Aloha and Welcome to Hawaii Island!
one of the most magical places on earth
Twenty years or so ago the mac nut market crashed and most of the producers on the island cut down their mac trees and planted coffee. That was the birth of Kona Coffee.
The family that owned this property just left the trees and stopped mowing the orchard. Their business was running the bed and breakfast and the trees were mostly forgotten. Except for the wild pigs. They took over the orchard and made it their home.
Our macadamia nut trees were planted in the 1970’s. The ground here is lava so each of our 150 trees had to have a hole drilled into the lava bed to be placed. This above organic orchard has been left alone, hidden by guinea grass and home to wild chickens and pigs for more than two decades. This has created an absolutely fabulous nut that hasn’t seen a chemical in over 20 years. Talk about natural!
In 2018 we welcomed honeybees displaced by the Kilauea Eruption. The papaya farm they had been pollinating was inundated with lava and these bees lost their home. It appears the move to our orchard was well received and they have blessed us with an abundance of the finest macadamia nuts on the island. ( I‘m not the only one who says that)
We happen to have a rare variety of macadamia trees that were developed specifically for this region. Our trees are some of the biggest we have seen on the island. I’d bet the happiest too. The best part is how healthy they are.
Hawaii Island Resort is situated on the same property and allows guests to experience fresh macadamia nuts they picked themselves. We believe it is important to know where your food is coming from.
Our nuts are hand picked almost daily. Our processing equipment consists of a husker and a cracker that can crack these nuts fresh. Pretty much all of the mac nuts you buy in a store, and even roadside stands on this island, are already ‘old’ when cracked.
Macadamia nuts are the hardest nut in the world requiring over 300 pounds of pressure to break them open.
The machinery used in the process requires the moisture of the nut to be at 5% in order to crack it.
Our nuts are cracked at 20% moisture retaining all the natural goodness only fresh nuts offer. Instead of roasting, we dehydrate the nuts and again preserve not only flavor and texture, the nutritional value remains very close to the freshest nuts.
Standard commercial nut farms get under each tree every three to six months. They have so many trees it takes that long to get back to them. That means the nuts are laying on the ground exposed to whatever comes along.
We hand pick the nuts almost daily. Our nuts are not only fresher and tastier, they are handled and processed by us so you get the very best of the best.
We use our ‘waste’ as all natural organic compost and nuts that don’t make the grade for eating are pressed for the oil they contain. The fiber that remains feeds the wild chickens.
This brings us to our biggest hurdle and the solution that gave us our best friends, our dogs! Meet the night shift!
