More Doings

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More Doings was Originally Posted on December 12, 2006 by

Was invited to a Christmas party the other night and had a great time! I knew a few of the people there. In typical Hawaiian tradition, there was much more food then people and anyone who wanted could take a plate or two home with them. We had prime rib, teri chicken, kalua pork, seafood and lots of deserts. Although the main courses were supplied by management, many people brought side dishes like the cucumbers in vinegar with a touch of hot pepper.

They had a gift exchange which seemed like fun. Everyone had a present in their hand and the “moderator” reads a scripted story which contains various spellings and meanings of Right and Left, like “Mr. Wright went right outside but before he left…”. At each incantation of right or left, the gift exchange participants would pass the present in their hands either to the right or left as the words were spoken. This took about 15 minutes. With my computer experience I would have wanted to hurry things up by scanning the story counting the rights and lefts, subtracted and told participants to pass the gifts the final number of times. But hey, that is just me :-)

A downside to the party was yet another stupid act on my part. I picked up a starlight mint, popped it in my mouth and without thinking, bit down. I cracked a molar and don’t have a dental plan, thus an unexpected and unnecessary expense. {sigh}

Recently I have received a number of orders, some for coffee and some for other items like the personal coffee maker. The coffee maker (a device that sits on a coffee cup and makes drip coffee) is an odd size for shipping and I had to find the right sized box for it. It made it difficule for me to set a correct price for shipping, so just bundled shipping into the item until I could find a box and determine actual shipping costs. I hate to list shipping charges on the site until I can determine that I am not overcharging the customer. As an online customer myself, I hate to buy something and then get all of the way through the order system only to then find that the shipping cost is very high or rediculously high. At least I try to avoid doing that to my own customers and have yet to have a complain that items took too long to get there or cost more than the person thought was appropriate.

I have an Ebay sale running for two 8 oz bags of coffee and also have a special on the website offering free shipping. The free shipping discount seems to bring in more business and perhaps I should just convert all of my site to offer free shipping.

I think I posted a blog recently that I created a Coffee Club with scheduled shipment dates. It is a test and I will create and/or modify the idea if people prefer other terms.

I posted a two-day classified ad in the Penn State newspaper to see if the students there had a) Disposable income or b) Access to Dad’s credit card… so far, no orders from the University. Well, I had to give it a try. Somewhere there are masses that are spending a boat-load of money in coffee shops when they could be making 100% Kona Coffee (an American product) at home and saving lots of money in the process.

Then again, I’d love to find a couple of coffee shops that would like to offer 100% Kona direct from the farm to their customers. Besides serving it by the cup, the coffee shops could sel bags of it behind the counter and make a few dollars from each sale.

During the holidays, many bars and restaurants offer free soda or coffee to the “designated driver” who agrees to not drink alcohol and rather shuttle their friends around for a safe holiday. What better way to encourage people to be a designated driver than great coffee? :-)

I am trying to get some time to fix up the ItsKona.Com website for my coffee. Along with that I’ll also update MyHawaiianSite.Com travel pages. I want to make them a bit more fancy and quicker to load and navigate.

When coffee is harvested, we take the ripe cherry and remove the pulp, wash and dry it and then store the parchment. If fairly recent, you can plant the parchment to create new plants or you open the parchment and reveal and plant the green coffee bean. That is what I have bee ndoing the past few days; opening parchemnt, one bean at a time! It will save 1 week or so on propagation and I should be able to see sooner what yield I have to plant. I am trying to plant 2 acres until I can get the catchment taks installed. In case of dry conditions I can still stretch a hose to those acres to water things. After catchment tanks are installed, rainwater will be the primary watering method.

I just uploaded a panarama view of the farm from the house and looking up mauka (mountain side). The trees in the distance are about 800 feet or more away and the mountain in the distance is a mere hill compared to Mauna Loa which rises out of sight behind it, up to 14,000 feet. This particular photo is at: https://itskona.com/photos/thumbnails.php?album=6 then click on the photo. I’ll upload some more photos soon.