Growing a friendship

By Wanda A. Adams
Assistant Features Editor

Tom Kadooka, left, shows Jim Reddekopp how to pollinate vanilla. Hawai'i-grown vanilla orchids yield high-quality beans. Advertiser library photo • April 1998 Plain it's not Vanilla is the seed pod of an orchid plant that bears a scentless, celadon-colored flower. Vanilla planifolia is one of the 20,000 species of orchid, the only one that bears anything edible (except for a few edible flowers such as vandas). Key to the production of a vanilla pod or bean is pollination. The plants bloom once every two or three years for just a few hours. Vanilla has just one pollinator, the Melipona bee, so to assure pod production, vanilla growers here must pollinate the flowers by hand, using a thin pick to find the sesame-seed-sized mass of pollen and transfer it to the stigma. Beans take eight or nine months to mature to the size of green beans. Then they must be dried or blanched to turn them brown and allowed to dry. Hawai'i-grown vanilla beans have a high vanillin content.

"Need," insists Tom Kadooka.

"No, no need," says Reddekopp, waving him toward the door.

"He's da troublemaka," says Kadooka to a visitor. But he leaves his hat behind.

A dignified affection flows through this simple exchange — in the smiles, the meeting of the eyes, the way Reddekopp's arm comes up as if to encircle Kadooka's shoulders but maintains a respectful distance.

Reddekopp has returned to this hillside orchid farm in Kona to spend a morning of memories and dreams with his orchid-growing mentor. In the course of a couple of hours of wandering the shady greenhouses and relaxing over coffee with Kadooka's wife, Evelyn, and a family friend, orchid enthusiast Carol Zakahi, Reddekopp will come to realize, with gratitude and yet a sense of rightness, that he is moving on from the student relationship. He holds some views now — about cultivation techniques and other matters — that differ from his mentor's.

It is characteristic of their relationship that he listens thoughtfully and says little about what's going through his mind.

"This one," says Kadooka, who has taught a number of young men a thing or two in his 81 years, "this one didn't walk in like he knew everything."

Reddekopp, 37, grew up on O'ahu, attending Lahainaluna High School as a boarder before going to work in his family's travel business. But five years ago, he moved with his wife, Tracy, and five children to six acres in rural Pa'auilo in the Big Island's Hamakua district. Committed Christians, the kama'aina couple wanted to raise their children in a wholesome, distraction-free environment. Reddekopp began looking about for an agricultural enterprise that would allow him to work on the homestead while his wife schooled the children, a way to finance the lifestyle they'd chosen.

Discussing the matter with in-laws, he thought first of saffron, which would bring in a pretty penny if it could be grown, and then vanilla — the edible beans that come from a fleshy, slow-growing orchid plant.

Unconsciously following in the footsteps of his mentor a half-century before, he began to do his research, calling the state Department of Agriculture, tracking down an elusive report of "some guy in Hilo" who knew vanilla orchids.

Reddekopp finally scored a name and number, picking up the phone to call Kadooka — who lives near Kona, not Hilo — out of the blue.

Was he the guy who knew about vanilla orchids and would he be willing to help with some information?, Reddekopp asked. "Loooooong silence. Then he just says, 'Yah,'" Reddekopp recalled. But Kadooka was skeptical and said little. Reddekopp made about five more phone calls. "I became really persistent. I had finally found a source. I wasn't gonna give up." Grateful for the hard-earned information he had gotten, Reddekopp sent a thank-you note with a Longs Drugs gift certificate enclosed and asked if he could stop by sometime soon.

Kadooka, still skeptical, wasn't even sure who this guy with the long haole name was, sending him Longs gift certificates. But he knew that anybody who wanted to grow vanilla orchids — which take years of patient care — had better be serious. "It's a lot of hard work; it's not just a phone call that's gonna help you grow vanilla," Kadooka said.

Over weeks and months, there were many phone calls and not a few visits as Reddekopp acquired orchids and property, and developed a business plan for what would become the Hawaiian Vanilla Co., best known for its 10-month-old contract with Meadow Gold Dairies for ice cream made with Hawai'i-grown vanilla.

The young man knew the value of the information he was getting. "One thing in agriculture — not many farmers share their secrets," he said.

But Kadooka had always gone his own way, and always had the heart of a teacher.

More than a half-century ago, while this son of an issei carpenter was working in the dairy at Parker Ranch, Kadooka became interested in plant hybridizing. He could only find a single book on the subject but he pored over it, puzzling out the mysteries of genetics as they were then understood. Later, he was among the pioneers in the Big Island flower industry, growing anthuriums, orchids and mums.

One day, gathering hapu'u (tree ferns) on his sister's land in Ke'ei, he stumbled on something he didn't know much about — a vanilla orchid. There had once been a still in the area, he learned, and the vanilla orchid was used along with ti plant roots to make a potent liquor. Later he saw an article on vanilla genetics and became even more interested. "I have to drive 110 miles to Hilo to ask about orchid," Kadooka recalls. "But I go. Then I figgah, I gonna be alone, but I gonna try it."

Even as he was learning the art of floral design, developing a flourishing vanda and anthurium nursery in Kainaliu and founding the first orchid club in Kona, Kadooka was dreaming of vanilla orchids. "I learn it all myself. I don't drink. I don't smoke. I don't gamble. No mo' time. I do research," he said, smiling, while Evelyn, serving coffee, gently shakes her head.

The dreams have ebbed and flowed over the years: to show that the orchids are viable here; to determine the vanillin content of Hawai'i-grown vanilla beans (tests in a Japanese lab showed 31.5 percent vanillin, very-high-quality beans); to develop enough pathogen-free plant stock to get others started. In this last, he has benefited from the work of two of his five children — Janice Uchida, a plant pathologist, and Chris Kadooka, a researcher, both at the University of Hawai'i.

Kadooka has experimented with every aspect of vanilla orchid culture: advanced micropropogation techniques, growth requirements for vines, blossom formation, pollination timing, harvesting, bean curing and pod grading. He says he'd have to live to be 300 years old to learn everything.

He has long believed vanilla culture could be the future of Hawai'i: Anyone with a back yard, some black shade netting, a few pots and some patience could make a nice side business of growing vanilla beans. Though the process is admittedly slow (1 1/2 to four years to maturity, depending on how it's planted; nearly a year for the beans to mature after pollination), beans sell for $1 to $8 each, depending on quality, and you can get more than 100 beans from a single plant — 130 beans is Kadooka's record. He also notes that the pollination season for vanilla beans — the busy time — is the opposite of the busy time in coffee groves.

Zakahi said that many young people on the Big Island don't want the hard work of coffee and macadamia nuts, but they want to find a way to stay on the island, keep the family land. Orchids could be a part of that.

Meanwhile, Jim Reddekopp has been doing his part. "All of Tom's research was on the technical side. My goal was to take it to the marketing side," he said. He developed a trellis system for growing the vines that allows easy access and good support. He showed a series of vanilla products at food fairs, got

local chefs excited, then last year made a presentation to Meadow Gold for a vanilla ice cream deal that literally uses every bit of vanilla bean they can produce. "I knew the vanilla needed an identity. Ice cream was the way to get it on the shelf," he said. He purchased the Kona-side field of a former vanilla grower, received a grant to begin what he calls the Hawaiian Vanilla Expansion Project and is now working on contracting with growers around the state to produce vanilla.

The Reddekopps are temporarily back in Honolulu minding Fly Away Holidays, the family tour-operator business, which took a downturn after 9/11; Reddekopp's father, who is retired, is minding the Pa'auilo property. But, like his mentor, Jim Reddekopp longs to be back with his plants.

"I think the values Tom (Kadooka) holds, what he represents, in a corrupt world ... hard work, patience, clean living ... are the values you have to live," Reddekopp said.

He has created the Tom Kadooka Scholarship Fund, financed by proceeds from the ice cream, to help young agricultural students. Kadooka smiles: "I don't get one penny (from the ice cream deal), but I'm satisfied." Later, he says, "This one my son. Adopted."