuff, and ... we can sell the product we grow and they grow, and we all benefit," Buske said. To maintain consistency, Buske and Collins gather all the product, "bring it here and do all the processing ourselves." Collins described the grouping as their hanai family. "We fix their tractors, we go to their kids' birthday parties," that sort of thing.

In an ohana-style partnership with nearby residents, pig traps are set up on the farm to help curtail nonhuman harvesting of any crops. The traps were placed by "subsistence hunters," Buske said. "They're like our best friends ... and now we're teaching them how to grow coffee." The land they bought was overgrown with cane grass, and once they discovered the bounty amid the tall grasses, the partners bought 11 cows from a neighboring farm. In 2006 Buske and Collins moved to the Big Island full time to bring Paradise Meadows Orchard & Bee Farm to literal and figurative fruition.

Some of the people working at Paradise Meadows are nontraditional workers -- they're "WWOOFers." The acronym stands for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, and WWOOF Hawaii helps to match people with opportunities to work in organic farming in exchange for room, food and a chance to explore the islands.

On the net: --www.hawaiislocalbuzz.com --www.paradisemeadows.com --hdoa.hawaii.gov/add/soq-companies/paradise-meadows --www.wwoofhawaii.org Reach Erika Engle at 529-4303, [email protected] or on Twitter as @erikaengle.

___ (c)2014 The Honolulu Star-Advertiser Visit The Honolulu Star-Advertiser at www.staradvertiser.com Distributed by MCT Information Services

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