Last month, Sarah Gray from Hive Mind Maui installed three beehives here at the ranch. We’re thrilled to have new pollinators in our ʻulu orchard. They will also be busy pollinating our banana and citrus groves as well. In the future we hope to have our homegrown honey for sale at the farm stand.

Our mechanic Evan recently completed transitioning on one of cultivating tractors from a gas-powered motor to an electric motor. We caught up with Evan to learn more about how he converted our tractor.

Our agronomy team has just completed our second annual ecosystem testing. Our goal is to measure the ways that our ecosystem evolves under our stewardship from year to year. This event includes testing of soil chemistry, soil microbiology, soil carbon, mycorrhizal fungi root colonization, forage nutritional properties, livestock parasites, and water quality.

Our farm team has been hard at work planting windbreaks with native species across the farm. These plantings will help us protect our crops from the wind, and contribute to our goal of helping protect and reestablish native Hawaiian plants. We would like to send a big thanks to our friends at Native Nursery, LLC on Maui for providing us with the plants. 

The “Giving Elves,” also known as the first grade class at Hāna Elementary School, paid a visit to the ranch last week! They delivered a painting for the staff, and numerous handmade holiday cards to express their gratitude for our contribution to the Hāna community.

The monarch butterflies are hard at work on their reproductive cycle at the Hāna this time of year, and the caterpillars are everywhere! Our agronomy team took notice that they appear to be feeding on both the ballon plant Asclepias physocarpa, and the lantana plant Lantana camera. 

Our agronomy manager Ian Davidson headed over to his daughter’s first grade classroom to talk earthworms earlier this month. Keep reading to hear about his experience getting kids to love something so slimy…

Hāna Ranch’s expanded farm will produce a wide variety of fruits and vegetables that we hope to sell locally to stores, restaurants, and directly to community members through a community farm share program that we hope to launch later this summer.

We are excited to have harvested the first vegetables from the Hāna Ranch farm: basil, dill, radishes, bok choy, and several types of lettuce.