Waipao Lo‘i:

Taro growing in one of the lo‘i at Waipao.

"There may have been lo‘i there before," Keoni says about the spring water at Waipao. "The area is really marshy. There were no walls that were surviving. The kuāuna that we have are not stone, it’s mud, compacted dirt. It’s taken quite a while for the space to dry out, and it’s still, some areas are still very kelekele [muddy]."

"Our lo‘i kalo is located on a kuleana land parcel we lease from the Kauhane ‘ohana," Nick Needle explains, “and I was told it was farmed up until about the 50s or 60s . The family would grow kalo and they would take it to town side and distribute it at a church in Kalihi.

"The land around our lo‘i kalo and where our main building is located is all leased from Kamehameha Schools. This land went through different periods of use. For a long time, it was used as an illegal dump site. When Papahana arrived and began cleaning and restoring the site, there was all kinds of rubbish-from cans and bottles, concrete blocks and rebar, all the way up to abandoned trucks. You can still see plenty remnants of it. A lot of the topography is actually dump fill. In the stream, we’ve pulled out entire cars and trucks. Even today I could show you diesel motors that are lodged in the stream bed.

A chart at Papahana Kuaola explains the different parts of the taro plant.

"On top of the rubbish, this place was overgrown with invasive trees and shrubs. It looked very different from what you see today. What was here was some kukui and some ulu that was planted. I was told by a Japanese gentleman that would bring Japanese tourists here on honeymoon to take pictures for a short period.

"And as far as this building, I don't remember when exactly it was built, but I know at one point it was used as a boat and canoe building house. We’ve found discarded balls of hardened epoxy and other materials that were used for building canoes in this area. When I came here, we had only the top three or four terraces of lo‘i. Within a few years, we were able to expand our lo‘i to this full acre of production we have today.

"The whole property is around 70 acres. It includes some of the forest land going up the mountainside of ‘Ioleka‘a over there. We've made trails that go up the mountain ridge.

"As far as what we're actively managing, it's probably around 10 acres. Beyond that, we do more passive land management. There's a lot of pockets of native plants up on the ridge of ‘Ioleka‘a. On the other ridge, there's a red scar or erosion scar. There's one lone plant left in the center of that scar. It's an ‘ōhi‘a lehua just hanging in there. Beyond that, there are lots of ko‘oko‘olau, pala‘a fern, pukiawe, ‘ilima, and a lot more ‘ōhi‘a lehua. They're still up there, and when we find them, we clear the invasive plants back a little bit to give them a little room to breathe and grow.

Ukiuki, a native plant used for fiber and rope-making, especially for house-building.

"We've planted this hapu‘u, tī leaf, hala, ‘awa, ma‘o hauhele, native sedges. I was told these kukui and ulu groves were planted many years ago by a Japanese gentleman who would bring tourists here to take their wedding photos. It's just part of our mission of restoring native plants, and this one tends to thrive here. This tī leaf, the Hawaiian sugar cane.

"When I started here back in 2011, we only had these top four terraces of lo‘i kalo here. So most of the lo‘i you see here are only six to seven years old. They’ve only been through a few growth cycles. Most of this lo‘i was built on two different volunteer work events that spanned a total of three days. They were weekend long camp-over events that attracted over 100 volunteers each day. We had a huge turn-out from the community and were able to open most of these lo‘i in those few days. This is a testament to the power of bringing community together and achieving big goals on the ‘āina in a very short amount of time. It's very powerful.

"Aside from growing food, the main function of our lo‘i is to serve as a sort of seed bank for Hawaiian varieties of kalo. We have about 45 out of the 60 to 70 varieties they say are left.

Kihei Nahale-a shows how to turn ukiuki into cordage using the "Hilo twist" method.

"And we have sugar cane, tī leaf. There's Hawaiian varieties of banana. On this far hill side, which has only recently been open for a few years now, we've planted a lot of native hardwoods. The skinny ones with the leaves angled upward, that's kamani. There's also kou. There's five or six different varieties of Hawaiian banana. We've built in some sediment retention basins for when it floods.

"There's ‘awa, there's some more hibiscus. Eventually, this will all grow into a little forest, and will hopefully serve as another pu‘uhonua and learning resource. And the wood will be there 30-40 years from now to be harvested for different things.

"We started managing the space in 2006-2007. This area along the stream was one of the first areas that Papahana worked on. One of the primary plants that they put in here was mamaki.

"Since that first planting, now we have all of these mamaki volunteering along the stream. They are used for tea. It tastes nice and has medicinal uses.

"We’re only actively managing the part of Ha‘ikū stream that runs through this property. There was one period when we cleared a lot of the bamboo growing further up the stream, and it revealed many levels of old rock wall agricultural terraces. I was told these terraces date back at least to the period when this valley was used to farm sugar cane and pineapple."

Pacific Worlds > He‘eia, O‘ahu > Onwards > Replanting