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So excited - I have 30 saffron bulbs to trial at Arrow Ridge. All via facebook and like souled-individuals, learning and sharing seed thoughts of sustainability in Central Otago. Bulbs offered and transported through social networking. Gotta love how the world works today. Thank you, thank you, thank you to those willing to share. 30 bulbs as a trial crop or just because... Saffron one of our best restaurants name sakes, as a crop - new to the region but not to the world. A gold crop, high maintenance and hard work like many Arrowtown women, born of gold, and stunning. A new plant is a new story, untold and untested. Better than a delivery of on line shopping from Asos. Clothes that look great on the modeIs but carry the guilt of air miles from the UK even though shipping is free... a fashion fail with kiwi cankles. I get to see if I can encourage those 30 bulbs to thrive here. It may seem nothing to some but to seed-crop-cravers like me 30 bulbs are 30 gold nuggets. I've been gathering seeds; sweet peas, parsley, corriander, cucumbers, peas, beans and tomatoes to propagate next spring. I'm very aware that some places on our planet what I am doing for enjoyment and satisfaction is a crime. I get a buzz each time I mulch the pumpkins in the horse poop, the parsely and mint from generations ago and wild tomatoes or beans that have found crevices and thrived. Arrowtown, a living historic village filled with high end estates, first family homes and holiday cribs. Artisan galleries, boutique shopping, restaurants where slow food that showcases Central Otago produce and wines thrive. Villagers from all walks wax lyrical describing puff balls bigger than your head harvested in the early morning dew of autumn. Rowan berries, elderflower and rose syrups. Apple trees, apricots and quince hang on the river tracks and verges. Wild black berries and yellow plums are harvested on 4-wd drive trips up river to Macetown. We worship our chefs who turn rabbits shot on the block into Moroccan feasts. Or a rainbow trout, Tar or fallow deer dropped off by whanau to full the freezers for the wwoofers. Our prized silver dorkings are fed on tapas from La Rumbla - scraps so good the chicken run must be dog proof or the bulimic suffering big black walrus of a labravac dog will surely die. Living in central we battle the climate, the days are shortening at one end while the shadows are lengthening at the other. Hot days and lingering afternoons are being swallowed by darkles in the morning and the threat of frost. I dare not look when daylight saving ends. Too soon we will be swallowed by -14 degrees and winter. To walk bare foot on the lawn freshly mown and watered with our bore supply cold and crisp from the Arrow. We can eat and grow lawns, chip and putt golf balls and splash in clear river pools. We may simply sit majestic amongst the mountains. Nurturing the 100 mile diet philosophy. Reflecting on the chinese market gardeners, gold miners and settlers who have sown seed here before us. And get prepared to bed down for winter. Gathering and preserving what we can and paying it forward when we have an abundance to share.
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NZ European?? Not me I'm a New Zealander!! 6th generation, my children are 7th. And every time I fill in a form it irks me. To not be able to acknowledge my country as my own is a bash to my ethics of enculturation. While there is no bad just different I feel unsettled and misplaced. And now at census time we Kiwis have an opprtunity to DO something about it. My ancestors came from Nova Scotia and Mauritius a long long long long long long long time ago - not much European about any of them. They milled Kauri in Whatipu and by the colour of my youngest kiwi chicks skin the cocoa plantation we lost due to no rates payments in Southern Africa just a few generations back has a lineage battle with which unknown iwi may have jumped the engineering whanau fence in Patea and Hawera / Taranaki. You can take the boy from the naki but not the naki from the boy and it shows clearly in my daughters heritage. Yet we still don't know how to fill in our forms.Every time the school sends home a survey I add a thesis. Ethnicity debates aside we are New Zealanders. From Gods Own, Middle Earth. We love our country with a passion. there is not a human who did not migrate here, by waka or ship, by aircraft or mothers womb. They honed out a life from the bush, have contributed as settlers, farmers, politicians,mothers and others. We have never left and we call it home. Our blood is in her soil. Tommorrow there is a chance for our country to embrace us all. New Zealanders. All of us. Not of only our treasured maori or those who are happy to own European decent. Tanga te whenua to me is people of the land but when, where and how does that start or finish? How many generations have to pass of children being created and born here? Of toil and endevour towards the good of our nation until we don't have to pretend we are from somewhere else? Go on I D.A.R.E. you - be brave enough to say where we are from. I owe this to my kids this is their home. |
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