Re-purposed lifestyle

As the son of a family that worked the land, Sam Kakazu Jr. learned the art of repurposing long before it was trendy.

"As farmers it’s difficult to make money, so one man’s trash is another man’s treasure," he said.

The treasures in his Kaneohe garden include discarded furniture, DVDs,bleachers, track hurdles, airfield landing mats and plastic lumber — all repurposed into landscape features.

As a youngster, Kakazu watched his late father juggle his position as a school principal with managing a farm to support the family. They maintained a 9-acre plot in Waikane Valley where his father raised an array of crops.

"I was my father’s right-hand man on the farm," said Kakazu, 55. "My mother and my three siblings also engaged in various tasks, mostly harvesting and processing produce. Our major crops were bananas, sweet potato and chili pepper, but we also had dwarf papaya, eggplant, cherry tomato, soybeans, peanuts, okra, ginger and squash."

Since his grandparents came from the plantation, the family was also accustomed to the concepts of reuse and recycle. Kakazu recalls his grandmother finding a stone poi pounder on the farm and using it to pound macadamia nuts and anything else that needed to be mashed or ground.

"We needed to find a use for everything," he said.

Even an old fire engine. His family adapted the diesel-run vehicle to suck up water from Waiahole Ditch for irrigation.

After the family gave up the lease to their farm in the late 1970s, they needed to move everything on the property to the backyard of their Kaneohe home.

"The garden is a mishmash of different aspects of our life as a family," said Kakazu, who later helped his father on a farm in Waimanalo.

When his dad died in April 2010, Kakazu took over maintenance of the backyard garden. He implemented what he calls a "wiki garden" that uses long planting "socks" to hold soil and he plants and he gets water from a rain-barrel catchment system.

He’s also been creative in reusing discarded items. As an assistant athletic director at Castle High School, he obtained some bleachers that were destined for the landfill and repurposed them into shelves to hold plants.

"They were going to toss it," he said. "They’re sturdy and will never deteriorate."

Perforated World War II-era landing mats also serve as shelves. "I don’t know what they’re made of, but they last forever," he said.

In a small greenhouse, potted plants are laid out atop the slate surface of a pool table he acquired from a bar.

The garden is filled with vegetables, herbs and flowers. Carrots, bell peppers, cilantro, mint, beans, kale, eggplant, basil, chives and green onions are intermingled with fragrant flowers like tuberose, night-blooming jasmine, pikake, stephanotis and pakalana.

"The papaya blossoms are very fragrant, too," Kakazu said.

One aloe vera plant multiplied into more than 50 potted plants, and a red maple-leaf hibiscus sprout — surrounded by protective concrete blocks — has grown into a small, healthy shrub. In the center of the yard, he has plants that will be given as gifts to friends and relatives.

Kakazu said his biggest garden problem is slugs. His remedy also relies on repurposing: "They don’t like copper, so I surround the pots with old pennies," he said.

Kakazu hopes more people will consider salvaging materials that can still be useful and will take a long time to break down.

"One just needs to use their imagination."

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