Community Vounteer Workdays
Monthly, every Second Sunday
We provide an opportunity for community, to turn their hands downward - learning cultivation and planting methods, ongoing care and maintenance and harvesting of plants and more. To come together to build community around food sovereignty, sustainability, and to support the long-term vision of community food security
HULI KA LIMA ILALO creates a robust landscape of healthy trees and crops that supports community food needs while hosting and modeling best practices to shift agriculture in Hawaiʻi toward traditional and healthier environmental practices.
We promote and encourage the cultivation of traditional, healthy local crops and establish healthy outcrops of native forest stands that serve as windbreaks, provide habitats for native species, and create a seed bank for native forest rehabilitation in the Hāmākua Moku.
HŌʻĀ MAHI is a 70-acre leased property dedicated to enhancing the Hāmākua community through diversified sustainable agriculture and native forest restoration.
Guided by traditional Hawaiian values and practices, and supported by modern, scientifically-sound, environmentally-safe agricultural technology, the program focuses on enhancing natural ecology by preserving water retention, reducing erosion, and promoting soil restoration. The design relies on essential traditional and tropical crops to ensure local food production and access.
Home to the Huli Ka Lima Ilalo Program, HŌʻĀ MAHI emphasizes traditional and tropical crops to ensure local food production, promote ecological health, preserve water retention, reduce erosion, and restore soil fertility.
KiTeya Belford-Smith
Director of Operations,
HŌʻĀ MAHI
With over 25 years of experience in outdoor and agricultural education, KiTeya leads HŌʻĀ MAHI’s efforts in Indigenous land stewardship, watershed restoration, and food sovereignty. He blends traditional knowledge with modern regenerative farming to build resilient, culturally grounded food systems. At HŌʻĀ MAHI, he oversees crop production, soil and water conservation, and hands-on learning programs that empower the next generation of land stewards.
Class Visits
Creating educational opportunities for the whole community, from projects promoting home gardens, to cooking lessons with local produce, to hands-on learning about food production, Huli Ka Lima Ilaloʻs education component promotes access and utilization to local foods for the community.
Our efforts also support focal crops that are significant for culture and the arts, such as wauke for kapa making, lauhala for weaving, indigo for dyeing, and various medicinal plants for lāʻau lapaʻau.
