At Big Island Farms, taking care of this land (‘Aina) is a great honor for our team and we’re so excited that you’ve taken the time learn more about our organic permaculture farm.
Aloha to all pursuers of knowledge, experience, and passion!
The Farm
Our mission is to become a world-class educational center and permaculture farm built on the core values of living sustainably on the land. Our goal is to provide engaging and impactful educational opportunities through our hands-on experiential programs. We hope to share our knowledge with future generations of environmental stewards who will respect and build upon the traditional agricultural practices of our ancestors and the local community to produce high-quality, organically grown, nutrient-rich agricultural products.
Big Island Farms was the inspiration of its founder Gordon Goff, who in 1989 came to the Big Island of Hawaii in pursuit of a utopian dream to live holistically off the land in a tropical paradise. Over the subsequent 28 years he established the Hamakua Ecology Center and then in the mid 90’s moved into tropical food forest farming wherein the development of an agricultural educational program focused on the fundamentals of permaculture and deep ecology. Throughout this period Goff built a team of like minded, hard working individuals who began creating a diversified organic farm and orchard by planting, propagating and nurturing tropical super foods such as Macadamia Nuts, Dwarf Coconuts, and a diverse range of tropical fruits, herbs, and medicinals along side traditional Hawaiian crops and market gardens. Working closely with his son Alexander Goff and life partner Annick Dauphinais (who are co-founders of BIFI), together they have developed over 64 acres, planted in dense orchards and gardens. Big Island Farms is a thriving agricultural enterprise whose long-term goal is to provide super mineralized, nutritionally superior organic products grown and processed on site to ensure the highest quality of nutritional value to the local and global market.
Big Island Farms hosts many varieties of gardens. Currently, we have community market gardens, medicinal gardens, arid climate gardens, and permaculture food forests. Some of the plants you might find in our gardens include: Taro, Papaya, Banana, Cassava, Turmeric, Pineapple, Passion Fruit, Dragon Fruit, Plantains, Ginger, Gooseberry, Squash, Pigeon Pea, Lemons, Limes, Soursop, Eggplant, Hawaiian Chili Pepper, Jalepeños, Bell Peppers, Custard Apple, Sapote, Neem, Lychee, Mangosteen, Starfruit, Surinam Cherry, Bilimbi, Rambutan, Rollenias, Java Plum, Tropical Pumpkin, Jabuticaba, Ti, Hibiscus, Bamboo, and so much more!
Big Island Farms produces raw natural honey with no preservatives nor additives. Our honey is filtered once to separate the wax from the honey with no heating and or micro filtering. Our bee keeper and hive owner, Jon Pasqual, is a queen breeder supplying hearty, hygienic, superior genetic quality queens to apiaries in the US mainland and Canada, driven by the urgent need and goal to protect and preserve the genetic stock of bees which is essential to pollination and life on Earth. While BIF continues to expand its apiary, our beekeeper, Pasqual maintains a collection of several hundred hives which he tends to on and off site. Our bees are essential to the pollination of our orchards and gardens and are a fundamental component of our farm project.