Farmers as kaitiaki...

While we're on the topic of freshwater.

It would be easy to lump all farming in the same boat, point the finger and say that all farming was causing the decline in our freshwater quality and quantity in New Zealand. 

That's simply not true, and not fair on the farming community. My family come from a farming background, and most New Zealanders have a connection to farming in some way.  I know there are many many farmers trying to make a living and do the right thing, and they are to be celebrated.

I met one this weekend, at the excellent Reel Earth Environmental Film Festival in Palmerston North.  His name is Grant, but he is known as River Dog.  Grant is the star of a film made by his son James, and James' film partner Oscar Daniel Hunter.

River Dog is the story of a farmer trying to do the right thing by planting his river banks with native trees and desperately trying to keep the neighbours' cattle off the river, since they (the cattle) are destroying the quality of the water and the native vegetation.  Despite having the rules on his side, the council take no action, so Grant and his farmdogs spend their days chasing the cattle off his 'patch' of the river.  River Dog went on to win three awards including best New Zealand film.

We know that fencing and planting our rivers can protect them from pollution. We should be supporting farmers like Grant, not ignoring them!

Farmers have a tangible connection to the land, they themselves consider themselves stewards or guardians. That is a hefty responsibility, and one that should be celebrated when such stewardship is undertaken, but they should be made responsible when the environment is ignored, or worse, exploited.

Grant Muir, Wairarapa farmer, and River Dog. Photo: James Muir.

Oh and if you haven't seen River Dog  yet - make sure you do, it's highly recommended viewing.

Freshwater, or is it?...

The past week has been one that keeps rearing the ugly head of freshwater in New Zealand and the shocking state it's in.

First, the BBC caught our Prime Minister out, when Hardtalk's Stephen Sackur asked him how we could market ourselves as 100% Pure, when 90% of our lowland rivers were too polluted to swim, drink or fish from;

To which our nation's leader replied that the science behind those shocking pollution statistics was just "one man's opinion." This casual dismissal of scientific fact of the state of our freshwater, the key to our nation's social, environmental and economic wellbeing (if you don't believe that, try thinking of life in NZ without it), gave me quite a fright.

Then Nick Smith, Minister for the Environment, released the long-awaited National Policy Statement of Freshwater. This is a big deal. Despite the RMA requiring National Policy Statements so that councils can make plans that protect the values outlined in an NPS, we've never had one on freshwater in NZ.  It took 18 months, and more than 50 representatives from groups as widely diverse as Forest & Bird and Dairy NZ to get it into shape. Good stuff all around for these parties to agree to some tough measures to protect water. Except... well the policy wonks at MFE must have decided it was all a bit risque, and what was released was a watered-down version of what all of those parties agreed to. It gives councils no national standards to stick to, and puts incredibly long time-frames in place. NZ economist, Rod Oram believes it lacks teeth.

The NPS also promises huge amounts of funding for irrigation projects in NZ, despite the fact that intensification of farming and agribusiness has contributed significantly to the destruction of our waterways.

The NIWA (National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research) website says, “There is no doubt that our declining river water quality over the last 20 years is associated with intensification of pastoral farming and the conversion of drystock farmland to dairy farming, particularly in Waikato, Southland, and Canterbury."

So why are we paying people to pollute our freshwater?

Cattle damage (beef) in the iconic Mackenzie basin... and there's a big push to irrigate that golden 'Speight's' country, turning it forever a lurid green. Never mind what might happen to the relatively pristine lakes and rivers there...

Backyard chookies...

(NB:  I wrote this originally as a comment on an excellent post on Pundit, which was about the new proposed welfare standards for battery hens... but I've borrowed it here to introduce you to our girls... three ex-battery hens, brown shavers, good layers (mostly - more on that later...), and both our pride and the sometimes scourge of our garden.  I've had requests to write stories about the chooks - so this shall be your introduction to them, I have plenty more chooky tales to tell!)


As someone who  names all of her cars, I have yet to name my chickens... they are 'the chooks', and I am at once fascinated by them and exasperated by them.

We got the chickens days before the September 4th earthquake last year. The quake must have shaken the eggs out of them, because they began laying the very next day! 

The bloke has had to be very creative to come up with ways to keep these chooks out of our vege patch. This girl is standing on what was a pallet for fruit and veg, and various trips to the beach to collect driftwood have helped with the fence behind - they are super 'breakers and enterers' though... constant vigilance is required!

Once we got around fencing off various bits of the garden to keep them out (we have re-engineered the classic 'taranaki gate', to a series of 'taranaki fences' in our suburban backyard), I find the chooks to be a daily source of interest and amusement.

The bloke reckons they are like the chickens in a Gary Larson cartoon, somewhat sinister, and always appearing to be planning something. The dog takes this suspicion one step further and simply refuses to set foot in the backyard if they are out of the chookhouse.  Somewhat embarrassed by Nemo's sookiness over chookiness (perhaps not helped by his wussy name!), i once left him out there as an experiment. To my astonishment, I watched all three chooks work in formation, to appear one from each side of him, and one (the smallest and gutsiest) in th front, fluffing up her feathers and stomping towards his face while kicking her claws up in front of him. Needless to say, I don't subject Nemo to this kind of trauma anymore!

This is Nemo's usual stance when he has to have anything to do with the chickens... he's also afraid of sheep.

Despite their vegetable snatching, dog-terrorising tactics, I do love our chooks. I love the simple pleasure of watching them scratch and peck their way around the garden, and I too am amazed by the sight of a hen turning herself almost inside out in a dust bowl she has spent the morning meticulously creating. 

I have only purchased freerange eggs for some years now (even as a broke student), and moving to having your own home-grown eggs is something that you can't put a price on. The taste is incredible, the deep orange yolks are divine just to look at.  That said, I reckon they've saved us quite a bit of dosh.

Happy eggs indeed. The richness and quality of our chooks' eggs, makes all the 'eggsasperation' worth it...

To my chookies, you drive me crazy, and the bloke too, but we love the energy you bring to our place.

Choice words from a choice man...

From the New Zealand Listener, April 23-29, 2005. Said by renowned conservationist Don Merton, who died today.

“They are our national monuments. They are our Tower of London, our Arc de Triomphe, our pyramids. We don’t have this ancient architecture that we can be proud of and swoon over in wonder, but what we do have is something that is far, far older than that. No one else has kiwi, no one else has kakapo. They have been around for millions of years, if not thousands of millions of years. And once they are gone, they are gone forever. And it’s up to us to make sure they never die out.”

Never a truer word was spoken.

Goodbye to a legend...

Renowned conservationist, Don Merton died today. As we tend to say in New Zealand, a mighty totara has fallen. 

Don and his old mate "Richard Henry" the kakapo

Someone recently described Don Merton as New Zealand conservation's answer to Sir Edmund Hillary.  Not a bad little comparison.  What Don was able to achieve for some of our native species was nothing short of staggering. 

I got to meet Don while traveling through the Subantarctic Islands in 2004. We had a great old time pointing out wildlife and going into raptures over sea lions, albatross and penguins.  Then, while filming "Meet the Locals" with TVNZ, we met with him and asked him to tell the story of the black robin.

If you don't know the story, it goes like this. The black robin, one of NZ's most endangered  birds, dropped to just 5 individuals when Don and the Wildlife Service team got to Little Mangere Island in the Chathams. In that 5 birds, was just one viable female, an older robin Don named "Old Blue". Thanks to some nifty nest-swapping and unlimited perserverance, the team got Old Blue breeding again, and saved the entire species.

After the black robin work, Don went on to lead the kakapo recovery programme, and again contributed to saving the species from certain extinction, due to nifty nest-minding techniques and total tenacity.  He has since gone on to advise on conservation projects around the world. 

In a strangely synchronous event, Don's kakapo-contemporary, the elderly kakapo Richard Henry (named for New Zealand's other legendary conservationist) died on Christmas Eve last year, after an enviable life-span of up to 100 years.  Richard Henry was the last remaining Fiordland kakapo, rediscovered by Don and his team in the 1970s. Shortly after Richard Henry and the Fiordland kakapo were discovered (all males), a remnant population of kakapo were found on Stewart Island (including the crucial females), and the opportunity to save the species began. Richard Henry's genes (because he came from a separate population) were very important for kakapo conservation, and he was certainly the 'elder statesman' of the kakapo clan.

Don and Richard Henry crossed paths many times over the following years, most recently when Don and his wife went to visit Richard Henry late last year. Don told me that he was very glad to have had that opportunity.  In correspondence I've had from Don this year, he seemed quite matter-of-fact about his illness, his one regret that he did not quite have enough time to finish all the conservation projects he was involved with.

I remember watching Don and his workmates on wildlife documentaries, when I was a kid, their work inspiring me to take up the career I have now. If Don has one lasting legacy among people, it was his unswerving dedication to the conservation of our most precious wildlife. I wish to help carry that torch, and I know I'm not the only one.

A little bit country...

We spent last Saturday visiting the Oxford A & P show.  There's been a rash of them lately in our area - but this is the first one I've been to this year. 

I love A&P shows. Always have. I love the unchanging nature of them. While almost every aspect of our day-to-day life changes constantly as technology increases, lives get busier and we fill every moment of our time with 'important' tasks, the A&P show is predictably the same. And that's extremely comforting.

The same rides (actually, this is no joke, they are exactly the same pieces of machinery I remember tentatively hopping onto twenty years ago), the same food caravans, and I'm sure, sometimes, the same people operating them.

I'm pretty sure that this is the same ferris wheel that I used to ride on at A&P shows when I was a kid...

Taking your family to the A&P show means you can amble along past shearing displays, the calf-judging, prize-winning poultry, and hand the kids a few bucks to go on a ride, or get a hot-dog, knowing they'll find you again soon. We left the father-in-law at the shearing (it's his favourite), and meandered over to the wood chopping contest, which was by far the most popular event.

This photo was taken about thirty years ago, but you can't really tell the difference between then and now in woodchopping competitions.

Sitting on hay-bales in the sun, we watched some of the fittest kiwi athletes I think I've ever seen power their way through logs in seconds, scale huge poles to cut the top of logs that stood twenty feet high, swinging axes with arms that would have put Popeye to shame.

Apart from the people-watching, and sneaking a pat from some of the livestock on display, my favourite part of the A&P show is actually inside. The arts and crafts and vegetable part, usually in a hall on the site.  Oxford's A&P show didn't disappoint. As a kid, I remember entering the flower-saucer competitions (usually involving some wilted looking pansies jammed in a saucer full of sand), but the vegetable-art one was probably always my favourite.  Bert and Ernie (below) were streets ahead of the usual potato-bunnies.

Bert and Ernie were definitely my favourite, looks like the judges thought so too.

The bloke and I wandered around the tables, exclaiming at the odd stand-out prize-winning vegetable, and muttering quietly to ourselves that our beans were better, my plum sauce was definitely competitive, and our kamo kamo were worth a shot at the top prize.  Next year, we'll enter our own fruits (well vegetables mostly) of our labour, and A&P shows will take on a whole new meaning.

And who knows, maybe one day soon, we'll be able to enter our own prize-winning poultry, lambs or cattle. I'm looking forward to that!

Mine's bigger than yours...

One of the veges that has been the most successful in our garden this year is the kamokamo.  I'd never eaten it before now, and upon trying it this summer, I have to say I really like it. It's kind of like a cross between a pumpkin and a zuchinni (tastes more like a zuchinni).  Some of you may know it as kumi kumi or Maori pumpkin.

Like many of the pumpkin and squash family, it starts in a fairly slow way, sitting quietly and non-descript in amongst the other plants. Then one morning, ZOOOM, you come out to see the garden, and this triffid has taken over your whole backyard!

Kamokamo is the plant that you can see everywhere here, running over gardens, along fences, and around the clothesline.  (chooks placed in picture to give correct scale!).

Our kamokamo this year have been extremely prolific, constantly growing the large striped green globes, with no signs of tiring yet.

Even now in April, we still have new kamokamo bursting forth.

Mostly it's best to eat kamokamo when they are relatively small, they can get tougher and less tasty as they grow bigger. The giveaway is when they start to turn orange. 

However, this year our kamokamo have grown like 'topsy' (as my Nanas would say), and have constantly produced large, tasty orbs of goodness like this one. 

Our most recent kamokamo, which I dubbed "Wilson" weighed 4.5 kilograms.

I have been going a wee bit stir-crazy working from home, and had almost started calling the enormous kamokamo "Wilson" in reference to my Castaway work situation.  Having got to that point, it was probably a good thing that friends from up North arrived here for a cup of tea the other day, and in exchange for a crayfish and some perch, I passed "Wilson" onto them for their culinary enjoyment. Kind of serependitous really, since they hail from the same area that the seeds of our kamokamo came from. Wilson has gone full circle. (aside: Reuben's Mum put it on the plane as her cabin-baggage, much to the amusement of the aviation security guys when they x-rayed her bag). 

Do any of you grow kamokamo? What's your favourite way to eat it?