Earthing: What It’s Like to Volunteer at a Local Farm

Deep in Kalihi Valley, volunteers harvest greens for neighborhood kūpuna and a nonprofit café.

April 4, 2024

Sarah Burchard,

Earthing is Frolic’s three-part series for Earth Month. Each post spotlights a different way to support local food production on O‘ahu—with tips and a list of places to volunteer at the end.

smiling man in t-shirt and baseball pushes a wheelbarrow in a garden

Casey Chikuma at Ho‘oulu ‘Āina. Photo: Sarah Burchard

Deep in the rainforest of Kalihi Valley, past the pink store and around the bend from Chozen-ji Buddhist temple, is a 100-acre nature preserve called Ho‘oulu ‘Āina. Originally part of the Kalihiihiolaumiha ahupua‘a, this land was turned into a soil-dredging site in 1979 and after that a local dumping ground and refuge for squatters. In 2005, the Hawai‘i Department of Land and Natural Resources granted Kōkua Kalihi Valley, a community-based hub and holistic health center, a 20-year lease to restore the land. Together with the community, they’ve been doing so ever since.

Now there is a garden that produces greens, root vegetables, ‘ōlena and herbs; an orchard of kalo, cassava, ‘uala, ‘ulu, coconut, papaya, noni, māmaki and tī; and the muddy maluawai (mountain valley region), where mountain apple trees drip with fruit in the summertime.

Volunteers work the land. A typical volunteer day goes something like this:

9 a.m. I arrive to find farm manager Casey Chikuma and six volunteers and staffers bent over rows of bok choy and lettuce. I hurry over to help, pulling the roots up with one hand, knocking off excess soil with the other and placing the delicate greens into a large plastic tray. The morning’s harvest will be washed, dried and delivered to KKV’s Roots Café, where it’s packed into produce boxes for kūpuna in Kalihi, or goes into meals for café customers.

crates of freshly harvested greens in a rainforest

Photo: Sarah Burchard

About a dozen garden beds around me are laid out in a grid bordered by wisps of California grass and random taro shoots. There are tool sheds, an imu, a terrace wrapped in liliko‘i vines and structures that house offices, a restroom and a small apothecary filled with medicinal plants and tinctures. The air feels relatively cool, but that won’t last long. One of the reasons Chikuma has us working right away is to beat the heat. Kalihiihiolaumiha’s various meanings include rain, tough skin and profound silence. It rains a lot in the valley, and there are mosquitos. The place name describes not just the land, but the people who are resilient to its conditions.

10 a.m. Chikuma gathers us in a circle. He welcomes us with a brief history of the ahupua‘a and the aim of the workday: “to connect to the ‘āina, the neighborhood community, generational wisdom and our vitality.”

Ho‘oulu ‘Āina means “to grow the land.” This name also refers to people growing because of the land. “We engage in growing food and medicine for one another and in the process cultivate our own strength and healing,” Chikuma says. He speaks slowly and softly, often with closed eyes. He wants that lesson to sink in especially. Afterward, we introduce ourselves to each other and the ‘āina and share a pule, or blessing.

10:30 a.m. I put on garden gloves and get to work weeding, a typical task on any farm. The sun is hotter now. I remove my long-sleeved shirt, succumbing to mosquito bites, but I’m not worried. Last time I was here, Chikuma introduced me to honohono grass, which grows along the back of the garden: Pick one long blade, break it open, rub the sap on a bite and the itchiness and swelling go away. I’ve had bites heal before I’ve left the farm.

volunteer at a local farm rakes a vegetable garden bed

Photo: Sarah Burchard

Next, we grab rakes and drag them through the garden beds, chopping up clumps of soil and making a plateau. I chat with a couple volunteers while we work—a twenty-something from San Francisco who came to O‘ahu to explore his Filipino heritage, and a mom teaching her little boy the virtue of hard work. A staff member dumps a wheelbarrow full of fishbone meal onto the bed, and we mix in the fertilizer before reshaping our plateau.

11:30 a.m. Now it is time to plant. Chikuma shows us how far apart the seedlings should go—“about the length of a shaka,” he says. He demonstrates how to get the tiny plants out of their cups with one firm shake, like letting go of a yo-yo. We pack them into the soil and step back to marvel at our work. It begins to rain.

11:45 a.m. Back in our circle, underneath shelter, we share something we are grateful for. Chikuma thanks us; I mahalo him and the other staffers. While we volunteers give our time and labor, leading a volunteer day is labor for the nonprofit workers. They teach us about Hawaiian culture, the ‘āina and how to take care of it on top of their daily farm duties.

Tips:

Be ready to get dirty and wet and to work hard. I recommend work boots and a hat to protect yourself from the sun.
Stuff a rain jacket in your bag just in case.
Bring slippers to change into afterward.

I remember being up on the mountain at Ho‘oulu ‘Āina in the pouring rain, soaked head to toe. After a morning planting tī, we climbed the mountain apple trees and ate the fruit right off the branches. It was the sweetest, juiciest mountain apple I’ve ever had. Even so, getting to be there and help take care of the ‘āina was and is the greatest reward.