Farm Chores
Things To Do on a Kona Coffee Farm
29 October 2006
Before becoming a Kona coffee farmer, I made a living as a
computer programmer. I had often
considered farming but I had never actually farmed before. When we
first purchased the farm here in Hawaii there was a period of several months
before we moved here. During that time I knew I
was going to be extremely busy once I got here but I had a difficult
time imagining exactly what I'd be doing. For example, I knew I'd
need a tractor but what exactly would I need it for? Would I use
it every day? Would I drive the tractor more often or the ATV?
Where would I be going on the ATV? I knew I'd be spending a lot of
time outside in the fields but what exactly would I be doing there?
I asked other farmers for examples of what they did every day but all
the responses seemed vague to me. It's not that it's a big secret
or anything, it's just that every day is different so it's difficult to
precisely describe what a typical day is. I don't use the tractor
every day but I do use it quite often, whenever I need to
move something heavy. I use the ATV
a lot because it's the easiest and fastest way to get around the farm.
I spend more time on the mower than I thought
I would. I also spend far more time fixing stuff
than I thought I would. Some times I'll be in the fields for several days
in a row, other times I'll get stuck running errands
all day in town. Every day is different.
Now that I have more experience with life on a Kona coffee farm, I will attempt
to answer the question "What do you do all day?" As an example, here's a
list of some of the items that are currently on my To-Do list:
Pick coffee: It is the harvest season. There's too much
coffee to pick ourselves so we hire a picking crew.
The crew does most of the picking but picking is just the beginning. Once
picked, the coffee needs to be pulped, dried, stored, milled, roasted, packaged
and shipped. Harvest season takes a lot of our time just coordinating things
and processing all the picked coffee. Dealing with the coffee has
priority over everything else.
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Barn roof: Other than coffee, getting a roof on the
new barn is currently
the number one priority. It can be broken down into several sub-tasks such
as painting all the roof trusses, installing all
the shear bracing, taking the trailer to town to haul back all the roofing and
preparing the trusses before the crane arrives.
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Barn finishing: Once the roof is finished, there is a lot of other
work that still needs to be done on the barn. More blocking, wall panels,
siding, painting... there are a lot of little things I haven't finished
yet. Now that there's a top deck on the barn I should probably also build
some stairs. I need to do some more
digging and concrete pouring
for the stair footings. There will be five different flights of stairs at various
locations. It sure would be nice to get rid of the ramps and ladders I'm using now.
Once the barn is done, I'll finally have a place to put all my stuff.
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Fertilizer: Kona coffee trees are heavy feeders. There is one
more round of fertilizing left to do this
year. That's 3000 pounds of fertilizer that needs to be spread by
hand across the entire farm. I'll finish one field then
recuperate for a day or two before starting the next field. The
entire job usually takes a about a week. Faster if I have
some help.
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Goat gate: During the day, we put the goats
out in the macadamia orchard. At night we bring them back to their pen
near the house. Goats are escape artists. I purchase a sturdy
chain-link gate and I installed it nice and straight. Then I
installed the fence and when I pulled everything tight, it bent the
gate posts out slightly. It's just enough that the goats can
escape. To fix it, I need to dig the post out, pour more concrete,
then reinstall the fence at a slight angle so when it's pulled tight,
it will be perfectly vertical.
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Mailbox: Kona coffee country is still fairly rural. Living
on an island, we do a fair amount of mail order shopping. To make shipping
and receiving packages easier, we purchased a new super-sized mailbox.
All I have to do is install the thing. More digging, more cement. It
hasn't managed to make it to the top of the To-Do list yet so the mailbox has been
sitting in a pile of junk for the past month.
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Pick Macadamia Nuts: It's too bad that Kona coffee and macadamia nuts
all need picking at the same time. I've been ignoring the macadamia nuts
this year because the prices are so low. I would still like to get in at
least one round of harvesting. That means I have to
mow and clear all the weeds and leaves from
under the trees so the pickers can get at the macadamia nuts. It takes
nearly a week to get the entire orchard ready for picking.
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Pick Avocados: In addition to coffee and macadamia nuts, we also
have several avocado trees that are almost
ready for picking. That's another week's worth of work, possibly more
this year because all our trees are full. I haven't checked yet to see
if the prices of avocados are high enough to justify all the work.
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Keikis: We have about 500 baby coffee trees that need to be
weeded, fertilized, watered and protected from the goats. As soon
as the harvest season is over and the barn has a roof, then hopefully
we'll get a chance to plant the baby trees in our one remaining empty
field. We want the make sure the trees are healthy and vigorous so
they produce lots of delicious Kona coffee for years to come.
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Spread Mulch: There are several places around the farm that need
to be cleared and mulched. There are still
large piles of mulch left over from pruning the main macadamia orchard.
Spreading around all this mulch sure would be great because it makes a decent
fertilizer and helps control the weeds. My tractor has a bucket
and I have a trailer. When I find the time, all I'll need is a
second person to help with the driving and shoveling. Mostly the
shoveling.
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There are plenty more items on the list and I haven't listed the recurring
items such as mowing, caring for the animals and selling our 100% Kona
coffee. Of course there are always unexpected items such as mower
repairs, house repairs and the occasional trip to the beach.
I originally sat down to write this list because my brother-in-law,
Hart, is coming for a visit. He plans to stay for nearly a
month. I plan to keep him busy every second he's here.
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