Hale Akua Garden Farm

Farm Director, Lisa Hotchkiss, directs all farming operations at Hale Akua Garden Farm including training, scheduling and supervision of interns and farm workers, crop selection and planting, harvesting, and marketing of produce. For the past year she’s been working on increasing biodiversity at the farm. She is also an independent organic crop inspector and has done inspections for the Hawaii Organic Farmers Association (HOFA) and International Certification Services (ICS) on Maui.  She has worked many years on farms on Maui and the Big Island.

Assistant Farm Manager, David Paraska, has been working with plants for more than a decade and has been living and farming in Maui for over a year.  It is his hope is to bring to awareness, that nature has all the answers.  David’s focus is to unlearn and un-teach much of what we have heard and seen as it pertains to farming and gardening in our collective, conventional upbringing.  He has found that observance and awareness of natural ways brings a knowledge much deeper and more profound than any other form of learning.  He finds great joy in sharing and inspiring this vision in others.