One of my favorite jobs is managing the blog Ha Ha Ha! over at Hamakua Springs Country Farms, and this week I got to write a couple posts that I especially enjoying delving into.

The first was about Brudda Skibs, who recently participated in a sustainability festival Hamakua Springs owner Richard Ha helped coordinate. What an incredible person. Skibs and the crew he’s attracted over the years volunteer their time and labor to clean up Big Island lands near the ocean and turn them into beautiful parks. There is so much more to his story than just that, though. He is really making a difference.

Watch the video at that post and you can see right into his heart. 

The other post was on the Pacific Century Fellows, a group of up-and-coming business leaders who visited the Big Island (and Hamakua Springs) as a part of their year-long program. Interesting people, and ones we’ll all be hearing about in the news, I suspect, in years to come.

In the course of researching that post, I learned a couple things that didn’t make it into the story: Such as that, in exploring the issues and challenges in areas as diverse as the criminal justice system, education, agriculture, the military and many others, they started one of their days in a prison block, and on another day were flown out to an aircraft carrier.

The things I learn as a freelance writer! It keeps life interesting.