EVERYONE has their own taste of what kind of coffee they want, but Kura Kura Coffee, grown and roasted in the Padawan highlands brings connoisseurs to a different level of satisfaction.
Far from his native country of Norway, Lars Larsen, 45, has been residing in Kampung Semadang for 15 years with his Bidayuh wife Liza Ahngau, 45, and their two children, after setting up their Kura Kura Homestay.
Lars and his wife have ventured into coffee farming and roasting since 2012.
“My father-in-law told me that they used to grow coffee in the ‘kampung’; namely the country’s Liberica coffee and the Robusta coffee from Jawa and Sumatra. There are still a few old coffee trees alive.
“So, we decided to take some seedlings from those trees and plant a few for ourselves. That’s how we started, with roughly 10 trees and we roasted the beans ourselves,” said the 45-year-old to New Sarawak Tribune.
Lars said a few villagers that started to plant coffee trees and he plans to buy the coffee beans or cherries from them once the coffee beans are harvested.
“Most of them have just started to plant the trees. It will take some time before they could be harvested, and then we plan to buy it from them.
“We have talked to a few farmers from Kampung Git and Kampung Benuk to get involved in coffee farming. I hope to reach more villages in the near future,” he explained.
For almost 10 years, they have been farming and roasting highland coffee for their own consumption and also to serve it to the guests staying at their homestay.
Their homestay has been visited and stayed by foreign bloggers before and, in fact, it was featured in some videos on YouTube in 2019.
Coffee trees that Lars and Liza grows at the backyard of their homestay. 
Coffee cherries before being harvest.
“Our coffee received very good reviews from our customers and bloggers at the homestay, so we expanded our farm and planted more trees. We even bought a coffee roaster,” said Lars.
When asked how he marketed and sell the coffee products, the Norwegian mentioned that at the moment, they are selling via Timogah, a Serian online market and Farm Direct Shop in the BDC area.
He said for the moment, they prefer not want to sell via commercial supermarkets as they wanted to keep their coffee product more exclusive for themselves and their homestay customers.
“We emphasise on quality over quantity, as well as to make it a sustainable brand with hand-picked coffee, small scale farm, no monoculture farms and ensure a decent buying price to the farmers,” Lars explained.
Their home-roaster used to roast their coffee beans. 
Coffee beans after being roasted using the home-roaster.
Regardless of the type of coffee, they sell a packet of 200g of coffee for just only around RM20. The types of coffee they sell are the Liberica coffee, the Robusta coffee and their own House Blend coffee, which is a mixture of the Liberica and the Robusta coffee.
Initially, the couple faced various obstacles when they started venturing into the coffee business.
“We started our Kura Kura homestay in 2009 and most of our guests were mainly from overseas.
“I tried to find good local coffee for ourselves and to serve but it was really difficult to find good ones.
“It took a while and we learned that all the local coffee was actually from Indonesia, and that it got roasted with heaps of margarine, sugar and salt.
“This was, for me, a new thing that I have learnt and I wasn’t convinced. That is when my father-in-law told me about the old coffee trees in the villages and we started replanting it,” Lars explained.
Commenting on the effects of the pandemic on their business, Lars said that their business was affected as people stopped coming to their homestay when movement restriction was implemented.
“As our business expanded, we liked the idea of trying to sell some of the coffee via our homestay. Unfortunately, the pandemic hit and we decided to go fulltime with the coffee business.
“With less people coming to have a taste of our hand-picked coffee, the homestay is closed at the moment until the situation improves,” he said.
Lars and Liza hope that as soon as the pandemic improves, their business can thrive and are looking forward to more visitors to come and stay at their homestay as well as to taste their home-grown coffee.
