December 15th 2006, For Christmas Santa gave this Kona Coffee Farmer a nice Kona Coffee Label Logo

12/15/06 Our logo is finished...

Joachim did a fine job!

Give Joachim Oster a call today at 808-328-1401, or [click here] to email Joachim and get the ball rolling — what you waiting for?

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In December 2006, One highlight is attending a Kona Coffee Farmer's Seminar at a local organic kona coffee farm

December 2006_Our Climate Controlled Coffee Storage Room Project starts; Get our coffee logo completed!

12/11/06 Getting it into the final planning and design stages. It will involve some moving of soil, building the frame, determining
what type of dehumidifier or air conditioner or a combo unit will be used. How to monitor the humidity in the room, etc.


12/13/06, We attend a coffee workshop about drying methods. This is a coffee dryer!



12/13/06, Bob Nelson shows his custom made coffee rake! This is his farm we are at where the seminar is being held.
Bob has got the rake in his hand. Recognize the guy far back left? That’s Rick Funk again who a couple of months prior was pulping our coffee before our mill was ready to work. Rick has a similar dryer that he built so he had some input at the seminar.

October 15 2006, Big Earthquake hits the Big Island but we have little harmful effects

101506, EARTHQUAKE, for us just a few things thrown, some glass items that fell shattered and a few wall board seams broken. We had power back in about 40 minutes while Kailua town was out for 4 or 5 hours. We sat at home and watched the national news coverage (and put it on the DVR machine)...

It was amazing how powerful and a scary thought to think what something like this would do if it continued past the 20 or 30 seconds that it was! This reached Oahu where many of their power generators were kicked offline and each had to be carefully re-started. Some people had rock walls collapse, big bolders rolled into some highways, walls of some homes tumbled. But all in all it could have been much much worse.

October 2006, We get to roast our own coffee for the first time!

October 2006_We have roasted and it is VERY GOOD!

We have roasted a sample batch of our coffee and boy it is good!

On October 5th our pulper was put into place temporarily on the drying deck...
This is an Estrada pulper from Columbia.

September 2006, We get our plastic cover put on our drying deck at the Kona Comfort Farm

091406, Hoops Up!

091706, We get the plastic greenhouse cover (hoshidana cover) fully erected -- yeah!!



This actually went rather smoothly. It was fed up from the bottom and unrolled from the middle.

September 2006, We get to process our own coffee beans to the parchment stage: "whoopie!" Yes, those are our coffee beans in the blue tub af

September 2006_Picking Season

We are a bit late getting started but there is plenty to pick. Much of our cherry is very nice size.

September 7th -- we get things we need, like a moisture meter, a scale, and a plastic shovel (like a snow shovel) that
works well on decks to scoop parchment.


Here Christine and Ken Sheppard get the hoops ready to go on top of the sun drying deck. The whoops will support the plastic that will cover over the deck to help it keep hot and also to protect the wood from getting excess exposure to water...

September 13th -- we take some of our coffee to Rick Funk to get it pulped while our deck gets to it’s finishing point. Rick was a neighbor right up the road from us and the first President (and a charter member) of the Kona Coffee Farmers Association.

August, late 2006, The mill is getting close to being finished at the farm

082306, The Mill Progresses fairly fast at this stage...


083006, The Mill Progresses...The rain is unrelenting...



Later when the floor is down, it is treated to help preserve it.

August 2006, Work on the coffee mill continues and we get more weed whacking equipment

081006, We get a second Shindawa Trimmer (the real thing!) from Farm and Home



We also had picked up a truckload of wood for mill construction...


081406, Christine and Ken Sheppard work diligently on the mill, even when it rains which it did a lot...

August 2006, Our Sun drying deck to sun-dry the coffee beans is about ready as coffee picking season comes close

August 2006_Drying Deck is built and just about ready for service

Here is the very start of where the main structure of the mill will sit...

July 2006 is a busy time as we get inside features worked on all over the home!

July 2006_House renovations are almost to the point we can actually get to move fully in.

Here the spiral staircase is getting it’s turn -- this is one of the last things to get painted..
070706, The spiral staircase turned out to be much harder to do than anticipated, it had to be stripped first.


070206, The washer and dryer are finally moved all the way to the garage to make way for the utility room to be more versatile.
At the same time a utility wash sink is added.

Window Coverings Arrive 070806

June 26, 2006, More Trash Duty and a 1st look at "the cottage"

062606, And we continue to clean truck loads of junk -- where in the world was it hidden?!

Eventually this cottage will be leveled, put on a good foundation, and painted..

June 23, 2006, We try a big DR Trimmer on our weeds!

062306, Our DR Trimmer arrives...



062306, We put the trimmer into service fairly fast, but unfortunately it does not like lava rocks!

June 21, 2006, Solar Hot Water System Gets Replaced

062106, When we checked into repairing the old solar hot water it became more practical to replace it. We put in an oversized system but you have to remember we are up at the rain forest and we have naturally cloudy afternoons and often it rains.

We did good: we can go for two days without sun and still have hot water unless everyone washes clothes!


Surprise! When the hot water system is finished and we go to turn on the water, the main valve fails -- no water for us this night!

June 19th 2006, Invasive Species Investigation crew surveys our organic farmland in South Kona

061906, Are these invaders from outer space?

No, just a crew surveying for Miconia, they did find one or two!

June 16th 2006, At the farmhouse, we actually get to start putting some things in place

061606, The farm living room in progress

June 2006, Painting inside the farmhouse continues and some new solar water is in the works as well

June 2006_Painting is in progress...Ken Sheppard starts doing some work...New Solar Hot Water...Washer and Dryer being moved to garage...

060706, This is one of the first days Ken Sheppard was around the farm, here I think he is building a base for the solar water heater to sit on;
Ken is the same who lectured at the Small Equipment Seminar back in October of 2005. He continued to help outside where he would build the coffee mill and with that get us started in the right direction.

May 24 2006, The farm house is getting an interior refresh at our sustainable kona farm

052406, In the meantime, the painters start work and COLOR comes to the upstairs of the house!

All the windows are out so the glass can be cleaned.
We used to bring the dogs sometimes (you can see Alex trotting about below) and we would come late and clean up after the painters and try to work ahead of them doing things like taking all the glass out and cleaning the wood frames before they would need to touch with a brush. We learned that it gets COLD up on the mountain late at night and that windows are very important to have so you can CLOSE them to keep the cold air out (shiver)...

May 18, 2006, The Truck Blows Up that had come with our organic coffee farm

051806, We don’t even get to really use the truck one time until it throws a bunch of oil -- just what we need, it is late in the day and it has already been a long day we did not need this. What can you do? We take the load from the pickup truck and move it again by putting that load into the Honda Element and a Honda CRV.

We try to put more oil in but it just gushes out. So we have to call a tow truck rather than leave the pickup sitting -- it sure won’t budge on its own.

May 11, 2006, Time to Work on the farm truck that came with the organic farm in Hawaii

051106_We take the farm truck from the farm to the other house. It takes a couple of days to clean it up, replace turn signals, make some rail holders for the back end, change the spark plugs and wires. We really liked the idea of a small pickup that we thought would come in handy for hauling coffee bags and stuff like fertilizer -- and it could help us with the move of course.


The oil came out like sludge..

May 9, 2006, Work is in progress at the coffee farm house where we will live in South Kona

050906, The farm house interior before was all one color of -- well, white!

May 4, 2006, We are still working in between old and new places, Lucky gets lots of attention

May 2006_We are boxing up and packing up at the old home to move to the farm...The farm “came with” an existing dog called “Lucky”. The story is that he was “Lucky he did not get shot” when he wandered onto the property. He was in his twilight time but still had some spunk. He liked to stay in the garage or in the flower beds and all the people coming into and out of the house doing their work became friends with him.


Lucky sometimes gets in the car whether you want him to or not...

May 1st 2006, A new fence is installed at the sustainable farm.

050106, The house has a nice big back yard, but it needed a barrier fence to keep our dogs contained and safe...
One thing about being “in the country” is that there are many dogs (big ones) that tend to run and roam.
Our dogs are small and probably would be attacked if they are not kept within the boundary of the back yard. Thank goodness the back yard was already well located to the back of the house, well suited for the dogs, and not impossible to retrofit!

April 23 2006, Some unexpected junk needs to be picked up and moved off our South Kona Farm

042306, Unfortunately we discovered loads and loads of trash we needed to haul away...

April 2006, Friends Help Us With Our Work

Lawrence and Ikaka visit and get “Tom Sawyered” into helping. Besides coffee we have some wonderful citrus that we pick and enjoy during its season..

Here we see "Uncle Lawrence" who has a fruit picker that comes in very handy to reach up into the trees.




Ikaka (below) helped us many many days try to weed eat with the residential style whackers...

With those "hardware store" things you seemed to move just 40 or 50 feet after working all morning!

April 2006, We Get Possession of our Hawaiian Farm in Honaunau Hawaii

April 2006_We get possession of the farm

Yes, finally we get possession and it is a long period during which we move from one place to the other and at the same time attempt to get started with clearing out some junk left by the previous owner.
While getting things to the final packing stages at the previous house, we get this house painted on the inside.
We also start getting a new solar water heater system put in.
We continue to try to control weeds all during this time.


We quickly found out the weeds are a BIG chore -- with everything else we can’t seem to keep up.

We look at a SKAG mower that is supposed to make short work of this problem. I wonder???

March 2006, "We Are Trying!" to get some weed and overgrowth control at the organic coffee farm

March 2006_We work on the back fields even before we get possession of the farm

This seemed never ending. Of course we were using weed whackers from Home Depot and Lowes (big mistake)...
This picture is from March 19, 2006 -- everywhere overgrown coffee trees!



We eventually learned the hard way that when it rains it can rain a lot. We kept getting our cars stuck because by the time we would get our gear together and get to the car to leave, the soil would be saturated. Now we rarely take a car into the fields but the ATV is a different matter -- it is light enough to pick it up and get it “unstuck”!
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January 2006, Our first attendance of an Election at the Kona Coffee Council Turns Out to Make A Bit of Kona Coffee History

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January 2006_The Kona Coffee Council “is taken over”

Our first real meeting and it became quiet a controversy. Apparently lots of “proxy” voting that upset lots of people.

Lots of people left the KCC and a new organization the KCFA was born.

There are some farmers who stay members of both groups.

Visit the KCC on the web.
Visit the KCFA on the web.


01/21/06, Many of the candidates for office are in this shot -- which at the time we did not know would become know as the ” takover of the KCC.“

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