“Lokelani Ranch” is a 2.37 acre home­stead on the island of Kauaʻi, Hawaiʻi, locat­ed just behind the Sleeping Giant near the town of Kapaʻa. This land was orig­i­nal­ly pur­chased by my grand­par­ents Kay and Vernon Barker in 1969. At the time there were a few hous­es around, but most­ly it was sur­round­ed by pineap­ple fields and pas­tures. My grand­moth­er start­ed call­ing it the “Ranch House” because of it’s long, low shape and the name stuck. Now it lies with­in a neigh­bor­hood called Wailua Homesteads, a bit of an anom­aly in it’s gen­er­ous lot. It is the home of Roland Barker, Lisa Parker, Joanna Faso, Wiki “The Rat Patrol” and the cal­i­co cat Kea.

On this site we present the ongo­ing sto­ry of this land and our activ­i­ties on it. “The Story” starts with a brief pho­to his­to­ry then a chrono­log­i­cal series of arti­cles, to which we will add as the sto­ry unfolds.

The “Reference” sec­tion con­tains some arti­cles and resources relat­ed to our activ­i­ties here: per­ma­cul­ture, sub­trop­i­cal agri­cul­ture, nat­ur­al foods, med­i­c­i­nals and nutri­tion, ener­gy and resource con­ser­va­tion, self-sufficiency—stuff like that. It is being expand­ed and added to as time permits.

“Dinner at the Ranch” is all about food: recipes, inter­est­ing ingre­di­ents, tech­niques, and a run­ning log of din­ners we’ve had.