Kahala Soy

[macmex]

Folks, I thought I'd start a thread on this variety. My history with it goes back about 25 years. Kahala soy was developed by the University of Hawaii, 

Back in the 90s my family and I served at a Bible Institute in Central Mexico, about 100 miles North of Mexico City in the Bajìo, which is a high plateau area in the desert. While teaching at the Bible Institute I also helped with agronomy. We did small animal husbandry and gardening to help the school be more self supporting and to teach the students some skills for making their lives better once they left our halls.

The school invited a number of agents who worked with the department of natural resources to come and give seminars at the school. These seminars dealt with skills which would help rural people eat or live better. One such workshop was on the use of soy. Their reasoning was that rural Mexicans were already familiar with beans and that it should be a simply matter of teaching them how to use soy. The workshop dealt with the use of soy to make soy milk, tofu and soy meal. There was only one catch to all of this: though available in the market, soy beans were expensive.

For a couple of years I purchased various samples of soy beans from the market and tried growing them out. Apparently they all came from the far North, as they would only reach about 2-4," flower and produce about 6-8 seeds before drying down. They were day length sensitive.I thought on this and periodically tried another sample....


Then, one day it occured to me that soy originally comes from China, and that China, being a large place, has a North and a South. What if I could find soy from the far South of China? Perhaps it would grow in Hidalgo, Mexico! I got out a globe, put my finger on our region and turned the globe West, looking to see where in China our latitude might touch down. But less than half way there, I came upon Hawaii. So I picked up my Seed Savers Exchange yearbook and checked to see if anyone was growing soy in Hawaii. Sure enough! Not only were they growing soy, they had a soy which was developed there, specifically with nematode resistance (a common problem in tropical regions). 


I requested some seed and wallah! It grew and produced beautifully! Now there was a possibility of introducing an appropriate variety of soy to people in our region; one which they could grow for themselves. This would make soy practical for the poor.


Unfortunately, new things catch on very slowly in that culture and our family ended up moving back to the USA before it caught on. I left seed with two of our Mexican co-workers, but I don't believe they ever planted it.


Here's a photo of me with one of my first crops of Kahala:


We returned to the USA, settling in NJ, in 2001. I had my doubts about it, but tried growing it there and it did great. When we moved to Oklahoma I planted it here and it did EVEN BETTER! I'm amazed how this soy thrives in our super hot summer weather. I grew it here a number of years and then... lost the seed.

This Colleen Sakei, in Hawaii graciously sent me two packets of seed from the University of Hawaii, and with all that was goinjg on this spring, I lost them both! When it was time to plant, I couldn't find them anywhere. Colleen sent me half a packet more. This is what I managed to plant on July 2, which is precisely when I wanted to plant Kahala. It grows great, even shading out weeds. It would make a good cover crop, yet it produces a good crop of very good soy beans. Blister beetles and other pests seem to ignore it.

   Here's what I have going in the garden now.

[rdback]

Wouldn't it be cool to go back to Hidalgo and find fields of Kahala growing? Ya never know, it could happen! lol.

I've grown a lot of beans in my day, but not a soy. Perhaps I'll do some research and give that a try next year.

[macmex]

I would LOVE to see fields of Kahala growing in Mexico.
Yea, Rick, you should try growing a variety of soy. These days I am concerned that the non GMO varieties will become contaminated. I don't remember the figures, but I bet 90% of commercial soy is now GMO. Kahala is what they used to call a "hay type." It produced large plants and is more indeterminate than modern field types. I simply must try it as a summer cover crop. Planted as I did this year, it would smother weeds AND produce a crop, a hard combination to beat.

When I was in grad school my wife and I were pretty poor. I remember seeing the farmer harvesting soy, across the road from our trailer park. I walked over with a five gallon bucket and my wallet and asked how much he'd charge to fill my bucket. He filled it for $5. I think we were both thrilled. That fall we learned to make soy milk and soy meal. Jerreth and I would use the milk in cooking and the meal, well, we'd grind up meat and mix it with the meal, making "meat patties." We'd get at least two good meals from two chicken drum sticks by doing this.

Later, while serving in Mexico, I found my all time favorite use for soy. I toasted it and made "coffee" with it. It was so good that I simply dropped regular coffee for a couple years.

During that time I also experimented extensively with soy and garbanzo as meat substitutes, while at the same time we hosted a Totonac woman, who had severe health issues and had to keep a very very strict diet (low fat, no sugar, etc.) since she ate with us my wife imposed the same diet on us all. Our teen aged son struggled with this, to say the least. He'd meet me at the door, when I was arriving home from work, and tell me that he was in desperate need of a "taco break." So, we'd have some guy time, in town, over all of the forbidden foods. He rebelled against soy and garbanzo coffee mainly because he wanted "real food," as he put it.

Scroll forward about 11 years and we were now living in the USA. Our son was home from college, visiting. I had just made a pot of coffee when he came into the kitchen and got a cup. (For the first time in nearly a decade I had taken time to make soy coffee, storing it in a Folgers can.) He poured himself a big cup of steaming "coffee," taking a swig with a sigh of contentment. He put his arm around my shoulders and exclaimed, "It's sure nice to walk up to a nice cup of coffee!" 

Then he noticed that I was laughing. With tears I managed to say (before busting out laughing), "Gotcha..." The look on his face was priceless!
 

[macmex]

I have misplaced the photo I took, last week. Will have to take another. Kahala is BIG and lush. It's been flowering since at least the third week of July. Here's a picture I took, recently, of the little pods forming on the stems. Looks like a good harvest is coming.