More on the goggle-box

The Southern Institute of Technology 'Distance Learning' programme on organic farming and horticulture provided a chance for Robyn and I to showcase our home garden and share some of the methods we have learned for growing without using pesticides and herbicides. The interviews we did have been spliced into 6 programmes and there are more in the pipeline. They are broadcast on Sky and/or channel 110 and will run three times a day for the next 5 weeks. Again, we were very lucky with the weather - it looks quite tropical on the little screen!

TV3 - Whitebait

Elizabeth Glass, 3 News and her camera man chose the perfect day to film at the wetland reserve beside Riverton’s estuary – the strong winds of the previous two days had dropped and the sun was out. Riverton looked very attractive and when the piece airs on TV3 news, it won’t do our reputation any harm! The interview was to follow up on reports of a very poor season for the whitebaiters and the plans of Estuary Care group for increasing whitebait numbers by breeding and feeding them in our Te Wai Korari wetland reserve. I was asked about habitat loss, the increase in dairy effluent in the Aparima and Pourakino rivers and the changes to the oceans where young whitebait feed. The news team filmed the waterways and ponds of the reserve and my attempts to find some whitebait amongst the water weeds (they were hard to find this year, perhaps in line with the very low numbers seen by whitebaiters). The segment should show on the 6 o’clock news as the summer season gets underway. I’ll post the date.

Organic Landcorp

Letter to the Editor - Southland Times

The Labour government is in an excellent position to lead by example in the challenge to tackle climate change, by converting its Landcorp farms to organic production.
Organic farming, with its carbon-rich soils is an essential tool for a country needing to reduce its agricultural greenhouse emissions.
A far-sighted government would adopt climate-friendly organic methods as quickly as possible and its own farms are the logical place to begin.

Women in agriculture

We were very lucky with the weather when the rural women’s group visited our Riverton garden to learn about orcharding organically and the mysterious details of grafting and pruning. The warmth brought out all of the tiny hoverflies, highlighting nicely the point that plants growing amongst the apple trees are important for successful pollination and the fruit-set on the trees proves the effectiveness of the cow parsley, fennel, lovage and so on that are growing there. The next day, a photographer for NZ Gardener spent a couple of hours ‘firing off shots’ around the garden for an up-coming article and was greeted by the same phenomenon of busy pollinators en mass. They’re difficult to photograph, but impossible to miss on-site. If you are interested to see these little workers up-close, try this site or plant some wild carrot or cow parsley and attract your own!

Dig for victory

Robyn and I met scores of people at the Rural Heritage day at Donovan Park, over our model ‘victory garden’ and heritage fruit tree display. Most interest came from the very young, enjoying the scale model of a backyard garden complete with glasshouse, hen run and rows of paper-cut vegetables, and from the ‘used to be young’, older gardeners who had the real thing through their family-raising years. We took a lot of pointers from these experienced gardeners and plan to make some changes to our own vegetable garden at home. Some swore by well-matured cow manure as the secret to prize winning cabbages and marrows, others said that seaweed is the answer! More than one visitor told me that they were entirely self sufficient in vegetables and I was duly impressed – it takes a very methodical approach to grow year round and not find yourself popping into the supermarket for something or other that had failed to grow (or get planted in the first place). Thanks to all those alerting us to the location of more heritage apple trees in the many corners of Southland – we will be back on that trail in the autumn.

Insecticides

Insecticide residue limits set to rise – Southland Times Thursday November 15

“New Zealanders will soon be eating tomatoes and stonefruit with up to five times their current level of chemical residues. The New Zealand Food Safety Authority (NZFSA) has approved the move”.

Letter to the Editor
Insecticides

The decision to lift the levels of insecticides allowed on tomatoes and stone fruits (Nov 15) will boost the sale of organic vegetables and fruits and make farmers markets even more popular. The New Zealand Food Safety Authority decision is good news for customers buying spray-free fruit and vegetables and for all organic growers.
Robert Guyton, Riverton

Cob oven

It took us all day to pound, mix, mould and press this clay 'adobe' oven into shape. In one month's time we will fire it up for our first pizza. This gives us one more 'appliance' that doesn't need to be connected to the national grid. Thanks to the 8 'adobeists' that helped.

Eco Radio/Be the Change

My early start on Thursday morning was about getting to the Radio station on time to talk with host Chris Diack and Jo McVeagh from the Be the Change bus for a discussion on things-you-can-do about climate change. It was a good opportunity to talk about real actions the Riverton 'green-side' has taken to reduce their carbon footprint. Push mowers, solar showers fashioned from alkathene pipe, safe household cleaners, collecting rainwater from the roof, growing a vege garden... it was easy to think of simple, effective activities to share over the airwaves. The bus began its journey at Bluff after meeting the Healthy Homes project drivers and is now making it's way north. If you see them, stop for a talk - the bus carries a raft of eco friendly, green house gas reducing technologies and the 'passengers' are knowledgeable people.

Letter to the Editor - 5 Nov

China took a hammering on the world stage following the extinction of their Yangtze River dolphin earlier this year. New Zealand will be similarly criticised if we lose our tiny Hector and Maui dolphins. Our tourism and farming industries, with their 'pure and clean' marketing tag, will be hardest hit.

Robert Guyton,Riverton

Fast Followers aren't winners

For excellent commentary on New Zealand's place in the Climate Change debate, I recommend Hot Topic a site adroitly covering the issue, linking to relevant commentators from within our country. The piece by Rod Oram, regular Sunday Star Times opinion writer, on the NZ Institutes short sighted 'Fast Follower' proposal is excellent and ought to be required reading for any business person with doubts about New Zealand's committments to the Kyoto Protocol.

Flouride

Young people in my town don't drink water, they drink soft drink. They do this because the water smells of chlorine and tastes bad. Their teeth suffer from the sugar in their favourite drink. Health officials propose to put flouride into the drinking water to strengthen those teeth, but the 'target audience' isn't drinking the water and the plan won't work. A far better idea is to provide clean, good tasting water that children will drink. Let's look to the cause, not just treat the symptom.

Cleaning up Central

"Life in the 21st century is so heavily bathed in chemicals..and the search for reassurances has become increasingly ardent" - Thursday's Southland Times editorial focuses on fruit, in particular apples grown in Central Otago under the Apple Futures banner and the implications for all food crops grown in New Zealand. The editorial fudges the ideas of safe food a little, opinining that the initiative (Apple Futures) is something of a political response to market perceptions, rather than a real clean-up of chemicals on our fruit, but nevertheless lauds the moves to significantly reduce chemical use in orchards in Central Otago, Hawke's Bay and Nelson. The author talks of massive markets for 'organic' products and rightly says it extends far beyond the pipfruit area. The care taken with the word 'organic' is due to the fact that the methods proposed for the industry are partial, rather than full, and represent reduced application, rather than zero use. No detectable chemical residue is different to no chemical use, but it is a step in the right direction. The support for the new approach is at tempered with the claim made at the beginning of the article -"New Zealanders and our markets are already assured that we produce extremely safe fruit", but there is enough light showing for the supporters of an 'organic nation' to feel encouraged.