The entrance to Mohala Farms is right beneath the tallest mountain on Oahu.
Tucked away and hidden amongst the North Shore’s old pineapple and sugar plantation land is Mohala Farms, a small six acre organic farm sitting at foot of Oahu’s tallest peak, Mt. Ka’ala. The fierce waves that bring both the world’s best surfers and hoards of eager spectators to this small stretch of swell-battered coast every winter look tiny and unmenacing from Mohala’s vantage point atop the beginnings of the Wahiawa plateau in the Kamananui Ahupua’a. The vibrant red soil that makes this area famous has sustained decades of harsh mono-crop agriculture. If you ate a Dole pineapple before the 1970′s there was a good chance it was grown in this nutrient and iron rich old Hawaiian soil and up until 1993 the Dole cannery still operated a short way down the road from Mohala’s current location. It was the end the cannery and of Dole’s major pineapple and sugar plantations in this region that gave birth to Mohala Farms. The practice of industrial agriculture depleted the area of its rich nutrients and the land lay fallow for over a decade covered in six-foot tall Guinea grass until Mark Hamamoto and Kathy Maddux began cutting back the giant weeds and started planting a wide variety of crops six years ago.
