By the third week of August, the Maui events calendar has quietly relocated to the coast. The Emma Farden Sharpe Hula Festival is drawing hālau to Royal Lahaina on the 22nd. The same Saturday, Maui Calls fills the Yokouchi Pavilion at the MACC in Kahului. Wailuku Hongwanji closed its two-night Bon Dance on August 1 and 2. Anyone selling Upcountry to a first-time visitor is pointing them at the October pumpkin patch, still six weeks out.
That is the week Kula belongs to the people who live in Kula. And there is a specific reason it works: three things happen on the mountain in mid-August that do not overlap in any other month. The lavender fields on Waipoli Road hit their peak color. The Kula Shofukuji Mission holds its Bon Dance on August 15. And Kula Country Farms sits in its longest quiet stretch of the year, the working-produce lull between strawberries and pumpkins. If you already live here, that combination is the whole reason you tell friends not to come until later.
The weekend the visitor calendar leaves town
The visitor draws in mid-to-late August all live off the mountain. Emma Farden Sharpe runs 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, August 22, at The Branches at Royal Lahaina, free, with hālau performances and workshops honoring an Aunty born in Kāʻanapali in 1904. Maui Calls, the MACC's 28th annual gala, is that same night. On Oʻahu the season is winding down. On West Maui it is peaking.
Upcountry does not compete for that audience. It gets out of the way. The Baldwin Avenue rodeo weekend is a July memory, and the pumpkin traffic on Kula Highway is not until October 1. The road between Pukalani and Keokea, in mid-August, drives like it did in April.
August 15, on Puanani Place
The Kula Shofukuji Shingon Mission at 113 Puanani Place, under Rev. Takayuki Meguro, holds its Bon Dance on Saturday, August 15, 2026. The service begins at 5 p.m. and the dance follows at 7 p.m., per the schedule published by Maui Now and the Hawaii Council of Jodo Missions.
The Kula Bon Dance is not the biggest on the island. Wailuku Hongwanji, two Fridays and Saturdays earlier at 1828 Vineyard Street, is larger and easier to get to from Central and South Maui. What Kula has is elevation. The dance sits at roughly 3,000 feet on the western slope of Haleakalā, and by 7 p.m. in August the air moves from warm to genuinely cool while the yagura is still going. Taiko carries differently at that altitude. If you have not been to a Bon Dance before, this is a welcoming one to start with. If you have been for years, you already know the drill: bring a light layer, arrive by 5:30 if you want food, park along Puanani and walk.
Waipoli Road, when the fields are actually purple
Ali'i Kula Lavender at 1100 Waipoli Road sits at roughly 4,000 feet on 13.5 acres, with about 55,000 lavender plants across 20 varieties. Peak bloom generally lands in July and August, sometimes stretching into early September. Operational hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., last entry 3:45 p.m.
For visitors, the farm is a year-round stop, because nine of the varieties bloom continuously. For residents, the July–August window is when the plural fields, not just the plants, are purple at the same time. That is a narrower window than the website advertises, and it is the point of going in August rather than February. Waipoli Road itself is the second half of the experience: the switchbacks past the pastures, the crossover into cloud cover around 3,500 feet, the sudden light when you break above it. Locals know to drive up in the morning while the marine layer is still holding on the central valley, then come back down through it.
The Monden lull
Kula Country Farms at 6240 Kula Highway, across from Rice Park, is a four-generation Monden family operation that has been farming this slope since the 1940s, when it was known as Monden Farms. Most people know it for two things, and the two things are not August.
| Season | What is happening at 6240 Kula Highway |
|---|---|
| February through early June | Strawberry U-pick, ending around June 7 |
| Mid-June through September | Farm stand only, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., closed Sundays |
| October 1 through 31 | Fall Pumpkin Patch and corn maze, daily |
| November through January | Farm stand, quiet season |
August is the deepest point of the middle row. The farm stand is open, the sweet corn is in, the little free library and seed exchange are staffed by whoever is on the register, and there are no tour buses in the gravel lot. If you have been trying to get your out-of-town in-laws a photograph on the tractor without waiting 40 minutes, this is your month. Aunty Linda's Soaps on Naalae Road is on the way in from the highway if you are making a morning of it.
Chauncy and Teena Monden have been open in interviews about how thin the margins are on a small Maui farm. Rising costs, labor, competition for shelf space at Costco and Foodland. The strawberry and pumpkin windows are what keep the retail stand alive. The point of stopping in August is not sentimentality. It is that the farm stand's other ten months are the actual business, and a Kula resident buying a flat of Kula onions and tomatoes in the middle of August is doing something more useful than showing up for the corn maze in October.
Saturday morning at Kulamalu, without the October crowd
The Upcountry Farmers Market runs Saturdays from 7 to 11 a.m. at Kulamalu Town Center, 55 Kiopaa Street in Pukalani, just up from Longs Drugs. It has been operating in some form for more than 40 years, first at St. Joseph's Church, then for about 31 years at the Eddie Tam Gymnasium in Makawao, and at Kulamalu since June 2010 courtesy of the Dowling Company.
More than 100 vendors work the lot most Saturdays. In August, before the winter market grows again, the produce is what the mountain is doing right now: apple bananas, lilikoʻi, Kula strawberries winding down, avocados coming in, and the first serious sweet corn. Star Anise Cafe's Indian food stall is still the answer to any argument about breakfast. The rule, ask any regular, is that 7 a.m. is not a joke. By 9 the parking is a problem and by 10 the flowers are gone.
An August Saturday, mapped
For a resident who wants to run the mid-August version of the day, in order:
- 7 a.m., Upcountry Farmers Market at 55 Kiopaa Street. Cash. Bag. Coffee at the market rather than in the car.
- 9:30 a.m., Kula Country Farms at 6240 Kula Highway for onions, tomatoes, and a strawberry lemonade before the U-pick season truly ends.
- 10:30 a.m., Ali'i Kula Lavender at 1100 Waipoli Road while the fields are still cool and the marine layer is holding. Lavender scone on the porch.
- 1 p.m., late lunch at Kula Bistro, 4566 Lower Kula Road, open every day except Monday. It is still BYOB, and the market across the street still sells wine.
- 5 p.m., service at Kula Shofukuji Mission, 113 Puanani Place. Dance at 7 p.m. Bring a light layer.
Kula Lodge on Haleakalā Highway is still operating as the food truck while the original restaurant is rebuilt, and the Saturday 5 to 7 p.m. live music slot is worth a stop if the Bon Dance is not your speed that particular Saturday.
Why residents guard this week
The West Maui hula festival, the Kahului gala, and the Wailuku dances are all worth going to. What makes mid-August distinctly Kula is not that the mountain is putting on a bigger show. It is the opposite. The visitor economy has physically moved somewhere else for a weekend, and what is left, the peak lavender, the community Bon Dance, the farm stand between its two headline seasons, the Saturday market before the October rush, is the ordinary Upcountry week without the crowd tax.
Kula in August rewards people who have already learned the rhythm. That is the small, useful thing about living up here rather than driving up here.
If your family has been thinking about what a year on this side of the mountain would actually look like, or you are already Upcountry and quietly wondering what your home is worth in the current market, The Yokouchi Team is happy to talk story. Request a free home valuation whenever you are ready.
