The journey to human scale farming
It all began with an ad on Spotify - audible was proudly covering the perks of a book 'How to grow more vegetables' by John Jeavons - the father of the organic bio-intensive growing system. Something in the ad triggered action, and after several covid lockdowns, book pages covered in notes, and 50m2 of grass killing polyethene I was in for the ride.
Learning to run a market garden
The Waikato sits in one of New Zealand's most temperate growing zones. We get reliable rainfall, mild winters, and long summer days — conditions that suit both the hardy herbs we grow for tea and the delicate seedlings we raise as microgreens — but our first site was peat and held few of these benefits. We began with seriously low pH soils. The learning curve was steep, and I learned my greatest lessons in a wildly difficult environment.
Becoming commercial as a small-scale organic farmer was a wild experience. I thank my husband and family for their endless support, Gus Tissink of FED Foods for taking a chance on our farm and helping with brand and product choices, Jodi Roebuck of Roebuck farm for putting on his weekend courses and the other market gardeners who supported emotionally, shared ideas and generally wanted success for all of us.
We are up against some of the biggest brands on the planet with essentially no real logistics (us in our cars), little marketing and a country the currently has loud voices in viticulture, dairy and others, but no cohesion yet in diverse organic horticulture.
Little by little, I seed raised, planted, learned, worked on soils and moved forward. Stock grew; I learned to apply herbal medicine practices to growing. Studied and generally became a farmer. My husband called it a 'becoming' rather than a 'learning'.
Small Scale, by Design
The Micro Farm is small — and that's intentional. When you're growing on a small scale, you notice things. I designed the gardens to ensure diversity. I notice when a plant is struggling before it becomes a problem. I can harvest at the right moment rather than working to a schedule set by machinery. You can tend each crop with the kind of attention that simply isn't possible at industrial scale.
If you are drinking Red Clover tea, it is made with flowers that are hand cut and selected, in season when the flowers are growing (sorry folks few flowers in August), air dried out of direct sunlight, the way it has been done for thousands of years, so what reaches you is as close to straight-from-the-garden as we can make it.
I am in our market garden beds every day, walking the rows, changing out crop and planning next steps. It is a labour of love, and a tight relationship with the plants, soils and animals that live there. In summer, I often need to wait for bees sleeping inside flowers to wake up before harvesting.
The shift to the Hearthstone site
I quickly outgrew our site, and we were looking to make a move, but wanted to stay in Waipa and the Waikato. I started using my learning to plan out a new type of garden — similar to a food forest, but where there was great bio-diversity, but still considered the required economies of scale. I added fruit trees and bushes, medicinal herbs and flowers in rows beside and around market garden crops.
We hunted for 2 years for a suitable site, and finally settled Hearthstone in Parawera. Infrastructure took 3 years from buying the land, a remarkable pace, and we have now a simply stunning site that is able to expand and grow to accommodate other businesses over time, building a community.
Setting up the farm looked like boot loads of plants, literally being transported to their new home. Digging beds with a broadfork, testing soils through observation (visual soil assessments) and documenting behavior, challenges and strengths.
100m3 of oak tree woodchip from the trees that fell in cyclone Gabrielle fostered fungi, lifted compaction and the earth began to wake up — which is another rather long story.
Hearthstone Store
When we wanted to stock and sell other Waikato growers on site, I began to look for others who produced food like we do, with no chemicals and a focus on soil health.
A formal list was started to recognize those across New Zealand doing this work. The shop started with a homeschool tour koha of $300, and my own stock. Now we have many Waikato brands and foods that make a complete diet, all from others working on Waikato soils, their environment and a love of real food.
And here we are, on site at The Micro Farm with the gardens thriving, and with Hearthstone Store ever growing and getting out there.
Come in and see us, smell the herbs drying in the shop, take a moment and support those you walk past in your local towns, because alone small-scale farms and food producers walk a steep uphill battle, and together we form something remarkable, for you — our community.