Kona Kine Organic Coffee

By all accounts, I'm quite the oddball.

As a lapsed vegetarian raised in the buckle of the bible belt who is often ridiculed for my way of thinking that is decidedly outside the box, my life is seemingly one contradiction after another. As a child my choice for a pet wasn't our chocolate Labrador. Instead I begged for weeks for my parents to allow me to have chickens - in the suburbs, no less.

If there is one aspect of my life in which my resolve has remained steadfast over the years, it is with regard to organic food. Regardless of the specific item in question, food grown without the use of poisonous pesticides or chemical fertilizers just made sense to me. Taking a cue from my grandfather, I started getting my hands dirty at a young age and grew my own radishes and onions in containers in my back yard.

As we get older, our tastes change and I was no different. I entered the workforce and quickly availed myself of the adult luxury known as the morning cup of coffee. For years I was guilty of grabbing a cup at the office without the first consideration about what I was drinking or where it came from. It wasn't until some time later that I would first hear the word "organic" uttered in a coffee shop and a mental light bulb would begin to shine brightly, awakening me to the reality that I wasn't nearly so dedicated to the cause of natural food as I would have liked to think. I bought my first cup of organic coffee in 1993.

Without the benefit of Google I was left to my own devices to search out information on the coffee industry but my inner environmentalist was on a mission. I began researching and learning everything I could about coffee and was surprised to find that Juan Valdez is not the only man in the world who grew the magic beans. In fact, I could get organic coffee that was grown in the United States. Though Hawaii is the only U.S. state that grows the stuff, it is still a better option overall for me, with my penchant for buying local whenever possible, and buying American-made products unless absolutely unavoidable.