Visualizing a better life By Vicki Powers
Gary Strawn worked his days and nights as a successful computer game programmer in California. One day he wrote, "I quit," on a Post-It note and handed it to his boss. He was burned out and tired of sitting at a computer all day. To everyone's surprise, he moved his family to Hawaii to start his own business-as a Kona coffee farmer.
Not that this life is easier, it's just different. His days now revolve around the coffee process: plant, prune, pick, dry, store, mill, roast, package, and ship. Although his two daughters weren't thrilled to leave behind their friends in Los Angeles, not many suburban kids get to have pet goats, chickens, and rabbits.
With coffee season lasting from August to March, there isn't much off-season. Strawn's company,
Kona Earth, hires a crew for most of the picking and some of the pruning, but he and his family do most everything else. Each day is different from the next. It might involve spreading thousands of pounds of fertilizer on the fields at five different intervals throughout the year. Or maintenance chores like fixing the electric fence, the tractor, or the leaky tool shed. Other chores involve picking avocados or macadamia nuts-or caring for 500 baby coffee trees that need to be weeded, fertilized, watered, and protected from the goats. Strawn's wife also home-schools their daughters, ages 9 and 13, during the day.
Although Strawn uses his computer far less than he used to, he still relies on Microsoft products to help him run his business, including an Excel spreadsheet created by a college professor at University of Hawaii that shows the cost of fertilizer, irrigation, weed control, labor, equipment maintenance, taxes, and lots of other expenses new farmers tend to overlook. Strawn also used Visual Studio to design his coffee business Web site, www.KonaEarth.com, just like in his computer programmer days.
"I'm convinced that I will always use Visual Studio, even if I never compile code again," Strawn says. "I enjoy drinking coffee, but I enjoy selling it even more. Without my Web site I couldn't sell my coffee."
Strawn admits farming isn't easy. There's an endless stream of difficult work and not always much money, but on the plus side he gets to be his own boss, so overall he's quite happy with his decision.
"Seeing a game I made on the shelves was thrilling, but hearing people rave about coffee I grew is even more thrilling," Strawn says.
Vicki Powers is a regular contributor to Momentum,
the midsize business center newsletter. 
