About Time for an Update

It has been way too long to write into our journal. So what has happened with the business since November? The tourists are back, and we have seen a significant increase in sales. December is always good, and the Holiday Market at the Co-op was a great success. The sales at the Co-op where so overwhelming that Cathy needed help with the book keeping. I volunteered and ever since then I have been helping to make sure the artists at the Co-op get paid for their sales. Kailin also sold a lot of honey-comb mugs, and Jill had to struggle to keep up with demand. The Co-op extended the Holiday Sale through January, and although we did not participate in that, the gallery sales were also quite good. In February the Hawi Farmers Market came back to life. The HUB in Hawi offered space for the Farmers Market since the owners of the grass patch “under the Banyon tree” did not want to the farmers market there any longer. The market at the HUB it is a bit better organized anyway so we decided to give it a try. So far the sales there have been good, we’ve gotten a number of special orders and repeat customers. It is always satisfying to have a customer with specific ideas or color requests and then produce something that they really appreciate. Jill has been going through a number of designs for a travel mug with lid that fits into a car cup-holder, and she now has a design that she likes. One customer showed us a video of her mother unwrapping a honeycomb mug that she had sent as a Christmas present, and seeing the joy on her mother’s face was very moving.

Lidded Travel mug in the making

The deck of the yurt had deteriorated so much over time that we started the task of repairing it in February. The more we took apart, the bigger the problem got. We asked Dirk (son) to come over to help us with the work and that made the work go a lot faster. Still, the five weeks that he was here was not enough to repair everything. It was more or less only enough time to remove all the damaged parts and just start building things up again. The sun and rain did quite a number on the wood of the deck. Having avocados drop onto it once in a while didn’t help either. The avocado trees next to the yurt are now gone, and the plan is to cover the replaced deck with a roof. So far we have been able to put a little more than half of the deck back in place.

Since travel restrictions have been loosened and vaccinations started not only tourists have come back, but we have had a steady stream of visitors this year. First Autumn and Kyle (niece and nephew) showed up, son Dirk, of course, was here, and Paul (friend) came for a visit. And after Dirk and Paul were gone, we had KC (son) here for three weeks. Aurora and Aaron (daughter and boyfriend) will be next. The O’hana has been in heavy use this spring which is good. I think it had been over a year since it was used due of covid!