Eliah Halpenny grabs a waxy, emerging shoot of one her prized tea plants and bends the pekoe, the growing tip of the tea plant and the only part used to make black and green teas, in my direction. At a 3,000-foot elevation, her Glenwood tea farm affords the perfect conditions for her crop. The Vancouver businesswoman turned Big Island farmer speaks of sustainability and farming with a passion akin to a kid in a candy store.
"I knew I wanted to grow something, but I didn't know what," Halpenny recalls, reflecting on her venture into sustainable tea farming almost 10 years ago.
Eliah, a proponent of all things sustainable, wasn't always a tea connoisseur, but she was always adamant about farming without synthetic pesticides, herbicides or fertilizers. After five months of research she decided tea was the perfect fit for her vision and Big Island Tea was born.
Leaving behind a successful sales and marketing career in British Columbia, Eliah and her husband Cam, a biology professor specializing in conservation genetics at the University of Hawai'i at Hilo, now own and operate the sustainable five-and-half-acre farm where they have approximately 6,000 tea plants growing on an acre and a half.
Elements common to many commercial farms, such as machinery, chemicals, synthetic fertilizers, greenhouses and weed cloth don't exist here. Eliah says it's these tools of modern farming that were responsible for the poor condition of the land and soil when they purchased the property, their diamond in the rough. "The artificial environment created by greenhouses doesn't promote the establishment of complete ecosystems," explains Eliah, "and the lack of biomass recycling doesn't promote diverse microbial communities in the soil." According to Halpenny, greenhouses actually create a susceptibility to pests and a dependence on artificial fertilizers. She also adds that weed cloth burns roots and stunts a plant's growth, leading to a scarcity of worms and other beneficial critters.
Unlike the tomatoes and salad greens that were grown with pesticides on the property by the former owners, her tea grows within an endemic Hawaiian forest canopy she is recreating herself to nurture a self-sustaining forest ecosystem. "Our goal is to reproduce a forest in which our tea is a community member," explains Eliah. "This ecological design requires less intervention."
So far, she's planted koa, maile, kukui, 'ohi'a lehua, hapu'u, about 120 trees in all, and many other native plants. To get the ecosystem back into balance, she is working on reestablishing the cycle of biomass recycling by mulching the ground with leaves and branches. She also pours an organic compost mixture brewed on site that enriches the microbial content in the soil.
From healthy soil comes healthy, high yielding plants. All of their tea plants are unique, with slight variations in height, color and shape. Instead of opting for raising clones, Big Island Tea prides itself on raising seed-grown tea plants imported from India, China, Japan and Taiwan.
"We need diversity and cloning stops that," says Halpenny, explaining that cloned plants all flush (farmer talk for flowering) at the same time, which can lead to wasted tea when an entire crop must be harvested all at once. Since Eliah harvests her tea by hand, it's important that she can keep up with the sprouting pekoe. To aid during harvest, she maintains the plants at the perfect height for her to pick. "If my husband worked on the farm more, the plants might be a little taller," she jokes.
As we slowly meander around the farm, Eliah points to small palms scattered throughout the property. "We just planted a bunch of oil palms. We're going to process them into biofuel when they're ready, right here on the farm," she says, with excitement. "I'm bringing this up because we need to be able to barter for sustainability if the barges stop."
The palm oil crop was inspired by the propane drought on the Big Island earlier this year, where many residents rely on propane for heating water and cooking. "If that's not a wake up call, then I don't know what is," says Eliah. "With locally produced biofuel we won't have to worry about losing it."
After exploring the farm, Eliah pours us cups of her black and green, whole leaf tea, which are then emptied into another set of dainty cups so we can take in the tea's scent before sipping. As we give in to the calming aroma and flavor, it leaves no wonder as to why Harrod's of London just bought her entire 2011 harvest and will distribute it exclusively. The aromatic and flavorful tea is a prime example of why tea drinking has been a cross-cultural phenomenon for generations.
Big Island Tea is experimenting with other ways to promote sustainability, from rainwater catchment to a neighborhood community garden on the property. Eliah also enjoys sharing her knowledge and botanical successes with agriculture students.
Looking out over a Pu'u O'o vent smoke plume, Eliah sips her tea and says, "Hawai'i can become sustainable. But in order to be sustainable, things really have to change."