Welcome!

Makahiki Farms grows, harvests, processes and sells award-winning Estate 100% Kona Coffee. Spend a moment to browse our site to learn about our farm and about 100% Kona Coffee and why it is so special.

Our farm is privately owned and operated. We do most of the work personally. It is truly a labor of love. We pride ourselves on attention to detail and on the health of our orchard.

Our coffee is entirely handpicked. It is processed separately from the product of other farms so you can count on the quality. Smooth and flavorful, never bitter.

What's New! (August 26, 2008)

We're getting ready for a big round of picking that starts bright and early tomorrow morning. The leader of the picking crew was by yesterday to take a look and the next round is ready to pick. There is a ton of ripe coffee so we will be very busy over the next week. We're not sure how many days it will take to pick the entire orchard since it depends on how many people come to pick each day. Even after several years of doing this, we're not that good at looking out and predicting how many pounds of ripe cherry is out there.

The pickers arrive about 6 AM and our crew likes to pick until 4:30 or 5. Since we pulp the coffee ourselves here on the farm they are not compelled to quit early in order to get to a processor's mill before they close for the day. Jonathan is out at the mill right now getting it ready for pulping tomorrow evening. We pulp the coffee cherry the same day it is picked so that it does not sit around and degrade in the bag. Once it is pulped, it will ferment over night to remove the sticky mucilage layer. This stage it is called parchment. The next day we wash it thoroughly and spread it on the deck to begin drying in the sun. Then a few hours later we do it all again with the current day's picking.

The month of August has seen a sharp decrease in rain. This is sort of a good thing since so much rain last month was keeping the coffee cherry from ripening. We have resumed irrigating the orchard at night. But that is dramatically less water than we were getting as rain earlier in the summer. The coffee needs warmth and sunshine to be able to ripen.

Nancy's tomatoes are small but quite tasty. We were able to keep the bugs from getting them by enclosing the whole upside down bucket in mosquito net bags after they had pollinated. Jonathan is not a tomato person so he has quite a bit of difficulty understanding as Nancy eats a whole bowl of diced tomatoes. Home grown ones just taste so much better than store-bought. The upside down bucket works well but the south side of the property gets too much sun for them and it was hard to keep them watered well enough. The next plants will be hung to the west to see if they fare better there.

The life of a farmer is so wrapped up in the weather and battling weeds and pests. It's certainly a different life than that of a couple of Silicon Valley computer scientists, but we enjoy it.