Land leased for
1800s village on Kauai

A living history museum
hopes to begin with a farm
that features traditional crops

By Anthony Sommer
Kauai correspondent

LIHUE -- A Kauai group has taken what it hopes will be the first step in creating a living history museum depicting Hawaiian life as it was on Kauai in the early 1800s.

The Imi Ola Institute of Native Hawaiian History & Culture has leased 40 acres of former sugar land south of Lihue for use as a historical Hawaiian farm.

If it is successful, an entire Hawaiian village could be built around the farm.

"The farm is the hardest work. If we can make it happen, the rest should be relatively easy," said interim Executive Director Evelyn Cook. The lease with Grove Farm is for five years with two possible 10-year extensions.

The institute will ask volunteers to "adopt" small portions of the farm and grow a wide variety of traditional Hawaiian food, medicinal and fiber crops ranging from yams to ti to arrowroot.

The plan is to eventually offer educational tours of the farm and, in the future, begin building an entire village where daily life as it was 200 years ago will be portrayed.

Cook said the early post-contact period was chosen because it has the earliest accurate historical records to ensure everything done is authentic.

The idea of building a native Hawaiian version of the famous living history museum of colonial Williamsburg, Va., on Kauai has been around for at least two decades.

The Imi Ola Institute was formed two years ago.

Recently it was awarded a $10,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to build taro loi and holding ponds for endangered Hawaiian water birds.