Southlanders stave off inflation with self-sustenance

Friday, 25 February 2022

Daryn Chalmers and Kim Findlay produce most of their own fruit, meat and vegetables.

Inflation is increasing quicker in New Zealand’s regions than in the main centres, and many Southlanders are spending less at the checkout by growing their own food.

Whether it’s in suburban backyards, lifestyle sections or larger properties, people are negating food supply issues bought on by the Covid-19 pandemic by being self-sustaining.

Usually Mokotua man Wayne Barker has a few sheds full of hens at this time of year. But his orders have tripled as more Kiwi’s want eggs from their own backyard, which has emptied out his sheds.

The Farmland Free Chicken Farm owner sold about 900 birds since New Year's Eve. A few years ago, that number would probably be between 250 and 300, he said.

Farmland Free Chicken Farm owner Wayne Barker with some of his chickens. He says there's been heightened demand for people to have their own supply of eggs.

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The closure of hatcheries and new rules and regulations have been compounded by consumer desire to be more self-sufficient since the Covid-19 pandemic begun.

When Barker first started farming, there were several hatcheries across the South Island, but as the owners got older many had retired, creating a shortage of both eggs and chickens.

“No one has started up to make up for those shortages,” Barker said.

Supply chain disruptions due to Covid-19 lockdowns had further exacerbated shortages, with some stores completely sold out of eggs for days at a time during the Delta lockdown in August 2021.

Inflation jumped to 5.9 per cent in the December quarter. Consumer prices during the three months to the end of December put the annual inflation figure at its highest level since June 1990.

Natalie Beier, right, and Arthur, Mila, 5, and Leon Steinhauser, 2, in their garden in suburban Invercargill.

Infometrics principal economist Brad Olsen said regional inflation was outpacing Auckland, Wellington and Canterbury.

“This is leading New Zealanders to look to ways to reduce their cost of living,” Olsen said.

Kiwis across the country were paying $70 to $100 more per week on their costs, including mortgages, but being paid $50 more before tax, he said.

Natalie Beier and Arthur Steinhauser’s suburban Invercargill backyard is chock-a-block with fruit and vegetables.

Greenhouses and planter boxes fill the yard, which is about 160 square metres and was all scrub when they bought it six years ago.

“While we’re townies, I really like that from the kitchen to the garden is only a few metres,” Beier said.

“You can actually get a lot of food from a small place in town with smart gardening.”

Beier, a radiologist, used Youtube to learn about soil health.

Craig Ruthland with his one-year-old son Max after picking some onions and silver beet, walking past one of his apple trees.

With the help of their children Mila, 5, and Leon, 2, they grow carrots, courgettes, tomatoes, herbs for herbal tea and cooking and berries, among other things. They make their own compost and preserve and can the surplus produce.

The seven planter boxes, two second-hand greenhouses, barrels used as planter boxes and initial compost cost about $2000. Beier uses the reflected heat and light from the greenhouses to sun beans that are wedged in a gap, against their boundary fence.

“You focus on either the expensive veges of the ones that grow well but don’t require a lot of work, like raspberries and strawberries,” Steinhauser said.

Like the Beier and Steinhauser’s garden, Craig Rutland’s crops are organic, but on a much bigger scale.

Chef and accommodation operator Craig Rutland picks tomatoes in his tunnel house.

Rutland runs the Last Light Lodge in Tuatapere with his partner Violaine Dumas, and it keeps them busy: they look after the kitchen, grounds and cleaning of the 21-room, 26-campsite lodge by themselves. Their day starts at 5.30am and usually ends at 10pm.

Rutland uses his one-year-old son Max’s pram roof to carry the vegetables around the three-hectare property.

The lodge is the accommodation for trampers doing guided tours on the Hump Ridge Track.

Guests get their meals at the lodge and a packed lunch from chef Rutland’s kitchen.

An inventory of their crops is too long to list, but rows of vegetables, fruit trees, herbs and the tunnel house are laid out in an organised abundance on their three-hectare property, with views to the Takitimu Mountains.

A notable item was a crossbred spud which Rutland believed was one-of-a-kind. He dubbed the indigo-looking potato Craig’s Purple King.

Rutland had bought five kilos of potatoes in the past 18 months, and they use 15-20 kilos a week. He filled 3000 jars with preserves last year.

Daryn Chalmers and Kim Findlay checking seedlings in their tunnel house, with an amaranthus plant on right.

“People should be growing stuff like they used to in the 60s, 70s, even early 80s, but the way that our lifestyle has changed, to two of us needing to work to keep the mortgage covered, we don’t have time to grow a vegetable garden.”

“I think that there’s a genuine shift going back towards that. But we will probably not see, unless there’s a huge impact from global warming or climate change, people actually doing a vegetable garden again.”

The affable and talkative Daryn Chalmers is busy too, running a popular Invercargill kennel with his partner Kim Findlay, as well as the crops and animals that abound the three-hectare property.

Last week, the only thing on Chalmers’ dinner plate not grown outside his front door was avocado.

Turkeys, fruit trees, cows, chickens, sheep, vegetables and frogs share the property with their 16 sled-pulling pet huskies.

Pet peacocks Tom and Barbara, “louder than guard dogs”, are named after the characters in the 1970s British sitcom The Good Life.

“If it’s growable I will have a crack at it,” Chalmers said.

Chalmers and Findlay work long hours outside of the kennel to save money.

“If I don’t have to buy meat, that's a saving,” he said.

He had become used to “night farming”, and his dad harvested vegetables during the day.

They buy chicken and pork occasionally, but produce about 85 per cent of their own vegetables, and their weekly grocery bill including personal items was $190 to $220 a week, Chalmers said.

Winton community garden chairman Mark Taylor said with the rise of dairying in Southland, fewer kids stayed on to manage their parents’ farms, and as such the number of farmers who grew vegetables for just themselves had fallen.

This shift concerned Taylor.

The community garden grows in a 2000 square metre plot.

There was however a surplus of people growing their own vegetables around Winton, he said, and the community worker who worked with the garden had no issue distributing the vegetables to older people who could no longer garden for themselves.

University of Otago nutrition expert professor Sheila Skeaff said freshness, convenience, satisfaction from growing and the cost could all be benefits of growing food at home.

However, it required skills and time which could be a challenge for some people, so Skeaff wanted to see more cheap workshops, food co-ops and exchanges.