February 2010

Mangarara Station

Mangarara station is a  600 ha traditional sheep and beef farm situated near Elsthorpe in the Central Hawkes Bay (approx 20kms from Waipawa)
 The present owners, Greg and Rachel Hart, have been farming there for ten years. During this time they have become increasingly interested in how they fulfil their stewardship role for  the land, and its environment.  This has seen them plant thousands of trees, both native and exotic, and explore the whole terrain of the environmental movement including permaculture.
They have been in a process of exploring where this new consciousness takes them , their young family, and the farm   It is in this context that when we heard of their work and interests and met them late last year, we all immediately saw the possibilities of working together.
Kay and I have taken several visits to Mangarara by now, and I (Bob) have spent hours walking over most of it and absorbing its nuances.  We are starting to feel at home.
The land sits within ranges of hills all around it, almost basin shaped with the tiny Mangarara stream on its western boundary (including a 30ha native reserve) and the Horseshoe Lake (35ha) on its northern boundary.  One of the attributes we were looking for in our new home was a sense of quietness and isolation  - it has that as well as being only 20 minutes to a small town.
Much of the central part of the farm is in peat flats, with lots of rolling hillocks around this.  All feels very special, if a bit bare to us ex Northlanders.  Lots less rain too, only about 900mm per year, most of which falls in the winter.  This summer has been abnormal with lots of rain, so everything is looking very green.  Most summers all the streams dry up, so Greg is in the process of building more dams. (there are lots of small ones already). There’s enough room and resources to develop anything we might want to do, including clustered settlement, and still feel like we are living in a rural area.  There are also some reasonable areas of good soil which will enable all sorts of productive ventures to spring up in the future
 To the south is a backdrop of steep hills with thousands of trees planted, native and exotic, which are still small and pushing their way up.  Dotted amongst all the paddocks are hundreds of deciduous trees (oaks, chestnuts, plane trees and others) just starting to register their presence.  It’s on its way to being full of trees again.  Here are a few images

Whats Happening

Kay and I have settled on a place for our new home and I’m shifting down there, with Taiamai and Franzi, in early March to start Kay’s new garden and set up camp. Kay will be following at the end of May.  During my first few months at Mangarara; Greg, Rachel, Kay and I will be setting out a plan for how the farm may be developed, a new vision, including sharing it with more people.  We are hoping to have most of this sorted out within the next three months.  During this time we will also have a small group of friends and Institute staff helping us make some small sleepouts for the winter, with any serious building happening next summer once the new gardens are up and running.
Right now Greg is visiting Findhorn doing a four week course on Ecovillages and Permaculture, it is so good to have him singing from the same page, and I am looking forward to his return full of enthusiasm for the new vision for us all...

Getting Involved

Already we have had lots of people express an interest in both settling and just helping get things rolling. Lots of enthusiasm out their for the vision.  So I know its going to be frustrating for some, however we just need some time to gather our thoughts and get some clarity before anyone else gets involved.  As soon as we are ready we will put the call out in a newsletter and have a meeting/working-bee.  In the meantime we’ll keep the newsletters coming (approx monthly)

                              Watch this space

January 2010

We’ve Found the Land
I promised myself that we would find some land before the end of the year.  So I was feeling a little nervous on the 28th December with nothing in sight that felt right.  However on the 29th we got  a lead which I followed up and on the 30th we were on our way to visit a 600 ha farm in the Hawkes Bay.  Between Waipawa and the ocean. Since then we have visited the farm again and we are negotiating an agreement which will start the process of setting up our community land trust. All going well so far, and we hope to start our shift there in March.  We will be posting more details as they become available.  If you wish to receive email newsletters please contact us.

December 2009

Shifts and Closures
Its just over three years now since we made the decision to move from Kaiwaka.  In that time we have gone through some major closures and we are about to embark on another amazing journey.  The shift started when some good friend s of ours called in one weekend and issued us with several challenges.  The first was ‘I think you guys have achieved what you needed to here”  -  the second was how would you like to come and help us develop a ‘community’ down south.
It wasn’t long after we settled in the Marlborough Sounds that we decided that the new path we were treading was not really what we wished to do. However the ‘blessing in that (we decided later) was that we probably wouldn’t have shifted without that challenge.  Having shifted  we have never regretted doing so, and the dream of doing something ‘else’still sits with us even stronger than three years ago.
The main reasons for leaving Kaiwaka, were a sense of impending suburbanisation of our once rural district (one lifestyle block at a time), and the sense that the eco-village we had designed had some major limitations in its economic and governance structure, and that these combined limitations were unlikely to change.    We had  a dream of taking what we have learned from our years of observation, study and experimentation and do something more bold, with more potential to engage our personal visions and those of others
 
The Context of the Bigger Dream
It never fails to amaze us how parts of the ‘jig-saw’ in our dream sit and wait for us to find them, and once we have found them we wonder  how could we have missed seeing that.  Or isn’t that amazing  - now we can address that issue.  It could be scary that we don’t always know all the answers, but life is about finding the answers (not knowing them all) and the essential belief of the dreamer that the answers are out there (if we keep looking) is all we need to implement our dream in the face of doubt (and doubters).  Enough philosophising  -  I’m going to share with you some of the key concepts and issues that lie behind our new dream  - and then unfold it.
Our first night after leaving Kaiwaka, was at Trish and Joe’s, a time to share our journey with friends and fellow dreamers.  As usual Joe had something I “needed” to see, and we sat down and watched Arithmetic, Population and Energy: Sustainability 101 by Dr Albert Bartlett  (check out presentations on www.albartlett.org)   This is probably the world’s driest video, next to John Jeavon’s Dig It, and with equally important.content.  As Albert says it’s not rockets science, but the implications of continual exponential growth are stark.  You will never forget this video, and it really helps us put the continuous economic growth model into perspective.  You only have to superimpose a graph of exponential growth (whether it be population, oil use,  resource depletion etc.) over the bell shaped graph of finite resource availability to immediately see the potential for collapse.
Moving on I also spent some time reading David Holmgrens ideas on our possible ‘energy futures’  David ‘castes an eye’ on the exponential growth of the industrial revolution up to now and asks where to now?    Four possibilities present themselves:
1.    Techno-explosion, the ongoing belief that its onwards and upwards, more growth, amazing new technologies, and  more discoveries, in our ‘reach for the stars’ (including space travel and colonising other planets)  
2.    Techno-stability, a scenario where growth levels off and we use conservation, recycling and appropriate technology to sustain a similar level of energy use and  material well being to the one we have now.  (the lucky ones of us)
3.    Energy Descent, a conscious reduction in energy use, with  increased use of the sun’s energy, biological systems  and appropriate technology to ensure a sustainable future.  This almost certainly means the ruralisation of communities and economic activities.  We live where the resources are rather than cart them to cities.
4.    Collapse, an uncontrolled rapid descent, with accompanying loss of knowledge and infrastructure for an industrial culture.  A`worse case scenario involving a major ‘die-off’ of human population

Its not too hard to see examples of all four operating at present, with less and less people being part of Scenario One. Personally nothing that I’ve seen over the last 50 + years gives me confidence that Scenario One will continue.  I agree it is possible, but I believe it would take an enormous spiritual, political and  economic shift  the likes of which we have never seen in our history. Also we don’t see the present version of it as something that is spiritually, emotionally or economically uplifting for most people anyway..
So if we rule that out, and  we assume that Scenario Two is really an optimistic version of Scenario Three, then we are left with two scenarios.
We believe that we have to start seriously preparing for both, with the main emphasis on Energy Descent.  We also believe that significant economic contraction will start occurring within the next 5 – 10 years(possibly sooner) solely based on reduced availability of oil, and we try not to focus too much on possible contractions caused by global warming, epidemics, war, or earth changes. (however some preparation for  Collapse is a sensible ongoing ‘insurance’ policy)
That’s the bigger picture within which our dream sits


Our Vision
There’s no one right way to proceed from there, each is going to be an expression of the individual or individuals who are the immediate drivers of the dream. For Kay and I, here is a summary of the principles that will lead the way.

•    We will be developing an intentional community with a clear purpose of becoming largely  self reliant (within our community or our bioregion) in food, health, energy, clothing, shelter,  currency and finance. We are subscribers to Richard Douthwaites ideas, check them out at  www.feasta.org/documents/shortcircuit/contents.html
•    The community will be focused on self- reliance and interaction within its bioregional community, and global society.  It will not be isolationist.
•    We will take particular care in ensuring the land we settle on has adequate resources to achieve our goals  - particularly enough water and good soil.
•    We will choose a rural setting, not unduely affected by horticulture,industrial dairying or life style blocks, an area that is not likely to change dramatically in the foreseeable future. This  will also mean avoiding  being close to a major city (2hrs ?) We see the need to fully engage in our vision without too much interaction or conflict with the expanding presence of ‘civilisation’
 This is likely to mean we choose a small dairy farm, sheep farm or forestry land in a relatively  isolated area
•    We will take particular care to ensure that once we have satisfied the infrastructure  requirements of the District Council and the  Resource Management Act that we have sufficient capital, energy and an appropriate governance  to invest in the communities  economic development  -  to give legs to our vision.  Most of the ‘eco-villages’ in NZ have not done this adequately, or have not wanted to do it, consequently they have  become rural suburbs with very little development of self-reliance.   In particular we are likely to establish a well provisioned design/building cooperative, and construct ; a good water supply system, a small dairy farm and shed, a cooperative processing  facility, community facilities, and a cooperative communications/office facility
•    We will adopt the legal structure and typical governance structures of a Community Land Trust. We believe this is by far the best model developed so far to promote self reliance, and its philosophical base is that we are ‘owned by the land’, not that we ‘own the land’    This is a huge topic to discuss, check out our summary and compiled links at   www.koanga.org.nz/articles/135937.html
•    A major part of the economic development within the community will be centred around the Koanga Institute, including maintaining and distributing its seed collection, and an education facility based around experiencing and learning about the whole process of developing self-reliance. This will entail the lease of a section of the Community Land Trust  specifically for this. The activities of the Institute will provide opportunities for employment and contracted self-employment.  Outside of these opportunities we envision others will be both self-employed and/or working within other independent business organizations, with independent leases or licenses  from the Trust to suit their needs.
•    The initial development of the community will be done by a purpose formed development company, under contract to the Community Land Trust.  This stage will possibly take up to 4- 5 years between obtaining the land, setting up the Trust, obtaining resource consent, constructing the infrastructure required by the resource consent,  marketing, economic infrastructure, and settling the full complement of settlers.
•    We envision two parallel economies within our community, the ‘internal’ one being based on our self – reliance within our bioregion, the ‘external’ one  being oriented towards using the internal economy to create external synergies. One example of this will be that the Institute will bring students in from all around the world to learn from what we are doing and to contribute to both our  internal and external economies.  We also imagine using our base of producing and processing good food to export some high value processed products.  There are lots of possibilities which will arise out of the vision and passion of the individual settlers.
•    We will provide for both clustered and non-clustered housing and  clustered sites for 'cottage' industry
•    Much of the detail about how we do this will present itself out of the individual nature of the land we acquire.
•    Some of the positions within the community for settlers will be held for who ever turns up, however we will also target the specific skills we will need once the detail of the development forms.  This is likely to include  builders, designers, business managers and administrators, farmers, gardeners, healers, food processors, mechanics, teachers, foresters, potters, weavers, blacksmiths etc
•    There will be use of 'gatekeepers' to protect the direction of development, these may include:
- Limited or no grid electricity to foster alternative and low energy use
            - Prescriptions on the  heat dynamics of housing to encourage  passive heat storage
             - Prescriptions on housing materials
             - Organic management of the commons
             - Possibly others



First things First

We have a finance company  -  Craigmore Sustainables that is interested in supporting our vision.  Our challenge now is to put a proposal in front of them that ‘stacks up’  This finance company is also involved in purchasing  large parcels of isolated farm land  that is suitable for forestry planting and preferably future ‘carbon credits’ This is particularly advantageous to us as they can purchase the whole farm and  sell or lease back  a small part that fits our requirements.  There are many ways this will be mutually beneficial, and best of all this relationship has been initiated from one of the Institute members whose family has an on going commitment to support our work.  We believe the model we are proposing is replicable,  so once it has been proved this it can happen again, which could be one of the economic activities within the community.

Now we need the land.  This is an invitation to all the readers of this to help us find the ‘spot’
What’s it going to look like  ?  -  here’s  a few ideas

•    Probably 500 – 2000 hectares of marginal hill country grazing and with some easy contour land and a small amount of elevated river terraces with good soil
•    Good water flow through the summer
•    Doesn’t need to have any housing on it, but could be an advantage
•    The present owner could have the option of retaining long-term leases on houses sites if required and being part of the community
•    Could be anywhere in NZ but most likely to be south of Rotorua and north of Palmerston North, or  the South Is excluding most of Canterbury.

If you are reading this and know someone who may be able to help us, please feel free to pass this on with a personal introduction attached  (Please do not send it out indiscrimantly)


We are also keen to start a network of supporters including potential; settlers, investors, designers,  and those who simply would like to lend their encouragement.    We’ll be keeping in touch with progress as it happens on www.changeofheart.co.nz.  Also we’ll be having regular meetings starting in  the new year