Huila Farm: Our Story
Established by Nicola “Nick” Lesourd, and his wife Jaime Lesourd, Huila Farm Hawaii is located in Volcano Village on Old Volcano Road situated on a 1-acre agriculture lot. Huila, in ʻŌlelo Hawai'i, translates to “wheel”. Inspired by stories of horse and buggy transport to Halema‘uma‘u Crater and the collection of vintage wagon and tractor wheels on site from Nick’s family farm in Bakersfield, CA. Huila Farm seemed to be a fitting name and was the perfect fit for a farm catering to people on the go.
Huila Farm: Unearthing Roots
Nick comes from a long line of farmers; his maternal great-grandparents immigrated from Portugal (Souza) and Italy (Destefani) where they began farming in Bakersfield California. The Italian side of Nick's family immigrated in 1891 initially working in dairies until 1922 when they started their own (photo of small dairy on the left). Eventually their children continued farming in Bakersfield starting with 80 acres in 1936 and expanding to 4,500 acres. In addition, Nick's father was a grape grower in the South of France. Like many family farms, Destefani Farms was eventually sold off. After military service, Nick began farming in Hawaii to rediscover his roots.
Huila Farm: Goals and Core Values
Our goal is to provide convenient and consistent quality produce within the community of Volcano. We strive to live by the market gardener principals and utilize organic growing best practices on our small farm.
In the United States Coast Guard Nick lived by the service core values; Honor, Respect, Devotion to Duty.
Modifying these core values and applying them to Huila Farm;
HONOR: We strive to Honor our community, customers, and farming best practices.
RESPECT: We respect this beautiful and special island that we call home, and we ensure we are preserving and maintaining the ʻāina for our community as well as the future generations.
DEVOTION TO DUTY: Lastly, we remain devoted to providing produce for the community and Hawaii Island to assist in alleviating food insecurity.
Huila Farm: Homegrown By Heroes Certified
The Homegrown By Heroes label (HBH) is the official farmer veteran branding program of America and is administered nationally by the Farmer Veteran Coalition. It certifies ranchers, farmers, and fisherman of all military eras to sell their product as veteran owned and produced. The label informs consumers that agricultural products donning the logo were produced by U.S. military veterans, and it allows veterans to differentiate their farm and ranch products in the marketplace.
Huila Farm is proud to have received the HBH certification.
For more information about the program please visit https://farmvetco.org/hbh/
The steep never ending learning curve
During Nick's 20 year Coast Guard career he faced many challenges, stressful missions, domestic disaster deployments, failures, and successes. Through all of these assignments one thing Nick realized is that there is always going to be challenges, setbacks, victories, and opportunities for learning and growing. So why not try another hard career in agriculture and farming?
As a participant in the Go Farm Hawaii AgXcel program, Nick embarked on a 7-month beginning farmer journey working hard to achieve his goal of farming post military service. When we established Huila Farm in 2023 while Nick was also participating in the Go Farm AgXcel program at the Alae farm site north of Hilo many lessons were learned. The biggest lesson learned was the time spent traveling to Hilo. Though the growing conditions are more optimal down the hill, the time factor in traveling offsets any growing gains. Therefore we focused on maximizing our time spent on our property growing produce exclusively in Volcano. Due to our cooler climate and wetter weather patterns we are constantly learning and growing different types of vegetables and flowers.
We are also in the process of expanding our growing area so please follow us on our social media feeds for updates on current operations and offerings.