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41 www.baristamagazine.com its establishment. Coffee cherry of all shapes, sizes, and colors scattered across a backdrop of green foliage and tangled limbs in dizzying kaleidoscopic fashion. Are those red, pink, and yellow cherry on the same tree? Is that Yellow Caturra or Catuai? Is that Red Caturra, Catuai, Typica, or something else entirely? It was simultaneously thrilling, overwhelming, and awe-inspiring. We realized then that our adventure was just beginning. Solving one mystery only to discover many more became a daily ritual. We followed curiosity and it beckoned us deeper and deeper into the wil- derness of possibility. SEVEN STEPS TO PERFECTION Since then, we've learned a little bit. When you're on a fairly isolated farm with more time and questions than money and city activ- ities, you tend to tinker with your surround- ing environment and figure out answers and techniques. We experiment, test extremes, learn limitations, respect parameters, make mistakes, and repeat. Being vertically inte- grated from coffee seed to roasted, packaged bean, we have the great blessing of perspec- tive coupled with the burden of responsibility. Dazzling arrays of potential await realization, but exploration is balanced and tempered by time, money, and energy. It doesn't require any fancy tricks or gimmicks to transform poor coffee into great coffee—the landscape and weather do most of the work. The rest is up to human intervention to observe, to assume the role of liaison between plant and animal worlds, and to skillfully manipulate certain variables—in other words, to craft. We dove in headfirst and sooner rather than later, our coffee started tasting pretty damn yummy. It only took about two years. Step by step, we began understanding the variables and processes involved in cultivation, harvest- ing, processing, drying, storing, roasting, and brewing. This is not to say we don't continue to make mistakes. Even if you know exactly what needs to be done, fatigue, life, nature, quantum mechanics, whatever, ultimately shape and disrupt the circumstances of execution. That's the beauty, that's the struggle, that's the thing about coffee: You can screw it all up at any single point from seed to cup. Everything can be executed with perfection all the way through roasting and then completely botched with improper brewing. So delicate and intri- cate is coffee that it leaves you chasing after its elusive harmony. The "perfect" cup is the experience of an extremely rare consonance of innumerable factors coming together over great distances of space and time. LITTLE PESTS AND BIG THREATS The coffee field was in disarray when we adopt- ed it in 2010—we've established that. Slowly, year by year, we rehabilitated and rejuvenated the trees with hours of pruning, clearing, feeding, and nurturing. Our yield was scant the first two years: about 350 roasted pounds in 2010 and 2011. In 2012 and 2013, it came in at about 1,000 pounds—definitely an improve- ment, but not that good given the tree count. By March of 2014, the coffee was looking bet- ter than ever. We had huge, uniform, consec- utive flowering sessions all through February that continued until late March. The blossoms promised an earlier, heavier crop. Even more flowers randomly popped in April and May. To prepare for this big season, I didn't waste any time taking necessary steps to mit- igate risks. We have a few difficult challenges to overcome for a successful harvest. The most persistent among them is fungi—cerco- spora and anthracnose, to be precise. Given Puna's high humidity and rainfall, these fungi can only be managed as they'll likely stick around for a very long time. The coffee was hit pretty hard in 2013 as the fungi caught me The captivating evening glow of Halema'uma'u Crater's lava lake inside Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.