It’s been said more than once (I’ve said it at least half a dozen times) that upcountry Maui resembles parts of Montana. Of course, Montana doesn’t have a volcano crater that looks like the moon, but that’s a minor point. Upcountry Maui girdles the slopes of 10,000 foot Mt. Haleakala with a special growing zone the locals call, “kula.”

The Kula area has been blessed with a temperate climate that’s unique in the islands. It’s ideal for both agriculture and ranching. Hawaiian farmers switched from their traditional staple crops of sweet potatoes and taro to feed the whaling crews in Lahaina.

Sailors back then weren’t much on taro or sweet potatoes. Local farmers starting growing wheat, apples, Irish potatoes, corn, and fruits in the form of pears, plums, and peaches.

The area became so fertile that Hawaiian farmers began shipping produce to California during the gold rush years. In fact, the farmers were so dependent upon business in California and the mainland, that during the 1800s, the area around Kula became known as “Nu Kaliponi”—New California.

Politics being the same back then as now, the Union Army refused to use cotton from the South (and probably had a difficult time getting supplies anyway) and imported cotton from—you guessed it—Kula on Maui.

Kula is no longer a cotton mecca and there’s not much that gets exported to California these days. Still, food crops on Maui’s Kula area range from huge strawberries to the famous sweet Maui onion. You gotta trust me on this one. This onion is so sweet it can be eaten like an apple. Grab it and bite.

Is that cool, or what?

Surprisingly, the Kula area’s bumper crop today is flowers. Exotic protea and pretty much anything else, grows in abundance in Kula. In fact, the Sunrise Protea Farm on Crater Road has every kind of protea you can think of. King. Mink. They grow everywhere.

Except Montana. 

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