Sunset Ranch Hawaii

modeling land conservation and sustainability in hawaii

Located on the North Shore of Oahu, Sunset Ranch is one the most exclusive private estates in Hawaii. The 30-acre property has panoramic ocean and mountain views of the entire northwest side of the island, and is home to six beautiful event venues, avocado and lychee orchards, an aquaculture site, two apiaries, a butterfly house, botanical gardens, and a family of horses.  The estate is extremely private, nestled between two of the largest nature preserves on Oahu: Waimea Valley (1875 acres) and Pupukea-Paumalu (1129 acres), and a short drive from Haleiwa Town, Turtle Bay Resort, and several world famous beaches, including: Waimea Bay, Shark’s Cove, Pipeline, and Sunset Beach. 

Sunset Ranch was forever protected with Hawaii’s first private conservation easement in 2010. The owner of Sunset Ranch, Greg Pietsch, along with The Trust for Public Land (TPL) and the North Shore Community Land Trust (NSCLT), successfully raised grant funding from the Federal government’s Farm and Ranch Protection Program (FRPP), the State’s Legacy Land Conservation Fund (LLCF) and the City & County’s Clean Water and Natural land Fund (CWNL). With the prospect of the first recorded private conservation easement in the State of Hawaii, Mr. Pietsch insisted on all government agencies participating; federal, state and county.  With many non-profits, landowners and agencies now actively involved in the land conservation cause, we are pleased to share that almost 100,000 acres of land has now been protected throughout the State of Hawaii.  We are grateful to be part of this journey, and we hope to continue to educate visitors and landowners to advance the land conservation cause. 

After successfully protecting Sunset Ranch, Mr. Pietsch wanted to share the property in ways that would resonate. To inform the community on land conservation programs.  And to establish a true model of sustainability that visitors could enjoy, understand and appreciate.  Mr. Pietsch breaks down sustainability into three forms: financial sustainability, food sustainability, and community sustainability.  Mr. Pietsch actively worked to develop a business plan around these objectives, setting out to establish a mission of modeling land conservation and sustainability in Hawaii. He constructed a business model around four specific segments: (1) Tours & Events (financial sustainability), (2) Farming (food sustainability), (3) Gardens & Forest Restoration (community sustainability), and (4) Therapeutic Horsemanship (community sustainability).  Today we are proud to share that we have hosted over 1400 events, donated thousands of pounds of food, planted hundreds of native trees, and hosted hundreds of therapeutic horse programs.  We will continue to work hard to improve and advance each of these business segments.  We hope our model teaches others how to best preserve and steward our precious lands in Hawaii.  We are grateful for your interest, and we would love to share this special place with you.

1. Tours and Events

Sunset Ranch is a private 30-acre estate on the North Shore of Oahu, with ocean and mountain views of the entire northwest side of the island. As the first property in Hawaii forever protected with federal, state and county grant funding, Sunset Ranch has a focused mission of modeling land conservation and sustainability in Hawaii.

While we specialize in Wedding Packages, Sunset Ranch is available for a variety of Tours and Events. These efforts are in the interest of maintaining Financial Sustainability at the ranch.  Our Tours are designed to provide visitors a unique opportunity to enjoy one of the most exclusive estates on Oahu and learn about the history of the ranch, land conservation, sustainability and Hawaiian history and culture. We also host Events for a variety of occasions, including: weddings, birthday parties, fundraisers, family luaus, corporate retreats and other social gatherings.  All package offerings at Sunset Ranch provide exclusive access to the estate for 12 hours.  This gives clients the freedom to choose where and how they want to celebrate.  Clients have use of 6 different event venues, two guest suites and our courtyard chapel for the entire day.  We host no other activity on the day of their event.  In the interest of our Food Sustainability efforts, it is also worth noting that we donate all left over food from Tours and Events to local foodbanks across Oahu with the help of Aloha Harvest.  While Financial Sustainability is our primary objective for Tours and Events, our hope is that by sharing the estate in these ways, visitors will not only enjoy themselves, but learn about and begin to engage in, the land conservation and sustainability cause.

2. Farming

Sunset Ranch is working hard to model Food Sustainability in Hawaii.  Accordingly, we have established a 60-tree avocado orchard, a 60-tree lychee orchard, a 50,000 gallon aquaculture site home to 500 tilapia, and two apiaries for honey harvesting.  We work hard every year to continue to build and grow these efforts.

Our 60-tree avocado orchard currently yields approximately 8000 pounds of fruit per year.  While we integrate some of the fruit into out package menu offering, we donate most all avocado yield to local foodbanks across Oahu.  We partner with Aloha Harvest for assistance with orchard management, harvesting and distribution.  Our newly planted 60-tree lychee orchard will yield between 5000 and 10,000 pounds of fruit in the next three to five years.  While we will look at monetizing the lychee over the long term, our first yields will also be donated and distributed to local foodbanks with the assistance of Aloha Harvest.  Our aquaculture site is currently yielding approximately 400 pounds of tilapia per year, and we hope to harvest more in years to come.  Mari’s Gardens helps us manage the site and is also our primary source of fingerlings.  Annual harvests are scheduled and executed in partnership with Aloha Harvest.  As with our avocado harvests, we currently donate all of the fish and distribute it, with the help of Aloha Harvest, to various foodbanks across Oahu. Lastly, our apiaries currently yield about 500 pounds of honey.  Our hope is that these yields will increase in years to come as we continue to add more bee hives.  We work with Nalo Meli Honey and KinoBees to manage, harvest and bottle all of our honey at Sunset Ranch.  Currently all honey is integrated into our Tour and Event offerings.

 

3. Gardens & Forest Restoration

The botanical gardens at Sunset Ranch are home to a variety of native and non-native flora and fauna, including many varieties of native Hawaiian Ferns (Fern’s Garden), Pikake, Puakenikeni, Bird of Paradise, Heleconia, native Hibiscus, and other varieties. We also now have a butterfly house at Sunset Ranch (Anastasia’s Butterfly House) and are working to propagate Crown Flower, Milkweed and Marigold to assist with increasing the Monarch Butterfly population in Hawaii.  The Monarch Butterfly was added to the endangered species list in 2025.

Sunset Ranch has also partnered with Waimea Valley to eradicate invasive plants and plant native Hawaiian plants throughout the mauka regions of north valley. We work with various non-profits and volunteer groups to advance this effort.  We have learned that forest restoration in these regions is a very difficult and complicated task and partnerships with non-profits and regular recruitment of volunteer groups is critical to the success of the effort. We have also determined that is most practical to clear select, well defined areas within these regions.  Further, we have found these efforts more meaningful when dedicated to certain local causes.  As an example, we have now planted over 100 Hawaiian plants and trees in memory of children who have passed prematurely.  Mr. Pietsch sits on the board of HUGS (Help, Understanding, Growth and Support) where efforts are dedicated locally to supporting families that have children with a serious life illness.  All of these efforts collectively are in an effort of Community Sustainability.  We feel it is our duty to give back to our community in ways that have meaningful impact.

4. Therapeutic Horsemanship

Sunset Ranch has dedicated a large portion of the estate to equine operations. Specifically, the ranch has a 12-acre pasture, an on-site riding trail, a 2-acre riding field, and a large stable (Sunset Stables) with a 14 horse stalls and a 10,000 square foot indoor riding arena.  All of our horse family resides in the lower pasture.

In the interest of Community Sustainability, we have worked hard at Sunset Ranch to partner with certain non-profits over the years to provide meaningful therapy programs that deliver something more than the traditional riding experience.  More specifically, our focus has been on offering specialized programs that incorporate horses for personal growth, learning and healing. While we have had a wide range of horsemanship offerings in years past, our current focus is providing access to and building therapeutic programs around the families and children of HUGS.  Our primary goal is to help these families and children during some of the most challenging times in their lives.  The majority of these programs are conducted off the horse, where the families and children are simply interacting with the horse.  Whether it be brushing the horse’s mane or body, or simply feeding the horses treats, we have found the interaction between people and horses extremely powerful and healing.  The ultimate goal is to bring moments of joy and happiness to these families and children.  Our hope is to continue to build this program offering in years to come.

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