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THURSDAY 20, NOVEMBER 2008
Kona Coffee Farm
So you are looking for a good Kona Coffee farm? Let me introduce you to an awesome farm, the Mountain Thunder Coffee Plantation located in Kaloko, Kona, Hawaii.
It all started when the owner of our Kona organic farm let his organic Kona coffee become overrun with weeds. Not wanting to use poison, and not wanting to spend the money to have a full-time worker weed-wack all day long at Kona wages, he simply let the weeds engulf the trees.
Soon, his son, came home, back to Kona, from college and was posed with the problem of cleaning up the field of 9 acres of over-run organic coffee trees. The new caretaker of this Kona farm knew that he didn't want to weed-wack the field, and he couldn't poison it, but he sure knew he was going to have to use his head to solve his problem. It took him a few weeks of "sleeping on it" and reflecting upon the history and nature of the desmodium weeds which had engulfed the trees, that he remembered why the weed had made it onto the island. Soon the son knew that the weed was brought over as a animal feed for the cows on Hawaiian ranches. So he immediately thought "animals will eat it!". However, living next to a ranch, he already knew that cows would also eat the coffee trees--because sometimes they hopped the fence and ate the coffee trees--so they were out of the question.
Then he remembered that a rancher was selling tropical hair sheep, and that sheep won't eat coffee trees like cows. He immediately made a phone call and was soon driving back with 17 St. Croix tropical hair sheep in the back of his truck. He released them into the field and within a month, the entire field was clean. And how did he get the weeds out of the coffee trees? The sheep "pulled" the weeds right out of the trees because desmodium is so sweet and tasty to grazing animals such as sheep.
How's that for a good farm story? To this day Mountain Thunder maintains a flock of sheep, geese and a pair of Kona Nightengale Donkeys to eat the weeds of the orchard. At the same time, an organic agricultural consultant showed up on the scene and he did some soil samples and found that the manure of the animals had increased the levels of nitrogen in the soil and that to his suprise, no additional nitrogen would need to be added to his new agroecosystem. The only thing that needs to be added to the fields is micronutrients and soil additives which do not consist of conventional N-P-K fertilizers. Animals contribute around $50,000.00 of work and product to the farm per year in the savings of labor and fertilizer.
We named the coffee from this farm Organic Cloud Forest Reserve Coffee.
The attention to detail in the agricultural component of this organic farm adds to the complexity of its wonderful coffee. Because the trees have natural-occuring forms of nitrogen, and the micronutrients in the soil (and therefore the trees) are managed on a very close level to be in equilibrium, we have some of the happiest and healthiest organic trees in Kona. This coffee has been entered into local contests multiple times and it might interest you to read about our awards, as we have won 12 of them. That's how good this coffee is.
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