Community rallies to restore torched Ka’ala Farm

When Jacob Aki watched flames sweep through Wai­anae Valley in early June and come within 20 yards of his family’s home, he feared for nearby Ka‘ala Farm.

"I live right down there so I was worried about what would happen," Aki said. "It was more of a sad time because to me the aina is very important to my culture, and the aina is what feeds us. So then when the land burns, it kind of burns us inside as well."

Aki joined roughly 100 other west Oahu volunteers Saturday to help clean and rebuild the farm after one of the island’s largest brush fires this year charred nearly 1,200 acres.

The fire began June 4 at Radford Street and Kolekole Road at Lualualei Naval Magazine and spread into the forest reserve.

It spared the ancient lo‘i (fields) — one of the main attractions at Ka‘ala’s Cultural Learning Center — but destroyed the 30-foot, nearly 30-year-old Hawaiian grass hale used for gathering and teaching young students, along with two miles of PVC pipes that supplied water to the taro patches.

The farm’s executive director and co-founder, Eric Enos, along with his staff, has chosen to view the fire as a positive event that has rallied the community to restore the farm.

"Something about once you put your hands in the ground, you feel like a sense of ‘this place is my place,’" said Andrew Aoki, a worker and executive assistant at the farm. "Ka‘ala has been an institution here. We want people to know that there are great things in Wai­anae — real treasures."

Pauline Sato, a volunteer with the Malama Learning Center who also helps run the Hawai‘i Green Collar Institute, said she spoke with Enos shortly after the fire and was surprised by his calm demeanor.

"He (was) like, ‘It can always be rebuilt,’ and, ‘That’s what you do; it wasn’t meant to be permanent,’ and, ‘Things like this can happen,’" Sato said. "This is like a new beginning for the next hale and the next programs that they’re going to do."

Sato and other volunteers from Waianae High School, Nanakuli High School, MA‘O Organic Farms, INPEACE, Kamehameha Schools and the Malama Learning Center spent Saturday clearing charred trees from a nearby wauke, or paper mulberry, garden used to make kapa, replacing and protecting melted PVC pipes used to irrigate the lo‘i, and preparing the fields for students to begin visiting the hands-on educational farm next month.

Enos said the fire has also opened up opportunities to discover more ancient taro fields within the valley. Because the June fire came from behind the valley, which is usually protected from fires, it raged through roughly a generation of untouched brush, he said.

"We knew from the old maps that this area was probably the breadbasket, or the poi bowl, of the entire Waianae coast," Enos said, adding that he has already begun to work with archaeologists and students from Waianae and Nanakuli high schools to map out the exposed area.

"I think when you go to Europe, people understand the old European villages, they understand the value (of age)," he said. "Since America is such a new country, we don’t have that 2,000-year (reference point), but we have (that) as Pacific islanders — it’s just that it’s not in cathedrals; it’s in the land."

Aki, a Kamehameha Schools student, said he attended the work day after hearing about it from one of his past teachers.

"It’s just to give back to my aina," he said. "Because the land is what feeds us; the land is what takes care (of us), and so if we care for the land, the land is going to care for us."