In the Midst of the Garden

Anne-Marie Hardie

Michelle Rose has had a passion for food and gardening almost all her life. When she speaks about her farm, her enthusiasm is contagious as she shares both the beauty and challenges of working the land. A food and science graduate from the University of Minnesota, Michelle immerses herself in all aspects of farming, from learning about biodynamic farming to attending the needs of goats.

After graduating, Michelle worked for an airline and travelled the world, spending a significant amount of time in Japan. During her travels in the east, Michelle learned about tea farming and wondered if it could be done in North America. At the same time, the University of Hawaii was researching the potential of growing tea in the States. Extremely intrigued, Michelle purchased a 20-acre plot of land in Kauai, Hawaii, which she now lovingly calls Cloudwater Farm. Michelle and her husband (and business partner) Parker Croft made the official move to Hawaii in 2006 where they fully immersed themselves in developing Cloudwater Farm and growing hand-crafted tea.

Producing tea for commercial use
Self described as a tea garden, Michelle and her family are committed to producing handpicked orthodox tea. In order to produce a high-quality tea, the first two leaves and the bud need to be picked when the tea is flushing. The time of flushing will widely vary depending on temperature and the amount of rainfall. 

“When the tea is flushing, you have to be there,” said Michelle. “You have to live it; you have to really be in the midst of your garden. It’s a very intimate experience.”

Natural, slow-growing tea on average takes about five to seven years after planting to receive a good harvest. One of the challenges with growing tea is that it doesn’t like to be transplanted or moved and so patience is a requirement for anyone wanting to invest in tea. Despite its challenges, tea is the perfect crop for Michelle.

“With the tea, there is more of a rhythm to it—now it’s planting time, then the picking time, then the rolling and drying time.” said Michelle. “You don’t have to start from scratch all of the time; you have an infrastructure that is semi-permanent and I like working from the grid.”

Currently, Cloudwater Farm grows and harvests black and white tea, which retails online at a local wine shop and at a farmer’s market. Although her love for tea is what inspired Michelle’s move to Hawaii, her land has evolved to much more than a tea garden.  

Learning about the land of Hawaii
Upon her arrival, Michelle was surprised by the quality of the earth and so she realized that in order to grow vegetation for commercial sale, she needed to focus on the land first. 

“Everyone has this idea that in Hawaii you can grow anything and I think that’s a misconception.  Especially where we live,” said Michelle. “Being on the north shore of Kauai, we have these rivers and steams and mountains. It rains a lot on the north shore, which is ideal for tea growing because you want to get around 100 inches a year for growing tea. And typically, the rainy season would be in December. We’ve had as much as 20 inches of rain in just over 24 hours.”

Although the plentiful rainfall was perfect for growth, it’s resulted in leaching out many of the natural minerals residing in the soil. The soil her land is on is extremely heavy clay soil, covered by invasive vegetation, including strawberry guavas that made it challenging for anything to grow underneath. And so Michelle’s primary focus was to enrich the land, working with the clay soils by adding compost and endemic vegetation that’ll help the land prosper.

Building enrichment back in the land
Diversification was one of the key elements to building back the enrichment into the soil. Michelle realized that in order to successfully grow tea on her own land, she needed to do a lot of different processes, including bringing in nitrogen fixing plants like sunn hemp (Crotalaria juncea).

Growing throughout her land are more than 30 different varieties of bamboo. At minimum, Michelle has 300 bamboo clumps throughout the land. The bamboos are excellent fodder and not only for the land—the leaves that fall from the bamboo add silica to the soil and act as feed for her goats. Although not a primary crop at Cloudwater Farm, Michelle has sold bamboo clumps at the local farmer’s market. The variety of bamboo can be harvested as fresh bamboo shoots for consumption or used to produce walking canes, fishing rods or even building materials.

Currently, there are 28 goats on her land, including three milking goats, wethers (castrated goats), several kids and a billy. These goats are being used to clean out the extra acres on her land, using a rotational graze system where each group (there are three) are moved to different plots of land every 30 days. This leaves a plot of land not being grazed every 30 days. During this time, Michelle applies mineral enhancers, including lime, biodynamic fertilizer and/or a seaweed-based fertilizer to the land to add in additional nutrients.

In addition to the goats, Michelle has 75 chickens, which cruise throughout the land all day eating bugs, worms, the flowers on the land and sprouted grains, including barley, oats and wheat. For a few months, Michelle fed her chickens the goats’ milk that produced extremely high-quality eggs retailing for $12.00 at her local farmer’s market (the average price was $8.00). Although she doesn’t add goats’ milk to her chickens diet today, her eggs still garner a premium price of $10.00 at the market, selling out in minutes.

The milk from the three milking goats has been used for Michelle’s own personal use, but also to create a line of tea-infused soaps. Michelle uses the fourth and fifth leaves of the tea plant (only the first two are used for tea) and processes them as a white tea. After the tea process, she uses a variety of ingredients, including sunflower oil, coconut butter, shea butter and the milk to create a white tea goat milk soap. Currently, Michelle sells her soap both at the farmer’s market and online.

“Even though it’s back-breaking hard work, you can’t not milk the goats or they will die. You can’t take a wellness day,” said Michelle. “It’s rewarding to me feeding people. Not only do my kids have great nutrition, but I’m able to feed the community.” GT

Anne-Marie Hardie is a freelance writer/speaker from Barrie, Ontario, and part of the third generation of the family-owned garden center/wholesale business Bradford Greenhouses in Barrie/Bradford, Ontario.