1,100 acres on the windward slopes of Mauna Kea at 1,400 feet elevation, rolling down to the open Pacific. Phase 1 is a 290-acre operation — twelve tropical paddocks, 200 Black Angus and Wagyu-cross cattle, a fully free-range layer and broiler flock, Indian Runner ducks, KuneKune hogs, and the working Pyrenees.
The forty-acre operations compound sits on a single board-formed concrete terrace cut into the hillside, ocean-facing. Seven primary structures engineered for the Hāmākua Coast specifically — salt-spray-resistant 316-grade stainless cladding, a shorter observation tower than its Wyoming twin for trade-wind tolerance, deep eave overhangs sized for the annual 130 inches of rainfall.
A low matte-white residence with a wraparound lanai sits at the western edge of the terrace, ocean-facing. Three hands plus a cook and family. The lanai catches the trade winds in the afternoon. South-facing windows watch the weather roll in across the Maui Channel an hour before it lands.
Hāmākua catches 130 inches of rain a year. Six 90,000-gallon corrugated 316-grade stainless cisterns sit beside the pole barn, fed by the full roof catchment of every PV-clad structure on the property. 540,000 gallons stored — enough to carry the operation through a three-month dry stretch with the bank still half full.
The Hawaii herd is two lines on one rotation — a production line of 200 Black Angus and a forty-head Wagyu-cross line for the table cuts. Tropical pasture lets us hold the herd at a density we'd never get away with in Texas or Wyoming, and the year-round growing season means we never feed a winter supplement.
Black Angus do well on the windward slopes — emerald-green kikuyu and pangola pasture, salt air, no parasites we can't manage. Two hundred head sired off two bulls. We grade by frame, foot, and disposition before we grade by marbling.
Forty Wagyu-cross calves a year out of select Angus dams. Pure Wagyu is more genetics than meat program, but the cross gives us the marbling and the temperament without losing the foraging ability. These calves carry the dam line as much as the sire — pasture-finished, never grain-finished, on a slow growth curve.
Hawaii is the one ranch in the operation where we run no Roosts. Every chicken — layers and meat broilers both — is fully free-range, intermingled with the cattle in the active paddock, roaming across the property by day and roosting in low ironwood and koa stands at night. The climate carries it.
The layers patrol the paddock that the cattle just left, breaking up patties and clearing fly larvae the way the Roost flock does in Wyoming — they just do it under their own direction. The broilers grow out at their own pace on the same pasture. We collect eggs from clutches in the ironwood line every morning.
Two more species share the rotation. A flock of forty Indian Runner ducks works the lower paddocks for slug and snail control — exactly the predators that would eat a tropical pasture from underneath. A foundation herd of eight KuneKune hogs roots through the same paddocks once the cattle have moved on.
Indian Runner ducks stand straight up — bowling-pin posture — and walk single-file through the pasture eating slugs, snails, and grasshoppers. In a tropical climate this is the cheapest, most effective pest control there is. They lay heavily, too: a duck egg for every chicken egg in the morning kitchen.
KuneKune is the New Zealand grazing pig — short snout, tassels under the jaw, peaceful disposition, and an animal that actually eats grass instead of just rooting it up. They follow the cattle through the rotation, finish slow on tropical pasture, and produce some of the best pork in the Pacific.
Three working Great Pyrenees live with the flock, year-round, outside. Mongooses are the threat here, not coyotes — and the Pyrenees handle them by presence more than by combat. Two adults on the cattle rotation, one on the free-range poultry. They were the first three sent west from the home kennel in East Texas.
The dogs are part of the operation, not pets. We name them. We bury them on the property. We don't take them off.
Step inside the ocean-facing pavilion and the open-sided pole barn and it reads more like a research station than a working ranch. Polished board-formed concrete floors, floor-to-ceiling glass on the windward south face, the entire fleet electric and inductive-charged off the photovoltaic roof.
Three sections of the paddock system are bordered by intact 1880s dry-stacked lava-stone walls, hand-built by Hawaiian paniolo cowboys with stones cleared from this same pasture. Lichen-mottled, ferns growing in the cracks, settled into the slope. Most ranches bulldozed theirs decades ago. We kept ours and routed the modern single-strand fence to thread between them, six feet of parallel.
Scattered ohia trees throughout the upper paddocks anchor the slope and feed the bees we keep on the property. The lehua flower is the unofficial flower of the Big Island — we left every mature ohia standing inside the paddock system rather than clearing the pasture clean.
The lowest paddocks end at the cliff above the Pacific. From the upper paddocks you can watch weather move across the ocean for an hour before it lands. Trade-wind showers, big cumulus, the occasional shaft of golden light cutting through a passing squall. The herd grazes through all of it.
Even when the trade-wind showers come through, the cattle stay on pasture. The deep overhangs on the pole barn are for the hands and the equipment — not the cattle. The herd has the ocean in view from every grazing position; they've earned it.
The full 1,100-acre operation comes online in three phases. Phase 1 is the engineered compound and one full rotation system. Phase 2 adds an upper rotation system on the higher slopes. Phase 3 fills the parcel and adds a processing facility.
290-acre primary zone, 7-structure compound, 12 paddocks, foundation herd of 240, a 600-bird free-range layer + broiler flock, 40 Indian Runner ducks, 8 KuneKune hogs, three working Pyrenees, 1.7 MW solar, 540,000 gal cistern bank. Operational by end of Q4 2026.
Add 10 paddocks on the higher elevation slope, second cistern bank for the upper compound. Herd grows to 450 head. Free-range flock doubles to 1,200 birds. Crew expanded to five hands with a second residence.
Complete the parcel. 25+ paddocks across two rotation systems, herd at 700, dedicated processing facility on the lower terrace. Native koa reforestation on the steepest 30 acres.
East Texas is the working ranch today. Wyoming follows in 2026. Hawaii follows in 2026. Same standards, same software, same handshake — three climates, one operation.