Life on our small farm

Who's that croaking in the troughs and watching me in the garden?

I'm going back and forwards with the wheelbarrow ... topping up rocket beds with soil. We're sowing 2 x 20m beds of rocket every week right now. It's a bit monotonous and feels like it will never end. Then I notice I have a silent audience.

A frog is sitting very still at the end of a garden bed. He doesn't move after I've gone past 10 times. Every time I go past, I glance over to see what he's doing. He distracts me from my work, and suddenly, I'm finished.

Southern Bell frogs love our place. In the warmer months, their croaking melodic love songs echo loudly from inside our concrete water troughs. They're telling potential girlfriends that our trough would be a good place to set up house.

In the winter, they become quiet, and we more likely see them in the garden, especially when it's wet. They hide under taupolins, logs, and piles of leaves.

I once looked it up, and they can live up to 10 or more years here in Northland NZ. Have we met before Mr Frog?

Each year or so Daryn heads to the sale yards to buy calves. We generally buy weaned calves and sell them 12-18 months later, depending on how much grass we have and what the pricing at the sale yards is like at the time. It only takes a few days for new calves to settle in and understand the drill here on our farm. We enjoy having cattle, they are intelligent animals and we generally only have between 20-30 here at one time. Their time here is calm and quiet, with no working dogs, just Daryn calling them to new paddocks and me trying to get them to pose for the odd photo.

This years group came from 3 different farms, but it doesn't take long for them to make new friends and work out their place in the herd.

It's entertaining to get to know the personalities of a new group of calves. As a general rule of thumb there is always in the group: a smart intuitive leader, a couple of friendlies who'll come right up close, and an annoying thick one who over-analyses everything and takes forever to follow along to a new paddock ... or totally freaks out and takes off in the wrong direction!

Some of this year's calves are Speckled Park breed ... with striking black and white smudgy dotted coats. I've been charmed at how they contrast against the other calves' black coats.

When we buy calves from the sale yards, we usually don't know much about where they've come from.

Sometimes, there will be a 'friendly' with an ear tag that's got an actual name on it instead of a number. Of course, the calf can't tell us that they were a calf-club calf or someone's herd favourite, but you get an impression that by the way they act, they were something special to someone.

The kererū have set up camp here, many years in a row. Why wouldn't they, with guava and peaches on tap. Looking comically oversized, perching on thin branches in small fruit trees. Confidently and calmly watching as we walk by.

Thwop ... thwop ... thwop. Mr kererū and Mrs kererū perform a flyover over the top of my head and the bean fences. They're on their way back from gorging themselves on the guava. They come in fast and it's a heavy landing into the cabbage tree. You wouldn't describe them as stealth.

Now full of guava, its time to sun themselves while digesting their meal. In this summer heat the fruit ferments. Drunk and happy up in the cabbage tree.

I was in the packing room one Saturday morning when I saw something out the corner of my eye. Thinking went on in my head for a few moments as I worked. The small black shape in the farm race was a calf. Daryn had shifted the cows and their calves across the road into a new paddock of grass the night before. I went over to the door for clarification ... had I seen a calf? Yes, there was a calf, it was standing quietly in the race by itself. It must of been left behind! I decided that I couldn't herd the calf across the road by myself and it would be ok until Daryn got home from the farmer's market to help.

The cows came to our farm in-calf. We didn't have any information about when they were mated, and slowly throughout a few months they had all but one, had their calves. It had been a few weeks since any calves had been born and the calves were now quite grown up and hung out in calf gangs, running up and down the hills together having a great time. Their mums are calm and friendly Angus cows, big giant softies, and good mothers. 

While I worked, I kept glancing out to check it really was a calf. And once Daryn came home we went out to the race to herd the calf over the road to it's mum. We walked up the race and at first it we couldn't see the calf. But it didn't take many steps before we could see the top of a little head and a little face trustingly watching us from a patch of long grass. The way the little calf was snuggled up, watching us approach and didn't stand when we walked up to it, made us realise the calf was a new born - just a wee baby. It had been born yesterday, just before the herd was moved! It had gone all night and half a day without his mum's milk and the warmth of her big body on it's first night to cuddle up to. The critical feeds of the first couple of days had been interrupted - we were eager to get the calf back to his mum. It was alert and we could tell it'd had at least a couple of first feeds before it'd got left behind, but he needed to get to mum ASAP. There was no way we would be able to herd the little fella without him having his mum to follow, so he'd have to be carried.

Daryn scooped the little fella up into his arms and I sped ahead to open gates in front of him. We got the little fella across the road and into the paddock where his herd was grazing. It took barely a second for his mum to see us coming and compute that we had her calf. She knew instantly he was her calf and gently pushed the calf into her side, knowing he needed to feed. We held our breath as the little calf bumped around clumsily trying to find her udder. He bumped around under her front legs and she pushed him back. He stubbled. He stood up again and did some more bumping around under mum. I was starting to feel a motherly-anxious-feeling of needing him to get the udder business sorted! It was at this time that a gang of older calves ran over to see who the strange calf was. They didn't know who this new calf was and started pushing the calf around and being a nuisance. 

Mum swung around and collected her baby with her nose. I think she was feeling like I was. She pushed him all the way around her big body to her other side, so that the calf was between her and a fence. Now the big calves couldn't get to her baby. We watched with relief as the little guy found his mum's udder and started drinking. What relief! We left them to it and headed on home. Daryn checked on the little guy each day, reporting back that the little guy was fine and strong.

A couple of weeks later I tagged along with Daryn to move the herd. The herd gathered at the gate waiting, while Daryn checked the fences in their new paddock. I stood there and counted everyone and everyone stared back at me. The mums, the bull and the calves in their gangs. The smallest face in the herd caught my eye and I realised it was the little left behind calf. He looked so grown up now, and like he had quite a lot of attitude. He watched me intelligently and I wondered if he was remembering his ordeal.

He was standing strongly with his legs apart and his gaze was steady. I guess he had to grow up quick to find his ground in the calf gang. I don't think he'll be left behind ever again.

Christmas arrives and family with helping hands arrive too. This means extra hands in the market garden, in the packing room, and to put up the Christmas tree which might have been forgotten otherwise. It means two extra sat-on seats at the table, extra company and extra laughs.

Our youngest son who has finished his Uni year comes home with a renewed enthusiasm for what we do. He makes a big impact on weeds, helps us fly through Christmas induced increased volumes of salad bags in the packing room, prunes trees and goes to the Farmers market to help Daryn with the big Christmas crowd chaos. 

My Mum turns up each year before Christmas, to lend a hand. She excels at pulling apart flowers for the salad mix, tying up feisty cucumbers, completing abandoned housework and peering seriously through her glasses when the rest of us joke that she's the HR department keeping us all in line.

When I was little, my grandparents would arrive a couple of days before Christmas to lend a hand in the tomato shed. It was a busy time, with the picking, grading, boxing and selling of tomatoes to locals and people heading off in all directions on their summer holidays. My grandparents, who had been market gardeners themselves, knew what a hectic time it was and turned up spot-on when they were needed. I remember the tomato shed a bustle of people chatting and laughing, Christmas songs playing on the local radio and customers cars pulling in off the road all day. 

This Christmas, keeping our flat-tack busy stockists stocked up is a priority, and we'll rush to keep up in the Christmas madness. But once we've done each days work, we'll relax and celebrate with our loved ones.

We wish you all a happy Christmas. May you too have extra hands if you need them over the busy season. Good luck to other growers out there, that are working hard these holidays to earn an important chunk of their year's revenue. Thank you to all our wonderful customers, fellow market stallholders, our stockists, friends ... and our families for your support and fellowship this year.

When we first arrived at the farm, there was much discussion of ideas for a farm name. But when it came down to it, the most obvious choice was a nod to the little Whanaki River (it's more a salty, muddy mangrove creek) that our farm sat next to.

You could say our river is a tidal finger pointing inland off the Kaipara Harbour. The Kaipara has 5 main arms that weave out into the land. When we look at a map of the district we can easily find our farm. It's a little corner between 2 tidal fingers. (tiny red circle on right of map).

The river not only inspires a farm name, it also provides some character.

The white headed grey heron live here, next to the river. We see them silhouetted against the sky up high on the branches of 'old man pines'. They perch facing the river, and we think they're watching for crabs or small fish. They glide down from the pines, across our paddocks, making prehistoric-sounding croaking calls. They swoop down to join our goat herd. They and the goats happily go about their daily tasks together ... we guess the herons enjoy the insects and worms that get disturbed by the goats.

The river changes from hour to hour, giving us tidal intel. It just takes a quick glance down the river to know if the tide is in or out. The tidal status doesn't impact our daily tasks but it's kind of grounding to know what it is. It reminds me of childhood car trips to Grandma's house at the beach. We would drive up and over her hill - and as we came down we had a birds-eye view over the tidal inlet. It was a race to be the first to shout out if it was: in - or out. 

Straddling our river is an old one-lane bridge. Over the years there are been some interesting goings-on down at the bridge. Our market gardens are in our front paddock and any noises at the bridge tend to be quite clear. As I mentioned, the bridge is old (I think built around 1917) and it looks a bit dodgy because the upper structure is wooden. But there are concrete footings underneath. At the bridge entrance, there is a sign of vehicle weight restrictions but I guess drivers don't always know the weight of their vehicles.

One day I was picking tomatoes and heard a truck approach the bridge. It screeched to a stop just before the bridge and then a loud, animated conversation began between the driver and passenger. I heard: "I'm not bloody driving this truck on that", the sound of the men jump down off the truck and then their footsteps on the bridge. There was a fair amount of murmuring. They went back into the truck. After a few minutes I heard a bigger truck coming from the opposite direction. It was a big heavy sand truck, one that goes over the bridge almost daily. Once the unsure truck drivers saw the bigger sand truck cross the bridge, they went across.

One year there was a team who came to maintain the bridge. They did some repairs, cleaned and painted it. They were busy working for a couple of days. Suddenly the bridge looked cared for. I called out 'thanks for looking after the bridge' to one of the guys as I drove over it while they were working. On their last day, there was a lot of banging and crashing as they loaded their gear into their truck. The driver started up the engine and I heard a guy yell "nearly finished, one minute" and then the driver called out "looks fricking awesome, lets go". The next day when I drove over I saw the guy had painted new white lines leading up to the bridge. They were free-styled, a bit wonky. That made me laugh.

We'd been here a couple of years, when there was a knock at our door. It was the public relations person for a movie that was going to be made in our area. They wanted to tell us that our bridge was going to have a part in the movie, there would be disruptions to our road while they were shooting and could they use our driveway for a day to film from? YES! We gave the boys the day off school the day they filmed the bridge scene from our driveway. The film was 'Mahana', and our bridge was the star of a car chase scene right at the beginning. As the cars race towards our one-lane bridge, one gets ahead and cuts the other car off. Our oldest son was about 13 at the time, and was invited to join the director and crew where they were filming in the tent on our driveway. Our younger son and I stood out of shot in our loading ramp. It was so much fun to watch the old cars racing up our road and the actors dressed up in their 1960s clothes. It made me imagine life in another era on our road. And when we watched the movie at the pictures for the first time we were so excited to see our road, glimpses of our farm and the bridge. 

We found some photos up at the local Albertlander's museum of when the bridge was built. There were less mangroves then, the river looks wider and there were even some sandy banks in areas. Now the river is muddy and there is quite a drop down into the channel. But we have seen schools of mullet swim up the river and under the bridge, and the mangroves do have a beauty of their own especially on sunny days when the water sparkles up and around their trucks. 

A neighbour told me a story about local mullet fishers of the past. They meet up at the bridge with the loads of mullet to be transported off. Sometimes they had to wait for hours for the load to be picked up, so a dunny had been built on the river side. But the dunny ended up being converted into a smoke-house, and the guys would smoke a feed of mullet while they were waiting.  

The river gives us these stories - and our farm character - and we want to give back to it. We want to help look after it, and the important harbour it flows in and out of. The people here before us did a great job in fencing off drains, dams and the riverside. Now's our turn to do our best for the river and make this farm even better for future people to come. We're earning our living market gardening off less than a hectare. We have between 10-20 cattle grazing the paddocks, a few goats on weed patrol and a few sheep on race-clean-up but there are extra paddocks we would like to retire. The lower areas of these paddocks - close to the river, are reverting back to wetlands. You can just tell they're crying out to be planted out into wetland loving plants and trees. 

We've begun planning with The Forest Bridge Trust, who are helping us create a sediment reduction plan for these paddocks and the riverside. By retiring paddocks to farm animals and planting them out, it will help prevent subsidence of land and sediment in the river. It will help create more forest, wetland, and habitat for birds, frogs, eels. But more than that, our little river runs down to an even bigger and important place that needs protection - the Kaipara Harbour. We're excited to do our small part, it's going to cost a lot of money for us but it sounds like we'll get some funding to help us out. And we'll do it in stages over the next few years.

Over the years our little farm and it's corner on the river have become our home. As time goes on we learn more about it's past, make our own stories and realise we've become part of it's history too. When you work where you live it's hard to see the beauty - often all you can see is the work still to do. But when we stand on a hill and look down to the river, we can see that the river connects us to something much bigger - the Kaipara. Who would have thought we'd feel such kinship to a salty muddy creek?

A few seasons into market gardening, we faced the ultimate test: can we grow tomatoes? Why am I calling it the ultimate test? Because people tend to have quite strong opinions about growing tomatoes. Either they grow a plant at home every summer, or their father does. We'd read lots of posts and articles about commercial tomato growers watering each plant 20 litres of water a week in irrigated tunnel houses with fans. Pruning and feeding the plants sounded complicated and only fit for an expert to attempt. 

We don't have tunnel houses, we'd love one ... but just haven't had the money to buy one. We don't have a town water supply to rely on, or a spring or river. We collect all our water from the sky and store it in tanks. Would we have enough water to sustain the tomatoes? Would the tomatoes be ok in our no-dig beds out in our front paddock in the wind and rain?

When I was a kid, my parents and grandparents were market gardeners. They grew a lot of different crops, mainly through the summer, but they were mostly known for their tomatoes. Penny's tomato shed was quite well known in the district. They grew most of the tomatoes in glasshouses but also grew some tomatoes out in the paddock. There were die hard outdoor tomato customers that would wait for the outdoor tomatoes. They'd come in week after week asking when the outdoor tomatoes will be ready. It was flavour they were after, the paddock tomatoes have a different flavour, maybe it's because they're out in the direct sun, sometimes not quite getting enough water, open to the wind and rain.

I remember riding my bike along the smooth dirt track alongside the tomato beds in the paddock. The tomato plants were dying, it was the end of the season. I saw one last deep red little tomato on a plant and ate it. It was the sweetest, strongest flavoured tomato I've ever tasted.  

So, anyway back to now - we knew growing outside was possible, but I didn't remember all the hard work to pick the tomatoes when they're down on the ground. I wish now I'd taken more notice when I was a kid instead of riding my bike around.

Like most things we do for our business, we jumped in boots and all with great enthusiasm. We seeded 150 tomato plants, all cherry tomato varieties. We decided that's what our customers would like the most because we loved eating them. It didn't occur to us until the plants were big enough to transplant out into the paddock how time consuming it was going to be to plant, stake, train, prune them all. We got them all the in ground, staked and tied up and did a round or two of pruning. Then it all got out of control.

I told my grandma, 'we're growing outdoor tomatoes. 100 metres of them. We haven't kept up with pruning and tying and now they're great big tangled bushes. But there are loads of tomatoes'. Her face dropped and she rolled her eyes. She said 'that's fine, they'll just be really time-consuming to pick'.

Something quite interesting to me is that my Mum told me that back in the earlier days, when my Grandparents were in charge, they didn't used to sell the little tomatoes. The little tomatoes wouldn't be picked and would be left on the plants or thrown away. My Grandparents once went away on holiday and left my Dad, a teenager at the time, and his sister in charge of the market garden and roadside shop. I think a customer saw the little tomatoes still on the plants and asked if they could buy some. So my Dad and his sister had a brainwave to box the little tomatoes and sell them for more than the larger tomatoes. It was a success.  

Anyway, just to reassure you, our baby tomatoes were a success too. We ended up with a huge crop, the flavour was outstanding, our customers loved them and we sold them all for a good price that made the time-consuming crop worthwhile.

This is our third summer growing tomatoes and we haven't learned our lesson. We still grow 150 plants, and this year we got behind in pruning and tying up. It takes us 1 hour per bed to pick the baby tomatoes and there are a couple of plants that you pretty much have to lie on your tummy to get the massive handfuls of little tomatoes hiding underneath. We thought we had it cracked this time, too, with a whole lot of bamboo tepees supporting the plants. But they weren't strong enough for the heavy weight of the fruit laden plants.

Note to ourselves: next summer ... buy big steel Warratahs to extra support the tepees.

We tried a new variety this year - a variety called Andiamo, a 'San Marzano' style, lower acid, plum tomato. San Marzano tomatoes are famous in Italy for their flavour and as a canning tomato. I'm sure you'll agree the description sounded quite romantic so we grew it, and it's all true, Andiamo is our new favourite. We'll be growing that each year along-side (or along-ground) the baby toms.

I think back to my childhood again and I remember my dad coming in from the tomatoes, his hands all black from the tomato plants and smelling of tomatoes. I remember him scrubbing and scrubbing his hands and never getting it all off. Now our hand towels have tell-tale yellow marks from the tomato season, and one of our sons once said there's nothing better than the smell of a tomato plant.

Does this mean we can now call ourselves tomato growers?

It's been wet and muddy and honest-to-goodness we're over trudging through it to get to our gardens and taking on and off our wet-weather gear to work outside. 

The wet and mud affects all of our daily work on the farm and most tasks take longer than usual. All crops grow slow and take an age until harvest. Less customers brave the farmer's market and our stockists sell less. All in all, our work is a little less rewarding in the winter.

The gravel road we live on becomes quieter - with drivers avoiding its potholes and muddy puddles. When we drive to our local town we feel a muddy-vehicle kinship to the other muddy-vehicle owners we drive past and park next to.

If the wind is strong, we prepare in case the power goes out. Fuel for the hydroponics generator, buckets of water, candles, playing cards and firewood. It's too far to pop up the road for takeaways so we make a slow cooker of something that can be re-heated on our wood fire for dinner if the worst happens. The wind whistles around our old house, which is a bit draughty but solid against the stormy weather - the settlers who built it chose a good spot.

On very wet days we check for road closures in case our route to school or our delivery to stockists is blocked by slips or flooding. One stormy afternoon all three routes to and from town were blocked with slips and flooded roads. We couldn't pick up our son after school so he stayed the night at a friend's house. That night the friend's dad couldn't get home from work and he ended up staying with us. We joked that we had traded family members. The roading guys worked hard overnight to clear the roads and the next day our households returned to normal. 

It was during one of these wet and muddy months that our oldest son Sam, who is in his final year studying film production, asked if he could use one of our paddocks to shoot some scenes for a short film he was making. It was a story he had written about a Viking and he was excited to begin filming.

Here was something to distract us from a difficult time in the garden and luckily it had stopped raining for a couple of days to dry the farm (slightly) for filming.

Time was short before filming started and Sam asked if we could help with set building. We - reluctantly at first - chipped in constructing a hut. Our boys had built many huts in our bush over the years, but we hadn't done work like this since childhood and it was fun. Sam said the hut needed to be big so it took a while to finish. The hut was visible from the road and passer-by's were slowing to get a look and neighbours were stopping to ask what the hut was for. 

The film crew arrived and we watched them filming in and around the hut, crowding the doorway with their cameras, booms and screens. Suddenly we understood why the hut was big - there was lots of gear, lots of crew and the tall actor playing the Viking needed to fit inside.

It was entertaining to have young creative minds around for a few days talking about stabbing scenes, golden hour shooting and, most excitedly ... a planned camera drop. Our kitchen was the birth place of many massive trays of stir-fry rice, our side-by-side bike was roaring up and down the road and driveway at all hours ferrying people and gear back and forth. The local cop even stopped at 3am at the close of a night shoot to check what was going on!

The filming wrapped up, the crew went back to the city and now the farm is quiet once again. It's still wet and muddy but it's getting lighter earlier and going dark later, which is an encouraging sign that winter will end soon. The farm had been used for something new and the filming took our minds away from mud for a while. We can't wait to see the film finished. 

Sam and his friend Jordy are the creative directors of Red Ape Media, and the short film they shot here on the farm is called 'The Walker'. Take a look on Instagram @thewalker.production to see more on the filming of The Walker, and follow future projects at @redape.media.