Out at Makauwahi Cave, we are willing to try almost anything that might teach us something, and that includes growing breadfruit in worn-out clay soil, with strong wind and salt spray, just to see if it can be done.

Wendy Hollender produced this beautiful depiction of breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis). If you would like to learn to draw plants on Kauai, go to drawingincolor.com.

That’s what our experiments there are about – finding out what is possible. We’ve learned a few things, because we measure almost everything: young breadfruit need a lot of water, more than twice as much as the native plants we grow down there, or crops like papaya and citrus. Mulch helps, and cardboard makes good mulch, and tortoise dung and the compost tea from it make good fertilizers. It takes only two years to get the first fruits from the Ma`afala variety distributed by NTBG’s Breadfruit Institute, three for traditional Hawaiian varieties.

As part of our breadfruit research, we thought we would ask our daughter Mara, who is an ER nurse in Manhattan currently using her vacation time to help the desperate people of Haiti through a medical relief organization called “Heart to Heart,” to find out all she could about their use of breadfruit. Here is an excerpt from the resulting Facebook exchange:

Lida: Hope you’re doing great! Please eat, photograph, and get breadfruit recipes for me.

Mara: I did have a patient yesterday who was injured by a falling breadfruit. Didn’t seem like the right time to ask for a recipe.

Burney: Wow, may I use this data point, even if it is a “sample size of n = 1”? Please ask around and see if others have been hit by breadfruit…no, people might think you’re crazy, or throw breadfruit at you if your Creole is not absolutely perfect in asking…

It’s a great feeling to know that our children are as crazy and adventurous as we are. Mara is giving up her vacation time to help people who really need it. Makes me really proud. If you would like to donate to this effort, go to hearttoheart.org.