Help With Coffee Trees Needed (Captain Cook, Kealakekua: leasing, organic, tax)

[johndsalisbury]

Hi,


Due to unexpected health issues, our retirement farm property in Captain Cook is proving to be more than we can handle - especially since we're switching to organic methods.

We stumped all the trees a few weeks ago, and need help getting the weeds under control, not just around the coffee, ideally.

We are exploring leasing out the trees. There's no Coffee Borer Beetles, and the cherries are large.

Any positive suggestions might have would be much appreciated! I'm thinking what we may be missing is a tractor.



JD

[Grassyknoll]

Originally Posted by johndsalisbury

Hi,


Due to unexpected health issues, our retirement farm property in Captain Cook is proving to be more than we can handle - especially since we're switching to organic methods.

We stumped all the trees a few weeks ago, and need help getting the weeds under control, not just around the coffee, ideally.

We are exploring leasing out the trees. There's no Coffee Borer Beetles, and the cherries are large.

Any positive suggestions might have would be much appreciated! I'm thinking what we may be missing is a tractor.



JD

There are herbicides that can be used on Org certified farms. I believe it is a product called Supress, but Farm and Garden in Kealakekua can steer you to the right product.

[hotzcatz]

Geese voraciously eat grass AND they fertilize while they're doing it. Fence against dogs, add geese and no more weeds?

Sheep are more of a grazer than a browser like goats and they say woolly sheep are more of a grazer than hair sheep so maybe some woolly sheep? Also, if you bring in pedigreed sheep, you can sell the offspring for quite a bit. Especially small sheep that can be lawn mowers on small lawns and get 'agricultural' tax breaks. Miniature cheviots are the cutest things ever and you'd have lawn mowers, fertilizers and livestock to sell as well.

https://doubleheartparksfarm.com/miniature-cheviots

These are a bigger sheep than the miniature cheviots, however there's some already on the island:

https://livestockconservancy.org/ind...al/clun-forest

[terracore]

An alternative to geese are muscovy ducks. They are almost as large and being a jungle fowl actually do better than geese without access to water for swimming (although they do appreciate it). They are also nearly silent, so do not make good alert animals, but they also do not wake one up at night. Blindfolded, most people couldn't tell the difference between muscovy duck meat and beef. The meat even smells similar on the grill.

None of our geese fly and keep to a pretty small footprint. When we had muscovy ducks they would range further, some would even fly, but they always came back.

Muscovy ducks lay more eggs than geese, and although they are larger than a chicken egg, with larger yolk and richer flavor, are easily substituted for chicken eggs compared to a huge goose egg. Muscovies can also hatch their own chicks with a fairly high success rate. Our hatch rate with geese using an incubator is pretty good, but left to their own the hatch rate is close to zero.

With either species absent a pond you'll be dumping and refilling some sort of water source for them daily (in our case, kiddie pools). The ducks are easier on the pools.

[hotzcatz]

Muscovy ducks taste like beef? That's way better than the usual 'tastes like chicken'! Maybe we need a duck or two around here.



The local tea farm is now using sheep to mow, next time I see them I'll ask how it's going for them. They've had the sheep for awhile, though, so I'm guessing it's working out. They were 'certified' organic for awhile but said it wasn't worth the cost of certification and now they're still 'organic' but with the sheep, they can't be 'certified organic'.

[Salty Water]

Originally Posted by terracore

An alternative to geese are muscovy ducks. They are almost as large and being a jungle fowl actually do better than geese without access to water for swimming (although they do appreciate it). They are also nearly silent, so do not make good alert animals, but they also do not wake one up at night. Blindfolded, most people couldn't tell the difference between muscovy duck meat and beef. The meat even smells similar on the grill.

None of our geese fly and keep to a pretty small footprint. When we had muscovy ducks they would range further, some would even fly, but they always came back.

Muscovy ducks lay more eggs than geese, and although they are larger than a chicken egg, with larger yolk and richer flavor, are easily substituted for chicken eggs compared to a huge goose egg. Muscovies can also hatch their own chicks with a fairly high success rate. Our hatch rate with geese using an incubator is pretty good, but left to their own the hatch rate is close to zero.

With either species absent a pond you'll be dumping and refilling some sort of water source for them daily (in our case, kiddie pools). The ducks are easier on the pools.

Wow, what an interesting post. Thanks.

[terracore]

Another difference between muscovy ducks and geese is that muscovy ducks pretty much eat the same vegetation as geese, but they are also prolific hunters of insects, slugs, and other pests. We had a few that would even kill rats. They didn't try to eat them or anything, I think the rats were disturbing their nests at night so the ducks killed them.

[NORTY FLATZ]

Great first post!

[hotzcatz]

Well, IMHO the OP is hoping for an answer he will like, but I suspect the actual answer is to sell the farm. Coffee farms require people power to maintain and harvest. Weeds are just the beginning and I don't know if a tractor is gonna be enough of added power to make it work. Eventually there will be some sort of robotic coffee picker, no doubt, but haven't a clue if or when that will happen and or if will work on the hillsides around here.

[Buckeye77]

OP is another "one and done" poster.