About Our Farm

Anela's Farm is an intentional community located in Waiohinu, Hawaii. We are near South Point and in between the volcano and Kailua-Kona on the Big Island. We purchased the land in 2006 and have been working it since then to turn land that had gone to jungle back into a productive farm. We are at about a 1500 foot elevation overlooking the Pacific Ocean. We value diversity and being good to ourselves, each other, our animals, and our land. Anela means angel in Hawaiian. We believe our farm is truly paradise on earth and hope you will, too!

 
What We Grow

We have many specimen native Ohia trees on the farm and have planted (and are in the process of planting more) citrus, avocado, apples, peaches, nectarines, pears, plums, figs, mango, cheramoya, papaya,white pineapples, and many other exotic types of tropical fruit trees and plants. Everything is grown organic.

We have also been working at growing vegetables. It's very little work here to grow anything--the problem is keeping under control the bugs which are never killed by freezing. We harvested the first zucchini several days ago which was a major accomplishment. Fruit flies here usually lay eggs and wipe out all the squash before they are harvestable size. By using Neem at just the right time in the squash development cycle, we are now able to circumvent the lowly fruit fly.

Community Building

We completed building our community building which currently provides our permanent farm residents with housing until we build our own homes. We will be using all alternative energy sources with a windmill providing for all of our energy needs.

Visitor Spaces

Volunteer vistors share an open air kitchen / dining area, bathe in a small temporary bath house, and live rustic. Since we live in Hawaii where temperatures are fairly stable year round, most visitors love our simple amenities. We call it camping out in style.

 
 

The Big Island and Vog

The volcano is actively putting out vog (volcanic fog) through a new vent which is causing a decrease in air quality for us when the wind blows our way from the volcano. Fortunately for us, the air usually blows straight off the ocean. Before this happened, we had the cleanest air in the world. Now, we have the cleanest air in the world except when we're vogged out. This air quality would have little effect on normal, healthy people, but those with lung conditions such as asthma may be affected on heavy vog days.

Four-Legged Farm Residents

We share our farm with quite a few cats and dogs. They all have jobs on the farm and are very necessary to having a successful farm. The dogs keep out the wild pigs, wild pig hunters, and stray cows from the neighboring farms, along with killing mongooses and rats. The cats kill mice and rats and anything else they can catch including Jackson chameleons. Without the dogs, we would be overrun with wild pigs. Without the cats, we'd be up to our ears in mice and rats.

We Do For Ourselves

We do all the work for building and farming ourselves. One of the most frequent comments we hear is "you're very organized!"

About Us

We define ourselves as spiritual people without using organized religion. We believe in being good to ourselves and other people and animals. We don't even kill insects unless we must.

We work hard. Most weeks, we work six days a week of 10 hour days. It's really hard work making enough money in outside jobs to pay the bills and then working the farm with all the daylight hours remaining to build and grow.

Our plan is to create farm businesses so that we can live and work on our farm. We always have projects going on to make this dream a reality.

We don't use any type of drugs including not smoking cigarettes. We may take an occasional drink--but that's as in once every three or four months for some of us and not at all for others. We do not allow any drug use on our farm.

We get alot of questions on the way we eat. We are almost vegetarians. We do eat fish and seafood sometimes but primarily our diet is plant-and-grain-based with limited dairy. All our foods are home cooked. Most of them are made from scratch with organic ingredients from our own gardens as they come into season. We don't use sugar, cook low fat for the most part, and focus on eating healthy with whole grains and lots of fruit and vegetables. We try our best to accomodate dietary requirements, such as vegan or wheat free. Everyone who comes to visit tells us they really miss the food after they leave. Here are some sample menus...

* Vegetarian spaghetti with tossed salad and garlic bread

* Pesto pizza with grilled vegetables and caesar salad

* Vegetarian tacos with homemade cilantro guacamole and homemade anasazi refried beans

* Oriental stir fry with brown rice and homemade oriental pickles.


* Salmon cakes with curry stew

* Homemade desserts with no sugar ( we use agave or maple syrup as a sweetener) such as chocolate cream pie, coconut cream pie, banana cream pie, pumpkin pie, lemon-lime pie, pineapple upside down cake and whatever else we think of!