News at La’akea!

Take a look at what’s we’ve been up to since we moved into La’akea in March of 2005.

Here's us signing the papers to buy La'akea.

That's Dona walking from the main house to the meadow space. We’re blazing new trails in our 6 acres of Ohia forest to enable us to remove non-native species, plant native, edible and useful species.

We are remodeling the "Triplex" to increase air and light flows. The triplex is one of three member owned dwellings at Laakea. Another dwelling is planned for later in 2005-6.

Here's our new fruit tree nursery. We're propagating species such as: abiu, avocado, cacao (chocolate), mango, jackfruit, rollinia, soursop, mamae zapote, and many more to plant at La'akea and to plant in other landscapes throughout the big island. In addition to maintaining our existing orchard areas, we are preparing to plant hundreds of new fruit trees at La'akea. La'akea began as a lime and guava orchard and over 100 of these trees remain.

That's Laurelsong leading a budget discussion. We plan on substantial investments in the infrastructure at La’akea over the next few years to prepare for a community of 12-20 members.

Here's us harvesting water weeds (azolla) from the Meadow Pond. We're clearing more surface area for swimming and using the weeds to mulch and fertilizer our apple bananna grove next to the pond.

Here's Biko (in truck) and Robert relocating a composting toilet from the main house area out to the nursery. We have three composting toilets at La'akea. Sawdust is added to humanure, the 60 gallon buckets compost for a year, and then the finished compost is added to bananna plants.

Here's Aniko in our "Marigold Greenhouse." We’re installing raised beds in the greenhouses to increase soil depth – using harvested peach palm trees which will regrow from the stumps.

Biko and Tracy enjoying a relaxed weekly business meeting. We have a weekly business meeting and a weekly community gathering to discuss what's going on for us.

There's Orion working on the computer. Orion, Laurelsong's son, likes to cook and recently took a yoga teacher training course.

We've revamped our aquaculture tanks which grow plants and fish, and will soon provide nutrient rich water to our gardens and nursery area.

That's our utilities shed. We are off-grid with 18 solar panels and plan to increase the capacity of our system later this year. Shown also in this photo is our 21,000 gallon ferro-cement cistern that collects run-off from our main house roof.

Here's Loriel at one of our weekly community workparties.