Try It, You Might Like It: Coffee, Fruit, Turtles, and a Drink for a Friend.

Mar 10, 2014

Coffee, Fruit, Turtles, and a Drink for a Friend.

Day 1 was a laid back island day. We headed into Kona to check out the farms market then attended church services at the first Christian church in Hawaii.

Followed by brunch at the Java Lava in Kona. I highly recommend the coconut syrup...

and the spectacular view.

From there it was off to the Greenwell Farms Kona Coffee for a tour, and a purchase of coffee for the week, of course.

The tour started by looking for chameleons in an orange tree - we failed to find any, but we did see the oranges.

Then, the biggest avocados we have ever seen.

Then, we learned about bananas and banana blossoms.

While none of these are coffee, and none of the plants are used to shade the coffee during the growing season, I am sure that it helps to farm crops that have different ripening and selling seasons. Then, we came to the coffee productions. We saw some ancient coffee trees and the former mill. The red flowers in front of the mill in this photo are poinsettias. I know, they look like trees...there is also a pineapple in this picture.

Don't believe me about the pineapple? Here it is.

We then learned about coffee plants, which are currently in blossom.

Due to the landscape, Kona coffee is picked entirely by hand. They use a stick with a string on the end to gently pull the treetops down to pick. If trees age too much, they get brittle, so trees are pruned back almost to stumps after three years. This is done in rotation so there are always two years worth of trees bearing fruit (yes, when they are pruned, they only take a year to begin producing again. I also learned that coffee plants are related to the gardenia and, on average, it takes 7 lbs of coffee cherries to make 1 pound of roasted coffee. After learning about coffee growing and processing, we saw the cocoa trees on the farm.

Then we went looking for chameleons again - we found a quick little shy male. I could only get his back end as he zipped up the branch.

And a good angle on a female.

After a few stops for necessities and a meeting with the concierge, we went to happy hour. NB, this one was for you - Waikoloa Limeade, hold the umbrella.