Uncategorized

What all farmers hope for is that yes next year will be a good crop. The kona Snow is blanketed all of the trees and the smell of gardenias (coffeee is in the gardenia family) fills the air. The flowers last a day or two so when the coffee is white and in bloom we…

This is the time of year when we begin pruning the farm . There are so many ways one can go about doing this. There is the Hawaiian style which after 8 years of farming we are learning more and more bout. The Hawaiian style prunes every third or fourth row of coffee completely,  those…

Kona snow is back !!  Now I know everyone on the mainland might not be so thrilled at the mention of snow ( especially after that “polar vortex” whatever that is!), but we are delighted to see the snow in Kona.  Of course I am talking about the coffee flowering which comes in thick and…

Slapped on our rigged picking buckets on the 5yr old, 7 yr old, and 10 yr old and headed out with my husband to pick coffee. What a joy! Ripe plumb and beautiful red jewels awaited us in the early morning light.  This is what I think of when I think of christmas time. Coffee,…

We are in the full harvest season. red lucous coffee berries being picked and macadmia nuts plopping tom the ground. Once picked the processing happens on the farm and shipped out immediately. The macadamia nuts are Raw , dehydrated at low temps, we also ahve organic macadamia nut butter and oil. Mahalo mahina mele farm

After one of the largest rainstorms we have had in years, the sky is so clear and the air is sweet. The fragrance of fruit blossoms and wet grass infiltrate the air. The sun is slowly drying us out as we live in a yurt with an outdoor kitchen. We have lived outdoors for about…

Macadamias nut are falling and Im sitting in the dehydrating room, my office, at over 100 degrees. The coffee is also ripening and being processed. We are building another coffee drying deck, and getting ready to enter into the kona cupping contest. I love being a farmer and love what we are producing. Water I…

Alooohaa! My name is Lola Hylton and I am currently doing work-trade through the WWOOF Hawai’i program for Jason and Kollette Stith who own and operate Mahina Mele Farm, Kona’s largest certified organic macadamia nut farm, as well as the #1 macadamia nut processor on the Big Island! Not only are the wonderful Stith family…

We like a little R&R just as much as the next guy, but we usually take it with a bit of adventure.  So my son and I took a little jaunt through the woods to get some flowers  for mama.  Luckily for us we have a large chunk of virgin Hawaiian rainforest adjacent our farm.…

Continuing on our fruit tour of  Mahina Mele Farm, here is one we love to eat.   The mountain apple. This fruit was one of the “canoe plants”, plants  that the Polynesians brought with them when they colonized Hawaii. They brought plants that were important to them of course and plants that could survive the…