Laulima Garden 'Ohana
A Homeschool Community Garden

The Laulima Garden 'Ohana homeschool community brought us in as consultants in order to revitalize the garden component of their community. We spent two months working with them, identifying profitable produce and products that would be valuable to the local community (these can now be purchased online at the Maui Hub) and creating workflows so that future volunteers can seamlessly find their place in the garden. Our biggest reward from our time at Laulima was getting their Junior Farmers of Maui (JFAM) sprout program off the ground. We worked with the Health Department to ensure processing, packaging, and labeling was up to standard, and began selling sprouts at the local farmers market. We taught classes with the JFAM students, teaching them how to grow, process and label sprouts, and supervising as they did "trial sales" at pickup with the parents of the homeschool community. We also created an outdoor kitchen area for the JFAM group to use for processing, complete with a running sink, and established a presence for the community at the Makawao Farmers Market. Additionally, we developed a monthly "featured plant" program, consisting of informational drawings of a plant in the garden, recipes, take home harvests, and growing/harvesting and cooking classes for the weekly garden class.