new surf dialogue

Christine and I said our goodbyes to Simon and Maria, packed up our Zorro Blanco Mystery Van, and headed down Surf Highway 45 this morning. Again, like our Anaura Bay WWOOF experience, the highlight was the conversation as much as the time spent digging around their garden and clucking with the chooks. Our dinner conversations often drifted to agri-politics and the nature of organics in New Zealand. As I’ve mentioned before, New Zealand is not the clean and green machine that the tourism board promotes. Conventional farming, according to Simon, has really taken its toll on the environment here. In Taranaki, the DOC just started dropping insane amounts of 1080  around the mountain to kill the Aussie opossum’s that are – and have been for years – eating up all the native vegetation, and polluting the crap out of the local ecosystem in the meantime. Many local farmers drench thier pastures in urea Simon tells us, polluting any nearby waterways and soils. But organic mindsets are here, and many farmers, even though they aren’t advertised as organic, practice very sustainable methods, and since the 1990’s organic food production has skyrocketed. Although, we have to be careful, as Christine, Simon and I all concurred, organic doesn’t mean sustainable. Plenty of conventional farming “wisdom” is being used to produce heaps of organic produce, especially as the global market is demanding it in greater numbers. You don’t need to be using chemicals to farm unsustainably. But there are so many re-thinking of farm practices going on here in New Zealand. From Simon and Maria’s organic take over of their property, to the permaculture and bio-dynmanic farms we encountered in Napier – and are found all over the country to terraquaculture techniques that fit perfectly into the sustainable farming mould and are methods that Chinese and Nepalese and Bhutanese farmers use in places with very little rainfall.  The most recent New Zealand Lifestyle Block magazine has an article on this farming technique and we were all discussing it over plats of potatoe curry one night.  Terraquaculture goes against the western grain paradigms by working with the natural landscapes and how rainwater naturally drains through ones property instead of draining the land, plugging up the holes and putting in irrigation. Pretty awesome stuff, and as the article notes, these natural farming methods have been putting food on plates in China for thousands of years. I love hearing and reading about these types of alternative ideas being put to work. I love learning about the lives and loves of people like Simon and Maria and helping them grow food and raise their own beef and live as resposibly as possible. Makes for good, positive dinner conversation too, a social digestivo.

So we’re back in Opunake, going to find a place to park the Mystery van and wait for the swell to fill in. There is going to be a whole lot of reading going on too. The quarter is quickly coming to an end and I need to start putting all my thoughts and talks and photos and nerve-wracking surf starvation into that thing called a thesis. Time is flying, as it always does. The mosquitoes have fell in love with my calves. The sun shines overhead, and the ocean calls.