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Chris and Sabrina English squeeze into seats facing the corral on the outskirts of Waimea town. By the look of the crowd packing the small grandstand, every Hawaii Island rancher, rodeo competitor and recreational rider had this day marked on their calendars: Parker Ranch's annual horse auction.
The sale coincides with Parker's Labor Day scholarship rodeo. It's a chance for Island paniolo (cowboys) to support the next generation and expand their stable. Buying a locally bred horse beats shipping one over from Montana or Texas-and for ranch owners, a reliable work animal remains indispensable. Chris and Sabrina, who manage Ponoholo Ranch, brought their trailer in hopes of taking home a new mare. But with only twelve horses on the block, bidding will be as quick and fierce as this afternoon's barrel race.
Everyone's dressed in their rodeo best: Keiki dangle from the fence in fringed chaps and spurs, retired ranch foreman Gary Rapozo and Kimo Hoopai Jr. wear championship belt buckles from years past, and fifth-generation rancher and parade rider DeeDee Keakealani-Bertelmann passes out auction booklets wearing a woven lauhala hat wreathed in flowers. In celebration of Parker Ranch's 175th anniversary, the Paniolo Preservation Society sponsored a lei papale (hatband) contest, and local lei makers outdid themselves. Elaborate garlands of ferns, orchids, beach vines and even tufts of goat fur hang in the back of the entertainment tent, next to the society's display of rawhide saddles, braided lariats and branding irons used on the ranch over the years.
Geoy Purdy gets da kine in poo wai u, a rodeo event seen only in Hawaii, which demonstrates how paniolo rope ahiu pipi-wild cattle-out in the open.
Hawaii Island's paniolo community is tightknit; nearly everyone here is related by blood, marriage or employment-including the auctioneer, who calls bidders out by name. "Starting at six thousand, six thousand," the auctioneer chants as Bronson Branco bursts into the corral on a handsome brown gelding. The Parker paniolo takes three fast turns around the ring to demonstrate his horse's agility. Bidding paddles fly up. Bronson dismounts, removes the saddle and climbs astride bareback. "Well, now he's just showing off," the auctioneer laughs. Bids jump to ten thousand. But Bronson is just getting started. He stands on the horse's back and rides circus style around the ring. The audience hoots their approval. Bronson jumps down, retrieves his baby daughter and takes her for a spin on the accommodating steed. "Sold for $14,200!"
Modern paniolo display all the panache and bare-knuckled bravado of their legendary forebears. Through sheer will and devotion to the land, they've sustained an industry that has fed Hawaii for two hundred years. Ranching has outlasted both sugar and pineapple, and it's still going strong-despite uncertain weather on the horizon.
People outside of Hawaii are often surprised to learn that one of North America's oldest and largest ranches exists in Waimea. Cows and horses aren't native to the Islands, which seem altogether too small a landscape for the thundering, days-long cattle drives characteristic of the American West. But when you consider that Hawaii Island is bigger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined-4,028 square miles (and growing)-and comprising Earth's largest mountains measured from the seafloor-it might begin to make sense. You feel the vastness of this sprawling landscape in the wide bowl between the volcanoes, an uninhabited hinterland save for Hawaiian short-eared owls and, more recently, grazing ungulates.
When Captain George Vancouver presented King Kamehameha with six seasick cows and a bull in 1793, few if any Native Hawaiians had ever seen such beasts. The king declined to show surprise, to the dismay of Vancouver and his crew. But Kamehameha saw the animals' value; he built a stone corral for them and placed a kapu (restriction) on them so that they might multiply. Within twenty years the herd had not only multiplied, it had burst free. Wild longhorns became dangerous nuisances, trampling taro patches, forests and unlucky bystanders.
The dally team roping event at the Labor Day Rodeo.
Kamehameha granted John Palmer Parker, a runaway sailor from Massachusetts, permission to shoot the feral cows and sell their meat and hides. Parker married Kamehameha's granddaughter Kipikane and built a homestead on the slopes of Mauna Kea-the seed of his ranching dynasty.
By 1832, Kamehameha III recognized the need to manage cattle. He recruited Spanish-Mexican vaqueros from California to teach Hawaiians how to ride and wrangle. Hawaiians took to it immediately. They adopted the vaqueros' style of dress and saddle, tweaking them to meet their needs, and assumed the name "paniolo," an adaptation of espanol, the language of their mentors. As they hustled cows out of the mountains and into corrals, the first Hawaiian cowboys laid the foundations of the local ranching industry and created a culture wholly their own.
Today ranchers steward more than 750,000 acres in Hawaii, or 20 percent of the state's total land mass. The islands of Hawaii and Maui lay claim to the biggest spreads, but Kauai, Oahu, Molokai, Lanai and even Kahoolawe all have proud ranching histories.
Ranchers survived in part due to their resourceful use of marginal lands. According to LA Henke's 1929 Survey of Livestock in Hawaii, "Puuwaawaa Ranch consists of 128,000 acres, but about 100,000 are waste lands covered with lava flows. Of the remaining 28,000 acres only 1,500 are really good grazing lands." For years the ranch's cattle subsisted on cactus and dew. In contrast, the cows at Puu Oo Ranch above Hilo were so perpetually soggy that limu (moss) grew from their horns.
Fifth-generation paniolo Lai Bertelmann and her horse Bumps carry the Hawaiian flag during the Labor Day Rodeo.
Paniolo history is peppered with stories that sound fabulous. The job demanded heroism. In the early days, transporting cattle off-island required cowboys to swim cows out to steamships anchored offshore. They developed rawhide saddle rigs that held up in salt water and treehorns that could hold a wild bullock. Nearly every old-timer has a story about chasing a bull through thick rainforest right up to the edge-and sometimes over-cliffs. Jimmy Duvauchelle, former luna (foreman) of Molokai Ranch, recalls trying to break a horse so mean it bucked him off, then chased his friend into the house and up the stairs.
Cattle were a double-edged sword in Hawaii: They devastated native forests, which have never recovered. But ranching-as challenging as it was-afforded Hawaiians the chance to stay close to the land and their families. Over two centuries, ranches managed to preserve open space and pieces of Hawaiian culture that might have otherwise been subsumed. Paniolo came from diverse backgrounds-Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, European and African American-but most of them spoke olelo Hawaii on the range, using Hawaiian words to describe their work and surroundings.
Unlike the lonesome cowboys of the American West, paniolo belonged to a large, extended family that never missed a chance to celebrate the completion of work with hoolaulea (festivals), rodeos and parades-traditions that continue today.
At its peak, Parker Ranch encompassed half a million acres with a cattle herd thirty thousand strong. It's a smaller, more efficient operation today, with 10,000 head of cattle on 130,000 acres. As the lead cowboy for Parker's Mana and Makahalau sections, Shane Hoopai oversees several thousand cattle, more than a dozen horses and four ranch hands. Their domain stretches twenty-eight thousand acres across the base of Mauna Kea, from Honokaa on the island's wet, windward side to the dry Kohala coast.
Shane whistles to four horses silhouetted on a hill. They snort, tails waving. "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon," he hollers, filling their feed buckets. The horses come running, the drumbeat of their hooves muffled by the kikuyu grass. Numerous Hawaiian songs celebrate Waimea's glowing emerald hills, reminiscent of Ireland. But decades of drought have sucked the color from the grass. "I never did see it like this," says Shane. "Normally, this place is super green, but we haven't gotten rain for a while now."
Shane can draw on generational memory. A great-grandfather, both grandfathers and his father, Kimo Hoopai Jr., all spent their lives in the saddle. The last three were inducted into the Paniolo Hall of Fame, and his maternal grandfather, Walter Stevens, was regarded as one of Parker's finest horse trainers. If Shane has big boots to fill, he doesn't mind. "Growing up on Parker Ranch, it's every kid's dream to work here," he says. He applied four times before landing a job. "The first three times, the managers said I had too much family on the ranch."
Shane Hoopai watches his herd of purebred Angus (black) and Charolais (white) cattle at Parker Ranch.
Shane points to a reddish cinder cone in the distance. Puu Kemole marks the boundary of the Mana section; the entire ranch can be seen from its summit. When he was barely old enough to ride, his father took him there. "We started riding at 3 in the morning. By the time we reached the top, we could see the lights coming on in Kona. Then the sun rose on the Hilo side. Not many people get to see this."
As a boy, Shane spent summers camping with other paniolo families at Anaehoomalu Beach. Parker Ranch owned cabanas there, and access was one of the perks that made the hard work worthwhile. "My dad didn't get paid much, but he would catch pigs on the ranch and make smoke pork," Shane says. "He would throw net and bring fish home to feed our family or give to whoever needed."
Shane's dad encouraged him to pursue an easier, more lucrative career, so after high school he worked as a welder on Oahu. He didn't last two years. "I like wide-open spaces. It felt like houses on top of houses there," he says. He went to Freddy Rice, the legendary polo player and rodeo champ from Maui, who hired him to work at Kukaiau Ranch. He spent ten years catching wild cattle for Paniolo Hall-of-Famer Jack Ramos and another four years herding cows across a cold, dry ranch in Arizona. Finally, on his fourth try, he got assigned to Parker Ranch's saddle house.
Parker Ranch is divided into five sections, and ranch hands live in off-grid houses near their assigned paddocks. Each morning, they congregate at their saddle house to discuss the day's tasks-everything from branding, weaning, castrating, inoculating and sorting cows to fixing fences and monitoring water lines.
(ABOVE) Chris and Sabrina English with their Angus and Charolais at Ponoholo Ranch, home to the second-largest cattle herd in Hawaii after Parker Ranch. The Englishes took over the management of the ranch from Sabrina's father, Pono von Holt, whose own father helped found Kahua Ranch in 1928. (BELOW) "This life is not for everybody," says Sabrina English, seen here at Ponoholo Ranch. "It's hard, really hard, but we love it."
The Makahalau saddle house is a beautiful relic of a bygone era. A tin roof tops weathered green walls framed by hapuu ferns, rose bushes and a peach tree. In days past, paniolo would bunk here before cattle drives. Several bunks and a pool table remain from that time. Shane points to yellowed photos tacked to the wall. "Auntie DeeDee's father, Uncle Sonny Keakealani, was the foreman when my dad worked here," he says. "It was a pretty tight family ranch, and still is. It's a privilege and honor to be the guy that oversees this section now."
Tomorrow is a big day. "Cattle drive," Shane says, grinning. "Always a good time." The paniolo from Parker's other sections will meet at dawn to ride horseback down to seven hundred cows grazing near the Kohala coastline. The men will line up abreast and push the herd along the fence line into fresh pasture.
This centuries-old practice is mellower than in days past. Cattle drives were rough, sometimes brutal affairs, with cowboys rounding up free-ranging cattle and prodding them across long distances. That changed in the late 1980s with an industry-wide shift to intensive grazing. Now ranchers rotate cattle more frequently through smaller paddocks. It requires more fencing, but it's easier on the animals and gentler for the environment.
Even with this change, Hawaii ranchers couldn't keep up with the competition from the Mainland and New Zealand. Rising operating costs forced the shutdown of local feedlots and slaughterhouses. Island ranches had to either change their business model or founder. By 1992, Parker and most other ranches had shifted to a "cow-calf" operation: Instead of raising full-grown cows for local consumption, they began sending calves to the Mainland for finishing. With two breeding seasons per year, Hawaii's ranchers had an advantage.
Thirty years later, things are changing again: The demand for grass-fed local beef has grown. The Hawaii Cattlemen's Council has been working with Island ranchers to cultivate a market for premium, pasture-raised steaks. Each year, Parker sends five thousand calves to the Mainland for finishing and keeps between fifteen hundred and two thousand grass-fed animals for local stores and restaurants. That number fluctuates with rainwater. Parker relies on water from the forests above Waimea, which flows down through the whole ranch. "Dry times are hard for our cattle. They get thirsty and hungry," Shane says. "But the old-timers always told us, you just got to roll with the rough times. And that's what we've been doing. I mean, with the rains, just continue to pray."
Historically, paniolo lived in employee housing on the ranch. Several still do. In a state where the median home price exceeds $1 million, a free home with access to tens of thousands of acres is no small benefit. Shane's grandfather Kimo Hoopai Sr. worked for fifty years on Kahua Ranch in Kohala. When the owners split the property in two in 1980, the lifelong cowboy faced a tough choice: Which half would he migrate to? He chose to follow Pono von Holt to Ponoholo Ranch. "It was the best decision," says Shane. "Pono told my grandpa and grandma that as long as they're both living, they can stay in their ranch home. So Pono has a very special place in our family's heart."
Midway along Kohala Mountain Road, an iron archway announces the entrance to Ponoholo Ranch, half of the original Kahua Ranch, which Pono's father helped found in 1928. The eleven-thousand-acre spread has unobstructed views of the Pacific and all five major volcanoes: the jagged Kohala ridge on which it sits, the towering peaks of Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa and Hualalai to the east and Haleakala across the channel on Maui.
As a young man, Pono enjoyed dragging feral cattle out of the Kohala forests. "I grew out of that," he says. "Don't get me wrong, it was still fun." But riding out the whipsaws of his business' bottom line proved a bigger thrill. "I've seen ranching go from a dying industry, reduced in size, to what it is now, which is a lot of opportunity." Pono earned his spot in the Paniolo Hall of Fame as much for his business savvy as his roping skills. An early, ardent proponent of intensive grazing and low-stress handling, he incorporated these techniques to expand his operation from twenty-five hundred to as many as eight thousand cows. Ponoholo Ranch now maintains the state's second-largest cattle herd after Parker Ranch. "We're feeding a lot of people," Pono says.
Nine years ago Pono turned the ranch's management over to his stepdaughter Sabrina and her husband, Chris. They took a proactive approach to succession, attending seminars together to help them transition seamlessly. Pono serves as an adviser, but Sabrina is now the one wrestling with the bottom line. "I realized of the four kids who grew up here, I was the only one who had any interest in operating the ranch," she says. "So I switched my degree to animal science and started to think about coming back." A stint working as a personal concierge convinced her. "Not to be crass, but if I'm going to deal with BS, I would much prefer it come from the back of an animal."
Now Sabrina bites her nails over the brittle grass. "We are in the middle of a very bad drought," she says. "We're just waiting for a hurricane. Nobody else likes them, but all the ranchers cross their fingers hoping for one." At present, Ponoholo Ranch is one thousand head of cattle short. "Normally we could run around 3,500 mother cows. Right now we're at about 2,500 mothers."
In addition to shipping calves to the Mainland, Chris and Sabrina produce two to three hundred grass-fed animals for the local market each year, but the drought has paused that program. Another income stream comes from the sale of bulls. Sabrina drives to the upper reach of the ranch, where the purebred herd grazes in the still-green pasture. "This cowherd is the genetic base for the whole ranch," she says. Each spring, her crew artificially inseminates the 170 cows in this herd; they keep the best calves and sell the surplus as breeding stock. The ranch's breeding program dates back to 1968, so Sabrina can reference performance records decades deep. "We look through them for a general shift, in a good or bad direction. There are so many different DNA markers now for docility, marbling, tenderness, feed efficiency. If there's anything that we need to change, we can."
Sabrina's scientific detachment evaporates when she reaches the herd. Two gregarious heifers, Ginger and Margarita, nose up to greet her. Like daubs of paint against the lush grass, each pure-black Angus, milk-white Charolais and caramel-brown Tarentaise is a paragon of cow-ness. The French Alpine breeds-Charolais and Tarentaise-look as if they've trotted out of a musical. The wind rips across this hillside, Sabrina's favorite spot on the ranch. She and Chris were married here, in the ohia grove. "This life is not for everybody," she says. "It's hard, really hard, but we love it."
Chris and Sabrina didn't bring a mare home from the auction-to the disappointment of their four-year-old daughter, Isabel, who hopes to be a trick rider one day. But two youngsters did score horses at the sale. Fourteen-year-old Kawelo Castro shadows Shane on weekends, helping with small ranch tasks. The high school freshman has zero ranching background-his parents are surfers-but has respect and enthusiasm for the paniolo lifestyle.
Shane had planned to give Kawelo a horse. "His mom said, 'No, that's our investment and it's a responsibility for him.'" So Kawelo set his alarm for 3:30 Sunday morning to be first in line for the sale. Even after he blew past his budget, his parents were proud and grateful. His uncle offered a place to keep the horse, Auntie DeeDee gave him a saddle and Shane provided tack. The boy looked sharp as a pin riding his new horse out of the arena. It was a win for everyone, including the horse's trainer, Tyler Cox. "You can't ask for anything better as a cowboy," Shane told Tyler. "Seeing a kid ride a horse you've trained-that's the biggest dream right there."
That dream came true twice on auction day. Tyler also trained Whisky Blossoms, a four-year-old gray mare that sold after frenzied bidding. The auctioneer couldn't see the winner and called out, "Stand up, miss!" Eight-year-old Hiilei Karratti was standing. Tiny but tough, the fifth-generation cowgirl expressed relief. "I was kinda scared I wouldn't get her," she said. She had immediate plans for her new horse. Without delay, she threw a saddle on Whisky Blossoms and rode her straightaway into the barrel racing competition-proving that paniolo blood still runs hot.
