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K. HICKEY: Hi everybody. I'm Kate, and this is my husband, Doug Hickey, and we own
<br /> Sunshower Farms in H61ualoa. Thank you so much for hearing our application today. I'm, I'm
<br /> really nervous, so, I hope I'm clear.
<br /> So, to tell you the story of our farm, in 2012 we moved to Hawaii - - - Chicago. I was an
<br /> attorney there, I worked in environmental law for NRDC that's Natural Resources Defense
<br /> Council, and it's always been a passion, like a lifelong passion, of mine to be living sustainably,
<br /> and really just contribute to the betterment of our earth and not, and not, you know,
<br /> non-sustainable practices. And that was a big part of our move to Hawaii. We purchased our
<br /> farm in February of 2013. We had every goal, when we bought our farm, of making a hundred
<br /> percent of our living as organic farmers. We thought about what we were going to do with what
<br /> we had, with our gifts, with our passions, with our money, and what kind of difference we
<br /> wanted to make in the worlds, and that's what led us to this farm. When we bought it, unlike a
<br /> lot of the properties, or like many of the properties around us, it was a home with unimproved
<br /> farm ag property; there were no crops, no animals, and we started everything from scratch. To
<br /> be clear, that is the case for all of the units in our CPR. We planted our eight acres of coffee on
<br /> our own. We have six acres of pasture animals; we have a herd of sheep and a herd of goats; we
<br /> have about an acre and a half of chicken coops; we have beehives also in that area; and then a
<br /> number of fruit trees and other vegetable gardens. We actively farm about 17 acres of our 20
<br /> acres. The proposed event venue site is on our site plan two and a half acres, but that includes
<br /> our house and driveway; the actual site plan for just the venue would be about three-quoters of
<br /> an acre. So we are not talking about a large portion of our farm. We are really dedicated
<br /> farmers, and that is our goal.
<br /> We have tried a lot of strategies in the almost eight years we've owned this farm to make it
<br /> profitable. We have planted our coffee, like I said; we have our animals; we have, vend at
<br /> farmers market; we've sold microgreens to restaurants; we sold homebrewing supplies; we had a
<br /> vegetables delivery CSA; we baked bread; we sold eggs; we've done farm tours; we've done
<br /> coffee tasting; we sell our coffee online. We have done everything we can do to make our
<br /> property profitable for us and to make it as farmers. But it wasn't until 2016 when we, when we
<br /> hosted a couple of farm-to-table dinners in conjunction with Slow Food Hawaii, of which I'm
<br /> on the leadership team. And that was the time when we realized that there was a market for
<br /> small weddings. We had a number of the guests of those dinners asked us, like, oh, could we do
<br /> a wedding up here? Do you do weddings? Are you up for weddings? And so we said, oh, sure.
<br /> You know, we thought that it was part of our ag,just ag tourism; never did I realize at that point
<br /> that we were in violation of our zoning. We did a couple of weddings in 2016, and then from the
<br /> photos and reviews from those weddings, the demand went crazy. In 2017 we did 12 weddings,
<br /> and 2018 we did 40, and 2019 we did 50, and we had 50 on the books for 2020 before COVID.
<br /> We have done over 100 weddings on our property at this point. I realize I'm telling you right
<br /> now all about how we violated our zoning, and I'm really sorry about that. I want to be clear; the
<br /> day I realized we had violated our zoning, the first thing I did was call our lawyer—Alan Tuhy is
<br /> on this call—and I asked him how we could get into compliance. From that day forward, we
<br /> have not booked even one new wedding, which I'll talk about in a second, but we are trying to so
<br /> hard to come into compliance with the rules and to be able to continue to farm and do our
<br /> wedding venue.
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<br /> EXHIBIT A
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