1. The La’akea Project

2. What is La’akea ?
 The La’akea Community is a small, family style, egalitarian, intentional permaculture
community on the big island of Hawai’i.
 The La’akea Community is a committed group of people working together closely as a means
to health, relationship vitality, economic stability, and personal and spiritual growth. They
integrate the social aspects of sustainability into daily life: how to live together with honesty,
love and peace, and shared power and leadership.
 As a committed group, they make important, long term decisions by consensus of community
members. There are currently nine adults and two young children. They also hold an
intention of expanding to 12 to 20 full-time members. They own the land in common, with
each member paying an equal share to buy in, to insure authentic power balance.
 La’akea has organic farms that practices tropical permaculture in there lush rainforest
climate. They bought there land in 2005 and currently grow a large portion of there food.
They are growing many kinds of fruits and nuts, with an extensive gardens and greenhouses,
taro beds and orchards. They also keep bees, chickens, rabbits and sheep who are natural
lawn mowers in addition to providing them with food and fertilizer.
 There electricity comes from solar photovoltaic panels, and the water is from a rainwater
catchment system. They value alternative and sustainable building techniques.

3. Project: Gardening
 After taking the farm tour our group decided to focus on the gardening
aspect.
 We decided to focus on the gardening aspect on how the La’akea community
grows their food supply and how they would prepare planting as well.
 We learned how to pull weeds, mix soil, plant seeds, and also the overall
function of how to plant crops.

4. Process: Pulling Weeds
 Step 1: Pull invasive weeds that cover the plants and clear as much as you
can. (This Plant bed is Kale)
Before Picture After Picture
*Notice how much a difference it makes when cleaning the weeds out. It gives the plant more room to grow.

5. Process: Green House
 Step 2: We helped clear their greenhouse by also pulling invasive weeds.
Their greenhouse was taken over by weeds and needed a good cleaning so
that they would have more room to plant. The greenhouse beds was so badly
covered with weeds you couldn’t see it until we cleaned it.
The front of the green house
Example of
the weeds
covering
everything
A clear
bed in
the
green
house
A comparison of clearing
weeds. Top: Before
Bottom: After

6. Process: Planting
 Step 3: Combine three different soils to make a healthy batch of soil to plant about 3-4 different seeds.
 The process contain mixing soils, sorting seeds, and watering them after.
 This process is important because without healthy soil plants will die and the seeds will not have enough nourishment to grow.
 Tracy mixes her own soil instead of buying because she uses natural composting and recycled compost to make their soils.
First Tracy showed
us a variety of
plants she already
started on her
own.

7. Process: Planting (Mixing Soil)
We pour the dirt into
a frame like this to
sort out big pieces of
rocks and etc.
Then we shake them to make sure we
get as much dirt as we can.
*The reason why we do this is because
sometimes they get composting soil
from the dump so they never know
what they will find inside.
Worm Compost that we
mix into the soils.

8. Process: Planting (Prepping Trays/
Sorting Seeds)
Compacting the soil
into the trays.
Tracy showing us how to
line the soil for the
seeds.
All three of us sorting the seeds into
the lines in the soils.

9. Process: Planting (Watering the Trays)
Just couple of trays we prepped
and finished watering.
*We planted mint, basil, bamboo,
broccoli and etc.
Tracy explaining the
process of what we
need to do after such
as sunlight, water, and
shade.
A couple more trays we did.

10. How does our project relate to culture?
 Our project relates to culture because culture is a key element in the
concept of sustainable life. Culture helps develop people’s relationships and
attitudes towards the built and the natural environment. By living in a certain
way culture helps affect the way people live. They bring different aspects of
life and life decisions together.

11. How does our project relate to
Communication?
 Communication plays a big role in this community because as an eco-village community
everyone needs to be in synced and on the same page. This particular community works
closely together in everything they do such as economic stability, personal and spiritual
growth, health, and relationship vitality. Communication occurs on a daily basis whether its
verbal or nonverbal; each person contributes to live sustainably by having honesty, love,
peace, and leadership. Communication helps balance each person in the community because
it gives everyone a chance to express themselves.
 The medium of communication our group used to reach the stakeholders was by email. We
decided to email them about touring their farms because an email was a more professional
type of contact. But after thinking about how they live in an eco-village, energy resources
may haven be limited. While waiting for a response, we did not hear back from our
stakeholders so instead our professor Dr. Becker was able to get in touch with them to set a
tour for our group. We noticed that the email was ineffective because they did not respond
back, but instead we were contacted through our professor Dr. Becker.
 After arriving at the farm, our communication with the stakeholders was verbal. Our group
was able to talk directly with Tracy and ask her questions if we needed. Communication was
a major key because we had to make sure everyone knew what was going on.

12. How does our project relate to
sustainability?
 Sustainability is a movement that embraces all facets of human endeavor. “Sustainable” means to
perpetuate existence as well as to provide sustenance and nourishment. Sustainability is most often
associated with the environment and specifically to our landscapes and gardens.
 Sustainability is important for a very simple, very straightforward reason: we cannot maintain our quality of
life as human beings, the diversity of life on Earth, or Earth’s ecosystems unless we embrace it. From the
smallest to the largest scale of sustainability there is always something we can address.
 Sustainable gardening is one of the most important and effective sustainability practices that we can follow.
Its practice and benefits include respecting, and improving the soils, using native plants, shrubs and trees to
create beautiful landscapes, feeding one’s family fresh organically-grown fruits, berries and vegetables and
utilizing every renewable resource that nature provides, from rain water to gravel.
 Practicing sustainability is a reach for perfection, an act of protecting the environment through actions that
benefit it or do it least harm. The closer we come to a goal of complete gardening sustainability, the more
reward to our gardens, our families and the planet as a whole. Sustainability not only embraces organic
gardening methods but conservation of resources as well. Sustainability often mimics natural process,
utilizing what nature gives us with as little supplement as we can manage.
 Sustainability isn’t a commodity as much as it is a lifestyle. It has immediate as well as long-term rewards.
 We chose this project because we all had a common interest about learning how to live sustainably and
make a difference to our environment. When we heard about the La’akea community, we took notice that
they were a permaculture eco-village that lives sustainably. Our group will be learning the ways this
community works together to live sustainably and partake in helping live eco-friendly so that our earthly
environment will thrive much longer in the future. We choose to focus or main project on the gardening
aspect of how they prepare food for their community.

13. Conclusion (What we learned)
 From spending time at La’akea Community we learned how important communication, culture, and sustainability are.
 Here are a couple things we learned from this project:
 Seven individuals came together via communication to create La’akea in 2005. They needed intensive communication to
make sure what they felt a community needed was mutually agreed upon.
 The blend of these seven individuals had a variety of different culture backgrounds. Although they had different cultural
backgrounds, it was very helpful for each member to offer their opinions to create common ideas for there new culture
in the community.
 Being resourceful with materials provided by nature saves both money and our environment. Growing crops helps make
healthier food, easy access, and less expenses. La’akea has a bunch of great resources around their land that’s
important to sustain. For example: they have a chicken coop, bees, sheep's, rabbits, and plenty of land to grow all
different kinds of crops.
 Most importantly we learned how to mix soils to create healthy mixtures. Tracy taught us that healthy soils will have
worms in it which gives us a sign that the soil is nutritious.
 We also learned that pulling weeds is not easy and requires hard work! We learned that pulling weeds is a necessary
action when planting because it helps create beds for planting.
 Tracy taught us that critters on the soil is a good thing because it shows a sign of healthy soil.
 After pulling weeds we would throw them into the chicken coop because instead of throwing them away they can be
recycled to feed the chickens.
 The one thing we all thought was interesting was that in the La’akea community, everyone contributes in some way or
another. They have a system where each individual who lives at the farm will contribute work up to 2 hours 3 days a
week. We thought this was a good idea because it shows that everyone is committed and contributes their time to live
sustainably.
 We noticed that they grow there own food in a sustainable way where they can feed everyone in the community and
visitors. It is vital that they work together and communicate effectively with one another in order to sustain the farm
and other areas of the community.

14. THANK YOU!
 We would like to thank Tracy Matfin for all her help in showing us how we can contribute
to living sustainable.
 We plan and hope to take these skills we learned with us to help encourage others and
as well as starting our own garden of food.
 If you are interested in checking out La’akea Community, you can contact Tracy at
tracy@permaculture-hawaii.com.
Tracy made us a smoothie
made out of fruits and
plants from her farm and
it consist of honey,
sunflower seeds, kale,
katuk, bananas and etc.