Abundance Abounds at July’s Farm Fair
Oahu Worm Ohana joined other departments of the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resilience (CTAHR) under a big Educational Pavilion tent at the 60th Hawaii State Farm Fair out in Whitmore Village. All of us offered creative interactive displays, games, or products at our tables, and enthusiastic crowds teemed through steadily hoping to learn, pick up freebies, or buy something new.
We talked up and displayed hands-on wormies and touchy-feely vermicast, sold 28 tubs of cast, and distributed lots of brochures. But what drew people to our table was the stunning, colorful array of gummy candies for $1 a cup. Gummies are the products of Kaimuki High School’s W.O.R.M.S. Club, which stands for We Offer Rich Moist Soil – high school students who vermicompost! They initially started packaging vermicast and selling it online. Teacher Chu Hong decided to try vermicast to bring out the intense flavor of Korean strawberries. She and her students grew the plants under lights in their classroom, then processed the fruit to make gummy candies. At last year’s Farm Fair, we sold strawberry gummies and they were a big hit.
Since then, Chu expanded. She used turmeric to flavor orange gummies, lilikoi for a pineapple flavor, moringa for lime, mamaki for blueberry, and butterfly sweet pea for grape – a rainbow! Asked to upgrade their vermicomposting operation years ago, we have since become passionate supporters of this brilliant, innovative agribusiness. We were happy to tell their story at the Farm Fair and sold 693 cups of KHS gummies Powered by Vermicast!
Last year we nabbed a few buckets of watermelon-contest-eating scraps for the Magoon worms, but this year, a number of CTAHR staffers and student volunteers collaborated to collect ALL FOOD WASTE generated during the two days at the Farm Fair. Buckets and signs were installed at all 20 rubbish stations; program emcees made frequent public announcements to sort rubbish. We figured we recovered 90 percent – not bad for our first try.
Over 1,200 pounds of food waste was transported, sorted, and distributed back at the UH mauka campus. The corn husks and cobs went under our big green waste tarp, worms got six buckets of watermelon, mountain apple, guava, banana, radishes and zucchini. The rest was all meat and rice and miscellaneous glop that got tucked into various hot compost piles.
The plan for 2027 is to collect again and create a special Farm Fair Compost Pile that will be brought to maturation, studied, measured, and analyzed. We know our carefully-curated, hand-crafted, artisanal compost is the best on Oahu.
Finished compost will be boxed by cubic foot and brought to the fairgrounds, displayed to build awareness of our mission to Reduce Food Waste, Create Value, and Grow Community.
Our first batch of Farm Fair Compost will be auctioned off with proceeds going to a worthy organization supporting local agriculture and food security. Let’s make it a CTAHR/Farm Fair tradition!