I harvested this giant jackfruit today. We have to pick it green or else the fruits start to split open. I think Hilary is going to make hummus with the seeds.
I planted three more coffee trees in the breakfast orchard. This is where I planted a whole bunch of coffee, an egg fruit tree, a sausage tree, and a bread nut tree. There is even a navel orange nearby. All we are missing maybe is a grapefruit and some papayas. And a bacon tree if such a thing exists.
One of the first things Julia and I did when we moved here was helping our friend Ed in Hakalau with coffee picking. His beautifully designed orchards has about 500 trees and it’s a lot of work to harvest 4 to 5 months out of the year and it takes about an hour to fill up a 5 gallon bucket. When you pick the coffee cherries at the peak ripeness you end up with some high quality product. Ed entered his coffee in cupping contests and won 1st place Hamakua for two years in a row, until someone complained that Hakalau is technically not in the Hamakua district… Ugh.
The process of making coffee is very similar to chocolate but with fewer steps. I prefer growing cacao over coffee because picking each cherry is tedious work and there are so many pests and diseases that plague Hawaiian coffee right now. But having coffee to add to chocolate is not a bad idea… It’s my favorite combination!
Originally posted on 2021-08-16, part of the daily planting journal behind Ha’a Chocolate’s food forest on Hawai’i Island.