By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

WAILUKU, Maui — The Tamura family won't slaughter a pig to celebrate the New Year. It's one of the few changes that have come to their one-acre farm in the middle of Wailuku. I was amazed to learn that three generations have lived there since 1906.

True, a few rental units have sprung up on the property. Yet the gurgling 'auwai (irrigation ditch) that once watered taro still flows steadily all the way from 'Iao Valley two miles away before it almost disappears in a banana patch. The breadfruit and mango trees still tower overhead, and the chicken coop remains in place.

You don't even know the farm is there when you drive by on the crooked, narrow street. It will have to change before long. But for now, it's a little bit of yesterday in a sea of change. The Tamura farm is my New Year surprise for you in high-speed 2004.

Shoichi, the eldest son in the third generation, an insurance agent in Honolulu, owns it now. Sister Lillian and her husband, Charles Murakami, manage the place. He raises okra, squash and eggplant that they sell to Afook Store or give to the nearest fire station.

Shoichi has clear memories of their grandfather, Shoikichi, who moved from Waimanalo Plantation on O'ahu, bought the kuleana on the outskirts of Wailuku for $2,000 and paid it off in a year. The grandfather worked the land with a three-pronged pick and a hoe. No tractor, no gas-powered plow.

"He stood 5 feet 6 and he could go all day long," said Shoichi.

Lillian remembers helping her grandmother, Miyo, wash vegetables in a laundry tub. Water came from two reservoirs that have since been filled in.

Sorted at a wooden table, the vegetables were loaded on a handcart. The grandfather grew the vegetables, the grandmother sold them from the cart around Wailuku.

According to Shoichi, their grandmother was a tiny slip of a thing, and the loaded cart was very heavy. He helped her get the cart up the hill on Kalua Road. She pulled, he pushed.

The farm also produced chickens, ducks, rabbits and frogs to eat or sell.

"We butchered the pig every New Year and got a young one," said Shoichi. "The pig fed on vegetable scraps. The chickens provided eggs and meat. We were pretty much self-contained."

At that time the Tamura family consisted of the grandparents, parents, four children and two uncles, one married, the other a bachelor. The bachelor uncle worked on a fishing sampan and brought home tuna and turtle meat. The family cooked on a kerosene stove.

While Lillian washed vegetables, Shoichi chopped wood for the furo, the Japanese hot bath. Their mother mended their clothes, let down hems and turned rice bags into dish towels and underwear. Their father was a handyman with a passion for collecting machinery parts. Charles still finds rusty wheels, washing-machine tumblers, etc., around the place.

In those days, the farm was on the edge of town and surrounded by sugar cane fields. Now, Wailuku is just over the fence and subdivisions stretch as far as the eye can see.

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-8073.