By Rod Thompson, Star-Bulletin
Sheree Chase, project director of Uchida Coffee Farm,
describes items in the kitchen of the Uchida house.
Uchida’s Farm
tells the story of
Kona coffee
Visitors can see what life
By Rod Thompson
was like for farmers there
nearly 100 years ago
Star-BulletinKEALAKEKUA, Hawaii -- Mainland historic site experts accustomed to American westward expansion "went nuts" this summer when Sheree Chase described the tale of eastward migration told by Kona's Uchida Coffee Farm. "We're telling the story of coffee and macadamia nuts. It's a very exotic crop," said Chase, director of the Kona Historical Society's Uchida farm.
They're also telling the story of farmers who were as independent as the "rugged individualists" of the American West.
Kona coffee farmers left sugar plantations to live in "very remote" Kona, where they could be their own boss, Chase said.
"These guys didn't care if they weren't making any money. No one was telling them what to do," she said.
Except for a brief spike in world coffee prices in the 1920s, they didn't make much money. "I've never been able to figure out how these guys survived," Chase said.
Daisaku Uchida arrived on Kauai in 1906 to be a sugar worker, moved to Kona in 1909, married wife Shima, and built a house in 1925 where they raised five children.
The scene for farmers like Uchida was set in the 1840s when wealthy planters tried to set up large coffee plantations. The attempt collapsed because coffee needed individual attention.
The coffee grew untended until Japanese laborers starting arriving in 1886. After working for other people, Uchida leased six acres of coffee land from Arthur Greenwell in 1913.
His family survived the Depression by diversifying to macadamias and vegetable crops. Shima died in 1967. Daisaku died in 1986 at age 99. His eldest son Masao retired from the farm in 1994.
By Rod Thompson, Star-Bulletin
Coffee worker Bibencio Florino works on the farm.
Following a National Endowment for the Arts recommendation, the Kona Historical Society began looking for a farm to preserve in 1992.They are aided by people like former state Rep. Minoru Inaba, 93, who relates childhood memories of his donkey carrying coffee bags uphill, then slipping and falling in the mud.
Children were needed to help with the fall coffee harvest so "summer" vacation for Kona schools was set September through November into the 1970s, he said.
Harvested coffee was dried on platforms. Kiyono Kunitake, 87, another society member, recalls spreading sheets of iron over it to keep rain off.
In the 1930s, shed roofs on rollers were invented to cover the coffee, Chase said.
Inaba remembers a friend from Honolulu seeing a roof in motion and thinking the whole house was moving. "I didn't say anything. I wanted him to brood over it a little while," Inaba said.
The Uchida farm has such a drying platform with moveable roof next to a small pulping mill. They're set apart from the small, dark, unpainted family house.
"We're not trying to make it all pretty," Chase said.
But there are pretty items, such as futons and other bedding donated by local families, made around the turn of the century with Kona-grown cotton, Chase said.
These were family items still in daily use after nearly 100 years, she said.
Visitors to the dark kitchen will see the Japanese "kudo" Shima used for cooking all her life. Her daughters used a fancier stove-top oven for making a western-style food they learned about in school: bread.
The farm can now be visited on Tuesdays and Thursdays by appointments made by calling (808) 323-3222. When renovations are complete in 1999, tours will increase, with visitors seeing coffee-farm food being cooked, a furo bath being heated, and a museum staffer dressed as Mr. Uchida greeting them.
