Hawai'i Homegrown Food Network

Mala'ai School Garden

The Great Pumpkin Harvest & Garden

Waimea Middle School students harvesting kabocha pumpkins from the Mala'ai Garden

Waimea Middle School students proudly show off a few of more than 2,200 pounds of Kabocha – also known as Japanese pumpkins – that they have harvested since the start of this school year from the Mala'ai school garden. Growing and harvesting delicious fresh produce is really just the first step. This school year, with Mala'ai garden classes integrated into Physical Education and Health Classes, students are learning how to prepare and enjoy eating the produce they have grown.

Backyard Kalo Farming

Amy B.H. Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden, Captain Cook, South Kona

If you've never grown kalo (taro) before, or only made fledgling attempts, this workshop is for you: in 2-1/2 hours you get all the basics you need to successfully start, maintain and harvest a kalo garden, plus cook and prepare the most popular types of kalo food products.

Sponsored every year by the Bishop Museum's Amy Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden, Foreman Manuel Rego and assistant Sumao Kadooka this year took 18 avid workshop participants step by step through the preparation, propagation, maintenance, harvesting and cooking phases of family homestead kalo farming.

Hamakua Alive!

Pa'auilo, Hamakua

Started in October 2007 with 11 participants, the Third Annual Hamakua Alive! Festival held in Pa'auilo Elementary and Secondary School on October 24, 2009 was a huge success. The event has grown in leaps and bounds with over 40 booths this year and the largest ever number of entries in the cooking contest.

Locavore Dinner

at Annual Hawai'i Sustainable Education Initiative Fundraiser

On the evening of December 10th the Hawai'i Sustainable Education Initiative (HSEI) held its Third Annual Fundraiser in our one-room school house in downtown Honoka'a amidst children's toys, student artwork, musical instruments, desks, chairs, overflowing bookshelves and a teacher's very messy desk. Over a hundred friends, parents, and students descended onto the scene to applaud student musical and hula performances, participate in a silent auction and sale of students' arts and crafts, listen to homegrown music, and most of all, whet their appetite and satisfy their stomachs on a complete locavore dinner.

Mothers and Gardens

How does one tend a garden with an infant?

Those of us who begin to raise food as a positive choice rather than a necessity may not know the basics, like when to start, effective carrying styles, or the rhythm babies within a gardening day. We have not observed our mothers doing this work. As industrialized women, we are missing huge chunks of basic subsistence education. So what do we do?