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THE BIG ISLAND OF HAWAII THE EAST SIDE OF THE BIG ISLAND is a place distinguished by lava, 'Ŀhi'a lehua forests, abundant ferns, endemic honeycreeper birds, wild pigs, heavy rainfall, and the most active volcano in the world. It's lush, uncivilized, diverse, and uncontained. It's the birthplace of new earth, an undulating environment of intense sensations. It's also home to troublesome invasive species, poverty, mold, meth, and many people eager to leave civilization. It's beautiful and crazy. This is the Hawaii tourist brochures won't show you. Though the easternmost district in the state, this is Hawaii's wild west. This is Puna. Inside the 320,000 acres designated as Puna, there's a whole universe, so much so that the term "Punaverse" has been coined by residents. Even with a scant population of about 50,000, it's the second-most-ethnically-diverse county in the nation after the Bronx in New York. The jungle here, however, is real. The landscape and flora consume inhabitants. No doubt this place is distinctive and authentic. Whether you love it or hate it, think of it as good or bad, there's just something about Puna—and this peculiarity is reflected in the coffee that grows here. Nevermind that our Puna Pink Bourbon topped the score sheet of the 2013 statewide cupping competition, or that our honeyed Yellow Caturra garnered a spot on Coffee Review's "Top 30 Coffees of 2013" list. That's no guarantee you'll swoon for the experi- ence in the cup. That, though, is precisely what has pulled me into the mysteries of coffee, Puna, coffee in particular. It tells its own story in its own way, just like the place it calls home. OUR STORY Kelleigh, my life and business partner, and I moved from Portland, Ore., to Mountain View, Hawaii, in September of 2010. We both had different reasons for wanting this, but in retrospect, there was only one that real- ly mattered: adventure. At the time, we were looking to buy a house in Portland or possibly land to start a farm in the Willamette Valley. When a Craigslist real-estate hunt led us to a listing for a 3-acre, vertically integrated coffee farm in Hawaii, we thought, "Why not?" We'd never heard of Puna or Puna coffee, but it seemed like a natural fit for our interests and skill sets. Kelleigh has a science background and a mind to match, as well as a deep love for mushroom hunting and forest exploration. I like plants, but I really like throw- ing myself into completely foreign situations and then figuring them out. We're both nerds at heart, and we're both obsessive-compulsive enough to want to learn how to do everything (or, at least, as much as we can as well as we can). Living the city life simply didn't allow us to explore our curiosities. We arrived at the beginning of the coffee harvest season and had no idea what the hell we were doing. Neither of us had any experience growing, processing, roasting, or cupping coffee. We understood the bare minimum about wet processing, thanks to instructions by the previous owner. All we knew was to pick ripe red coffee cherry. To get a feel for our new home and endeavor, we made coffee very intently every morning via press pot to taste this new place. It didn't take long before we regretfully concluded that our coffee really wasn't good—at all. Logically, we panicked. Me being the farmer, I assumed it was caused by an inferior variety of coffee in the field. This is what happens when you walk half-blind into endeavors. We didn't even have the knowledge to say whether or not we grew Arabica coffee. Ouch. It's a little embarrassing, but completely fair, to admit: We bought a coffee farm out of ignorance. We started at ground zero and had a long way to go before we got to good coffee. Adding more depth to the naivety/terror dynamic, the coffee field mirrored the surrounding jungle. It was a 2-acre mess of over-grown and out-of-control malnourished trees—1,700 of them, some 30 feet tall or higher. Little-to-no pruning had been done in the 15 years since Opposite page, at top: one of several St. Croix/Barbados sheep utilized on the farm for lawn mowing, fertilizing, and, yes, human consumption. Boom photo: A gold dust day gecko hangs out in the drying room on racks of pulped natural coffee to snack on the sweet mucilage drying on the beans' exterior. This page: A triumphant morning hike on the Kilauea Iki trail in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. R. Miguel Meza (le), Joan Obra Gaston, and the author. (Photo by Kelleigh Stewart) PHOTO BY KELLEIGH STEWART 39 www.baristamagazine.com