Welcome to our family farm! We have five lush acres in Honalo, at 1900 ft elevation on the west slope of Hualalai volcano. This area is part of the historic breadfruit belt, more recently the Kona coffee belt, treasured for its perfect growing climate with both sunshine and rain showers nearly every day. Kim’s family bought this land in 2001 and began clearing the overgrown elephant grass and nurturing the native ʻōhiʻa trees. We planted kukui trees and ti plants along the borders and started filling the farm with a variety of fruit trees and produce.
In the spring of 2017, we began sprouting hundreds of avocado seeds and planting them on the farm when they were a few feet tall. The ground is a thin layer of soil over “blue rock,” a highly dense form of lava rock that we needed to break up with a backhoe. It was hard work, but soon our avocado orchard started to grow.
Once the young trees were established and growing, we learned how to graft. Grafting from a mature tree ensures a known quality of the fruit, rather than taking chances with the young trees grown from seed. We took the sprouting ends of branches, called scions, from our favorite avocado tree, a Sharwil from Kim’s childhood home that was already over 40 feet tall when her parents bought the house in 1993. We bound those scions to the saplings growing at the farm, and waited. The scions were fed from the rooted sapling trunks and they eventually grew seamlessly together, giving us the orchard of consistently excellent Sharwils we have today.
Sharwils were originally grown in Australia and marketed by Frank Sharp and Jim Wilson, who combined their names for the new variety, and the Sharwils were introduced to Hawaiʻi in the 1960s. There are over 200 varieties of avocados grown in Hawaiʻi today, but Sharwils are the most popular commercial variety. They have a rich, nutty flavor and buttery consistency, and are large with small seeds so there is a lot to savor in each fruit. Sharwils are the only variety that can be exported to the mainland US, and we are currently getting our farm USDA-certified so we can export our avocados.
Once the young trees were established and growing, we learned how to graft. Grafting from a mature tree ensures a known quality of the fruit, rather than taking chances with the young trees grown from seed. We took the sprouting ends of branches, called scions, from our favorite avocado tree, a Sharwil from Kim’s childhood home that was already over 40 feet tall when her parents bought the house in 1993. We bound those scions to the saplings growing at the farm, and waited. The scions were fed from the rooted sapling trunks and they eventually grew seamlessly together, giving us the orchard of consistently excellent Sharwils we have today.
Sharwils were originally grown in Australia and marketed by Frank Sharp and Jim Wilson, who combined their names for the new variety, and the Sharwils were introduced to Hawaiʻi in the 1960s. There are over 200 varieties of avocados grown in Hawaiʻi today, but Sharwils are the most popular commercial variety. They have a rich, nutty flavor and buttery consistency, and are large with small seeds so there is a lot to savor in each fruit. Sharwils are the only variety that can be exported to the mainland US, and we are currently getting our farm USDA-certified so we can export our avocados.