The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1909-02-22
SMALL FARMING
IN EAST MAKAWtO
A Correspondent Tells Some
Extraordinary Stories
OF Yields.

eAAS -houi 4stNS.
strangers naturally want to know il
any of the small farmers in the nine
apple or grape growing business il
the East Makawao district have made
anything in their ventures. All ]
know about it is there are several small
growers who are in the business and
are staying by it as any man would
stay by good thing, and are saying
nothing.
There are stories of men who made
something, which may not agree with
the facts For stories are easy Of tell
ing and the crop is plentiful. The
stories related below are SAMPLES of
those floating round the countryside
and We're raised there, nurtured and
turned loose with the proper earmarks
for anyone to father or to disown as
the whim might seize one.
Among the small pineapple growers
OF Haiku is a skilled nursery man
plant nursery man-who understands
horticulture and the selection and hy-
bridizing of plants, and is an authority
on the mysteries Of coaxing plants to
produce crops of the desired quality at
will, and is said to be the man among
them all who has made the biggest pile
probably everybody added something
to 1t as the story is told) from the
smallest fields of pines of any. He
grows the best pines and holds the
reputation of being the Burbank
among the pine growers of Haiku. He
has the best fields and gets out the
best pines of any.
The writer S informant told him that
friend of his recounted to him what
friend of Mr.. Lindsay's repeated to
him which was related to him by an
other who heard it from another that
this particular grower cleared $4,000
from seven to eight acre field of
pines.
Whether it was the result of a sim
gle crop or of half dozen crops in a
bunch the details are Indifferent, be-
ing only a story-probably thrown out
for unsuspieious people TO bite at and
was told the writer within year or
two after the Haiku cannery went into
business, and is here repeated as a
characteristic harmless story from the
pineapple district.
There is another story relating to the
fertility of the district about to be
opened for homesteaders. Itais about
a Portuguese who had fine grape
arbor. He grew enormous punches of
grapes on it, the kind that has to be
carried on a pole between two men,
faithfully portrayed in sunday-school
literature, and he Dragged about his
grapes IN season and out of season,
much to the disgust of his friends.
One day when he returned home
after he had been around Dragging
about his grapes as usual he found the
weight of the grapes had crushed the
framework and bursted the props of
his pet arbor, and pigs and fowl were
feasting on the fallen fruit. That made
him mad. He suspects an innocent
neighbor Of the mischief and does not
take it as the surest and most reliable
proof of his telling the truth. Not at
all. He wants 20 pull up his vines and
grow pines instead, crops he thinks
which don't need props to stay put.
Of course he has not heard Of the
man who lost his crop by the pines
growing larger and larger till they got
to the size of nail kegs and kept right
on growing larger till the plants got
top-heavy and tumbled over so the
fruit lay on the ground with the roots
in the air, which ruined the crop and
killed the plants. Whatever is raised
has to be propped up or the crop would
be spoiled. Whether grapes, pines or
bananas, the farmer has to buy posts
and scantlings to hold his crop up off
the ground, and the expense of it is
another drawback in farming on the
virgin lands of East Makawao.
These are given as samples of stories
people love to swap with one another
when strangers are around, and in a
way Illustrate the rare fertility of the
district, and are not extraordinary
stories when taken only as such.