Clay cracks. Note the red cap wellies
standard issue on NZ farms
standard issue on NZ farms
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Letter From New Zealand #4
My friend Peter Huck, journalist and windswept adventurer, recently moved away from Los Angeles with his other half, the lovely Barbara Drake, to beautiful New Zealand. I asked Peter to write a monthly letter from down under as a kind of mirror to my own efforts and experiences here. This is the fourth letter.
Autumn is here, although most days you wouldn’t know it. Daylight saving has ended, the days are far shorter and the starry nights notably cooler, but we’re still in drought, despite tantalizing promises of rain; the Southern end of the country has been hit by a weather bomb, with hikers evacuated from the Milford Track and Queenstown on flood alert. But up on our section at Two Caravan Hill disconcertingly large cracks have zig-zagged over the exposed clay pan near our house site, and previously lush native plants are beginning to look stressed, with some tree ferns starting to die back.
Looking towards the Tuki Tuki River
at dusk. New Zealand's landscape
can veer wildly from the South Pacific
to Montana to Dorset or Scotland,
all within a few hours' drive.
at dusk. New Zealand's landscape
can veer wildly from the South Pacific
to Montana to Dorset or Scotland,
all within a few hours' drive.
I’ve been in Central Hawke’s Bay, on the eastern side of the North Island, for the past fortnight. This is the countryside that most reminds me of Central California, although at times it looks like the Dorset downs in England. The seismic topography is the same – the 1931 7.8 Napier earthquake was New Zealand's worst disaster, razing towns, killing 256 and lifting the seafloor about 2.7 metres – and the landscape does a passable likeness of Napa Valley, complete with grapes, olives and a laid-back Mediterranean ambience.
The Argyll Hills, Central Hawke's
Bay,looking towards Otane
They’re picking the Merlot and Sauvignon Blanc grapes at Lime Rock, a local winery, but Hawke's Bay olives won’t be ready until June or July, months after the Coromandel pick in March. On a recent afternoon, I went out gleaning with Barbara and my family in an olive plantation on a river terrace up in the quiet back country, studded with totara groves, where the Waipawa River tumbles out of the steep, heavily forested Ruahine Range to meander across rolling park-like farm land on the Ruataniwha Plains. We collected fallen pinecones from a hedge of weathered macrocarpas – also known as Monterey Cypress and endemic to California - and walnuts from a solitary, spreading tree, gone wild.Bay,looking towards Otane
I guess gleaning is pre-impressionist;
here's some walnuts
The walnuts make a tasty substitute for pine nuts in pesto sauce, a regular in our kitchen when we can find honesty stall garlic, Coromandel olive oil and homegrown basil to throw into the blender. We’ve taken to eating it with Japanese rice noodles. I’ve also been sampling skipjack tuna steaks, held together with ultra-thin bacon rashers, as well as gurnard quickly deep-fried in an almost translucent batter, along with the last of the summer garden vegetables. Such feasts are followed by fresh raspberries, wafer biscuits and wedges of tart, six-year-old damson plum "cheese," made by my mother from a Victorian English recipe, using heritage plums from a tree near their vegetable garden. here's some walnuts
Here's an abbreviated recipe, supplied by the New Zealand Listener's gardening correspondent on April 1, 1991:
"Place a quantity of damsons or plums into a jar and stand in a saucepan of water on the fire. When quite soft pulp them through a sieve and to every pound [455 grams] of pulp add a pound [455g] of preserving sugar and 1 ounce [30g] of sweet almonds, blanched and pounded with four bitter almonds. Boil all together till the fruit forms a stiff jelly. If the plums are very juicy some of the juice may be taken off the fruit. If you can't find bitter almonds take a hammer [I love that phrase] to four damson stones instead. The resulting kernels will be more authentic. Pour the cheese [the smooth jellies were called "cheeses"] into oiled, straight-sided moulds or jars. Leave for at least six months. The cheese is said to be at its best when it has shrunk from the side of the jar. About 1 1/4 kilograms of damsons make 1 kilograms of cheese." It's good with port or pinot noir, although I'm not unhappy with Tui, currently my favourite New Zealand beer.
Sheep tracks on dry country farm
land remind me of Dorset's Iron
Age fort, Maiden Castle, used as
a location in Thomas Hardy's Far
From the Madding Crowd. If you
want isolation this is as good
a spot as any.
Water is a contentious issue on the Ruataniwha Plains, not least because diary farms are pumping out the aquifer. Until recently, drought was only a seasonable issue in eastern parts of New Zealand, sheltered by mountains from the prevailing westerly weather systems that bring rain from the Tasman Sea. But deepening droughts - in line with predictions of changing climate patterns wrought by global warming - have also deepened local concerns. Wandering around stream beds in the upper reaches of the Waipawa and Tuki Tuki rivers, which wend downhill through ever widening gravel beds as they flow from the Ruahines to the Pacific, it is sometimes hard not to recall the scene in Chinatown where Jack Nicholson talks to a boy on a horse in a bone dry river course. All too often in recent years streams that feed into the Waipawa and the Tuki have vanished or become semi-stagnant pools, even as huge mechanized irrigation systems turn dairy pastures a weird emerald green, more fitting to Western Ireland than an eco-system where dry country sheep and beef farming has been the norm for the past century. So it comes as good news, even as I post to this blog, that New Zealand will meter water use by farmers, a step towards sustainability.land remind me of Dorset's Iron
Age fort, Maiden Castle, used as
a location in Thomas Hardy's Far
From the Madding Crowd. If you
want isolation this is as good
a spot as any.
We're having the tui tweaked by
Coromandel painter, Cindy Alger,
who favours a pointillist style.
Meanwhile, back in the Coromandel Barbara tried drilling for water on our Coromandel property last month, hiring a team who used an auger mounted on the back of a Ute - short for pick-up or utility vehicle - with a water tank to cool the auger on a second Ute. We had hoped to guarantee an alternative to rain water tanks and three dowsers indicated we had a good chance. Alas, it was not to be. After 21 metres, about 60 feet, the auger was still surrounded by thick clay, with no sign of the rhyolite, or volcanic rock, through which subterranean streams percolate. There's water there somewhere but we don't have the budget to reach it. Instead, we're waiting for rain, gathered by our galvanized iron roof, to fill two stainless steel tanks, formerly milk tanks, and each capable of holding 2,000 liters. So far, they remain empty.Coromandel painter, Cindy Alger,
who favours a pointillist style.
The mining issue is becoming ever more vocal in the Coromandel, as opponents petition the government and take to the streets in protest. The government, which wanted public subscriptions in by May 4, has now extended the deadline to May 26. If you're interested in this issue and have something to say about New Zealand's "100% Pure" tourist image, you may wish to visit the main protest website.
©2010 Peter Huck
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
1 comment:
I live in Central Hawke's Bay and those huge irrigators are absolutely hated by most people I talk to. The general feeling is that if you have to water your property that much in order to grow grass to feed your cattle, then you are running the wrong type of farming operation for the area.
Post a Comment