Water just began flowing into kalo farmer Charlie Palakiko’s patches 20 minutes ago.
He says Mauna Kahālāwai has been misty all day. It was just a matter of time before water flowed down the centuries-old Waimana ʻauwai, or irrigation ditch, and into his loʻi, or taro patch.
And the colder, the better.
“We live Lāhainā, so hot. So temperature, we like cold water. Cold water is how our plants grow good,” Palakiko said.
“You watch your plants grow, the side with the more water, the cooler, running, colder water, the plants way healthier, way bigger.”
Taro patches once dominated the landscape in Lāhainā, with more than 1,700 of them recorded in the region in the mid-1800s.
But once water was diverted for sugar cane cultivation, taro farmers from Kauaʻula Valley fought back in one of the earliest recorded legal battles over water rights in West Maui.
Palakiko gained further access to the taro patches of his ancestors once the Pioneer Mill sugar plantation closed in 1999. He and his friends spent every weekend cleaning that loʻi.
“We had one hose and we would drop em in that patch and we was like 'Eh! We get one patch up here!' And eventually, we cleaned it all the way to here. Opened up all the patches,” Palakiko said.
Kalo dominated the local landscape in the mid-1800s with 352 recorded loʻi in Kauaʻula Valley alone. But once water began being diverted for sugar production, taro farmers — including Palakiko's ancestors — fought back in the 1895 court case Horner v. Kumuliʻiliʻi.
“You know they fought for it all the way to the Supreme Court, they got em, I don’t understand how come they never give the water back,” Palakiko said.
In an unusual outcome for the time, the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court ruled against Pioneer Mill owner John Horner, and in favor of 60 Native Hawaiians from West Maui, who claimed rights to the water flowing in Kauaʻula Valley.
But it would take another century for that court decision to be backed up with regulatory laws to enforce it.
However, in the wake of the Lāhainā wildfires, these rights are being challenged once again.
“Right now, I really don’t know what for do. All I can do is clean the patches, plant everything we get and keep going. Gotta give em,” Palakiko said. “Might just come down to 'Eh, how much kalo you get, okay that’s how much water you get.'”
Palakiko said maintaining 10 to 12 loʻi kalo is a lot of work for one man. So he’s slowly putting the word out to the people of Lāhainā to experience what he calls “taro-py”—therapy but with taro.
“Yeah, this would be healing for all of them. Would be one good process for help those that they more nothing right now,” Palakiko said.
“Come, get purpose. Come, we go up there we go clean. Some 'taropy' up here. Get your feet wet. We going make this place nice, we going plant some kalo.”
