Seven years ago, my wife Jan & I escaped at last from being ‘townies’ when we had the good fortune of buying a 1.4 hectare lifestyle block at Tamahere, near Hamilton. Such was our lack of knowledge of country living that we took some time to come to terms with having only rain water for our 6000 gallon tank, and a septic tank for sewage. Our daughter’s 30-minute showers soon taught us that lack of water coming from the tap was not actually a plumbing problem! Then, after we had paid the bill for the tanker load of water, slow draining showers and gurgling toilets quickly proved that septic tanks are not self-cleaning!

Despite warnings from friends that what we really owned was a ‘life sentence block’, we proceeded to tidy the land up, spending every waking hour working till we dropped from exhaustion. Starting with ‘Plan A’, we soon had the property looking great after we recently reached ‘Plan 93B’. Sadly, the bank account does not look quite so great but who cares, you can’t take it with you! Plan 94 awaits action.

During the process, we read with much interest of the wonderful work being done by Kay & the Koanga team. So, some years ago, after joining Koanga, we drove to Kaiwaka for one of the open days and became instantly ‘hooked’. I recall telling Jan that if I ever went ‘AWOL”, she might find me at Koanga counting seeds.

Before long we started growing Hadfield Peas to assist the cause. Fortunately our land comprises some of the best soil around, Tamahere sandy loam. That activity has now grown to substitute Giant Alderman peas, and add Scottish Broad Beans, Perfect Stringless Dwarf Beans and very shortly a runner bean and range of Brassicas. Growing vegetables is totally new to me, as is allowing them to go to seed. As for composting, well that’s another story! However, the joy of finally packaging parcels of healthy seed and sending them off to Koanga makes all the effort worthwhile, knowing that my small contribution is helping to ‘save the seeds’.

We have now moved on from having ‘beefies’ (Jan refuses to eat our pets!), Alpacas and, very soon, sheep (who wants to buy a few purebred Dorpers?). We are content with our three cats, one old dog, a water trough full of goldfish and an unknown large and growing number of lovely white pigeons. Plus, of course, we have the obligatory ‘chooks’ that include a number of Araucanas and Silkies (yummy fresh eggs, nothing beats them).

I told Kay recently that my commitment to growing seeds would continue until I get carried out of here in a wooden box (untreated timber I hope!). I love it and Jan supports the passion by feeding our family with some of the wonderful heritage produce and helping me to keep the gardens tidy. How I am ever going to find time to finish restoring my 1926 Ford Model T Roadster beats me. Oh well, I’m only 63, plenty of time left yet!