What's New! (December 10, 2004)

The harvest is starting to wind down. The pickers were in a few days ago and finished our 9th round of picking. We expect to have one more small round in a couple weeks. The weather has gotten warm, windy and dry, so this next round will probably ripen more quickly than the last one.

The weather is a big factor in the coffee crop for both yield and bean quality. This year's crop has been smaller due to the wet winter we had. But the bean quality and bean size has been quite good since the rain helped make sure those beans that developed were big and fat.

Coffee needs dry weather in the winter in order for there to be a good flowering when the rain comes back in the spring. So we're glad that the heavy rains have stopped this week and that the sun is shining.

Need a gift for that coffee lover in your life?

By popular demand, we have T-shirts with our label on them. We can do gift baskets with coffee, shirts, mugs. Just let us know what you'd like in it and we'll wrap it up in a tropical basket and ship it for you. Send a little aloha to your family and friends this holiday season.

What's New! (October 21, 2004)

We just finished our sixth round of picking earlier this week. We've had it milled to become parchment coffee and it is aging in climate-controlled storage before we hull and grade it. We are all ready to submit our entry into this year's Kona Coffee Cultural Festival coffee cupping contest. Wish us luck!

People's Choice Coffee Tasting

We will be participating in the Kona Coffee and Art event at Keauhou Shopping Center to be held on Saturday, November 6, 2004 from 7:30 am until noon in the center courtyard. If you will be on-island that day, be sure to stop by to say hello and taste some of our coffee. There will be voting for the "People's Choice Award" coffee tasting, best coffee package label and best web site.

T-Shirts!

By popular demand, we now have t-shirts with our label on them. We are very excited and pleased that our label is so popular. The shirts are high quality Hanes Beefy-T's with our logo on the front left and our label on the back.

What's New! (September 21, 2004)

The 2004 harvest season is in full swing. The pickers have been doing a great job with the hand picking. We've had the most recent rounds processed and stored as parchment. The trees are very healthy and the cherry is very large. It will be interesting to see what the grading results are when we have some of it dry milled.

The pickers will be picking again later this week. The crew of ten arrives at dawn and picks until 3 or 4 in the afternoon. They use baskets or plastic picking buckets strapped to their waists so they can use both hands to pick. The only other tool is a wooden hook with a knotted rope attached to it. The pickers use this to hook onto the upper parts of a tall vertical to bend it and pull it down. They step on the rope to hold it there and continue to pick the coffee cherries with both hands.

The biggest news for us personally is that we have broken ground for building the house. A really big bulldozer came and began moving earth in order to flatten out the house pad. We are very excited and can't wait to be able to live among our coffee trees.

What's New! (July 17, 2004)

Makahiki Farms has won the Silver Medal at the Cream of the Crop coffee tasting event held today at the Kona Village Resort. We took second place in the People's Choice balloting in the Estate Coffee category. Thank you to all who voted for our coffee!

New Darker Roast

The darker roast we tried over the last couple months has been a big success. Folks who have tried it have liked it very much. So we have decided to offer both dark and medium-dark roasts. We're taking some more green beans to the roaster this week. I will update the order page as soon as we have it available.

If you order a four pack of the 2 ounce packages, we will send you two of each roast. If that's not what you want, just include a note with your order or send us an email.

What's New! (July 12, 2004)

The 2004 harvest season has begun. The pickers were in for one day last week and picked a couple bags of coffee cherry for us. If the pattern from last year holds, we will be picking about every 3 to 4 weeks for the rest of the year and probably into January.

The trees are looking excellent. They have enjoyed nearly perfect weather this year. We've been getting a half inch or more of rain every couple of days. Most days the mornings have been sunny and the afternoon clouds have been rolling in. We've used bamboo poles to stake up some of the trees. The cherry near the top of the verticals is getting very big and heavy. The poles hold them up so they don't break under the weight.

The rain continues although it is not nearly as heavy as it was in April. We've been getting between a quarter inch and a full inch every few days. That is just about perfect and the trees are loving it. Some of the trees are already so loaded with big green cherries that they can't hold themselves up any longer. We've been using bamboo poles to prop them up so the verticals don't break.

We applied foliar fertilizer a few weeks ago and will soon add another round of granular fertilizer. The trees need some extra nutrition to support all that cherry. We've put down some mulch in the north makai section where it is the most warm in the summer. We had a couple truckloads of macadamia nut husks and shells that we composted into a lovely rich mulch. We'll continue to do a few rows at a time until we cover the orchard. This not only gives the trees some added organic matter for nutrition, but helps shield the roots from excess sun and discourages weeds.

New Darker Roast

For a limited time, we have some freshly roasted coffee that is a little darker than we usually do. I know some of you have expressed an interest in trying something a bit darker so now is your chance. If you like it, let us know and we can offer it on a more regular basis. Order Now.

Rain, Rain Rain!

The rainy season has started and I'd venture to say the drought is at an end. We have already received more rain in April than we had in all of 2003. And it's still raining. It seems every day we have a mostly dry morning, but the clouds roll in and the afternoons are wet.

The trees are enjoying quite a growth spurt due to the longer days and all this moisture. Some of the trees are already loaded with big green cherries. There are lots and lots of little tiny green beans starting where the Kona "snow" blossoms were. And we continue to have more rounds of blooms. This weather should help to slow the development of the beans so they set up nice and big.

We just applied another round of granular fertilizer and will apply some foliar fertilizer as well. I thought the suckering is almost completed for this year, but all this new growth looks like I'll need to make another pass at suckering the orchard.

Kona Snow!

Here in Kona we've been getting some winter storms. The rain is very good for the trees. The wind took a bit of a toll in a big "kona" storm a few weeks ago. We lost some leaves and had a few broken branches.

This past weekend we had a terrific bloom of "Kona Snow". So we think the production for the upcoming crop will be pretty good.

Check out some additional pictures here.

We just applied a round of granular fertilizer and will continue to mulch. The suckering is almost completed for this year. It's been quite time comsuming, but rewarding work.

Look for our new recurring ad in Kona Views magazine. Feel free to drop us an email if you have any questions or suggestions.

What's New! (February 9, 2004)

The harvest is over and the pruning is completed. We do a type of pruning that is called "Kona Style", where each tree has its oldest vertical branch removed. Pruning stimulates the tree to grow new verticals for subsequent years' harvests. Pruning each year is very important since the coffee cherry is produced on the new growth.

We've gone through the entire orchard and examined every tree. A few were replaced and others marked with surveyor tape to revisit in a couple months to see how they are doing. Those will also get a bit of TLC icluding some extra organic fertilizer.

I think this is one of the reasons to choose farm-direct Kona coffee from small farms. We know every tree in our orchard and can give them individual attention and extra care where needed.

The next job on our list is mulching and suckering. Suckering is where we examine the new shoots (suckers) and choose which ones to allow to grow into new verticals and cull the rest. There are lots of criteria to use to know which ones to choose. The idea is to choose those that allow each vertical to get the most room and light as well as make it easiest for the pickers next harvest season.

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Keep reading "What's New 2005"

Keep reading "What's New 2003"