Going Back to My "Roots"
The Kashima family has been farming in the Huleia Valley on Kauai for almost a hundred years. My grandparents were rice farmers and I grew up chasing chickens, catching crayfish in the ditches and playing while the grownups toiled from sun up to sun down. To me, it was a playland full of fresh fruits for the picking, shooting birds near the pig pens with my BB gun and exploring without fear. My father, uncles, aunts and older cousins all worked the farm over the years. There was so much that needed to be done. In hindsight, I had no idea how hard they worked everyday.
Even after grandpa passed away, my grandmother lived down at the farm until she was well in her 80's. She was a tiny woman and had become permanently bent over from so many years of planting the rice and carrying 50 pound rice bags on her back.
Before my dad retired from Grove Farm plantation, he cleared several acres of thick overgrown jungle land and started Haiku Farms. He planted ti leaves (the kind used for grass skirts and making lau lau), papayas and beautiful tropical flowers. He too toiled from dawn to dusk working the land, mostly by himself and with help from my mom and my siblings. I had moved away to Honolulu and then to California and was never there to lend a hand. I had become a "city boy" and worked in an office - I couldn't last a day doing the hard work like they did.
Besides the fruits and flowers, dad set up an unattended fruit shack and people would leave money for the fruits or sometimes take both the fruit AND the money. (see picture) The "Honest System" didn't always work.
Even with all the hard work, there were bountiful years and sparse ones. The most disastrous blow was Hurricane Iniki in 1992. That hurricane devastated his ENTIRE farm. Years of hard work was subjected to the laws of nature in mere hours.
Undeterred, dad started up again. Tourists from around the world stumbled across his farm and they came back year after year to enjoy his papayas and fruits. A few years ago, however, dad lost his sight and could no longer keep working the farm. Plants went unattended and the fields were overgrown. The tourists would come back to visit and asked what happened to his once beautiful farm.
I took my family back to Kauai a couple of years ago, I wanted my grandchildren to see where I played when I was growing up. I didn't know how much longer we would have the farm. This way of life was going to be lost forever.
Recently, my sister retired and decided that she would revive the farm. She and my brothers are now the third generation continuing the farming legacy. She's been updating me every so often on how they're progressing.
Please see our new feature - "Haiku Farms Minute" and follow the journey to rebirth.
Aloha, Myron 
