Issue 36 October / November 21
Observations of a Wallflower
Take Me
Artist & Woodchopper, Darcell Apelu
Home Farm’s Spring Planting
All you need is love and solar power All-new Grand California The Volkswagen Kombi has come a long way since it revolutionised our lives in the 60s, but this modern version still holds true to its ideals. With a little sun worship and some handy solar panels the Grand California will keep you running no matter how far you go off the grid. Plus with the added luxury of a self-contained bathroom, 4MOTION AWD and adaptive cruise control you can truly go wherever the wind takes you.
Reserve yours now for summer. Contact Farmer Volkswagen today.
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116 Hewletts Road, Mount Maunganui for sales information contact Chris Tabersham | 021 194 2870 | Christ@farmerautovillage.co.nz Keith Andrews | 021 195 3029 | keitha@farmerautovillage.co.nz
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Founders Rachelle & Christopher Duffy Creative director Christopher Duffy Editor Sarah Nicholson sarah@ourplacemagazine.co.nz Social manager Maddie Banks social@ourplacemagazine.co.nz Advertising enquiries Rachelle Duffy 021 032 7873 rachelle@ourplacemagazine.co.nz
PLANNING & MONITORING
Contributors Alma Eatery, Loretta Crawford, Pip Crombie, Home Farm, Lucy Houghton, Elric James, Megan Raynor, Josie Steenhart Photographers Katie Cox, ilk, Cam Neate Pick up your copy from The Little Big Markets, plus at selected cafes, restaurants, shops and businesses.
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Cover Photography by Cam Neate. Floral styling by Lucy Houghton. Follow us @ourplacemagazine ourplacemagazine.co.nz
As Bay locals know, when it comes to food and drink, we have firstrate growers and makers in our region. This issue, we get a couple of fantastic backstories. We meet Nathan Shand and Zach Heale, who used to be fiercely competitive home brewing mates, until they finally joined forces to create Slab Brewing. They now garner plenty of attention for their innovative approach to small-batch brews. We also chat to Billy Roy from Mārama’s Mushrooms, who grew up in a family of fungi growers and is now growing his own exotics, while also focusing on going organic. For both profiles, and details of a new food festival, see page 37. In our Grow Together column (59), the guys at Home Farm share their tips for planting a lush and happy garden for spring (and beyond!). This is the perfect time of year to get some food into the ground with great results, so if you’ve never tried, we hope this column inspires you. We also feature a range of impressive wāhine doing excellent things in our area. There’s artist, teacher and woodchopper Darcell Apelu (50), who’s just about to exhibit at Tauranga Art Gallery, and Awhina Motutere (75), who shares the ideas around rongoā Māori. And Tahlia Charleson (44) is using her studio, The Pilates Fix, not only to keep people’s bodies moving, but to start conversations around women’s health issues, and to help those in need through community outreaches. Ngā manaakitanga, The Our Place team
Contents 67
15
Observations of a Wallflower
19
Welcome
What’s Up
Photo Essay
24
30
Our Place Tauranga
75
TLBM Shopping Guide
Healing Hands
Awhina Motutere on rongoā Māori
83
37
In Good Taste
Bright Spark
44
90
Musician Georgia Lines
A new festival is coming...
Room to Move
Aiming High
The Pilates Fix studio
Helen Van of Aim’n
50
92
Through My Eyes
Behind Bars
Artist Darcell Apelu
By Elric James
59
94
Grow Together
Delicious Fife Lane
Gardening with Home Farm
17
98
Risotto Radicchio
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What’s Up Vintage Vibes The team from Mount Longboards started their dreams in a weatherboard garage in the 1970s. They repaired surfboards, sketched up designs and printed t-shirts. Now, they’ve brought back many of those original sketches for the prints on their tees and caps, which pay tribute to the 70s and 80s. The shirts are made from 100 percent cotton with a classic cut, and the prints are handcrafted in New Zealand. The summer 2022 collection launches new prints featuring VW Kombis, Holden cars and Hawaiian vibes, such as the Oahu vintage cap, pictured left. Mount Longboards do print small runs and limited editions, so keep an eye out on social media to get in quick. → mountlongboards.com @mountlongboards
You Made It Made of Tomorrow is putting down roots and setting up shop with a brand new design studio and showroom in Tauriko. Having outgrown their previous digs (home), founders Matt Genefaas (pictured left) and Dan Craig (right) have designed a studio that’s a creative, inspiring space for them to work, as well as a place for the public to shop their full range of functional homewares, designer accessories and office goods — all designed and made in New Zealand from sustainable and recyclable materials. Features of the new studio include a huge curved, textured wall, a 7-foot indoor Tōtara, and lots of spaces to shoot new content. Come along to the open day, 10am–3pm, 23 October at 327/8 Matakokiri Dr, Tauriko, where there’ll be a coffee cart and food trucks. → madeoftomorrow.com
Free to Wonder The Wild Wonderers festival was started out of a love of bringing people together for a good time and a desire to create lasting memories. For the inaugural event, the team are staging a mini festival, crammed into an afternoon, in Takapuna, Auckland. The festival aims to have a safe and inviting atmosphere, where young humans have the confidence to explore new exciting ideas and concepts, and their carers can spend some time relaxing in a lush environment with friends and whānau, and actually have the chance to catch up and finish a drink! The line-up features national treasure Suzy Cato, Little Wild Music, Koltrain, jazz, MāoriMex food truck, fresh seafood, cocktail cart, tote bag designing, poi making, Good Little Finds, biddy pots pottery workshop, lawn games and more! → For tickets, visit wildwonderersnz.com @wild.wonderersnz @the_wild_wonderers 19
What’s Up Get the Axe This year in Tauranga, Gumboot Friday will be followed by Axe Throwing Saturday. You heard right! Don your boots on Gumboot Friday (5 November) to support I am Hope, an initiative by the Key to Life Charitable Trust. You can involve your workplace or school, make a gold coin donation, and join in the mental health conversation while raising money to provide vital free counselling for young people in need. The next day, 6 November, at Masonic Park in Tauranga, Kiwi Axe Throwing is running “Axe Throwing Saturday for Gumboot Friday”. Head down to learn how to throw axes for a bit of fun. Any funds raised will be donated straight to I Am Hope. → iamhope.org.nz/gumbootfriday kiwiaxethrowing.co.nz @kiwiaxethrowing
Present & Correct Gift-giving is an artform that can be fraught with issues, but a new Tauranga-based online initiative, The Giftery, launched by mum and daughter duo, Denise and Emily Arnold (pictured), is set to change that. The idea is that the giver digitally chooses a selection of gifts to ‘give’, and the receiver picks the one they like best (or something else entirely from the site). Brands on board include Wild Fennel Co, Real Rad Food, Honest Rum, Naturebox and Sage & Grace. A portion of The Giftery’s sales go directly to Cambodia Charitable Trust — a charity Denise founded in 2008. → thegiftery.co.nz
Sweet Success Manawa Honey from Ruatāhuna, nestled in the remote Te Urewera wilderness, has had its Rewarewa honey crowned Best Tasting Honey in the World at the annual Black Jar International Honey Tasting Contest, held in North Carolina, USA. Manawa Honey was created to create jobs and prosperity for Tūhoe locals and inspire the rangatahi (youth). “The collective goal for the people of Ruatāhuna is to keep our people here and to be selfsufficient,” says CEO Brenda Tahi. “We’ve lost generations to bigger centres in search of work but we’re working together to change this trend.” Chief Beekeeper Hekenoa (Taawi) Te Kurapa (pictured, right) was born and bred in Ruatāhuna. He learnt beekeeping through distance education with Lincoln University years ago, and has led the beekeeping team at Manawa ever since. The company specialises in producing exquisite native honeys from the diverse flora within Te Urewera forest, and its honey range also includes Tāwari and Pua-ā-Tāne (impressively, both also made the finals of the Black Jar contest, which had more than 600 entries) and Mānuka. → Available at Countdown and manawahoney.co.nz 21
You can now pay-it-forward at your favourite local.
Our local partners
Pop in and ask them how or find out more at www.gogenerosity.com/local
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What’s Up Music of the Maunga Cancellation of the much-anticipated Tauranga Arts Festival was yet another cruel Covid blow, but a key (and free) event remains as part of the line up, along with the Visual Arts Programme (details below). Combining music with adventure, Te Manawataki o Mauao, 21–31 October, “takes audiences on a journey that will evolve how they perceive the natural world. A meditative and immersive event, this piece uncovers the hidden treasures of Mount Maunganui”. We’re liking the sound of that. Created by respected musician Riki Gooch, in collaboration with Sonicity, the creative team worked with the guardians or kaitiaki of Mauao to reflect their experience — the result is a music and soundscape that’s designed to “evoke land, skies and sea”. Bring your phone and headphones, download the free Te Manawataki o Mauao app and turn on your geo-locator. Start from anywhere (although beginning on the Pilot Bay side of Mauao is recommended), take a track on the maunga and be part of this one-of-a-kind experience. → taurangafestival.co.nz
Flying High The line-up for Tauranga Arts Festival’s Visual Arts Programme is kicking off in Tauranga CBD and includes numerous projects, such as A Death of Prosperity by Darcell Apelu (see page 50) and Brave New World by Nicol Sanders O’Shea. The work of Tauranga-based artist Nicol runs 22 October to 12 November, and will see her bright flags (detail pictured) flying on Durham St flagpoles to signal the Brave New World we now exist in, where washing hands is mandatory and coming home is tricky. Battles have a start but no finish, daily experiences are data driven, and coughing is the new smoking. → taurangafestival.co.nz cityartwalktga.stqry.app
Photographic Memories Another key work in the Visual Arts Programme, Echoes: Tauranga Moana (pictured), by Storybox and Joe Dixon, runs from 18 October to 12 November at 91 Willow St. The experience combines modern selfies (that you can upload) with hundreds of historical photographs from Tauranga Moana that will swirl, shift and bloom as part of the interactive digital artwork. Both Echoes: Tauranga Moana and Brave New World (above) have been commissioned by Tauranga-based Supercut Projects, which is also behind the free City Art Walk app that offers a self-guided tour of these and other artworks in the city. → taurangafestival.co.nz cityartwalktga.stqry.app 23
Our Place Tauranga
Monster Cookies
If Cookie Monster ever came to the Bay, he’d be in absolute heaven after getting his furry blue mitts on some of Shaqiel Simonsen’s loaded cookies. Having just completed a business course before New Zealand went into its first lockdown in 2020, and looking for a way to utilise his new skills, the now 21-year-old Shaqiel’s passion for baking made it an easy decision to combine the two and launch The Cookie Shaq. “I started the business during the first lockdown period, as I’m a father of two young boys so I needed a reliable stream of income. I love baking and I’m a people’s person, so it all just came together,” he says. “Ever since I was young, I was in the kitchen. I would always kick my mum out of the kitchen to do dinner... I’d bake desserts, whatever I could.” These days, what he’s baking is an average of 600–700 cookies a week, to service The Cookie Shaq’s online store, stalls at Pāpāmoa Farmers Market and The Little Big Markets, as well as a newly opened pop-up at Our Place Tauranga. And these are no ordinary cookies. Described on The Cookie Shaq website as “New Zealand’s OG overloaded chocolate-stuffed ‘New York style’ cookies”, a single biscuit just fits the circumference of Shaqiel’s hand and each is stuffed with huge chunks of chocolate. There are currently six regular flavours: Snickers, Oreo, Red Velvet, Bounty, Triple Chocolate (which can be gluten-free) and Shaqiel’s own personal favourite, Caramilk. When time and space permits, The Cookie Shaq’s growing following can expect delicious new additions, such as the droolinducing Rolo & Caramel-Stuffed Overloaded Brownie Tray that Shaqiel introduced as a recent special. As well as ‘OG’ size, there are both mini versions, at one end of the spectrum, and at the other, ‘cookie pies’ — a jaw-dropping family pie-sized fusion of 12 loaded cookies in a mix of flavours. Shaqiel initially baked from a rented commercial kitchen space but under new ownership the price of the lease went up — he again put his business acumen into play and converted a cottage 24
on the family property into a full commercial kitchen. He’s also, smartly, getting a helping hand via what he laughingly calls “slave labour” — “I’ve employed my mum and my younger brother. They’re just helping out at the moment till I’m able to hire some people. They’ve both got jobs during the week, so they mainly help with the markets on the weekend.” And while his three-month-old son may not be a loaded cookie fan just yet, Shaqiel says his three-year-old is definitely developing a passion of his own for Dad’s business. “He’s addicted!” says Shaqiel, laughing. “He wants one every day! He definitely doesn’t get one though...” For The Cookie Shaq’s hours at Our Place Tauranga, follow @the_cookie_shaq the-cookie-shaq.myshopify.com
Story: Josie Steenhart
Shaqiel Simonsen’s over-sized, chocolate-stuffed cookies are in hot demand, and now you’ll be able to get your hands on them at OPT’s The Cookie Shaq.
91 Willow St, Tauranga CBD
@ourplacetauranga
The Golden Touch As the days get warmer and longer, Mount Brewing Co’s sessionable Golden Hour Hazy XPA comes into its own. This dry, tropical and juicy Xtra Pale Ale represents the unique and pure bonds between hops, malt and yeast. In this beer, they pay tribute to Idaho-7, Sabro and Nectaron hops, where a massive boil-free, double dry hop addition delivers exceptional drinkability with a satisfying and hoppy finish. Available on tap at High Tide and Rising Tide. mountbrewingco.com @hightidetauranga
Centring the Arts OPT has expanded its creative community with the arrival of Te Tuhi Māreikura Trust, home base for an artist community and two exciting projects. The first focuses on youth, with the creation of an arts hub. “The object of the art space is sharing arts and identity, including the history and stories of the people of this area, with key arts leaders contributing their expertise,” explains Julie Paama-Pengelly, Trust chairperson (pictured left, in a teaching session). “It aims to give Māori artists a place in the CBD to showcase their arts and it’s also about the ongoing legacy of Māori arts in this area.” A collab with social services, the Trust aims to create a vibrant, safe place for youth to learn new skills, and access workshops that connect them with the community and offer future opportunities. The space will also be the office for the ten-day Tā Ātea International Indigenous Tattoo Festival (slated for March 2022). The festival celebrates tattoo artists and brings in top international talent. As a build up to the event, there’ll be public events, including indigenous guest artists tattooing in the container space. Julie, an artist and owner of Art + Body Creative Studio in the Mount, expects the Trust’s art projects will spill out into the wider CBD area, with activations the whole community can experience. tetuhimareikura.org @ngauriomuturangi
Events at OPT! Women on Top by Blabla Events. 6pm, 14 October (if we’re level 1). Inspirational stories and music from special guests. eventbrite.co.nz In Bloom 2 by RedHearing. 6pm, 13 November. Line up: Mild Orange, Ribera, Max Pepsi, Aunty Elz. @redhearing (last year’s In Bloom, pictured) Afrobeat 8–11.30pm, 19 November. Yaw Asumadu and his 8-piece band, Ozi Ozaa. eventfinda.co.nz Strange Days Halloween 7pm, 27 November. Halloween party. eventbrite.co.nz 25
Nicol Sanders-O’Shea Brave New World DURHAM 18
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FLAGPOLES
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Storybox + Joe Dixon Echoes: Tauranga Moana 91
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Darcell Apelu A Death of Prosperity CO-PRESENTED COMING
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Sara Hughes Willow Street Project WILLOW
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DOWNLOAD CITY ART
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THE WALK
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@CITYARTWALK #CITYARTWALKTGA TAURANGAFESTIVAL.CO.NZ
91 Willow St, Tauranga CBD
@ourplacetauranga
ReMaker Space ReMaker’s mission is to help people redesign their relationship with resources to create sustainable communities. The latest exciting venture is partnering with other organisations to help them on their sustainability journeys.
Sharp as a Needle As a lifelong knitter, when the opportunity arrived for Alyssa Reed (right) to make custom, sustainable knitting needles for Liam Patterns, a branch of New Zealand fashion brand Ruby, she couldn’t resist! The production of these knitting needles was a one-woman show. Alyssa carried out the majority of the design and sanding in a shipping-container workshop at ReMaker Space. She then got creative with her work set-up during lockdown, completing the final stamping and varnishing stages at her kitchen table and in her garage. They’re made from local reforested timber, which was processed and turned into dowels, all within New Zealand. The needles are being used as part of a collab between Liam Patterns and Geo Knits Slow, to create slow-fashion knitwear from textile waste. geo_knits_slow rubynz.com
Sign of the Times Ein malig is a budding brand started by Ruth Love. German for “unique”, Ein malig creates one of a kind, durable bags made from retired billboards, car seatbelts and bike tubing destined for landfill. So much thought, time and money is put into creating eye-catching advertising billboards that are printed on high-quality durable canvas. Usually after one month, they’re taken down, never to be seen again. That’s not the case anymore — with ReMaker, Ruth is turning her passion for sewing and creating practical products into contracts with local businesses who want to utilise their old billboards and do their part for the planet. You’ll want to see these bags in person, so come along to ReMaker!
ReMaker has a new look coming... Keep your eyes peeled and see how you can get involved! remakerspace.co.nz @remakerspacenz 27
Artists, Creative Groups and Venues Join the Creative Directory!
Charlie from Lovely Creatures
Creative Bay of Plenty’s Creative Directory is live, and you are the star attraction! If you’re a creative person, creative group or have a creative space available in Tauranga or the Western Bay, sign up for your free listing today, and watch your network grow. Artists, creative organisations, event producers, educators, community groups, venues and creative people of all kinds are encouraged to submit a profile. We’re building the Creative Directory to represent our local arts and culture sector. Use it to find, learn about, and connect with artists, organisations, and venues. Add your listing and help us make the Creative Directory the go-to place for arts and culture in Tauranga and the Western Bay of Plenty
Find out more at www.creativebop.org.nz
When you buy local, it has a positive impact on the whole community. Check out these fantastic products from The Little Big Markets and see all the market dates on our events calendar.
Mount Longboards
Found Treasure
Mount Longboards prints pay tribute to the 70s and 80s. Each tee is 100 percent cotton, classic cut and hand-crafted in New Zealand. Check out this summer’s must-have caps in vintage Hawaiian prints. mountlongboards.com mountlongboards
Individually crafted jewellery for the sea lovers, made with a range of metals (silver, gold, platinum). All available online and via Instagram. Get in touch about custom designs: info@foundtreasurejewellery.com foundtreasurejewellery.com @found.treasure
The Cottage Gallery
Drawing the Way
Lucky Lucky Noodle
The Cottage Gallery is a boutique craft business specialising in New Zealand pounamu (greenstone), which is carved into beautiful taonga — much-loved special pieces of jewellery. 329 Waihi Rd, Judea, Tauranga thecottagegallery.co.nz
Drawing the Way is a Mount-based illustration and graphic design studio run by a couple that spread joy with their maps and paintings of places they visit, as well as custom paintings and quirky portraits. drawingtheway.com @wearedrawingtheway
Craving the flavours of your favourite noodle cart, Lucky Lucky Noodle? Good news! You can get its So Fried Chilli Oil and Hot Hot Chilli Sauce delivered to your door, to spice up your home cooking. luckyluckynoodle.co.nz @luckyluckynoodle
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Ruapuke
Food Point Restaurant
Small Batch
Get ready for summer with Ruapuke’s gorgeous 100 per cent turkish cotton towels that’ll ensure you are always set for anything, from lazy picnics and beach hangs to drinks at sunset. Compact, lightweight and quick to dry. ruapuke.com @ruapuke_
Food Point is a family business serving authentic curry dishes. Try the dosa: crisp savoury pancake made from a fermented batter of ground rice and lentils, served with tasty accompaniments. 21 Macdonald St, Mt Maunganui foodpointonline.co.nz
Known for its amazing nut butters, Small Batch is giving us a sneak preview... Pre-Christmas, there’ll be gift packs of its new Streichcreme range available for Little Big Market customers. Watch this space! smallbatch.co.nz @smallbatchedibles
Foodette
Ritual Masssage
Missy Jackson
Foodette creates gourmet mini quiches in a range of flavours. The food trailer moves about the Bay, including TLBM. There’s also free delivery every Friday. View the menu and trailer locations online. thefoodette.co.nz 022 6496 1890 rachelthefoodette@gmail.com
Ritual specialises in ‘Womb & Fertility Massage Therapy’. This deep yet gentle abdominal and sacral therapy is designed to nurture, and bring balance to the reproductive, nervous and digestive systems. ritualmassage.co.nz
Missy Jackson offers fun, functional home-sewn objects, made right here. Using bold fabrics (natural where possible), the range includes everything from cushion covers and aprons to skirts and scarves. missyjackson.co.nz @missy.jackson.nz
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Neufound
El Jefe Meats
The Little Big Markets
Neufound is a contemporary and sustainable eyewear concept using biodegradable acetate. The frames are handcrafted for sun-seekers who share the appreciation of premium, sustainable materials. Better for you, better for the earth. neufound.com
El Jefe Meats is committed to creating the best sausages in New Zealand. Products are handmade in small batches to ensure the best quality. Order home delivery or buy at local farmers’ market, and try its gourmet hot dogs at TLBM! eljefemeats.co.nz
Support little businesses and let everyone know about it! Get yourself one of these stylish TLBM tees or maybe grab a tote and fill it with the brilliant, creative products you pick up from locals at the markets. thelittlebigmarkets.co.nz/shop
Tag Burger
EJ Wood Watercolours
Kiwi Blade Knives
The delicious burgers and fries from Tag Burger are a crowd favourite at TLBM. They’re also a unique way to wow your guests at a wedding breakfast! tagburger.co.nz @tagburger ilovetagburger@gmail.com 021 246 6783
E J Wood Watercolours specialises in original fine art prints, linen cushions, cards, art magnets and vinyl decals. The Mountbased studio’s artwork is inspired by the local natural beauty. ejwoodwatercolours.co.nz @ejwoodwatercolours
Defying the plague of sameness, one knife at a time! Celebrate the unique joy of owning a handcrafted knife that’s designed to suit you and your lifestyle, and is definitely built to last. kiwiblade.co.nz @kiwibladeknives
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Book your Christmas Function at Elizabeth
Summer Menu out mid November!
Book a table of over 10 or more people in the month of December and go in the draw to win a $100 voucher.
07 579 0950 eat@elizabethcafe.co.nz elizabethcafe.co.nz @elizabethtauranga Weekdays 7am - 3pm Weekends 8am - 2pm
In Good Taste Producer profiles by Josie Steenhart
The Bay of Plenty is getting its own food festival! Flavours of Plenty Festival is a long weekend that involves the whole region, from the talented growers, makers and chefs, to all the food and drink lovers. 37
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Solomons Gold photograph: Katie Cox
There are numerous great food festivals in Aotearoa New Zealand, and now it’s time for the Bay of Plenty Te Moana-a-Toi to get something we can really sink our teeth into, so to speak. Enter the Flavours of Plenty Festival. Developed by Tourism Bay of Plenty, the festival is focused on carving out something special for our region, really putting it on the map as a key regional food destination. It’ll bring people together to celebrate our best food and drink experiences and, in doing so, tell the stories of our world-class kai and captivating whenua. The inaugural festival is 7–10 April 2022 (diarise now!), and it’s going to be a long weekend of delicious events across Te Moana-a-Toi (including Katikati and Whakatāne), with restaurant nights, workshops, forums, demonstrations, pop ups and more. You’ll be offered out-of-the-box experiences with food and drinks, have the opportunity to learn new things, and definitely have a whole lot of fun. Already lined up as part of the festival is the super-popular annual Vegan Vibes festival (rescheduled from 2021, due to Covid challenges), with its usual top food, speakers and live music, plus the Local Wild Food Challenge and a modern hāngī with local stars, Kasey and Karena. The theme of the first event is Plentiful Produce. As locals, you don’t need to be told how good our kai is here, from the internationally recognised Manawa Honey (page 21), raw cheese pioneers Mount Eliza Cheese, Mount Made ice cream, Te Puke Truffles, Solomons Chocolate, Harbourside Macadamias, Roa Kombucha, The Hungarian Artisan Co, and of course our avos and kiwifruit (pictured on opener), to name just a few! To kick things off, we’ve delved into the backstory of the innovative local talent behind Mārama’s Mushrooms and Slab Brewing, who will no doubt bring their own flavour to the festival. If your business wants to host an event at the festival, submissions are open until 22 October 2021. Visit flavoursofplentyfestival.com
The Fungi
↑ Billy from Mārama’s Mushrooms at the Tauranga Farmers’ Market. ← Solomons Gold chocolate is made in the Mount; a bustling farmers’ market; on the hunt at Te Puke Truffles.
and restaurants to being front-of-house as well. I did hospo for a while. I worked for Whale Watch for a little bit and I also worked in the film industry as well,” he says. “But basically, after doing a stack of different jobs and just always feeling a little bit uninspired, eventually I decided I was looking for something else.” When his uncle offered him a chance to grow portobellos with him at the family mushroom farm, Billy took him up on it. “I put down my first shed of portobellos and it went really well, like, really well actually, I had some really good beginner’s luck. So whether that was a tohu, a sign, or not, I don’t know. But I just thought, growing food for people, it’s an honest living. Not only was I learning how to grow food, it was an opportunity for me to be my own boss, which means that I got to set my own rules... “And then I wanted to start branching out into different types of mushrooms and I also wanted to lean more towards being spray-free in the path of eventually becoming organic, which is where I’m just about at now. I’ve just got to find one more aspect of my supply chain, then I can say that all the ingredients that go into my mushrooms are fully certified organic, so I’m pretty excited about that.” Eight years on from his first crop and Billy, operating as Mārama’s Mushrooms, is now wellestablished in his own field of fungi expertise,
The first clue as to where Billy Roy’s passions lie is the t-shirt he’s wearing in one of his YouTube videos. In the centre, there’s a cheerful-looking animated mushroom, around the edge run the words, ‘Pretty fly for a funghi’. The second is that he apparently likes to go by the moniker ‘Billy Mushroom’. Billy comes from a family of mushroomgrowers, so perhaps it’s no surprise he’s fallen into the same trade. “My granddad got into growing mushrooms about 70 years ago, and he and my nana, not long after he had his first little successful hobby grow, decided he’d have a crack at doing it commercially,” he says. “So he built his first shed, and then one shed turned into two, two turned into three, to the point where there’s now seven sheds at the farm where the family started growing mushrooms.” Billy’s mum grew up among the mushroom sheds too, later meeting his dad at teacher’s college before moving back to the family farm, where they also gave growing mushrooms a crack. “That’s down in Te Puna, and my uncle was using that for growing portobello,” Billy explains. “I wanted to get into growing exotics and also edible native mushrooms, so I built a shed at my mum and dad’s place up in Whakamārama and that’s where I run my operation now.” It wasn’t a given that Billy would join the family fungi dynasty. First, he tried his hand at a variety of jobs, “from tree planting to doing dishes at cafes 39
↑ The beautiful layers of phoenix oyster mushrooms. ← Golden enoki mushrooms bask in some rays.
growing an assortment of exotic and endemic edible mushrooms to sell at farmers’ markets all over the Bay, as well as supplying a number of local restaurants and organic wholesalers. Billy’s mushrooms range from oyster and enoki to New Zealand strains, such as pekepeke kiore, a kind of Coral Tooth that’s a cousin to the increasingly well-known Lion’s Mane and tawaka (“which is probably one of my favourite mushrooms, it’s a little bit like a portobello, but it’s got a richer flavour and they are beautiful looking”). He also runs workshops, records the aforementioned YouTube videos and sells mushroom blocks to those with an interest in fungi DIY. “Being your own boss is hard sometimes,” he admits. “But it has given me this opportunity to start questioning aspects of the mushroomgrowing industry, and to try to find ways to grow mushrooms that align more with what I value, which is moving towards being as waste-free as possible and ideally organic as well. And focusing on a local market, not on having a wide reach across many regions. I’d like to focus most of my energy in the Bay of Plenty where I live, because it’s less food miles, essentially.” His waste-free mission is taking shape and he’s recently taken a key step towards achieving his goal. “One of the things that’s pretty common in the industry is that you grow mushrooms in plastic, and that plastic is obviously waste afterwards,” Billy explains. So he recently tracked down a company in Waiuku called Future Post, which recycles plastic waste and turns it into fence posts that are then
used on organic farms and orchards around the country. “So I feel that’s like a small win,” says Billy. “But ideally I want to move to trying to grow mushrooms in clay pots, which is an incredibly expensive initial layout of money to set up, just for the sheer amount of pots I would need to buy to keep in rotation, and how much they cost. But once you’ve got them, you don’t need to have a single-use plastic bag anymore. You basically just wash the pots out and reuse them.” He’s excited about the local industry and the possibilities that are emerging as the market grows. “It’s an awareness thing more than anything. When I first started selling mushrooms with my uncle, oyster mushrooms, six, seven years ago, no one really wanted to try them. But now there’s a growing curiosity and a lot of research coming out about the health benefits of mushrooms. And also people realising you can grow them at home — people are thinking a lot more about food resiliency these days — and wanting to support local businesses. “It’s really just a matter of exploring, and I think that’s quite an exciting thing in Aotearoa right now. These mushrooms haven’t really been used that much in modern cuisine — there’s an opportunity to play and find exciting ways to use them, and find out where their flavours work and where they don’t. I think it’s a pretty cool time for the mushroom industry in New Zealand at the moment.” Visit maramasmushrooms.nz to get 10% off your mushroom order in October & November. Use the code OURPLACE 40
Beer in Mind
Every successful business needs a point of difference. Slab Brewing’s is, according to co-founder Nathan Shand, its “big ass cans”. Slab’s cans are imported from America and hold just under a litre (946ml to be exact) of beer. “So they tend to be a lot taller than the other cans on the shelves in liquor stores. You can get overwhelmed when you go to a liquor store, because there’s so many beers to choose from, but ours are the biggest, which helps,” says Nathan with a laugh. He and fellow brewing fanatic Zach Heale, Slab’s other half, are celebrating something of a milestone when we talk: “The first Slab brew went down almost three years ago to the day,” says Nathan. “So that was batch number one and tomorrow we’re making batch number 100.” Nathan says he’s been making beer (“mostly not very good home brew, but some was passable”) since he was 18. “I’m 35 now, so nearly half my life!” Nathan met Zach upon moving to Tauranga. Zach had just moved back from overseas and wanted to get into making home brew, so Nathan showed him the ropes. “And he quickly picked up how to make it, and started buying more kit and getting better at it than me. “From there it was a bit of an arms race between us — Zach bought a keg fridge, I bought a keg fridge. I bought a Grainfather, Zach bought a Grainfather. Then Zach one-upped me by starting a brewery. I couldn’t compete with that, so when he asked if I wanted to join him, well, there was no way I was going to say no. The timing wasn’t ideal, with my second son only a few weeks old, but a
very understanding and supportive wife gave me the go-ahead.” The plan was to start the brewery from the unused space below the deck at Zach’s new house. “Zach had dug out this area underneath his first floor deck and put a nice big concrete slab down, he had a little garden shed already in the backyard that needed to be moved, and was going to have the whole brewery down there,” recalls Nathan. “He ordered basically the whole brewery online from China, they shipped it all over, and when everything started arriving — he’s not very spatially aware — yeah, there was just no way that it was going to fit.” Instead, they found “a little industrial lockup kind of self storage unit in Fraser Cove, on the edge of town.” Not long after that, they took on a second unit, which doubled the size of the brewery and allowed the pair to open “a little bar with a tiny little outdoor area”. “We’re just open on Fridays,” says Nathan. “We get lots of the local people that work in the area come down for Friday drinks, or come and fill up their kegs or growlers or get cans for the weekend. Food trucks can come and do food while we sell beer, which works really well, when we can get them.” Nathan says launching the brewery from scratch was definitely a challenge. “It’s still a challenge. We’re still learning as we go. The thing we didn’t realise was how much cleaning you have to do, so much cleaning and sanitising. We spend the majority of our time doing that. But yeah, it was just a steep learning curve, stepping up from a bucket on the kitchen bench to a whole brewery. 41
↑ Left to right: Slab Brewing’s bar and cellar door; filling a takeaway Crowler from one of Slab’s 12 taps. Previous page: Nathan (left) and Zach behind the bar at the brewery.
Hazy beers are where it’s at right now, according to Nathan. “At the moment anything hazy is my favourite and that’s probably the same with most of the craft beer drinkers in the country. There’s just so much flavour. Traditionally beers have been quite bitter, but hazy beers are lower in bitterness so they’re more approachable. The new-age hops that are used are full of tropical, citrus and stone fruit flavours, so they’re really fruity. Some people liken them to alcoholic orange juice, and some of it does look a lot like orange juice, kind of cloudy.” Slab does a pilot batch of something new every couple of weeks. Now Ethan has started, the guys are able to brew twice a week. “Before he started, we would probably brew once a week on average, and couldn’t keep up with demand. It also gives me and Zach more time to work on new recipes.” Their next “sort-of crazy” idea is to release a new beer every second week for a year, starting in 2022. “The idea is that we have a bit of fun with it and make some styles that we wouldn’t normally make. There would only be 50 litres of each, so they’d only be sold on tap at the bar — every second week a new beer would turn up, some weird or wacky flavour, or something we’ve been meaning to make for ages.” Ⓟ
“So it started off as just the two of us, then we got a cellar door license for doing tastings and whatnot about two years ago, so we hired Zach’s brother-in-law Jack, part-time doing the bar stuff. And then we hired Ethan about two months ago, full time, so he’s doing all our brewing and packaging, deliveries and sales, marketing, lots of cleaning. And Zach and I still do a day a week, brewing or packing or canning beer or whatever. Both of us have day jobs, but we’re self-employed so it allows us to have a little bit of flexibility.” As well as being stocked at liquor stores and available via the onsite ‘cellar door’ and bar, Slab sells to a handful of local bars and restaurants: “Wherever we can really, anyone that’s keen to take us. It’s a bit of a fight as there are lots of breweries that have kegs they want on tap, so there’s definitely lots to choose from if you’re a restaurant owner,” says Nathan. Slab has six staples, which include a couple of lagers, a pale ale, an IPA, a hazy IPA and a stout, along with limited-release labels. Some of these small runs will only be available at the brewery, maybe on tap or in cans for people to take away. Next up for the Slab taps is a collection of hazy pale ales, each brewed with a different hop. “So people can come down and taste the difference, or not. We’ve got hops from America, Australia and New Zealand, so it’s quite cool,” says Nathan.
Visit slabbrewing.co.nz and get 10% off your Slab order in October. Use the code ourplace2021 42
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Room to Move Story by Megan Raynor
The Pilates Fix is all about giving people the freedom of movement, whether that’s via yoga and pilates, or access to expert advice about pelvic floor issues and chronic pain. 44
↑ Tahlia works with 87-year-old Lois, who has been with her for five years. Opposite: At The Pilates Fix, Tahlia (pictured) offers yoga, barre pilates, meditation, breathwork and more. most of his deltoid to cancer. Without that he wasn’t able to move his shoulder to comb his hair or tuck in his shirt. We worked with him to retrain his entire shoulder complex, tricked some muscles into acting differently… and we just about got his full range back.” Tahlia’s work with healing through mindful movement mirrors her own experience. Her pilates journey began at the age of 15, when a fractured coccyx during a dance competition meant she had to take a step back and spend time rehabilitating. She was surprised to find she felt stronger and healthier after rehabilitation than she did during her years of high-level dancing. This led to her sitting a matwork pilates certification when she was 18 — an experience that put her off teaching and instructor training for the next few years. “I didn’t come from a background in science — I didn’t know anatomy, I didn’t know physiology, I had no idea how technical and intense learning pilates [would be].” That changed when an OE in Canada led her back to instructing as a way to get work. Tahlia fell in love with teaching and started studying pilates again. A subsequent move to Dubai saw her study anatomy and physiology while training and working in chronic pain and cancer rehabilitation, working under the tutelage of some of the world’s “holy grail” instructors.
When you think of changing lives, it would be fair to say that pilates isn’t usually one of your first thoughts. But through her studio The Pilates Fix, Tahlia Charleson is helping chronic pain sufferers, cancer patients and everyday people change their lives through freedom of movement. “Freedom of movement is such an individual thing,” Tahliah explains. “For some people it’s being able to enjoy their life, feeling strong and pain free. For others it’s the ability to do everyday tasks without having to ask for help. When you have freedom of movement, mindful movement, you are able to live your life in a way that’s fulfilling to you.” She opened The Pilates Fix in January of this year along with her husband Tom and sister Amy, and it has grown from one instructor to six in just as many months. But, as Tahlia tells us, “The people who come through our doors are everything… [we] appreciate each and every one of our clients.” It’s the clients, and the transformation Tahila and her team offer them through pilates, barre, jump, yoga, breathwork and meditation, that makes her love her work. “The most rewarding [transformations] are not about image-based goals or weight, they’re about function and getting enjoyment out of life,” she says. For one of her clients, this was helping him to activate different muscles so he could get ready in the morning. Tahlia explains: “I had a client who had lost 45
↑ Tahlia guides a class through a reformer pilates workout in her light-filled studio. “I craved having that level of knowledge. I was inspired by the way someone could just walk in and within half an hour [the instructors] would have pinpicked their entire history, their entire musculo-skeletal system. They’d know what was happening in their nervous system and their fascia system, and would be able to give them exactly what their bodies needed.” This thirst for knowledge continued to grow, with Tahlia adding a pelvic floor education to her repertoire, including pre- and postnatal training. Much like many female issues, pelvic floor weakness and the associated symptoms, are often kept quiet by sufferers. This is something Tahlia is trying to change through displaying a variety of pelvic floor strengthening products to support stress and urinary incontinence in the studio and working alongside pelvic floor physios. “There’s still a stigma; people are embarrassed to talk about things like prolapse,” she says. “We need to get more conversations going so people can ask for help, rather than accepting it as ‘normal’.” She was reminded of this need recently when a client opened up about dealing with prolapse for the last thirty years. She had never sought help because, until she talked to Tahlia, she had felt it was something to be ashamed of. For Tahlia, this is just another example of helping locals find freedom in their bodies. “Women should be able to enjoy a walk up the Mount with their friends without worrying about leakage.” Tahlia returned home five years ago and before she opened her studio, she ran private pilates from her home. She eventually ran out of time and space to take
on new clients. One of her first clients from this time, 87-year-old Lois, still works with her weekly. The idea to expand and create The Pilates Fix — a place where you could get your ‘fix’ and ‘fix’ movement issues — niggled in her brain for a long time before she jumped in. After four months of spying on the perfect space on Trademe, Tahlia finally went to see it and knew it straightaway was the studio for her. Growing her space meant she could fulfill another dream of making classes accessible to those who couldn’t attend otherwise. Aside from numerous charity fundraisers, Awhina House is her first community outreach — it provides transitional support for Tauranga wāhine who are homeless. Operated by the He Kaupapa Kotahitanga Charitable Trust and with a combination of paid and volunteer staff, the organisation helps women to reintegrate and find permanent accommodation over a 12-week period. The Pilates Fix has become a part of this, offering a fortnightly yoga class to allow the women “space to move, breathe and be given something positive in their week”. It’s Tahlia’s hope that this work with Awhina House is just the beginning of breaking down barriers to movement and the many benefits that come with it. “As the first [outreach], we’ll be able to learn together, see what’s working and be able to expand it out to different groups,” she says. We’re looking forward to seeing what Tahlia and the team bring the community in future. Ⓟ 12 Elizabeth St, Tauranga thepilatesfix.co.nz 46
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Through My Eyes Story by Sarah Nicholson
Artist Darcell Apelu tells us about her next artwork — a towering gold fountain at Tauranga Art Gallery, her Mount upbringing, the discovery of her Pacific culture and her love of wood chopping. 50
A room full of axes and saws is not what you’d usually expect to see in an artist’s spare room but that’s what you’ll find at Darcell Apelu’s house, because champion wood chopper is one of her other talents. An assortment of axes sit upright in specially designed boxes, each with a different weight, size and edge thickness, and five hefty saws, ranging up to about 6-foot long, commandeer the rest of the floor space, safely sandwiched between planks of wood. Mount Maunganui-born and raised, Darcell, 30, is a teacher in art and design at Toi Ohomai, an internationally acclaimed woodchopper, and a talented artist about to exhibit at Tauranga Art Gallery. Although it may seem like an out-of the-ordinary line up of accomplishments, Darcell has had a sense of being “the odd one out” for much of her life, which has, in turn, had a significant influence on her art practice. Mount Beginnings Growing up, Darcell belonged to one of the Mount’s few Pasifika families (her father, now passed, was Niuean, her mother is Pākehā) — her sister and her were the only Niueans at Mount Maunganui College. She sensed people’s curiosity about her from a young age. “There were moments when I was with my mum, who is blue eyed and blonde, that people would just stare. They were trying to figure it out, they just couldn’t place me, couldn’t tell what kind of brown I was.” It was at college that she discovered her two passions. Her talent for art was encouraged from early on. “My parents were supportive of anything I did,” she says. “I was a quirky kid, I played video games, I had saxophone lessons, I played the clarinet — I was the biggest nerd you could imagine!” she laughs. Darcell also joined the school wood chopping team. “It was just another extra-curricular activity, so that’s where those two worlds started for me.” 51
She was “hooked on chopping straightaway”, first representing New Zealand at just 16 years old. “There’s something really empowering about chopping — this feeling of being strong and being able to use that strength. The mental game is also really important. You train for six months and you have 20 seconds to make it work — if your technique screws up halfway through, you’re done.” Now an experienced chopper with international titles under her belt (and a striking tattoo of a saw and two axes across her back), Darcell is as fiercely competitive as ever, with goals she’s yet to tick off. She competes in underhand (horizontal block between your feet), chainsaw racing, single saw and double saw (with her sawing partner of 10 years, 67-year-old chopping legend, Sheree Taylor). She has standing (vertical) blocks in her sights: “Not a lot of women do it in New Zealand. It does take a lot of upper body strength.” For Darcell, a big part of chopping is the tight-knit community. “I have made lifelong friends. The support system is one of a kind. I guess with any sports there are politics, but I value the friendships with so many people from different walks of life.”
he lived in those suburbs in Auckland, and I think that changed his perspective a lot. Even though I was accepting this ‘islandness’, he was happy with that. He totally understood where I was coming from, it just wasn’t his journey.” This cultural awakening directly influenced Darcell’s art practice, which took an autobiographical approach as she investigated her place in the world. After a degree majoring in sculpture, she moved into performance art and moving image for her Masters. “I had to know who I was, before I got to know my community better, and I thought the most impactful way to do that was to use film and performance with me in it.” Her thought-provoking body of work included the performance Brown Girl in the Ring (Tra la la la la) at Christchurch’s The Physics Room, where she stood naked in the middle of the gallery. “I forced people to walk right past me. I was interested in making people really engage, instead of being this thing that was looked at. “I wanted to do it in Christchurch, because that place is not used to bodies like mine — brown, plus sized, hairy — all that sort of stuff. I was pushing back at all these issues around beauty and being a brown body in that space. A lot of people just stood by the doorway,” she laughs. Her Make Me exhibition and performance at Tauranga Art Gallery also explored perceptions of the Pacific body and highlighted issues around Pacific identity within Tauranga. And her love of chopping was incorporated into performances, including chopping a block in a gallery. Now, she explains her practice has shifted to be “more generalised”. “It still has that connection with me, but it encompasses others that are like me.”
“I got to university and realised, I am a Pasifika woman who woodchops. There’s no other Pasifika woman in the country doing what I do.”
Looking Inward It was only when she left Tauranga to study art at Auckland’s AUT that Darcell realised that she was “a bit of an anomaly”. “I was going through the world not really thinking about it until I got to university and realised — I am a Pasifika woman who wood chops; there’s no other Pasifika woman in the country doing what I do. When people find that out, it’s always a little bit strange for them.” But the move north brought with it a dawning of something much more significant — what it actually meant to be Pasifika. “It was such a culture shock to be surrounded by people who looked like me,” says Darcell, who grew up with a predominately Pākehā identity around her mother’s side of the family. I made really strong connections with the other Pasifika students and I learned so much from them. That identity wasn’t there until I got to Auckland.” Darcell says discussing this process of cultural reclamation with her father was a tough conversation. “He was always, ‘I’m a staunch Kiwi’. He didn’t even get a chance to go back to Niue... he saw himself as a New Zealander, so the Pacific part of his identity got pushed to the wayside a little bit,” she explains. “He grew up during the dawn raids,
A Death of Prosperity Her “monumental” work, A Death of Prosperity, which is to be installed in Tauranga Art Gallery’s atrium, is an example of this broader perspective in her art. The piece will be an upscaled version of a work that showed at Auckland’s Te Tuhi gallery in 2020 — it’s a commentary on ideas such as the ownership and occupation of land, and wealth distribution, in a colonised country. The reimagined five-metre-high iteration, commissioned by Sonya Korohina’s Supercut Projects, consists of a gold perspex-clad fountain with water continually cascading down tiers of chairs. Around the base of the work, where the water 52
Chopping photo: Cinzia Jonathan
↑ Darcell’s experience of being regarded as ‘the odd one out’ has informed her art practice over the years. ← Darcell gives it her all in an underhand chopping event. Opening image: Make Me, 2015 — an exhibtion at Tauranga Art Gallery.
53
Photograph: Sam Hartnett
↑ A Death of Prosperity, 2020 at Te Tuhi gallery in Auckland. Darcell’s much-anticipated upscaled iteration will be exhibited in the atrium at Tauranga Art Gallery. parents built their life, their work ethic, notions of being savvy with money. “I am super thankful I got a stepping stone socially, culturally, financially. I see the difference between my upbringing and those in the Pasifika community that don’t have that skill set — I think it was only because I was in a Pākehā world that my parents were able to utilise that and get ahead.” Darcell says the work is also a bit of an “up you” to the wealthy. “The trickle down effect does not work. The cascade of the water in this work is cyclical — yes, it flows down, but it’s only a trickle and it’s still drawn back up to the top.” Ⓟ
pools, are the words: “You will never possess the soil, you will never be secure”. Darcell has inverted a directive by British colonist Edward Gibbon Wakefield: “Possess yourselves of the soil and you are secure” — a promise to migrants about a new, prosperous life in New Zealand. Through this work, Darcell is questioning the idea of possession and security, especially pertinent at a time when land ‘ownership’ is unattainable for so many. “With Māoridom, we are guardians, kaitiaki of the land; we’re only here for a short amount of time, it’s not about ownership.” She acknowledges the complexity in this for her personally. “My mother has lived in the family home in Matavai St [in the Mount] since 1989 and home has always been super special for us. When you are connected to home, you are secure,” she says. “I think that’s where the ideas behind A Death of Prosperity come from — not only the idea of ownership, but of legacy — the way my
A Death of Prosperity is due to open late November/ early December 2021, visit artgallery.org.nz For more artworks in the Tauranga Arts Festival’s Visual Arts Programme, visit taurangafestival.co.nz (see page 23 for more details). 54
Call for Entries
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Grow Together
The Ground Rules
Story by Home Farm Photography by ilk
This issue, Home Farm shares its knowledge about creating a community of diverse plants that grow happily together. Spring has well and truly sprung! We can now start planting out all those delicious heat-loving fruits and vegetables. In the last column, we covered how to set up a weed-free and fertile growing space (now on ourplacemagazine.co.nz). In this column, we’re diving into planting out those spaces to create healthy and resilient plant communities. First, let’s set up the framework. Keep one vision in your mind throughout this process — the layers of an established forest. This is what we’re essentially trying to mimic, just on a smaller scale and with vegetables instead of trees. A forest has many layers of plants, all with different characteristics, functions and needs. We have the sun-loving canopy layer taking up the space at the top, all the way down to the more shaded ground-covering layer at soil level. This framework will help us decide what to plant and where to plant it. An important question to ask before planting anything is: how much space will this plant ultimately take up? This is helpful when deciding how much space to give each one. Planting too close causes stress, as plants compete with each other for sunlight and nutrients in the soil. Overcrowding also restricts airflow, which can lead to disease. Spacing plants further apart is the safer option, however the aim is to utilise all the growing space to its full potential. Plant and sow with the end result in mind. Now we’ve established the framework of how to plant, it’s time to fill in those growing spaces with the plants themselves! You may know that certain plants grow well with others, while some plants can actually have a negative effect when grown together. We want to group plants that encourage each other to live their best lives and to grow into healthy and nutrient-dense kai. It’s called ‘mutually beneficial relationships’ and is the basis for companion planting or ‘guilds’. Beautifully worded by Frida Lotz-Keegan of PermaDynamics: “A guild is a community of plants working together in harmony over space and time. By placing plants together in a specific configuration, we create an interdependent ecosystem where the needs of one plant are provided for by the existence of others.” Last column we recommended options of seeds to sow as ground cover; now we’re going to expand on those recommendations. Below are some combinations, or guilds, for you to try at your place — they are centred around a primary plant, which is one that usually lives the longest and takes up the most space. They also take up the most nutrients, so planting them with other primary plants causes them to compete for nutrients in the soil and can have a negative effect on growth. Within these guilds, we’ve
outlined what to avoid planting near the primary plants, options for secondary crops (to plant around the primary plant), and ideas of what seeds to sow as a ground cover crop.
Tomato (determinate*), eggplant & capsicum Avoid Brassicas, sweetcorn, potato. Secondary crop Asparagus, bush beans, celery, onions, leeks, chives, garlic, cucumber, borage, mint, sage, thyme, oregano. Ground cover seeds Basil, parsley, rocket, coriander, spinach, radish, carrots, leaf lettuce, nasturtium, marigold. *Determinate means bush, rather than vine, which require way less maintenance.
Broccoli, brussels sprout, cauliflower & kale Avoid Tomato, eggplant, capsicum, beans, peas, sweetcorn, pumpkin, melon, asparagus, radish. Secondary crop Potato, onions, leek, garlic, celery, silverbeet, chard. Ground cover seeds Spinach, beetroot, leaf lettuce, parsley, coriander, nasturtium, marigold.
Potato Avoid Tomato, eggplant, capsicum. Secondary crop Bush beans, head lettuce, cabbage, silverbeet, chard. Ground cover seeds Basil, coriander, leaf lettuce, rocket, parsley, radish, spinach, nasturtium, marigold.
Climbing beans & peas Avoid The onion family Secondary crop Tomato (determinate), eggplant, capsicums, zucchini, cabbage. Ground cover seed Carrots, radish, spinach, rocket, leaf lettuce, parsley, coriander, mint.
Sweetcorn Avoid Tomato, eggplant, capsicum Secondary crop Climbing beans and peas, zucchini, potato. Ground cover seedlings Cucumber, melon, pumpkin, nasturtium. Note Any onion or relative (leek, garlic and chives), don’t grow well near the legume family (beans and peas). Plant them well away from each other. 60
← Home Farm creates layers in every patch. Here, a tomato is the primary plant. Ground cover seeds are then sprinkled about, before a secondary crop is added — this garden includes leaf lettuce, parsley, celery, leek and spring onion. Extra space is taken up with herbs (chives, oregano, thyme) and beneficial flowers (alyssum, marigold). Lastly, mulch is added to keep in moisture and ward away weeds. Opening page: Brandon (at the top) and Jim from Home Farm, cosied up to some lush seedlings.
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Hot tip for planting seedlings Before you plant seedlings, fill a container with water so you can completely submerge the seedling’s container — we use a wheelbarrow, which allows us to move it around. Soak for at least 30 seconds, then drain and plant. You could add liquid nutrient solution to the water to kick start growth! We use a liquid seaweed solution and after we’ve planted our seedlings, we feed the garden with the leftover water.
↑ Home Farm recommends thoroughly soaking your seedlings in a water bath just before planting. Any extra space can be filled with edible herbs and flowers that deter pest insects and attract good ones, especially ones that feed the bees! Keep the same framework in mind before planting, thinking about the space it will eventually take up and how long it will hold that space for. Here’s some of our favourites:
There you have it — a weed-free and fertile space with plant communities that support and encourage each other to reach their full potential. Get to know the plants you want to grow and look into various ways of growing them; get experimenting with companion combos! Remember to keep it dense (use every bit of the growing space) and keep it diverse (more species = more biodiversity). A monthly liquid feed will keep your plants happy and healthy and growing hard! Ⓟ
Herbs Basil, chives (plant away from beans and peas), coriander, dill, marjoram, oregano, parsley, rosemary, sage, thyme.
For more information on preparing your soil for planting, see Home Farm’s first column “Lay the Groundwork” on ourplacemagazine.co.nz The Home Farm team transforms spaces of any size into edible landscapes. For more info: @homefarm.nz homefarm@gmail.com
Flowers Alyssum, borage, calendula, chamomile, lavender, marigold, nasturtium, sunflower. 62
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Observations of a Wallflower A collaborative art project by photographer by Cam Neate & floral stylist Lucy Houghton
Framed images of bouquets sit dusty on the walls of the family home, resting silently, observing but never interacting. Generations grow up in front of them, often without acknowledging their existence at all. 67
I watched him read an entire French novel to find that quote 68
Helen was fourteen when she first got stoned 69
He’s an accountant but he owns a Harley Davidson 70
Perhaps a nice new pair of trousers will cheer him up 71
We were going to repaint but the pink somehow works 72
Margret’s summer crush was officially spoken for 73
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Healing Hands As told to Loretta Crawford Photography by Katie Cox
Awhina Motutere is a practitioner of rongoā Māori — the art of Māori healing, with her work encompassing her Ngātahi retreats and Lua, a line of skincare and remedies. 75
Awhina Motutere’s classroom smells of the sweet and slightly bitter aroma of kawakawa. It’s a calm, open space where she teaches rongoā Māori — the art of Māori healing. The practice of rongoā Māori is very old, but Awhina (Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Kahungunu) herself is thoroughly modern. She’s a consummate traveller who has lived and worked in Israel, the Middle East, the Far East and South America, and has a degree in naturopathy and a Diploma in Herbal Medicine. Now, she is home in Tauranga Moana, teaching rongoā Māori and sharing her wisdom through one-on-one appointments, small groups, workshops and healing retreats.
How long have you been practicing rongoā? Rongoā Māori is the way I was brought up and it was present in many different aspects of my life. Rongoā is about everything — it’s a whole unique holistic healing system that doesn’t need anything else apart from itself. Rongoā doesn’t fit into a box, it’s a whole universe.
How old do you think the system is? If I look at the whakapapa (genealogy) of mirimiri (traditional Māori massage) — the symbol is actually an Egyptian hieroglyph. I think it’s old, well before us. I feel it is celestial. Because of what some Māori believe, it’s in our cosmology, our purakau (stories), karakia (prayers), incantations.
Do you think rongoā has something to offer the world? Absolutely. There’s something really healing about Aotearoa New Zealand. We have so much to offer in the form of bringing people back to complete wellness.
Rongoā Māori practitioners look at the entirety of who you are — your whole universe. All physical symptoms come from a disease that could be mental, spiritual, environmental or whānau related. That’s why I like to go to people’s houses. I’m an energetic person and can pick up on a lot of things. If I’m going to someone’s home from a naturopathic viewpoint, I look in the cupboards and see what they fuel themselves with. It gives better insight to who a person is. And when they’re comfortable in their own space they’re able to let go of a lot more.
Tell me about the genealogy of trees and plant medicine In our creation stories there is a song called Te Pu that talks about the first root and the genealogy of how things came into being, how energy is manifested. How we all start at the same place, but all choose different directions. All plant medicine is similar, but each system is for that country, because what grows in our environment is what we need. You’ve got to be in touch with yourself to be able to connect with mauri (life force); to ask whether that plant is going to be useful for you, you need to connect to be able to activate that rākau (tree, plant). For each rākau you have a specific takutaku (recitation), which is said while you’re harvesting — this is what activates the mauri. In order to connect to mauri we use sound — vibration, karakia, or you might have a taonga pūoro (instrument) or a stick.
Is your name ‘Awhina’ significant in your career path as a healer? Awhina means ‘the helper’, to care for, to caress. When my grandmother was young, she got sick and my great grandmother 76
took her to the Rātana Church for faith healing. All of the people that help inside the Rātana Church are called Awhina; my grandmother and great grandmother were called Awhina inside Rātana spaces. When I was born my father changed it to Te Awhina. I am a helper, but my father changed it because my grandmother had been very ill, so he redirected the energy a little bit.
Tell me about your skincare range, Lua Lua started when I went to South America with my husband. We went to Machu Picchu and climbed Huayna Picchu. On the side of this mountain was Temple of the Moon (Templo de Lua) — there was a rock chair and we sat there, and I imagined that if you were there when the moon came out, it would’ve been phenomenal. That’s where the name is from. People think they’re buying a serum but it’s so much more — it has aspects of the sea, of the ngahere (forest), of me — all the different things go into it. You’re receiving healing without really knowing. I do some herbal remedies and a couple are very popular with international buyers so that tells me something — that people need our medicine.
Tell us about the healing workshops and retreats offered by Ngātahi In the retreats, people will get a basic understanding of the foundations of rongoā Māori. I try to do the workshops in places where you are completely cut off from the outside world — there’s no mobile phone, no internet, nothing. It’s just quiet. What we are essentially doing is connecting with ourselves. We’re letting it all go, whether we are with a bunch
“Rongoā is about everything — it’s a whole unique holistic healing system that doesn’t need anything else apart from itself.”
↑ Herbs such as mānuka, korowa and taraire are made into mixes specifically for individual needs. Opening page: Awhina shares her knowledge of rongoā through private appointments, as well as her Ngātahi group workshops and healing retreats. 77
↑ Awhina adds various mixed herbs and leaves to a steaming box, which is used to address various women’s health issues, such as period pain, cramping, trauma, cleansing and regulating the menstrual cycle.
of people, or one on one. We are learning to reconnect. I help by doing body work or sometimes I am just listening — a lot of people just want to be heard. They don’t need to go and do meditation, they just need someone to listen. The mirimiri is in the kōrero (conversation), when people are talking everything that needs healing comes to the surface. When they have finished talking, I put them on the table and then, depending on where the body is in that present moment and how much the body is willing to let go of, they release. Sometimes I have people that will talk for two hours and when I have people like that it means that they need more, and then they come back again until the work is done. I don’t like having people build a dependency on me, they need to do the actual work. It’s like peeling an onion.
For a bespoke retreat, I go into depth with people about what they want. Some people are on a wellness journey, some have had surgery and they want their friends to be with them on their journey. Sometimes it’s getting the girls together — saunas, spas, body work, eating rongoā kai (mostly plant based); some women want to do detoxing. The people who come to my retreats will learn from my perspective; I will build the foundations for people to get an understanding of what they are stepping into. Stepping into yourself is a massive journey. I work on myself all the time. People come to a workshop because they are looking for transformation and I am there to assist them on their path. 78
Any other thoughts to share? The Western way doesn’t teach you about the wairua (spirit), the mauri. It’s not a holistic view. It’s literally physical, not taking into consideration mind, body, family — all of the things that make us who we are. I used to often fall out with my teachers, because it wasn’t the way I was raised. Rongoā Māori is 89 per cent wairuatanga — your spirituality. It’s also in the stories; in rongoā Māori we talk about creation stories and whakapapa — we don’t know who we are if we don’t know who we come from. The takeaway is how people’s lives will change. Rongoā Māori is about finding yourself. Ⓟ lua.co.nz For information on Ngātahi, visit lua.co.nz/pages/ ngatahi-offerings
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Bright Spark Story by Josie Steenhart
Tauranga musician Georgia Lines started off busking as a tween at the Mount. Fast forward about 12 years, and she has a huge fan base for her music and regularly plays with our industry legends.
“What am I doing?! I should be busking!” says Georgia Lines with a laugh. Before the singer/songwriter — whose most recent live gig was also her biggest (belting out an effortlessly beautiful anthem pre-All Blacks versus Wallabies at Eden Park) — was famous, her and little brother Mackenzie could be found busking at the Mount. And doing very well too. “We were living at the Mount at that point, so we would take our guitars, walk down from the house and there was one spot that we had, right outside the ATM at the bank,” says the 24-year-old with a chuckle. “I would’ve been maybe 11 or 12, and my brother is four years younger, so he was the cute one. He would just, you know, draw in the customers. “Over summer we earned so much money! My mum actually has this photo of us in our garage, where I had used a whiteboard to document how much money we earned every day — which is so lame but so great — and I think we’d earned like a thousand dollars over the space of a week. Which is so much money for a kid! I mean, it’s a lot of money for an adult too!” Georgia, a born-and-bred local who still lives in the Bay (“family’s all here, grew up here, went to school here...”), was halfway through a national tour with Deva Mahal when the country went back into lockdown in August this year. “We’d done three of the seven shows, then we were supposed to do Tauranga, Auckland, Hawkes Bay and Queenstown. Lockdown hit and that hasn’t happened. I think the plan is for it to be rescheduled, but when, I’m not sure.” But Georgia is no stranger to pursuing a musical career in lockdown — her eponymous debut EP dropped just two days after New Zealand went into its first level 4 lockdown in March 2020, and instead of in-person touring to promote it, she made do with a virtual 84
← Georgia is well versed in facing Covid-related challenges, with her debut EP dropping during the first nationwide lockdown, and a recent tour cancelled halfway through.
performance on Instagram. Since then, she’s garnered a growing following for her soulful, dream-like vocals and feel-good, R&B-sprinkled pop. She’s clocked up nearly two million streams across platforms like Spotify and YouTube of her burgeoning body of work that includes newly released tracks written and produced with the award-winning Djeisan Suskov (who has also worked with the likes of fellow Kiwi pop sensation, Benee), and most recently Tōrere, a hauntingly lovely te reo translation of her original tune My Love, for the Waiata Anthems project. In what feels like a few short months of lockdown freedom, she has played gigs all over the country, opened for Reb Fountain at the Auckland Museum, toured with Laiika and performed alongside industry greats such as Annie Crummer, Anika Moa, Tami Neilson and Julia Deans at Auckland’s celebrated Civic Theatre. Georgia says that in part due to the situation created by Covid, she’s never felt any pressure to leave the Bay to further her career. It’s also been both a nurturing environment to become a musician and one that shapes her music. “I’ve kind of just stuck around, to be honest, I really love it. I think because there is such a big sense of family here for us, both me and my husband, and with the world the way it is, there’s definitely no rush to have to move. And obviously, you know, the Bay’s amazing! “I feel like you’re a product of the environment you grow up in, and I’m very grateful to have grown up in such a beautiful place. And in terms of music, I’ve been surrounded by amazing musicians — so many incredible artists that are either based in Tauranga… or have been here at some point. Even as a kid, I was around really creative people and amazing songwriters. I’ve definitely felt that shape who I am as an individual, and then obviously that flows into what I’m writing. I guess the result of that is me approaching this as a career, feeling confident enough to say, all right, I’m going to do this, I’m going to try to make this what I’m going to do with my life.” Georgia says her family too is musical. “My brother actually plays in my band, he’s my drummer. I love him so much and we get along pretty well, but he’s so good and he doesn’t have to practice and it annoys me so much,” she says with a grin. “He’s just naturally really talented at everything. And my parents, it’s not like they’re in bands or playing shows or anything, but they’re both musical. My dad can sing and play guitar and mum used to play piano. 85
↑ Georgia hopes her work as a music teacher in primary schools will help to inspire the next generation of creative talent.
“So there was definitely music in our house growing up. I was always making and creating things, and I was definitely that kid when your parents’ friends come over that’s like, ‘Watch me do my circus that I’ve put together for you’. That was definitely us as kids, always making and creating.” That environment is also one Georgia’s keen to pass on to a new generation of creative locals, via her work as an itinerant primary school music teacher. “You always hope that some of them might see that, oh, this is actually an achievable thing,” she says. “I think that’s a really hard thing about pursuing a career in anything creative… there’s no set pathway. We’re taught that if you follow these steps and you do this and you go and get this degree... but there’s none of that for creatives. There’s no guarantee. So I think knowing someone that’s worked hard and pursued something they loved, it’s always comforting, and hopefully inspiring to them as well. Knowing, oh, my teacher does that. Less scary, or less like an overwhelming path to choose, you know?” For now, Georgia has swapped gigs like Eden Park in front of tens of thousands for the more intimate but no less captivating confines of Instagram lives in her home. But a return to something like normality is on the horizon — all going well she’ll be opening for Dave Dobbyn at Havelock North’s Black Barn Vineyards at the end of October. And in the meantime, perhaps, if we’re lucky, she might really reconsider that busking gig at the Mount... georgialinesmusic.com 86
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Blue Royal Blueberries Promotion
A Sweet Homecoming
A return home to Katikati saw Tracey Cotterell take on a new challenge — growing big, juicy blueberries. Now, her innovative approach and hard work has made her an industry leader.
Blue Royal Blueberries Promotion
Tracey Cotterell didn’t expect to find herself at the leading edge of a new industry when she moved her family back to the Bay. Yet just five years after she and her two children relocated from Hamilton to her parent’s Katikati avocado orchard, she’s a four-season veteran and leading figure of the region’s blueberry trade. The journey from mum and Playcentre administrator to chairperson at Berry Packers, an industry collective based in Paengaroa, has been “a steep learning curve; lots of trial and error,” says Tracey. Fortuitously, her parents had a spare bit of unproductive land that had failed to sustain other crops and Tracey says this was the catalyst for creating a job with enough flexibility to still do school pick ups. “Dad came across blueberries grown in pots through his work with Southern Produce, and we decided it would be a great opportunity for me to learn new skills and possibly earn a living.” Unlike growers elsewhere in Aotearoa, who plant their blueberries in the ground, Tracey grows hers in pots, under tunnels. A cross between traditional outdoor growing and hydroponics, protected cropping is used on a large scale overseas but isn’t often seen on these shores. Tracey got lucky early on, joining Te Punabased BerryCo to grow their premium, super-sized and super-tasty varieties, sold as Blue Royal. “BerryCo provided fantastic support and technical advice, although they were learning alongside us as we fine-tuned the growing system. “They are committed to high levels of excellence across their operation and they’ve been instrumental in trialling new methods, and have even organised a group from the University of Waikato to look at developing new technology to improve our processes,” says Tracey. “Blue Royal blueberries are a range of blueberry cultivars sourced from the world-renowned Mountain Blue Orchards in Australia. The fruit from these plants grow bigger, have more flavour, are firmer and stay fresher for longer in comparison to other varieties previously available in the New Zealand market, so it’s definitely something that’s fantastic to be a part of,” says Tracey. Alan McLean, BerryCo’s production manager says that Tracey’s attitude to incorporating innovation has been the key to her success in the industry. “At BerryCo, we see getting ahead as doing things differently and better. Tracey is a perfect example of that philosophy, she’s embraced every new idea that we’ve put in front of her, and
↑ Tracey grows her blueberries in pots, protected by state-of-the-art tunnels.
she’s our go-to for R&D trials and testing out innovative ideas,” he says. Tracey’s first crop of six tonnes of blueberries were all packed by hand. It was an exhausting job and she knew they couldn’t carry on that way. She subsequently joined six other Bay of Plenty growers to form Berry Packers, which invested in a high-tech packing line that was designed and built in Hamilton by BBC Technologies. “It’s been a game changer. We’re now packing fruit for sixteen orchards from as far away as Tolaga Bay. This year we’ll pack about a quarter of a million trays of blueberries — we’ve doubled our output year-on-year,” says Tracey. Reflecting on her unexpected homecoming journey that led from setting up a fledgling horticulture operation to becoming an industry leader, Tracey wouldn’t change a thing. “The opportunity to be close to family has been so important to the kids and I. We’ve bought a neighbouring property so I can help out with the avocados, and the kids get involved with orchard mowing and blueberry picking. It’s a real family business.” You can buy Blue Royal blueberries at your local supermarket. To find out more, visit blueroyalberries.com 89
Aiming High Story by Josie Steenhart
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The glorious Mount lifestyle lured in Aim’n co-founder Helen Van, and now she’s not only settled here, but also opened a new brand headquarters and store for the global activewear brand.
If you’ve noticed a surge of fresh white tennis dresses in the Bay this spring, or admired the spate of locals stepping out in leggings with unique shades like chai and cayenne — put it down to the Aim’n effect. The luxe leisure and activewear brand was founded in Sweden in 2014 and now has a huge international following. Local fans are jumping for joy (or practicing gratefulness) over co-founder Helen Van’s (pictured, left) move to the Mount, and the recent opening of the label’s first permanent store. “It was always a dream, to live at the Mount,” says Helen. “I just love the lifestyle here — I love surfing, being close to the ocean and the waves, the relaxed and chilled vibe. Being in a smaller town, I really enjoy that as well — the people, the nature, everything!” Helen launched Aim’n eight years ago with high school friend and fellow Swede Tekla Acs, after finding herself at a bit of a loose end while living in Hong Kong for a year. “My sister has a muscle disease so she’s in a wheelchair, and her dream was to live in Hong Kong and learn Chinese, as our parents are Chinese immigrants, so it was a big thing for her to move there.” When her sister’s assistant didn’t work out, Helen quit her studies and work to go with her. “At that stage I was so lost in life, because I didn’t have a degree, I didn’t have work. My ex-boyfriend dumped me as well,” she says with a laugh. “But that’s when I started to think: oh, I want to be my own boss. Tekla and I were talking about this and I was like, let’s start this
now, because I live in Hong Kong, I can go to China and source from the factories…”
Why activewear? “We got tired of wearing dull and uninspiring sportswear while doing the activities we love — surfing, kitesurfing, yoga, running and the good old gym workout,” Helen explains. “At that stage, there were only really boring black tights on the market. The dream of Aim’n was born to boost and motivate ourselves and others with our happy pants, up-to-date designs and prints inspired by our environment and things we like. “So we started off there, and along the journey the brand also grew… Fast forward to now, we’ve grown into a global brand selling to 165 countries. We have two headquarters — one in Sweden where Tekla is based and one in New Zealand, and a team of 65 people in six different countries.” The new store and headquarters on Maunganui Rd is the latest addition to the brand’s growth, and Helen says she’s super excited to see where it goes. “The store opened on 12th August, it’s our first permanent store [in New Zealand] — before we had a few pop-ups, we had one in Bayfair for two months and one in Tauranga Crossing for almost a year, but we felt like we wanted to be at the Mount, close to the beach and not in a mall. “I just wanted to have a place where we could gather our community, and connect and engage with each other, because 95 percent of our business is 91
online and... especially after this year, that human connection is so important. And I wanted to create this space where we all get motivated and inspired. It’s also really nice to meet all the customers!” One of Helen’s favourite Aim’n activations is the Aim’n Sunset Run. “The concept is to gather women from different kinds of backgrounds for a 5km fun run. We run during the sunset, along the water, and then after that hold a yoga session. The beauty with that is we have a gratitude circle as well, so everyone gets to know each other and then they share what they’re grateful for — so it’s very in line with what Aim’n stands for.”
Has living in the Bay of Plenty changed anything about the brand? “In a way, yes,” says Helen. “We say Aim’n is an expression of mine and Tekla’s dreams and values in life, and as you grow and develop, your values also change. I would say living here has really changed me in the way I live life, focusing more on enjoying the moment and seeing the beauty around me, and I think that is reflected in the brand as well. “When we started it was all about ‘aim high dream big’, it was all about ‘go go go’, whereas now the brand is more about being grateful and enjoying the journey. It’s important to have dreams but it’s also important to enjoy what you have now.” aimn.co.nz
@aimn.oceania
Behind Bars By Elric James Illustration by Christopher Duffy
I’m writing this from captivity. The situation is kind of grim, but it could be a lot worse. I could be sitting on the cold concrete floor of a jail cell instead of an ergonomic office chair in our low-key three-bedroom rental, a couple of blocks from one of the country’s most grammable sandpits. Sure, the door between me and the outside world isn’t locked; but I’m still being told I can’t leave. Or rather I shouldn’t. Not unless I’m doing my prison-style workout within a 2.5-kilometre radius of home (or accessing essential services looking like an armed robber). I admit we’ve got a pretty sweet set-up at home — such is our privilege. We’ve got a solid stash of processed foods, a rock-steady internet connection, a temperamental Apple desktop computer and a relatively new smart TV with subscriptions to Netflix, Neon, Amazon Prime and Disney+. Honestly, I don’t know how I would’ve survived this second nationwide lockdown had I not signed up to every streaming service imaginable… But you’re a writer, you say. Why didn’t you exercise your mind, and hone your craft, by reading a book or ten? To which I respond: don’t shame me in my own column. How would you like it if I interrupted you during work and pointed out the things you should’ve been doing to better yourself in your downtime? Besides, before I was a struggling writer, I was a struggling filmmaker. And as my crippling student loan can attest, I have a vested interest in the medium of film and television. But seriously though, I consumed a lot of good content while I was locked up down. And there was one show in particular that kind of stuck with me. It goes by the name of… Dave. Not only was I expecting to dislike this show, I also thought it would be objectively bad (I was wrong). In fact, there were a couple of episodes in the first season that were darn-near brilliant. ICYDK, Dave is an American comedy series created by, and starring, Dave Burd, aka Lil Dicky, as a semi-fictionalised version of himself — a white Jewish, neurotic, 30-something male, who believes he’s destined to become one of the greatest rappers of all time. FYI Dave has legitimately good bars (rhyming lyrical sentences).
Dave is kinda like the rap game’s Jerry Seinfeld — but instead of roasting other people he’s constantly making fun of himself for his micro-sized genitalia and mangled urethra (the result of a botched surgery as a child). That’s right, Dave has more dick jokes than Superbad. But the show isn’t always juvenile. There are moments of genuine hard-earned emotion and poignancy on display, and this is where it shines. The fifth episode (Hype Man), which sees Lil Dicky’s sidekick, GaTa (Davionte Ganter), open up about his struggles with depression and bi-polar disorder, is one such moment. It might actually be one of the most realistic depictions of what it’s like to live with mental illness that I’ve ever seen. Ganter’s performance, played with genuine pathos, is likely to bring a tear to the eye of even the most hardened of men. Speaking of hard men, the season one finale (Jail) has got to be the most outrageous half-hour of self-parody ever made for television. Trust me when I say don’t read anything about it, just watch it. This episode best encapsulates what I like most about the show: it’s self-reflexivity. It really opens up the viewer to the creative process. (I’ve gradually been injecting myself and my thinking process, into my OP magazine contributions; so much so that they’ve now devolved into some kind of personal-critique-slash-quasi-entertainment-column hybrid — apologies to the editor.) But if there’s one thing Dave has proven with his show, and the bars he spits, it’s that selfdeprecation is funny. And it’s also a really useful coping mechanism for those feeling imprisoned by past traumas. Because if you’re busy laughing, you’re not busy crying, right? And that’s kind of how I feel about my life on the inside. It can seem grim at times, but it could be a lot worse. I mean, I could be like Dave and have two pee holes.
Dave (TV Series 2020) Starring: Dave Burd aka Lil Dicky Created by: Dave Burd & Jeff Schaffer Streaming on Neon 93
Delicious
Gold Standard Story by Pip Crombie
Fife Lane has delivered superb nights out to locals and visitors alike for two years now, thanks to its excellent service, smart surrounds, well-executed food and all-round attention to detail.
Above, left to right: The smart Solera dining room; lamb ribs with XO sauce, cucumber and feijoa. Opposite: Co-owner front of house manager Nick Potts (left) with head chef Neil Sapitula.
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This November marks two years since local couple Kat and Ryan Dippie opened the doors of their contemporary steakhouse located in Mount Maunganui’s Central Parade shopping strip. Fife Lane is now a well-established institution in local dining circles, a firm favourite of many who have made the comfortably chic restaurant their regular. The restaurant filled a much-needed gap, providing a dining choice for people residing in the 5km stretch between downtown Mount Maunganui and Bayfair, and also for people across the bridge in Tauranga. But there is a changing local demographic since the pandemic made itself felt, one which Kat and Ryan are happily embracing. International visitors may be few and far between, but new faces have come steadily through the door as people identify that New Zealand is an excellent antipodean bolthole, a place to return to, or to set up home for the first time. Many of these people are used to a certain standard of dining usually experienced abroad or in our larger cities. The Fife team have done their own travel and culinary research, which is reflected in the excellent venue and hospitality, which keeps attracting newcomers and original patrons alike. “In the two years we’ve been open, we’ve had three months in lockdown,” Kat says. “Like other hospitality businesses, we adhere and adjust to the ever-involving environment for dining and events. It is what it is,” she shrugs. One thing always remains the same at Fife Lane however, and that’s the consistency of the uncomplicated, seasonally focused menus, which the couple say are inspired by their own culinary experiences. “We don’t do boundary
pushing edible creations, our focus is on creating food with unique touches,” says Kat. Kat grew up further up the coast in Waihi Beach, Ryan in Kawerau, so both have a great appreciation of what New Zealand’s food basket has on offer. “We consider regional flavours and we ensure everything is created using locally sourced fresh ingredients, including meats, seafood and the best-quality vegetables.” (And yes, while Fife Lane has an authentic steakhouse vibe, vegetarians are catered for too!) There are numerous quotes that attest to the coupling of food and love, and the team at Fife Lane offer their own take. As Kat describes their “team of couples”, a quote from the hallowed playwright and literary critic George Bernard Shaw springs to mind: “There is no love sincerer than the love of food”. So it seems, in the case of the significant others who make Fife Lane what it is. Kat and Ryan both worked at iconic Tauranga restaurant Bravo in the mid 2000s, but didn’t meet again until 2010, when they soon became a couple. Bar manager Scott Hinton and senior waitress Paige Shaw make up the newest love match, and restaurant manager Keri Harman and head chef, Robbie Webber are a couple too. The Lockhart’s locked hearts in 2016 and both joined the Fife Lane team — Daniel in the role of sous chef, Suzelle the head of functions and communications. Word is, there may be another romance afoot, aided by the fresh kitchen aromas and heady noses of the hand-picked wines that grace the shelves of the cellar library — but there’s nothing like a little mystery, so I’ll leave it there. Back to the wine. Fife Lane is soon to release a separate cellar selection offering to their diners — 96
Fife Lane Promotion
Above: Staff members Paige Shaw, Keri Harman and Scott Hinton; fine wines are treated as such at Fife Lane. Left: The cleverly designed room; eye fillet, smoked wagyu beef brisket, parsnip puree and brussels sprouts. Opening photo: Chefs Matiu Kaihau and Dan Lockhart plating a dish of sous vide duck breast and confit duck leg filo parcel with spiced plum and duck jus.
a menu of carefully chosen New Zealand wines, alongside some Australian drops, for the discerning wine drinker. These premium wines will be on offer via the Coravin wine system, a device that enables people to enjoy a glass from a bottle without disrupting the integrity of the remaining wine (which can keep well in the bottle for up to three weeks). The restaurant could be described as having a smart-casual vibe, but it’s not at all uncommon to see people ‘dressed for dinner’. And the clever design of the space offers the perfect opportunity to simultaneously host functions of varying sizes — doors stack back to open it up, or close off areas for private gatherings. After 3pm, it’s a popular time for people to stop by to enjoy the snacks menus, along with a cocktail or glass of wine, and unwind. Lunch is
served on the last Friday of every month, but will be available every Friday leading up to Christmas (excluding 24 December). There’s an ever-increasing line-up of local culinary options, but Kat and Ryan say Fife Lane’s point of difference is the consistent hospitality on offer, especially paying attention to “the little things” — for example, they make a point of remembering what their regular guests love to eat and drink. The new season’s menu will see the return of some old favourites, such as the beef tartare, and kokoda. The chefs are also looking forward to fresh spring asparagus and summer stone fruits — watch this space! 512 Maunganui Rd, Mt Maunganui Tues–Sat, from 3pm fifelane.co.nz 97
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The lowdown on brodo Brodo (or Italian broth) is thinner in consistency and less concentrated than a stock made in a French manner. It’s typically a clear broth in which pasta (especially tortellini) may be served. In this risotto, it adds to the great depth of flavour. You can substitute with homemade or storebought chicken stock, or even use fish stock and serve the risotto with your favourite fish.
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This risotto from Italy’s Veneto region has few ingredients but loads of flavour — it’s currently on Alma Eatery’s very first dinner menu. Make a brodo for the best result, but you can also use bought stock.
Risotto Radicchio Recipe & photography by Alma Eatery, Ōmokoroa
SERVES 6 1.5 litres chicken brodo (recipe to follow — substitute chicken stock) 1 large onion, finely diced 4 cloves garlic, peeled 2 tablespoons olive oil 75g butter, plus optional extra 40g to finish 500g radicchio, leaves separated, washed, pat dry 2 cups arborio or Vialone Nano rice 1/2 cup dry white wine — we use pinot grigio (substitute light red wine, if preferred) 80g freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano Chicken Brodo (see opposite page) 2 chicken frames 4 chicken wings 1 onion, peeled, halved 1 carrot, peeled, halved 1 celery stalk 3 garlic cloves, peeled 1 tomato, quartered 1 fresh bay leaf 3 thyme sprigs 4 black peppercorns
If making the brodo, place all ingredients in a large stockpot, add 3L cold water and a generous pinch of sea salt, and bring to the boil over medium heat. Reduce heat to low and keep on a very low simmer for 2–3 hours, occasionally skimming off any foam as it rises to the surface (you should be left with about 2.2L). Sieve and discard solids. (If not using immediately, refrigerate and use within 5 days.) Place the chicken brodo or stock in a saucepan and bring to a gentle simmer. Place onion and whole garlic cloves in a large saucepan with the olive oil and 75g butter, and cook over medium heat until softened but not coloured, stirring occasionally. Bunch the radicchio leaves together and cut into 5mm wide strips, then add to the saucepan and toss to coat. Increase the heat to medium-high and stir in the rice to coat in the butter. Add the wine and stir until it evaporates, then season with sea salt. Add a ladleful of the hot brodo to the rice and stir in until absorbed. Continue this process, ladle by ladle, stirring continuously, until the rice is cooked al dente (firm to the bite). This process will take 18–20 minutes. The last ladleful of brodo shouldn’t be completely absorbed, giving the risotto a slightly runny consistency. Remove from the heat, then remove and discard the garlic cloves. Stir in the parmesan and the extra 40g butter, if using. Add pepper and check the salt. If desired, add a squeeze of lemon juice to balance the flavours, and top with shaved parmesan and torn radicchio leaves. Serve on plates or in bowls that have been warmed. 99
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