KEN IGE / KIGE@STARBULLETIN.COM
Ferrell Hughes delivers his Kula Harvest strawberries to Times supermarkets several times a week. The berries will be on special next week for $3.50 per 16-ounce "clamshell."
Berry special
A Maui partnership
produces a sweet bounty
of isle strawberries
Strawberries do grow in Hawaii -- up high where the air is clean and cold. If you live in Waimea on the Big Island or Upcountry Maui, a vine-ripe, picked-today strawberry has always been a possibility.
Hawaiian Island
Mark Okumura of Alan Wong's Restaurant and Ferrell Hughes will serve Hughes' Kula Harvest strawberries at the fund-raising event.
Chefs LuauDinner is served: 6:30 p.m. June 7
Place: Hawaii Prince Hotel, Waikiki
Tickets: $75, or tables for 10 are $1,500
Call: 532-6286
But here in the metropolis, it was an air-flown, West Coast strawberry, or it was nothin'.
These days, though, you can walk into an Oahu Times Super Market and buy a clear plastic box full of Kula Harvest strawberries, "Product of Maui." This is not a gourmet, once-in-a-while specialty. Production is high enough and steady enough that these berries even go on sale.
This bounty we owe to Ferrell Hughes and Chauncy Monden, partners in a farming enterprise that Hughes admits was a slightly wacko proposition.
If fruits were children, you see, the strawberry would be the delicate child: bruises easily, sensitive to temperature change, limited attention span. It must be packaged carefully, refrigerated well, moved quickly because of its short shelf-life.
But five years ago, convinced that his farmland on the steep sides of Haleakala would prove ideal for growing strawberries, Hughes began trials. A longtime produce importer/exporter, Hughes knew several California growers of this difficult crop, and they encouraged him -- "misery loves company," he explains. He also received advice from agricultural experts at the University of California-Davis.
Soon his neighbor, Monden, a farmer of comfortable crops such as zucchini and onions, was plunging off the cliff with him. "I like to think it was a mutual thing -- we jumped together," Hughes says.
Last year they were able to begin supplying Times, but volume was low. The store did not promote the item as Hawaii-grown, but rather combined it with California berries, Times' produce director Floyd Mikasa says.
Since February, though, delivery has been steady three or four times a week, Mikasa says, and the store has been able to keep prices competitive with California berries.
And because the berries don't have as far to travel, they stay on the vine longer and are picked when ripe.
"Anytime we can get local, that's beneficial," Mikasa says. "The product freshness is a lot better."
KULA HARVEST
Workers board buses at 5 a.m. daily to pick strawberries on terraced plots on the slopes of Haleakala on Maui. Most are former sugar and pineapple workers.
Hughes and Monden have 9 acres planted in strawberries and are expanding. Their holy grail, Hughes says, is year-round production. Imagine strawberries at Christmastime. It's something their counterparts in California haven't achieved.
What makes this conceivable in Hawaii is that steep Haleakala grade. Picture farmland consisting of terraced plots that march up the mountainside for about a mile. By planting at elevations from 2,800 to nearly 4,000 feet, the farmers can keep moving their crop higher through the year as the weather warms. What they're working on now is determining which varieties of strawberries grow best at the different elevations.
Strawberries are happy with cold nights -- "to keep the vigor in the plant and extend its production," Hughes says -- but they also thrive on sunny days that develop the sugars in the fruit.
The ideal temperatures are low 70s in daytime, low 50s at night, he says.
In California, the strawberry season begins in January, with fruit from the southern part of the state. As the weather warms, the harvest moves north, until the seasons cycle back and it proves too cold to grow berries.
On Haleakala, the farmers can replicate that cycle by harvesting higher and higher through the summer, then moving back down again in winter. It never gets too cold. "What latitude dictates on mainland, elevation dictates here," Hughes says.
Berries are picked every morning, chilled through the afternoon, flown out late at night and delivered to stores the next day. Because they are so delicate, the investment in refrigerated storage and delivery vans has been substantial. "We've been ratcheting up every level of the cold chain," Hughes says. He figures his berries are out of refrigeration for only about four hours -- at the airport and in flight.
Dean Okimoto of Nalo Farms, who wholesales Kula strawberries to Oahu restaurants, says the careful handling shows in the quality of the berries.
Until now, Okimoto says, no Hawaii grower has produced strawberries in enough volume to steadily supply Oahu markets and restaurants.
"I think these guys are going to be the most consistent of anyone around."
He sees great potential in a winter crop -- the only strawberries we get at that time of year now come from New Zealand and Australia. "These berries will be way better."
Okimoto says he is moving 100 to 130 flats of Kula strawberries weekly to Oahu restaurants, among them Alan Wong's, where pastry chef Mark Okumura has been playing with them since New Year's -- champagne gelée with sliced strawberries.
On June 7, at the Hawaiian Island Chefs Contemporary Luau, both Okumura and Hughes will have stations showcasing the strawberries. Hughes plans something simple, perhaps a chocolate dip, to give his product full display. Okumura's dessert is called Chocolate-Covered Maui Strawberries, but in his upscale presentation this means a chocolate mousse terrine with whole strawberries inside, to be sliced and served.
A Maui strawberry dessert is always on the Alan Wong's menu, Okumura says. He's found them softer and their flavor superior to mainland berries because they're left on the vine longer.
"The mainland ones are really like wood, yeah?"
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