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April fest to celebrate,
Star-Bulletin
promote Kona agricultureKona agriculture will be celebrated and promoted this April in a new monthlong festival for visitors and tourists. The event, called the Kona Spring Blossom Festival, will be centered in the mauka or upland coffee-growing and agricultural region of the Kealakekua, Kainaliu and Holualoa communities above the Kona Coast.
The festival takes its name from the flowers that blossom in profusion from a wide variety of plants and trees.
The festival will feature an art and photo competition, a special buffet dinner using local produce, "tall tales" and other agriculture-related contests, Farm and Field Day, and a townwide open house in Kainaliu. Other activities will focus on the region's Japanese immigrant heritage, including traditional flower viewing, foods and karaoke singing.
Kona's high-profile crops are coffee and macadamia nuts, but its agricultural products also include an enormous variety of exotic tropical fruits such as lychee, rambutan jaboticaba, and cheramoya; flowers, vegetables and other specialty items like vanilla and cocoa beans, not grown anywhere on the mainland United States.
The festival is being organized by a volunteer committee chaired by Ken Love, with assistants Kent Fleming and Virginia Easton-Smith of the University of Hawaii-Manoa College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources. Promotional expenses are partially funded by a grant from the Hawaii Tourism Authority.
For more information about the festival and art and photo competitions, visit the Web site at www.agtourism.org, or call 808-323-3434. Photos or artwork must be submitted with an entry form by March 15.
