Kauai Organic Farms: Moloa’a Organica’a

We All Need to Learn Where Our Food Comes From

Over the past year, I have wanted to learn more about where our food comes from. I started visiting the few farms that we have in Colorado to see what real food looks like. It has become one of my favorite activities visiting U-pick farms and learning more about farming and agriculture. I also started asking a lot of questions about the food in grocery stores. After I learned many horrific truths I gradually started cutting out extremely processed food one category at a time.

It Starts With Asking the Tough Questions and Shopping Local

After experiencing food that was freshly grown by my community through farmers markets and days spent at local Colorado farms. I gradually started to realize that plants have a lot more power than we are told. It is scary to see how we are all brainwashed and addicted to processed foods. In some places in this country and all over the world, the only food humans have access to is fast food and small convenience stores.

But the local grocery stores are still not the best option for us. The packaged and processed food is affecting our health in such a catastrophic way but many don’t care to change their eating habits because they are so addicted to the high of eating processed meats, sugars, and fast food. It is a bigger epidemic than we realize. Even the produce on the shelves at the grocery store are not offering all of their essential nutrients because it has been picked before it was ripped and has been processed to keep fresh through shipping and sitting on the shelf for several weeks. We have to start learning to say no, educating ourselves, and just simply try to eat more fruits and vegetables every day. And learning how to grow food or at the very least support local farms whenever possible. It all starts with small steps.

Visiting Moloa’a Organica in Kauai

When I was in Kauai I knew that I wanted to visit a Kauai organic farm to see all of the diverse plants that can grow on the island. I could tell from just a few photos that this farm, Moloa’a Organica’a had a lot of charm. The couple that owns the property put so much work in to their farm and really care about providing healthy food to their community. These pictures don’t do the property justice. The rich assortment of fruit trees, medicinal plants, and two large fields full of herbs and vegetables keep this farm very busy. I loved being introduced to farming during this tour and it makes me even more excited to continue to follow this interest even deeper. It would be a dream to one day own a farm just as beautiful as this one on the Hawaiian islands.

Every Part of the World Has Different Things in Season

The Moloa’a Organica’a farm has a large assortment of things growing. That is the wonderful thing about growing food in Hawaii. There is always something growing every time of year and there is an abundance of plants that thrive in the tropical climate. In the orchards they have dragonfruit, cacao fruit, coffee, mangoes, papayas, starfruit, lilikoi, guava, pineapple, avocados, jackfruit, breadfruit, lychee, pomegranate, rambutan, bananas, just to name a few. Unfortunately, we were visiting during a sort of off-season where the only tropical fruit we could find was banana, papaya, and pineapple. It was also a citrus season. So while we were touring the farm we wandered the citrus orchard and tasted all the different kinds that they had growing.

The Vegetable Gardens

The fields were also packed with all kinds of vegetables and herbs. Celery, carrots, snap peas, kale, chard, ginger, turmeric, arugula, basil, beets, bok choy, taro, kohlrabi, radicchio, peppers, cassava, moringa, hibiscus, and many more. A couple of things that are tricky to grow is cucumber and tomatoes which they have in a greenhouse. They also have macadamia nuts, cashews, and peanuts too. The hard thing about nuts is having the right machinery to process them out of the hard shells. Especially cashews which I learned are related to poison ivy so processing them by hand is not an option.

The Importance of Learning to Grow Your Own Food

There is a lot to learn when it comes to growing your own food but I have become obsessed with this challenge. It was such a great experience to learn more about what goes into caring for a large scale organic farm on Kauai. Organic farming is just more time-intensive because you have to keep an eye on your plants and use insecticides that are natural Ned said that neem is a great plant for a natural insecticide that can commonly be found in most plant shops. Lucky for him he can make his own with a few neem trees growing on his property.

Beginner Gardener Alert

I am going to be testing my gardening skills for the first time this year by growing some things in my parent’s garden. I hope to visit more farms and garden shops to learn more about gardening. If you are a gardener yourself please let me know if you have any tips or book recommendations. I hope to make some easy gardening tips for you through this process. That way we can make growing our own food more accessible on a large scale. Even if you don’t have the yard to do it. And not much time. I know there is something we can all learn to grow and I hope to contribute to helping more people live a more sustainable and healthy lifestyle with more blog posts like this one. I hope you enjoyed! Mahalo for reading!

For more information about this farm tour click here. Also learn more about Ned and Marta and how they started their beautiful farm here.You can also find them at these farmers markets when visiting Kauai.