The 11 Best Big Island Farm Tours You Won’t Want to Miss
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If you’re headed to the Big Island, there’s more to see than beaches and volcanoes. While those are beautiful, take yourself off the beaten path and explore the Big Island farm tours.
We find a farm tour is the ideal way to go off-the-beaten path, support local, and have a memorable (and affordable) tour on the Big Island! You won’t just find us on Kona coffee farm tours, from vanilla to bee farms, you can find a lot on the Island of Hawaii.
Watch a video featuring four unique Big Island farm experiences. We have many more videos below, as we visit at least one farm tour on every trip to the Big Island.
Animal Farm Tours
Ocean Rider Seahorse Farm Tour
- Location: Kailua–Kona
- Tour length: 90 minutes
- Book online
Nearby the airport is the Ocean Rider Seahorse Farm. Here, they focus on providing home and public aquariums with eco-friendly, hand-raised, domesticated seahorse pairs to help alleviate overfishing of the wild population.
The farm is family-run, and they breed over 25 different species of seahorses. On this very informative tour, they focus on teaching you about seahorses and their ecosystem.
While the hands-on portion of the tour is limited, at the end of the tour, you’re able to have a seahorse swim over to you and latch onto your finger, which is a pretty amazing moment. While this is a great tour, very small children may not enjoy listening during the purely informative portion of the tour (which is approximately 1 hour).
Honomu Goat Farm
- Location: Honomu (approximately 20 minutes north of Hilo)
This charming goat farm near Akaka Falls is well worth a stop, especially if you have kids! This isn’t a farm tour that you need to book in advance. Reservations are not required and there is no fee to play with the sweet goats! There is food for purchase to feed the goats and caramels and cheese available for purchase for you.
During bad weather, they do close the baby goat play yard, but you can call ahead to make sure they’re open for a visit!
Big Island Bees
- Location: Captain Cook
- Tour length: 1 hour
- Book online
If you love honey, Big Island Bees is a fascinating and delicious stop in Kona coffee country. Put this Big Island farm tour on your itinerary.
The 1-hour tour starts with a short movie that gives you an overview of production, from flower to jar. From there, your beekeeper guide will lead you to the bee hives to teach you everything you didn’t know you wanted to know about bees and honey. Our tour guide Joe was not only extremely knowledgeable but fun to listen to. He explained how bees produce different-tasting honey, showed us how to find the queen bee, and kept us all entertained.
To close out the tour, you’ll taste six different types of honey. When tasting them back to back you can absolutely tell the difference in flavors and we were able to each clearly find our favorite.
They also have a charming store with gift-worthy gourmet honey and honey products that you can stock up on for yourself or take back home to give to friends.
This tour is fun for all ages. We took our four-year-old as well as the grandparents, and everyone had a fantastic time.
Big Island Abalone
- Location: Kailua-Kona (Hawaii Ocean Science & Technology Park)
- Tour Length: 45 minutes
- Book online
Located near Kona International Airport, tour an aquafarm to learn how they sustainably raise and harvest abalone. Kona Abalone comes from the Japanese Ezo Abalone strain, known as the most precious species in Japan. This tour is part Japanese heritage, part abalone history, and fine dining as you get to harvest and eat grilled abalone.
If you can’t make it for the farm tour, they have a food truck out front where they serve grilled abalone (of course). They also offer a 2.5 hour abalone BBQ experience. This is ideal for seafood lovers as they BBQ lobster, abalone, shrimp, and other fresh seafood from the Big Island.
We have three farm tours located in the Hawaii Ocean Science and Technology Park. The park is unique in that the state pumps up deep sea water (around 2,200 feet) just offshore the coast. The mineral-rich, cold water is used for research, farming, and energy production.
Produce Farm Tours
The Vanillerie
- Location: Kailua-Kona
- Tour length: 1 hour
- Book online
If you are a food enthusiast, a trip to the Vanillerie vanilla farm is well worth a stop. Take a walk through the different greenhouses full of vanilla orchid to learn how vanilla is grown and all of the work that goes into growing just one vanilla bean. Our tour guide was incredibly knowledgeable and passionate about their farm and producing high-quality vanilla.
This Big Island farm tour is popular with those who have a late afternoon or evening flight. You can spend an informative hour or more at The Vanillerie with the airport across the highway.
At the end of the tour, you get to enjoy a serving of vanilla ice cream (delicious!) and visit their gift shop, where they sell a number of different things, including a vanilla extraction kit. Even if you can’t make a tour, a trip to their gift shop before your flight is worth the stop.
We did this tour before our late afternoon flight, a perfect way to do it! Enjoy the afternoon on the tour and then the Kona airport is a short drive away.
Big Island Farms
- Location: Honokaa (East Hawaii)
- Tour length: 1 hour
- Book online
Taste fresh fruit and learn about regenerative design concepts on this privately guided farm tour. Big Island Farms is a 64-acre farm just 5 miles from Honokaa and is home to over 200 species of edible and medicinal plants (including macadamia nuts!).
During your tour, you’ll be able to walk the farm with your guide, sample fresh fruit directly off the trees, and ask any questions that you have about farming practices and growing produce in Hawaii. You may even pick up some tips to take back to your home garden.
This private tour is great for all ages, so bring your kids and enjoy!
Honokaa Chocolate Tour
- Location: Honokaa (East Hawaii)
- Tour length: 2 hours
- Book online
Visit this chocolate farm and learn about the process of going from bean to bar. Hawaii is the only state in the US where cacao trees can be grown fruitfully, so this is a must-see for a chocolate enthusiast.
See a cacao tree and pods up close and taste a variety of different forms of chocolate: cacao bean, chocolate nibs, cacao tea, and different varieties of the finished processed product. You’ll learn a lot on this tour about the history of chocolate in Hawaii and how good-quality chocolate is farmed and made.
The tour runs for a total of two hours, with 45 minutes spent on a thorough chocolate tasting. This isn’t a tour for children and is catered to guests ages 10 and over.
Kona Sea Salt
- Location: Kailua-Kona (Hawaii Ocean Science & Technology Park)
- Duration: 45-minutes
- Book online
We really enjoyed this tour! The history of the company, the amazing location on the beach, learning how they made salt, the significance of Hawaiian salt, and of course the salt tasting!
Let the tour guide show you around the former research lab turned salt farm as you learn more than you thought possible about salt. The salt comes from deep ocean water harvested just offshore making the salt rich in magnesium, potassium, calcium, zinc, and many others.
Make sure to check out their gift shop as Kona Sea Salt makes for a perfect souvenir.
The tour made our What to Do in Hawaii When it Rains list as they provide umbrellas for the parts of the tour that our outside.
Hawaiian Vanilla Company
- Location: Paauilo (East Hawaii)
- Tour length: 1-2 hours
- Book online
The Hawaiian Vanilla Company was the first commercial vanilla grower in the United States and was founded in 1998. Family-owned and operated, they know their stuff and are very enthusiastic about sharing that knowledge with all their guests!
We had a blast on their farm tour only (1-hour tour) and loved their interactive presentation. They also have a luncheon tour (2-hour experience), which is a great option for lunch while you’re exploring the Hamakua Coast. The meal consists of a variety of dishes prepared with their vanilla, and it does not disappoint.
Beverage Farm Tours
Heavenly Hawaiian Coffee
- Location: Kona
- Tour length: 1 – 2 hours
- Book online
If you’re visiting the island of Hawaii, a trip to a coffee farm is likely on your list. The world-renowned Kona coffee country produces some of the best coffee in the world. There are plenty of coffee farms to visit, but our trip to Heavenly Hawaiian Coffee stood out.
This boutique coffee farm offers two different ways to experience and learn about the coffee growing process. The first is a walking estate tour followed by a coffee tasting experience. We enjoyed a full tour of the farm, following the process from bean to cup, and took in beautiful views of the Pacific as we explored.
Two more tours! For coffee enthusiasts seeking an even deeper experience, they offer a private roasting experience and a brewing class designed to help you become an expert coffee brewer.
While there are plenty of free tours that we love, this paid tour on the farm is in-depth and well worth the price.
Check out a list of all of our favorite coffee farm tours on the Big Island.
Mauna Kea Tea
- Location: Honokaa (East Hawaii)
- Tour length: 2 hours
- Book online
The Big Island isn’t a place just for coffee enthusiasts. If you’re a tea drinker, you’ll find a tour suited to your taste. Join a tour at Mauna Kea Tea to learn about the tea’s growth, harvesting, and transformation into refined tea.
Enjoy a privately guided tour through the beautiful landscape and then finish your tour with a premium tea ceremony. During the ceremony, they’ll help guide you through new ways to appreciate and experience tea. And when you book your tour, you can include notes about your current level of tea experience, so the tour guide is able to tailor the experience to meet you where you are.
Next check out The Best Big Island Snorkeling Tours.
If you’re looking for even more things to do on the Big Island (I’m sure you are), then check out our Big Island Wayfinder Itinerary. With five fully planned excursion days around the island, you won’t run out of things to do or where to eat.
