The story of our farm began when David Hobbs Cordell, the patriarch of the Hart family, moved to Hawaii in 1958—just one year before statehood. Since then, three generations of the Hart family have earned degrees from the University of Hawaii system, deepening their roots in the islands.
In the mid-1990s, after the collapse of Hawaii’s commercial sugarcane industry, the Hart family purchased their 33-acre parcel on the Hamakua Coast. Over the past 25 years, they have worked tirelessly to restore the land, transforming it from former sugarcane fields into a thriving, regenerative agricultural operation. Today, the eldest son, Colin Hart, leads the farm’s expansion into cacao cultivation—the source of craft chocolate. Driven by a lifelong passion for chocolate, Colin has been involved in cacao cultivation since his father planted the first small orchards over 20 years ago.
Today, the farm is home to 2,000 cacao trees, with plans to plant 1,500 more. Colin has become an award-winning cacao fermenter and a published researcher with a master’s degree in cacao fermentation and drying from the UH Manoa Department of Tropical Plant & Soil Science.
