Coffee Farmer: John Landess Jr.
Honaunau Valley Farm

(from Ground Control Issue #2)

John Landess Jr. was raised in Alaska on a Kenai Peninsula homestead, and did most everything from working in fish canneries, construction, and working in the oilfields. He finally ended up working for a major oil company and bought part of his dad's homestead (80 acres), where with his wife he raised five sons and a daughter.

In John's early days, working at an isolated fish cannery, each evening ended with "mug up." Anyone wanting a snack and coffee (or chocolate) would meet up in the cookhouse at about 7 pm and the talk covered every subject under the sun. Many enjoyable evenings were spent around the coffee pot.

Later, while in working for the oil company, "I worked many different places around, and found that each area kind of had it's own coffee style. Even in New Orleans with the 50% chicory."

Vacationing in Hawaii led to a new career for John. From Alaska, Hawaii makes a prime destination; direct flights, 50 degrees below to 85 above. Through a series of coincidences, "we went from a condo on Maui to owning a papaya farm on the big island." During this time, the specialty coffee boom started and John was unimpressed with what was then available in Alaska (mostly imported, old, and stale). "When in Hawaii, I started buying green Kona. Friends brought other coffees whenever they were out of the country for me to attempt to roast."

"My wife ran me out of the kitchen shortly thereafter, due to the smoke and mess, and I retired to the garage where, after some thought, I threw away the electric skillet and converted a hot air popcorn popper to a mini roaster." It worked so well that John soon had four of them going at a time, with a haze in the garage you could cut with a chainsaw.

"I love that smell! Everytime I opened the door for a little fresh air, neighbors would show up, following the aroma to the source wanting to buy some fresh coffee."

John realized that this could lead to better things. But to get there 100% he had to make some contacts in Kona to get fresh roasted coffee shipped to Alaska in large volumes, more than he had time to do.

John then saw an early retirement (read: downsizing) coming up from the oil company. "We decided we had better look where we might want to live other than Alaska. Naturally, Hawaii sounded pretty good. So on the next few vacations and during impromptu trips over, we started planting coffee and building a small house to stay in."

In 1993, after 35 years in Alaska, the Landess family made the move to Hawaii.

Today they are continuing to develop the farm, have built a larger home, and have nurtured a local market as well as a mail order business (wholesale pricing).

"We are on AOL as brewkona, and hope to have a web page soon, but for now most of our orders are by mail. The future will see us adding custom roasting, as well as 'plastic' transactions."

Johns email address is: brewkona@aol.com

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