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What's
New! (January 16, 2012)
Farm Update
The farm is winding down for the 2011-2012 harvest season. The pickers were in on Friday for a small round of ripe coffee cherry that will be the last before we prune. The next step is the crew will come in over the next week or so and strip all remaining fruit from the trees. This serves a couple of purposes including giving the trees a breather as well as keeps insect pests from hanging out in the old fruit. After the old fruit is removed, we will prune the entire orchard and mulch the prunings into the rows. This returns the organic matter to the soil. We are always a little sad to prune since the trees look a bit naked at first. But the trees need the extra light and air through their branches in order to get a few good flowerings and to set the fruit for next year. As our rainy season is in the spring, the trees come back very hardy and thick by summer.
We have been getting a few inquiries about the availability of Peaberry this year. As anyone who farms can tell you, the growing conditions are never the same from year to year. This year our percentage of Peaberry is quite small. The quantities are so limited that we will be only able to fulfill the needs of our existing Coffee Club members. So sorry to say, we won't be taking on any additional orders for Peaberry.
Donations to Cancer Research
This year (2012) we will try something a little different with our donation of $1 per half pound of roasted coffee sold. We will make our donations quarterly. Q1 2012 will go to MD Anderson; Q2 will go to Stand Up To Cancer and Q3 will go to the American Cancer Society. In Q4 (our biggest since it includes the holidays), we will split the donation among those three.
Specials
Watch this space in the coming weeks for some Valentine's Day Specials. We also post all our specials and SALE! bin deals on FaceBook. We currently have an ongoing deal for FREE USPS Shipping for orders of $75 or more (to US addresses).
Shipping Rates
US Postal Service rates are scheduled to increase on January 22, 2012. The shopping cart will automatically adjust shipping prices when this occurs. We do not add on any additional postage or handling fees. 
What's
New! (October 13, 2011)
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. 
There is a lot of attention paid to marketing pink things in October and if you browse the grocery shelves, it seems everything has a pink ribbon on it. This is controversial in some circles and I can understand both sides. At Makahiki Farms, we don't give it lip service and we don't just care about this in October. As you will notice on our side panel to the left. We give a dollar of EVERY half pound sold (year round) to breast cancer research. That includes the half pounds sold at a discount in the sale bin. Around December 20th or so, we run a report that tallies up every half pound and make a donation. We pick one organization per year. This year it will be the American Cancer Society. Last year was Komen. In 2009, we donated to MD Anderson.
Orchard Update
Now let's talk about what's going on at the farm. We had another round of harvest last weekend so we are right about half way through the harvest season. The quality of the coffee is looking excellent. We had lots of rain during fruit set and were on top of it when the rain stopped and irrigated at just the right time. We will be using our small huller to mill a little bit of this season's parchment so we will get a better idea of the quality and the grades. We will also roast and cup it to see how it tastes. We will post an update here and on FaceBook and let you know.
Speaking of FaceBook. Make sure you "like" our Makahiki Farms 100% Kona Coffee page. If you "like" us we will send you a coupon code for 10% off your next purchase. If you already like us, post on our wall and we'll send you the coupon code too.
Free shipping on orders of $40 or more. Our Summer Special has been so popular, it has been extended through the end of 2011 (and yes, that includes holiday gifts).
What's
New! (September 29, 2011)
Farm life has been very busy lately.
We have recently acquired a second-hand coffee dryer for use in the mill. It was in decent shape but needed some rework in order to make it more efficient and for it to fit into how we want to do things. We now have this cool auger on wheels that we can scoop the partially sun-dried parchment into and it conveys it up and into the top of the dryer. Turn it around and it takes the dry parchment from the chute at the bottom of the dryer and unloads it into wheel barrows. We still have some more ideas on how to get it to unload directly into the burlap bags.
The latest round of harvest was in the middle of the month and it was just gorgeous. Big, fat coffee cherries at the peak of ripeness. Our pickers did a great job! We worked late into the evening for several nights but it is satisfying work when you see how nice it came out. This round is dry and bagged and in the climate-controlled store room. The next round is almost ripe already so we will be picking again probably next week.
I bought a cool tool yesterday. Office Max had a sale on label printers. I bought a Brother P-touch that connects to the computer via USB cable. It didn't take long to create a UPC bar code label that we can attach to the bottom of our packaged roasted coffee for retail sales. The techie in me got some satisfaction yesterday.
What's
New! (August 15, 2011)
Free shipping on orders of $40 or more. Our Summer Special has been so popular, it has been extended through the end of 2011 (and yes, that includes holiday gifts).
Since our last update, the rainy weather has succumbed to hot and dry weather patterns. We turned on the irrigation and watered every other day, giving each coffee tree 3 gallons per cycle. In recent days, we have upped that to every day since the leaves were getting quite droopy. We have also received some small amounts of rain in the past three days so the grass around the orchard is greening up.
We should be picking again in the next couple days. We have a call in to the picking crew leader and hope to hear back later this evening on which day they will be here. The mill is almost ready. It has all been cleaned and serviced; the stands are painted, etc. It's looking very nice. Jonathan has been working with a knowledgeable friend to reassemble it and, of course, they are making improvements along the way. Once we have a fix on the picking crew's arrival that will spark a bit more urgency to get it fully functional.
Cruiser Pak
We now have a "cruiser pak" that combines two four-ounce packages of our delicious coffee with a 12 ounce French press. These are great to take along on a trip so you will have excellent coffee wherever your travels take you. The four ounce package has a tear-off top so no need for scissors. There is a zip-type closure to keep it fresh. The press has a sturdy glass carafe with heavy duty plastic framing and comes with instructions and a coffee scoop. This is a great deal since the MSRP for the press alone is $20.
Jonathan & I love to take cruises. We put together this cruiser pak based upon our own experiences with cruise ship coffee. This French press is an easy way to have some really good coffee for your cruise or other trip.
Has anybody seen our ad on cruisecritic.com? We are running a banner ad for the cruiser pack and every time I go look I haven't seen it yet. If you see it, let us know what you think.
What's
New! (June 23, 2011)
Summer Special! Free shipping on orders of $40 or more.
The coffee is growing leaps and bounds. We had have a quite wet and cloudy couple of months so the beans are getting big and heavy. We've had a couple of precocious trees start to ripen just a bit but it isn't enough to schedule the pickers just yet. That would be extremely early.
All this rain has made the verticals on the trees very heavy. In previous years we used bamboo poles that are notched at the top to prop up the heavy branches. This sort of works but the poles end up in the way of the tractor. We have been working with a long-time coffee grower on some other ideas. So far it looks like using twine to tie the bamboo to the stump and then tying up the verticals to it and each other might work. Our first attempts didn't use heavy enough twine and the twine broke. Those branches are very heavy we don't want them to break.
It will be time to apply more granular fertilizer soon. I have a crew in today helping me with suckering the trees again. Lots of growth has made the trees a bit bushy so these extra suckers need to be removed. This allows the new verticals to get more nutrients and light in order to grow strong for next season.
Cruiser Pak
We now have a "cruiser pak" that combines two four-ounce packages of our delicious coffee with a 12 ounce French press. These are great to take along on a trip so you will have excellent coffee wherever your travels take you. The four ounce package has a tear-off top so no need for scissors. There is a zip-type closure to keep it fresh. The press has a sturdy glass carafe with heavy duty plastic framing and comes with instructions and a coffee scoop.
Jonathan & I love to take cruises. We put together this cruiser pak based upon our own experiences with cruise ship coffee. This French press is an easy way to have some really good coffee for your cruise. Details
Sale Bin Announcements on FaceBook & Twitter
Just a reminder to keep an eye our our Facebook page and twitter. When we roast we often have coffee in excess of what we need for shipments. For example, I occasionally roast extra fancy and realize that I need peaberry. Most often what happens is we do a 3 pound batch when we need 3 half pound bags leaving 3 more left over. When we have these overruns from roasting, we tweet and post a status update. We offer them at a great discount and they usually go pretty fast.
What's
New! (April 27, 2011)
Ah, Spring!
It's great to be on the farm in the spring time. We are having quite a bit of rain in the afternoons, but our mornings have been spectacularly beautiful. It has been sunny and exceptionally clear so our views of the ocean and the coastline are stellar.
We have had no damage or consequences here at our farm from volcanoes nor tsunamis nor earthquakes.
The orchard was fertilized in February and we continue to fertigate every three weeks. The trees look great and had bushed up quite a bit. The crew was in and de-suckered the whole orchard, selecting several new shoots to remain as potential new verticals. We will select from these remaining ones in a few weeks when it is time to de-sucker again.
The grass and weeds have been a bit "overly happy" with the return of the rains. Jonathan mowed the whole orchard though it took quite a bit more time than usual since the growth had gotten pretty thick. I mowed the roads and perimeter. The crew was here also to do some weed control within the rows. It continues to cloud up and rain each afternoon and so I will need to mow the roads and perimeter of the orchard again in the next week or so.
Jonathan just applied another round granular fertilizer over the weekend. We also had a crew in last week to prune our monkey pod trees. These are great shade trees but are getting very large and need the canopy raised in order for the coffee beneath them to get more sunlight. It is also time to do our annual soil and leaf samples. The analysis gives us a reading on how we are doing with our nutrients over the past year and whether we need to tweak things. It's on my list for next week.
Overall, our orchard is quite healthy and it looks like we will have a good upcoming crop.
SCAA booth will feature Makahiki Farms coffee
The Specialty Coffee Association of America is having its annual Symposium and Exposition in Houston this weekend. Our coffee is going to be featured in two venues. The Kona Coffee Council's booth will showcase our coffee by serving samples of our Extra Fancy Sunshine! roast. There is also a cupping of 100% Kona coffees hosted by Dr. Shawn Steiman of Coffea Consulting that will allow participants to critically sample several Kona coffees including ours.
What's
New! (February 18, 2011)
The pruning was completed a few weeks ago and we hired a crew to come in a mulch it all up within the rows. The bill just came so that reminded me I needed to post an orchard update. The orchard always looks so thin right after a prune but you can see that the trees are already happier for it. They are very green and all the verticals are standing up straight. The pruning also gives all the new shoots (that will be our future verticals) plenty of air and sun to grow strong.
After the pruning it was time for do some irrigation inspection, repair and maintenance. We also applied granular fertilizer. This is the dry time of year here in Kona so we were fortunate that we got a nice 8 tenths of an inch of rain a few days later. It hasn't been raining much since then. The dry winter is what stimulates the coffee trees to flower. Yesterday began a quite large flowering, the 4th this season and also the biggest so far. We can hear the bees buzzing when we are in the house. They love the coffee blossoms.
I took this picture yesterday morning with my iPhone when I was out walking the dog. It isn't the greatest quality shot but if gives you the idea of what Kona Snow looks like.
We keep a record of the dates and relative size of every flowering. Later in the year we can match up the flowering with the ripening. That gives us a rough idea of the timing and size of each round of harvest.
In the midst of this we have also begun selling our wholesale green bean from the most recent (2010-2011) harvest. We had some of our parchment milled and graded. Our efforts last winter and spring during the drought have paid off. We have very large percentage of Extra Fancy and Fancy grades. Those are the two highest. Our production was also up from the previous year. We are happy we decided to invest in the irrigation and extra fertigation when it was needed.
What's
New! (January 12, 2011)
The harvest for this year is starting to wind down. We had the picking crew in last week for two days and they picked over 3000 pounds of coffee cherry. We met this morning with the leader of the labor crew that will prune the orchard. They will start next week and it should take about three days. The orchard always looks a little sad right after pruning. But we have learned that it is necessary and the trees are happier and better producers because of it.
Once the orchard is pruned we plan to have a crew come in to prune and raise the canopy of our monkey pod trees. There are six of them around the orchard and they have benefited from the irrigation and fertilizer so much that they have grown quite large and thick. We need to get the low branches removed so that the coffee growing under them will get more sunshine. We wanted to do this last year at this time but we were in the middle of a severe drought and we were afraid the monkey pods were under too much stress. We didn't want to chance killing them and we didn't need more scorching sun to dry up the coffee trees beneath them.
This year's harvest is looking great. We hulled and sorted a bag of parchment and the quality is very high with a large percentage of the beans at the Extra Fancy and Fancy sizes. We roasted some Extra Fancy Sunshine! roast over the weekend and the taste is stellar.
My Christmas present this year is a John Deere lawn tractor. That way I can keep the roads and areas other than within the tree rows mowed and neat without Jonathan having to fire up the big Cub Cadet tractor. There are quite a lot of rocks and tippy areas within the orchard to use something like this for that. But this little guy does a nice job on the flat spots and cuts a bit shorter than the big flail mower. I got a kick out of Jonathan's comment. Jewelry is for birthday presents but Christmas is for farm implements. :-)
Winter Special! FREE Shipping on orders of $40 or more until February 15th.
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