When the school bell starts ringing again this fall, we’ll be introducing you to Jackie Akuna and the students of her amazing Agricultural Learning Center at Leilehua High School.
After graduating just six years ago from Leilehua and this well-preserved DOE and Future Farmers of America supported agricultural student program, Jackie got her teaching degree and came back to keep the program going. In her first year of leading this program it’s clear that Jackie is out to not just lead it but grow it. Enrollment in her program went from 110 to 170 students in just one year as word spread that something special was happening over in Ag.
Firmly planted in the heart of old Wahiawa, Leilehua High School has ag roots and it’s these roots, as well as hardcore support from its close knit (and farming) community, that have kept this program full of self sufficiency skills alive. Students under Jackie’s supervision cultivate three dedicated acres of land on school grounds learning a variety of skills that range from crop field, hydroponic greenhouse, Ti leaf preservation project, Kikuya grass pasture, tree keeping, as well as caring for chickens and rabbits. Bees keep coming to the farm, so they’ve also increased their hives too. The program also includes all the business side of running a farm as well. Harvests from the farm are prepped for delivery to the school’s culinary program and for the new Wahiawa Farmers Market down the road.
We’ve been hanging out with Jackie, her staff, students and family over the last months. And each time we come away excited for these kids. Yes, farming is not easy, but in this day and age learning how to grow food and run your own business at an early age may just turn out to be quite valuable.
Stay tuned – we’ll be bringing you a story complete with video and a fundraising campaign to help them raise funds for an aquaponic addition. Also part of this story is our involvement in bringing EBT (electronic benefits foodstamps) acceptance to this market with GreenWheel Food Hub!
Where you’ll find Jackie and her students:
Wahiawa Farmers Market (non-profit, community operated, 100% local produce) Every Thursday, 4:30-6:30pm 1067 California Avenue, in the parking lot of Hongwanji Wahiawa town
They say that everyone has a story, that each life is a story filled with chapters and turning points, dark moonless nights of the soul and bright shiny epiphanies, all mapped out to look like chaos until the moment when the focus of our internal lens brings it all into sharp focus. Well at least most of it.
Taking a leap. Wandering into the unknown. Staying curious. Working. Learning. Showing up and sitting in. Taking the reins. Taking care.
These were the thoughts that surfaced as I edited the video pieces (two quickly grew into four), mesmerized by Lesley Hill’s remarkable journey into farming. One that starts as a 19 year-old student/tennis player in Florida, in trouble with the college dean for standing up for equal rights, lands on the tarmac of Honolulu International Airport for a year long exchange. It turned out to not only be a defining moment for Lesley, but for the agricultural community in Hawaii.
Can you imagine Lesley at her first Young Farmers of America local chapter meeting only to find herself the youngest, the only female and the only person with a five month-old baby wrapped to her body? Can you also imagine there with Lesley a year later (with a year and a half toddler in tow), attending her first meeting as elected president of the same chapter? Pretty cool.
Countless adventures later, Lesley is now owner of 110 acres diverse in tropical fruit, spice and flowers on the lush Hamakua Coast of Hawaii Island. A shared passion for travel and tropical plants brought Lesley together with Michael Crowell, her partner in life and business. They own and operate Wailea Agricultural Group – born after finding a suitable plot and years of growing business and expertise on acreage nearer to Hilo. (Like many other farms in Hawaii, the decline of the sugar and pineapple industries that freed up large tracts of plantation land for smaller farms to take hold.)
It’s hard to imagine the kind of planning, resources and work it takes to transform and renew old monocropped land, so we’re fortunate that Lesley and Mike were able to take time out of their busy schedules to give us a tour of their farm, share their experience, and allow us to share what they have done. They’ve studied the needs of the land and the plants that are growing there – taking great risk and dedicating themselves to taking great care to shape the landscape to help manage water, wind and erosion control. The result of Lesley and Mike’s knowledge and deep feelings of stewardship for the land is exhilarating. And so delicious.
Lesley can’t keep up with how many varieties of fruit and spices are living on their farm. Here’s only a handful: peach palm, avocado, lychee, mango, rambutan, chico fruit, mangosteen, starfruit, passion fruit, soursop, langsat, durian, jackfruit, breadfruit, açaí, Meyer lemon, citron, limes, cinnamon, all-spice, nutmeg, bay, clove. They are constantly playing with the possibilities.
To top it off Wailea Agricultural Group is the country’s strongest producer of the very renewable and nutrient-rich delicacy called Heart of Palm. Each year, they harvest over 15 tons by hand for delivery and shipment to restaurants and hotels – local, national and international. What is Heart of Palm? Very delicate in both texture and flavor, it is the tender point of the growing tip of peach palm. This palm is originally from Central and South America, and is considered a very renewable crop because new shoots are constantly replacing the ones that are harvested, doing no harm to the mother plant. Now that’s taking care!
Wailea Agricultural Group website Lesley also has a cool home and plant shop in Hilo, Paradise Plants
On the Future: Cultivating Farms and Compassionate Community
That afternoon in Kahuku, our conversation with Shin and her mom Le Xieng encompassed topics and realms well beyond their farm and farming. Wide and deep, just as their hopes for the future involve not just their own success, but also the success of fellow family farms.
As we walked the acres of their farm – the rows of varieties of cherry tomatoes, long round squash and Japanese cucumbers, green-housed and open field – our conversation quickly went from peering into the past to brainstorming on the future. History. The closer you look, it starts to show you more. Underneath the words and the timelines, we find the human and we find our symbiotic relationship with nature.
It was amazing to hear about the Ho family’s journey into farming. That whole era of their own farm’s beginning marks the start of a particular resurgence from city to farm. In these same decades that we lost thousands of American farms, others began to take hold and slowly grow. Women across the country began to make their way into farming American soil and so did many families relocating from Southeast Asia.
In 1996, I was working with filmmaker Spencer Nakasako on a video diary documentary that focused on a young couple starting a family and trying to make it work in East Oakland. What made their story even more compelling was that while they were going through the throes of teenage parenthood, they were also helping their families navigate a new culture. The video diarists, Kelly and Tony, were part of a diverse community who migrated from Laos during the last two decades: Laotian, ethnic Chinese, Iu Mien, Hmong, and many more.
These were the communities caught in the middle of the volatile aftermath of the Vietnam War and the struggle for political control. During this time, I heard of how thousands of families from Laos were being relocated into regions all over the country, from Minneapolis to Oakland. They came from both urban and rural areas. They came from backgrounds that ranged from highly technical to commercial to agrarian and the arts. What struck me even then was how even in Oakland, many found ways to farm. Out of survival, necessity, and out of a deep connection to land and nature, these families brought with them the belief that fresh food is integral to keeping one’s good health and connection to culture.
Like the Ho’s, and yours and mine, every family has a different story. The more we know, the more we can appreciate. The more we can figure out ways to help each other too.
The Ho’s deeply held desire to help fellow small farmers brought something amazing to our attention: Southeast Asian family farms are an integral part of our foodshed. These farms are not focusing their energy on growing cash crops for export. They are supplying us with our dinner basics: green onion, onion, ginger, choy sum, ungchoi, daikon, cabbage, beets, lettuce, papaya, banana. At the farmers markets that I help to manage, of our anchor farmers more than half are part of the Southeast Asian community. If we are talking about growing our foodshed we need to support these farmers who are already so to say “on the ground and growing.”
The Southeast Asian farming families represent the next wave and they have made a positive impact on Hawaii’s agriculture. They have the work ethic and a strong desire, two key ingredients needed to succeed in this very difficult industry.
We’ll be continuing the conversation, sharing it here with you and involving you in these efforts, as we listen and learn more about how we can all support these family farms who are currently in a position to become even greater contributors to our local foodshed. Let’s take a deeper look at how we can support these farmers so that they will remain viable and be successful. Lisa Asagi- She grows food correspondent
Dan and I drove out one Sunday to Ho Farms, a 40-acre farm in the Kahuku-area of Oahu’s North Shore. At only 28, Shin is well-known in the Hawaii food and ag community for being part of the next generation of farming in Hawaii – innovative, market-savvy – trading a career on the mainland for a chance to help her family’s farm.
Shin and her mother Le Xieng, took time out of their Sunday harvesting and packing schedule to talk with us. We walked along the rows of greenhouses that allows them to achieve a consistency they crave and to keep spraying down to an absolute minimum. Food Safety certified and Seal of Quality-approved, Ho Farms supplied the state of Hawaii with nearly 100,000 pounds of produce in 2009. They specialize in 6 varieties of tomatoes, cucumbers, long beans, eggplant and squash.
They are a tight family of four – father Wei Chong, mother Le Xieng, Shin and her brother Neal – and they run the farm together. Le Xieng laughs about how it is four minds running the business with four different visions. Now they have employees to help with the day to day operations, but it started out with just them: a young family who made the treacherous journey from Laos to Hawaii, unafraid of hard work but learning the hard way that the only way to really make a fair and good living was to work for yourself.
After a series of jobs from truck driving to taxicabbing, Mr. Ho made a go at farming. Le Xieng, watching him come home so late every night, left her seamstress work and set aside fashion design classes at HCC to help him. After a few years of shuttling back and forth from their home in Palolo to the farm in Kahuku, and seeing so little of their children because of their farming and commuting hours, the Ho’s decided to pack up their family and move to Kahuku.
As we walked along the rows of cucumber plants, hundreds of them, broad leaf and emerald green, Le Xieng talks about those years and you can feel how they must have been a blur – full of work and growth – when she mentions how her children must have felt. How her husband’s brother was the one to take them to the zoo, to the movies. How she and her husband would buy them trips to Disneyland but would be unable to go, unable to leave the farm untended. How there was nothing for her kids to do in Kahuku, no where to go. Later, Shin talks about growing up in Kahuku, how she wouldn’t trade it for anything. And you can see that mother daughter thing in these things, the worrying and the caring. The guilt and the love. But when it comes to the farm, they both say it: it’s about constantly finding a better way to do things. And respecting each other. That’s a big one.
Shin tells me that they respect each other’s ability to work hard. I also suspect that they respect each other’s opinion because they trust that each has the best interest of the farm in mind. A common goal.
And I wonder how it must have felt for the Ho’s when Shin and Neal after living on the mainland and earning college degrees, took up the challenge of coming back to the farm with the intent of taking it to the next level. It took a lot of trust and belief in their children for the elder Ho’s to accept and implement what Shin and Neal, with the help of Shin’s boyfriend at the time, had in mind – which was a completely new branding and market strategy. In a matter of months, they applied to get into Costco, got in, developed a logo, a branding and marketing strategy. This was the start of a whole different kind of farming. One that allowed Ho Farm to start commanding the respect and prices that comes with a branded farm. Branding, getting Food Safety Certified and Seal of Quality approved, only helped their farm to be recognized for the good work they were already doing.
Marketing is not the only kind of innovation going on at the farm. The Ho’s are always researching and experimenting with sustainable farming methods, so far the greenhouses have proven to be worth their weight in gold.
They are also social innovators. Shin mentions that their main top goals for their farm is to be able to supply the community with enough food, to have their farm be one of the greatest and most rewarding places for people to work, and to be able to help other small family farms in the community take their produce to the next level too. And it can and will happen. The Ho’s are part of the Laotian community in Hawaii, a community that is small but increasingly keeping much agricultural land in production on Oahu alive and productive through small leased plots run by families. These families are part of the legacy of farming world-wide and they are part of the future of farming in Hawaii. Lisa Asagi- She grows food correspondent
Check out Part Two of Ho Farm’s mother and daughter team – we talk about the future of their farm, farming in Hawaii and the role of community.
When 2010 rolled around, the Peterson family knew that they would have to do something special and they are still figuring out just what. Their family farm in Wahiawa had reached its 100th year of existence. That it would come at a time that is so bittersweet and hopeful has put so much into perspective for them and for all of us. The Petersons have been through and continue to make their way through more than their share of trials. The road has been a long one. A hundred years old to be exact, which is equal to a miracle for a farm these days. So how are they celebrating? In the most meaningful way you could ever imagine. They are slowly rebuilding. They are slowly regrouping. And with the help of all of us, they will even grow into their dreams of being able to supply our community at full capacity again like they did for decades. Fresh eggs for us and a promising livelihood for their entire family again.
We visited with Sharon at her family’s farm and got her thoughts on the efforts that brought all of us together – the nearly disastrous crisis of the Hawaii egg farms, feed subsidy help and the marketing plans in 2007 that saved them. It was during these months of working on the marketing strategy for the egg farmers that Dan and I started working together. In some ways it was our first She grows food project. Here’s a link to the website islandfresheggs.com. Visiting again with Sharon opened our eyes even more to her and her family’s incredible story. As humble as they are, we can still see how much more we can learn from them about the history and the future of farming in Hawaii. So please stay tuned for more about Sharon, her family and Petersons Upland Farm as we venture into the month of August.
Why August? Why, it’s been declared Hawaii Egg Month! When Petersons Upland Farm fan and Wahiawa-raised Chef Alan Wong realized that 2010 marked Peterson’s 100 year anniversary he decided to commemorate it with an Egg Recipe Contest! alanwongs.com and an egg-citing menu for the entire month of August. Well, word got around and we jumped on the band wagon to refocus on the August issue and soon to be announced collaboration with our friends at Share Your Table!
We think a 100 years of farming is definite cause for celebration. If anything, to honor all of the love that Sharon and her family have for what they do and what that love fosters in its hometown, Wahiawa, and beyond.
When Estrellita was just a girl with a name full of starlight, she would explore the wilderness surrounding their family’s anthurium farm in Mountain View on Hawaii Island and come back with baby fish that she would raise in tubs and buckets in the backyard. She cared for them so well that they would end up on the dinner table months later. That was just the beginning.
Now Lita Weidenbach, with her husband Ron, runs the largest Tilapia aquaculture farm in the state of Hawaii.
The second thing Lita tells me is that it was love at first sight: college days, Ron was standing in the kitchen at a friend’s party, cooking. Fish soup. This led to dates of driving around the North Shore looking for land to dream about raising fish on, deep decades longs research and experimentation that has led to the cultivation of a unique branch of Hawaii’s food growing past and potential: land-based aquaculture.
Over the nearly 20 years of building their farm, Lita and Ron have also built a new reputation for tilapia in Hawaii and it hasn’t been easy. Tilapia here picked up a reputation for being prolific and cheap, whose quality was determined by it’s environment: historically ditches and canals. The quality of any fish is determined by where it lives and what it eats. Tilapia is no different.
We’re standing a few feet away from the edge of a cliff that drops down into the shimmering green expanse. She calls it a pond but it’s eight acres large and 100 plus feet deep. What makes it so rare and keeps it alive is the fact it’s being fed by cool natural springs. Tilapia can grow anywhere, but there could not be a more perfect place for raising a new kind of tilapia: the tastiest kind. Lita and Ron have been working together for thirty years, painstakingly breeding and carefully cultivating toward a fish fit for white tablecloth and the finest of palates. Especially one belonging to a very stylish and knowledgeable First Lady, who has in fact dined on a tilapia raised right here on this farm and has declared that tilapia is her favorite fish.
Tasty is right. It takes one to two years depending on the desired finish weight. The result is big, meaty with a delicate and light flavor.
Lita’s domain at the farm is the hatchery and nursery, the raising of the baby fry as well as the algae the baby fish feed on. Keen attention to detail, and nuanced reading of behavior key Lita into the well-being of the young fish. It is fascinating to me, how Lita’s girlhood fascination with growing fish had blossomed into a very specialized livelihood. I want to learn more about how far back and how deeply this connection to fish is to her life and she sends me this illuminating email: “You know, I think when you are a child it is so easy to be captivated by the wonder of animals, plants, and other creatures of this world — a child can be acutely aware of and appreciate such minute details as the translucent tint of a fish scale or the particular flowing curve of a fin. I remember knowing each of my tilapia as specific individuals — I had a name for each of them! I was so totally charmed by these underwater inhabitants that I spent long hours just observing them and learning their habits. So yes, I believe that on some level, the care of my fishes came naturally to me, although my mother assisted in helping me to provide their basic care (an old bathtub and leftover rice from dinner!).”
Is it possible to have a sense of fish? We think so. So many people who have dedicated their lives to working with nature have developed a certain sense. It could even be looked at as a kind of communication between humans and animals, perhaps honed by tens of thousands of hours of living together and of caring for. There is also another kind of sense that Lita hinted to in our interview as we talked about how more women are needed in aquaculture. Why women? In aquaculture the kind of attention to detail and acute observational skills that women have had to develop as care givers would be of great benefit in raising fragile young creatures that can only exist in very specific living conditions. In Lita’s case maternal instincts must have been doing double duty with raising her small fry alongside her three human children on the farm.
With their involvement in the growth of the aquaculture industry in Hawaii and the nation, Ron was sometimes away on conferences and this often left Lita in charge of running the farm and caring for her young children. We’re standing at the rocky shore as Lita introduces me to a farm-built skiff that she and the kids would steer out onto the water to feed the fish. It’s about the size of a surfboard. It must not have been easy at all, as isolated as the farm is, but I can tell by her laugh and the glimmer in her eyes that they took it as an adventure.
Lita mentions often that it was a dream of theirs, to raise their children on a farm and the dream has come true.
Her children were outstanding students at Waialua High School. Joe is now 25 and an environmental engineer. Mariah is 22 and has a degree in sociology. The youngest, Mikia, is 18 and attending Princeton and is focusing on issues of sustainability and renewable energy. They still come back to help on the farm and have a hand in planning for its future– the second generation of Weidenbachs. It will be exciting to see what they can do all together now.
We hope nothing gets in the way of their plans.
A few days ago, Dan and I got word that the Weidenbach’s farm is in danger. Please lend your help by emailing a brief testimony of support for the renewal of their lease so that they may continue to operate their farm. They not only strengthen our local food system by being our largest land-based aquaculture operation, but they are also leaders in this community. Here’s a link to the Acting Up Call to Action.
It’s highly unlikely that anyone else will ever be able to use that particular patch of land in the optimal and sustainable way that Lita and Ron are. They have been selectively breeding fish, maintaining a pristine eight acre pond, and cultivating an industry that already feeds us and may even save us one day: sustainable land-based aquaculture. This means the ability to raise seafood in safe, controlled and healthy environments, not the ocean.
With all that’s been happening to our oceans, how relevant is this particular endeavor at this moment in time?
This premiere issue of She grows food focuses on The Farming Women of Ka’u. We’ll take you to this farming community on Hawai’i island that’s not only rising from the ashes of the post-sugar era recession, but is aspiring to reclaim farming and food growing for the art it truly is. Five-star finished pasture-raised beef. World-class coffee. Magazine ready veggies.
Michelle Galimba, Lorie Obra and Sokha Hester. They, like the rest of the women of Ka’u and women all over the world, are the backbones of their communities. We are stronger than we know. She grows food is here to remind us of this.
Why start at Ka’u? It’s the district on the southern tip of Hawai’i Island, the state’s youngest island. In fact, it is still forming. All that new birthing is happening in Ka’u alongside a fiercely growing community commitment to growth that is agriculturally based. No hotels, more farms. No chains, more local stores selling local produce. They are developing a new strategy for growth: growing things at the highest standards possible. In a world awash in the tide of cheap food, they have decided to grow not only real food, but really great food.
They are taking farming back to it’s original state. Much more than a science. It’s a craft. Even an art.
And not just a business either. Rather, a community effort. A responsibility. Women are leading the way of this revolution. In the next weeks and months, we’ll be introducing you to more women who will be giving you reasons to think Hawaii is on the forefront of this movement that may have began on our plates but is ultimately reconnecting us deeply to the issues of land, water, community, and food.
Please join us. Let’s build the future of our food together. From the ground up.
With a cattle ranch to run, raising an eight-year-old daughter on her own, and a Ph.D. in Comparative Lit, there’s a lot on Michelle Galimba’s mind.
Coming back to Hawaii after an era of travel and study that took her from the cafes of Paris to the corridors of academia, Michelle has only sharpened her ability to see the beauty and meaning, the art and politics, in the landscape of agriculture and community she now finds herself.
She grew up on Oahu and graduated from Punahou, but raising animals is strong in her blood. Her father, Al Galimba, played a huge role the North Shore Meadow Gold dairy operations at the height of its success. When Meadow Gold closed its dairy operations on Oahu, C. Brewer on Hawaii Island began leasing land holdings acquired for their defunct sugar operation, it was then the Galimbas decided to pursue Al’s long held dream: to move back to his hometown of Na’alehu in the Ka’u district and raise cattle. They started with nothing but knowledge, desire and their connection to the land and its history.
Hawaii Island is where the relationship of Hawaii and cattle began, over 200 years ago, when the first four cows arrived as gifts to King Kamehameha. It is on this island that the king’s love of the cows caused him to declare a protective proclamation that allowed them to flourish without boundary – wild. Ranching in Hawaii began as a way to minimize the rogue population of this huge animal.
And that’s how Kuahiwi Ranch started too. With one cow. With Michelle and her brothers, riding deep into the valleys and roping wild cattle. Then caring for them, raising them, cultivating their herd over a decade and a half.
But ranching is not just about cows. It is also about the land, pasture, water, and working with others to keep a rural community alive. The expanse of land, and the many factors involved, might also require those who ranch to develop a philosophy of stewardship. This is certainly the case with the Galimbas and in other ranchers we’ve spoken with.
On an early visit to Kuahiwi, I sat with Michelle on her porch. We were high in the valley and as she gazed deep into the valley. She spent the last few nights shuttling one of her dogs to the vet, he was old and not doing good. Between thoughts, my eyes would drift over the expanse of shimmering waves of green and gold pasture to the smooth and endlessly blue ocean. Then sky. She had just come back from Honolulu where she met with a meat distributor in a small air-conditioned office. The goal is to get their beef into markets on Oahu. She is also working with coffee growers in Ka’u to get their coffee into larger markets too. It’s not all just about markets, it’s about farming. It’s about doing what it takes to make Ka’u a community where farms could have a future and people could continue to have livelihoods and independent businesses, where the next generation does not have to move away.
That moment in the freezing air-conditioned office in Honolulu – it was a walk through fire. A necessary step, she said, if her daughter and nephews are to have even an inkling of a chance at running this ranch.
Months later, Michelle is on Oahu again. Events have been organized to showcase Kuahiwi beef in a tasting against supermarket imported beef. Chefs from top Oahu restaurants show their overwhelming support of Kuahiwi.
I hear from a friend of mine, also a friend of Michelle’s, that Michelle’s father Al has said if they do not get into Oahu markets by summer, they will need to close their operation. I meet Michelle and her daughter, Ua, for dinner. They are in town to do a sampling presentation at Foodland for a beef co-op they are a part of. Ua is along for a short shopping trip that involved a pair of silver shoes for the Miss Peaberry contest.
Michelle is a mover of things and ideas. And things are moving quickly for Michelle. And on a recent Saturday night, she fired the equivalent of a bursting flare high into darkness, illuminating the disappearing landscape of agriculture in not only Hawaii, but the rest of country, and perhaps the world.
It came as a 8:43 p.m. posting to her blog Ehulepo, named aptly for the wind of Ka’u that beats the dust.
In it she mentions an article, “Push To Eat Local is Hampered By Shortage” by Katie Zezima for the New York Times that reveals that local independent livestock farmers across the nation are finding that a lack of support by communities and governments for needed infrastructure has become the largest obstacle in this push for reestablishing local food systems.
“This is a problem that I deal with everyday,” writes Michelle. “It’s a part of what I mean by saying that it’s not enough to buy local. Is it the farmer’s and rancher’s responsibility to create the infrastructure necessary to get the food all the way onto the plate? Do farmers have the millions of dollars and more importantly, the time and stamina to get through the regulatory hurdles of putting this infrastructure into place? We are trying to get it done, but the obstacles are daunting. We could really use some help, and not just in the eating part. “
In a few days she will be appointed to the Hawaii Board of Agriculture. But it will not instantly solve the problem for her ranch, for Ka’u, or for food growers in Hawaii.
She Grows Food invites you to be a part of a project to support Kuahiwi, in not just establishing themselves in the Oahu markets, but to address Michelle’s concern about the lack of infrastructure.
Did you know that freshly picked, unroasted coffee berries have a soft white flesh?
I was savoring the rarity of this chance to taste one and its surprisingly pleasant sweetness, as Lorie Obra informed me that because there was only one white bean that came out of the berry that was in my mouth, it was a peaberry. Very special. Rare.
We were standing in Cloudrest, an elevated area in Ka’u, where many of the coffee growing families’s farms are. I’m told that this place lives up to its name. A friend was here a few months ago and came early enough to be treated to some dramatic mist lingering just above the seven hundred trees on Lorie’s farm. But this afternoon, it was the happiest and bluest sky you ever saw.
How it must have felt for Ka’u.
Remote. Nearly 922 square miles that was home to an active volcanic crater, moonscape lava fields, ranches, a string of townships, not quite 6,680 people, and recently cultivated coffee farms. When the international coffee spotlight fell on Ka’u, lingered on Lorie Obra.
This was no strike of luck. This was the result of a concerted effort of thirty newly established, family-run independent coffee farms that, against the prevailing cannibalistic business models, decided to help each other. Through trials and tribulations, they organized and committed their hearts to proving that in Ka’u, an exceptional coffee could be cultivated. The awards started coming in.
In 2007, two of the Ka’u family farms captured 6th and 9th place in the Roaster’s Guild Cupping Pavilion Competition. Also, seven Ka’u farms ranked in the SCAA’s top 10 Hawaii/Asia/Indonesia regional competition. In the following year, another farm came in 11th in the Roaster’s Guild Coffee of the Year competition. In 2009, yet another Ka‘u farm placed 7th in the Roaster’s Guild Coffee of the Year competition.
Most of these farmers were the last of multiple generations to work at the sugar plantation which long ran the Ka’u economy before closing operations in 1997. Old plantation land became available at reasonable price and these families decided to make a go of it and planted coffee trees. What Ka’u decided to do however, was not simply grow coffee. They were aiming for exceptional coffee.
When the sun gets too strong, Lorie and I walk towards a small red cabin raised on stilts. There’s a picnic bench under an eave that extends from the little. It’s cool and quiet. The grove slopes up toward the mountains, the trees are planted in orderly rows. Lorie tells me that I just missed the blossoming of the coffee flowers, by a week! Darn. She jokes that it looked like it was snowing up here.
I follow her gaze, the little red cabin behind me, it too has a story. Rusty’s brother-in-law called it The Love Shack, she mused, joking about it’s isolated, romantic look. It was a place that they and their help could to run to for shelter when the rain came.
Lorie was moving her hand through hundreds of brilliantly red coffee berries nestled in her picking basket when I noticed the small elegant script eternally drawn into her left hand. Rusty.
It was 1999 when, after several trips home visiting his family in Ka’u, that Lorie and her husband, Rusty, decided pack up their life in New Jersey, move to Hawaii and grow coffee. The two of them did not having any coffee growing experience, but what they did have were meticulous natures and an understanding of the workings of chemistry, which is of course, is all about the nature of nature. Rusty was a chemist and Lorie was a medical technician. As their website says, this contributed to the spirit of culinary experimentation and open-air laboratory that still exists at the farm.
After six years of building their farm together, she lost Rusty in 2006. She tells me that when he got very ill, he made her promise to sell their farm. He didn’t want her to be burdened with running the farm alone.
It was a huge undertaking, but Lorie kept the farm. She decided to continue her and Rusty’s dream.
She’s been running the farm alone. Her berries are hand-picked and she is constantly experimenting with all kinds of processing techniques, working closely with good friend and roastmaster R. Miguel Meza, extending her knowledge of all things coffee. She is also currently president of the Ka’u Coffee Co-op, still 30 families strong, an organization started by Rusty. The co-op could be thought of as backbone that brought the Ka’u growers deep into serious international coffee competition.
When I ask her to tell me what she can’t live without, the farming scientist tells me “water.” Then as we walk through a row of trees, she shows me the delayed, unripened berries, an effect of the heavy recent vog. I ask her what she dreams of, not skipping a beat, Lorie lets me know. What she wants is not just for her business, but for all of Ka’u coffee to be recognized as perhaps the best the world has ever known. She wants that for Ka’u. And for Rusty.
There’s always that moment. That bright second when the world aligns itself into an open path.
For Sokha Hester, the path has been both treacherous and remarkable.
But the moment she started on the path of a professional grower of food happened when she gave a teller at her bank a few of her homegrown eggplant. The next week, the same teller begged Sokha to sell some of her harvest at the Na’alehu Farmers Market. You can see why. Anyone who catches a glimpse of anything grown on the Hesters’ farm, blinks twice. Not just beautiful. Stunning.
Years later, Sokha and her husband Ellis, have innovated their 30 acre growing space a mile above Pahala, into a farm that offers such a diversity – nothing seems impossible. They continue to creatively work their way through a variety of not the best growing conditions: uneven land, rocky soil, weather conditions – to bring to their markets the most flavorful and eye-popping vegetables.
As we sat on the beautiful deck of the home she shares with her husband Ellis and their cats, Sokha confides that it hasn’t been easy lately. Ellis had just come through some health issues. She was worried about how long they could keep up such a difficult way of life: waking up early for the farmers markets, the very physicalness of farming, the necessity of their constant brainstorming of solutions for their crops, the long summer twelve hour days.
But then, that bright moment circles back. “But people depend on us, for their vegetables. Whenever we talk about quitting, they all say please don’t stop, if you stop, where will I get my vegetables.” After another pause, “Also, we really like being able to employ people, we like it that we can give people jobs here.”
And they are not only providing employment. They are providing an opportunity for learning how to grow and all of the skill set needed to run a farm. The young local people on their farm that day looked involved and engaged, there was a sense of pride to. How can you not feel very good about growing things of beauty. I’m getting repetitious, I know. But, look at this.
That she came back to growing food is another circle altogether. The beginning of that one took place in a small village in Cambodia decades ago, during the communist regime, where she and her family had been relocated. They, like every family, had been given a 100 square foot space. They, like all the other families during that era in Cambodia, went into the forest to cut trees and grass to build a shelter to sleep in. This is where and how they lived for years, Sokha, her parents, her ex-husband and their four children. She traded seeds with her neighbors and learned how to grow. They are Cambodian, Chinese and Vietnamese. Her family ran businesses, not farms. This was her first experience with growing, in the small spaces around their house. She grew pumpkins, squash, whatever she could. They never got to eat what they grew. Khmer Rouge guards would keep track and come to harvest all produce for the main kitchens. She didn’t mind, as long as it was providing food for people. She kept growing.
After her mother died in the camp, they decided that it was too dangerous to stay where they were. It took five attempts, but they all made it out. The path out was through jungle and fields laden with mines. But they made it. They made it to the US where Sokha eventually started working for a technology company that developed high-speed telecommunications equipment for hospitals. Sokha, starting as a technician, worked her way through the gates and ended up as a patent-holding engineer. It was hands on all the way. They would give her the projects that engineers with degrees could not handle.
Her love of finding solutions is something she has in common with her husband Ellis, the perennial farmer. They stay up nights devising solutions for their farm. Two inventors burning the midnight oil about water, weather, tractor pumps.
After she met Ellis, he was managing a huge organic farm in Willamette Valley. She began spending more and more time in the country, on the farm. He taught her how to drive a tractor. They began coming to Hawaii Island on vacations. They loved being here. And slowly, a way opened for them to move to Ka’u.
At first it was natural to tend a vegetable garden. They had no idea it would turn it into a business. But here they are. Thirty acres later.
As we walked through the tractor pathway between the greenhouses, a hawk circled overhead and landed on a tree right on the farm. It stayed and watched. Sokha told us that the hawk had been there from the day they moved in. “This is his home. He comes and watches us everyday, picking green beans, everything. Sometimes I can get very close to him. Yes, this is his home.”
Here she was now. On an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Growing food for people and creating livelihoods too.
Before we left, I asked her what it was, that one thing she could not live without, without a pause she said it. “Work.” She smiled and put on her hat. “We have to keep moving. It’s what us human beings do.”
