2012 November Issue 59

Page 1

Rodney's

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2012

Landscaping:

fauna from across the ditch p.6

An eco house: off the grid in mud brick p.3 Antiques: treasuring the past p.10 Horsin' around: building life in the dull horse p.13

issue 59


fo CA rF L C R fL an EE or FN AL d m ROEW L qu aen E N ot adsu m e qrue e ot as e

up any property and gives useful tips for

Our apologies. We omitted to mention our beautiful cover picture in the October issue and wish to thank Christine and Tony Peek of Woodbridge Gardens, Coatesville for providing the photograph. sliding Custom-made

managing our gardens over the holidays.

Yet again, Helen Martin has uncovered a

an EE N d m OW qu e ot asu e re

couple of amazing businesses in our region. She talks to John Perry, the founder of

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Global Village Antiques and Collectibles

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or bi-folding Wardrobe Custom-made sliding Door System allows or bi-folding Wardrobe communities and changing tastes. Helen efficient access to Visit www.rurallifestyle.co.nz Door System allows also to Tipene-Ryan Smith, who runs storage space for a FREE subscription. efficient access to Helensville’s collectibles shop Monkee www.homeplus.co.nz storage space Letters or enquiries to Rodney’s Rural Business.

Continuing our focus on off-grid

For our horse oriented readers we look at

initiatives, Helen talks with Susan Wilson

how you can build new life into a ‘dull’

in Helensville. John describes how antique shops have become chroniclers of our

Now the sun is making more of an appearance it is time to plan for summed. A good place to start is to make sure all your bikes, boats, campers and toys are

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who lives in a mud brick house on South Head, running olive and alpaca businesses from her property. We look at the journey Susan took as she modified her sustainable home.

fo CA rF L R L an EE N d m OW qu e ot asu e re

editorial

The bright lights of summer

Wardrobe Doors Wardrobe Doors

underway.

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ply (conditions ap

2

RURAL LIFESTYLE ISSUE 59

Editor: Jay Bocock. Sub Editor: Helen Martin. Writers this issue: Helen Martin, Grant McKechnie, Ben Longwell. Designer: Dan Stenhouse, Bgraphix. Printing: PMP maxim.

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Reproduction in any form without permission of the www.homeplus.co.nz publisher is prohibited. No responsibility accepted

We have caught our first snapper and 10lb

In this vein, Grant McKechnie highlights

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Lifestyle

Off the grid in mud brick

By Helen Martin

When Grey Lynn film maker and teacher Susan Wilson went house hunting five years ago she had her heart set on a rural property. Having spent ten years growing organic bananas on land she leased in Matakana while she lived in town, Susan was ready to leave the city. Another motivator, and one not usually heard by real estate agents, was that she wanted the right sort of accommodation for her friend Jumbo, the circus elephant, should the opportunity to house her ever present itself. The 20 acre South Head property she settled on was just right for an African elephant, Susan tells me as we shelter from a wild spring downpour in her beautiful, brand new archgola. “Sand, kikuyu and ponds were important, she says,” and the place was perfect for Jumbo. It was only later I thought about how it would be living off the grid in the mud brick house. I didn’t even know it had a composting toilet!” As Susan was to soon learn, this was no ordinary house. Designed for original owner Fenella Scaglione by Warkworth eco-architect Graeme North, who specialises in designing sustainable buildings, in 1998 it received a BRANZ Green House Scheme Certificate, with an environmental house design rating of ‘Excellent’. Susan quickly discovered the advantages of living in a mud brick house. The thermal insulation properties mean the bricks are warm in winter and cool in summer. Because there is no cement the house can breathe. While the bricks absorb sound (snoring guests are no problem!), they also provide great acoustics for

a sound system. Susan loves that the bricks have none of the industrial smells you can get from building materials and that their shape allows for lovely flowing curves in the house interior in a way not possible with timber and gib board. . Finding the house too small for her needs Susan, whose father was an architect, who has always loved building and who is no stranger to ambitious projects, decided to increase its 65 square meters to 135 square metres. Having enlisted Graeme North to design the extensions, she found the clay on the property wasn’t right for mud bricks. Clay from a Kaukapakapa subdivision-in-progress turned out to be the right stuff, and Susan enlisted Hiway Stabilizers, who were making the subdivision’s roads, to deliver her enough clay to make 4000 bricks. The only charge was the cartage.

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The solar panels and generator housing.

Susan’s bathroom is part of her extensions.

Making the bricks, which consist of a mix of clay, sand, water and wood shavings mixed into a wooden mold and left to dry, was a painstaking project undertaken by a brick maker introduced to Susan by Graeme North. For two years the builders lived on and off in the barn on the property that Susan now rents to holiday makers. All the timber in the original house was macrocarpa, and Susan was easily able to source more for the extensions locally. As a key feature of the design, generous windows allow for plenty of light and fresh air. One significant alteration to the original concept was to do away with the existing Onduline roofing, as it was disintegrating, and to replace it with permanent colour steel. Power for the house is generated by solar panels (Susan has added extra panels to the original set up) and by a wind turbine, which looks like a small windmill. The power is fed to a shed where an inverter converts it from DC to AC power. A generator housed beside the shed will automatically kick in if Susan is ever really low on power. It hasn’t happened yet, but Susan is well prepared – one

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small solar panel keeps drip-feeding the battery in the generator ‘just in case’. The water heating system in the original house consisted of an Ireland-made cast iron Waterford Stanley Wood range connected to a wetback, which in turn is connected to a copper water tank. Two solar panels on the roof also feed into the tank. While the range is good for cooking once you get the temperature up, and Susan has it going all day in winter for warmth, for convenience she has installed a gas stove and gas caliphont, which are powered from gas bottles. Maintenance is, of course, essential. The wide eaves keep the exterior bricks dry. Susan treats the mud brick floors with a mixture of linseed oil and beeswax to keep the surface hard and treats interior walls with a lime whitewash. The solar panels are washed twice a year to keep them free from debris like pollen and sand, the solar system batteries have to be regularly topped up with rainwater and the wind turbine has to be taken apart and serviced every 3 years. It’s a very satisfying lifestyle. Jumbo did move in, and she loved it, but after a brief stay she was taken to Franklin Zoo. Without Jumbo to look after, Susan still always has plenty to do. She loves her garden. She has a herd of 24 alpacas, selling some of their wool. Riverdale Fibre Mill spin some into skeins, which Susan then uses for making garments and bed covers. Her other major enterprise is the olive grove. Susan bottles and sells the delicious oil from her spray-free olives (pressed by Salumeria Olives) under her Magic Olives label. Susan says she’s enjoyed the learning curve living off the grid in a mud brick house has prompted. “I loved it when a neighbour called last month when there were a lot of storms and asked what had happened to the power. Of course I didn’t even know there was a power cut. Here I’ve got everything I had in the city, down to the chandelier I turn on for special occasions! I enjoy what I have and I’m really happy here.”

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RURAL LIFESTYLE ISSUE 59

A section of the lovely interior.

Susan Wilson at home.


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landscaping

Strike me

pink

By Grant McKechnie

In recent years, Julie and I have been lucky enough to do some great road trips around Australia, gawking at all the usual touristy things. We also, of course, take a strong interest in all the plant life, in particular New Zealand plants and the way they are used, which can be different from the way we use them. For instance, a couple of years ago, travelling between Melbourne and Sydney, we called into a little tourist town, population 391, called Central Tilba, (not to be confused with the nearby town of Tilba Tilba). It was late in the day, most of the cute little shops had shut and our travelling companions made a dash for those that were still open,

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RURAL LIFESTYLE ISSUE 59

You see lots of flaxes and cabbage trees over there, as well as coprosmas and pittosporums. It’s interesting that coprosmas and pittosporums seem to keep better form over there. They stay more compact and are not as inclined to drop their inner leaves — probably because it’s generally a hotter, drier climate and they grow more slowly. On the flip-side, many Australian plants seem to grow better here than at home, probably for the opposite reason: our wetter climate suits them. The most obvious of these are probably the eucalypts (gums) and callistemons (bottlebrushes) in their various forms. Bottlebrushes are regarded as relatively slow-growing in Australia. Here in NZ, with our bountiful rain, they grow at a great rate of knots. Two years ago, we put 60cm tall Callistemon salignus plants in our garden. They’re now 2.5m tall, even though I’ve trimmed them twice. Left to their own devices, they’ll turn into graceful small trees of about 5m tall and 4m wide. Bottlebrushes thrive in damp to dry areas, with their flowers providing good food for the birds and the bees. We have some flowering in the garden at present and there’s a very audible buzz which can be heard some metres away — it’s the bees tucking into the nectar. Use bottlebrushes for low to medium-sized screens, or for colour in your garden. They can also be useful for a hedge, with a bit of judicious trimming. The aforementioned Callistemon salignus is particularly good as a hedge, because of its pink new growth; every

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while Julie and I honed in on a NZ native, Muehlenbeckia astonii. It’s not all that common in NZ gardens — although it’s getting more so — but here it was, in small-town Australia, taking pride of place in a pot outside a shop, trimmed into a column. It was used in a way I’d not seen before, and looked really great.

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Eucalypts and blackwoods mix well to form a large shelter belt.

forms, selected for their compact forms and great flower displays. Most grow to around 2.5 to 3m tall and wide.

time you trim it, it produces another flush of leaves. Its flower colour is cream, but because it is a seed-grown plant, colour can vary from light cream to almost yellowy-cream.

Eucalypts are, of course, known for their rapid growth, both here and in Australia. Some of them make excellent firewood that coppices. This means they will re-grow again after you have chopped them down. Eucalypts take five to seven years to get up to firewood size first time around, but re-growth for the second and subsequent crops is quicker because the tree has an established

Most of the bottlebrushes available are cultivars, which means they produce uniform flower colour. Favourites include Callistemon ‘Kings Park Special’, with good red flowers, C. ‘John Mashlan’, pink flowers, and C. ‘Western Glory’, vibrant cerise-pink flowers. There are lots more varieties, but these are some of the popular

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7


Callistemon salignu.

root system to draw on. Eucalyptus ovata (swamp gum) is good for very wet areas, while E. botryoides and E. nitens will take dry to moist soils. If you’re planting for firewood, spacing will vary depending on how many rows of trees you want. For a single row, plant at 2m spacing; for two rows, plant 2m apart within the row and 1m between the rows, with the plants alternating in a zig zag fashion. For three or more rows, plants should be spaced 2m apart, with 2m between the rows. The average household will need 10 to 20 trees per year for firewood. Australian blackwood (Acacia melanoxylon) is another good choice for your coppicing firewood lot. It takes seven to 10 years to make firewood size, but burns hotter than the eucalypts. It also makes a useful farm shelter tree that keeps good form, growing quickly in dry to fairly damp soils. Plant it on its own, or mixed with eucalypts. Blackwood is a big tree, not as tall as some of the eucalypts, but the two species alternated in a row make an

Leptospermum ‘Copper Sheen’ forms a quick, colourful hedge.

excellent shelter belt on a lifestyle block or farm. The gums quickly provide very tall shelter, but tend to end up with less growth on their lower halves, while the blackwoods are very branchy and fill all the gaps. Another Aussie import that thrives in our damper clime is Leptospermum ‘Copper Sheen’, which can put on a metre of growth in a year. Its coppery-purple colour is pretty special; it’s at its best when used for contrast in a mixed border, or as a colourful hedge. However you use ‘Copper Sheen’, give it a regular trim to keep it nice and bushy. As this is my last article for this year, I wish you and your garden a great Christmas, and I’ll see you in the same place next year. Handy hint: If you’re worried about your plants drying out over the (hopefully) hot summer months, remember that one good, deep watering per week should get them through. Alternatively, a good thick layer of bark mulch, 10cm to 15cm deep, will also help moisture retention.

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RURAL LIFESTYLE ISSUE 59



heritage

Treasuring the past

By Helen Martin

One person’s throwaway is another’s treasure. Junk, second hand goods, curiosities, retro goods, collectibles, antiques, call them what you will, these items changing hands over counters up and down the country are an increasingly important part of our cultural heritage. When John Perry opened Global Village Antiques and Collectibles in Helensville’s Regent Theatre at the end of last century, many were saying such shops were a threatened species. The founding of Trade Me in 1999 seemed to confirm the view that, if you wanted to buy anything at all, you just needed a computer and time to search the sites.

business. Aside from the fact that buying

Not so, says John, an artist and art valuer who for 20 years was the Director of the Rotorua Museum of Art and History and who knows a thing or two about the

Golden Mile Collectibles Trail, where six

John Perry open for business.

10

RURAL LIFESTYLE ISSUE 59

antiques online can be problematic, not everybody likes shopping online. “People like to look at an object, pick it up, see how heavy it is and gauge its condition. lt’s the tactile connection they’re after.” Rather than dying out, shops that specialise in the objects and artefacts John calls “the outstanding, the unusual and the extraordinary” are proliferating in small towns, as are ‘antiques trails’, where individual shops link up to create a more visible profile and help treasure hunters find them. Establishment of the Matakana shops between Warkworth and Matakana have joined forces to profile themselves, is a recent case in point.

The outstanding…

What is fascinating about this phenomenon is that so many small New Zealand towns are using their histories to re-invent themselves. Paeroa, for example, which was once a river port servicing the gold mining industry and later a service town for the farming industry, was forced to find new revenue streams when its butter and milk factories closed in the 1980s. Now, there would be few who did not know of Paeroa’s strong identity as “the antiques town of New Zealand”. Helensville was another small town profoundly affected by closure of its dairy factory, and like Paeroa has re-invented itself as a town of deep historic interest. Interestingly, the buildings which house the collectibles shops are often themselves significant in the country’s heritage.

The extraordinary…


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Tipene Ryan-Smith open for business.

John’s Regent Theatre was built during the first world war. Having started life as a multi-purpose hall, it became a cinema in 1941. Down the other end of town, installation artist Tipene Ryan-Smith runs Monkee Business out of a beautiful heritage site, the tiled building that served as a butcher’s shop from the end of the nineteenth century, celebrated as being the first refrigerated butcher shop north of Auckland. Both men love what they do, valuing the fact that, whether they’re buying or selling, each piece they encounter has a story which is part of the bigger narrative of our histories. Looking at John and Tipene’s eclectic collections, which include iconic pieces from here and from overseas – old books, cuff links, china, paintings, fur coats, lamps, mantel radios, glassware, milk shake makers, mirrors, dolls, kauri gum and so much more - I’m interested to know who comes to buy. While some customers are locals, and some are travellers passing through, I’m told that these shops are a popular destination for out-of-towners. Some are collectors looking for that special piece. John, who has a particular interest in New Zealand art and ceramics and who calls himself “a dealer in endangered species”, has a customer who collects outboard motors,

The unusual...

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RURAL LIFESTYLE ISSUE 59

for example. Other customers are day trippers, getting out of the city for a spell and seeing what the rural towns have to offer. “I look for man-made and natural curiosities of integrity and quality,” says John. “I describe my place as ‘no ordinary junk shop’, as most of the material I buy for the shop relates to art and culture. Cultural heritage is priceless, so what I sell simply has to be ‘the right stuff’.” While John has been in Helensville for many years, Tipene is a relative newcomer. He points out that one advantage of being based in a small town includes being charged a much lower rent than a city location would demand. He also enjoys the slower lifestyle, which, he thinks, has a really positive effect on outof-towners. “Moving to a small town I wanted to be part of it, I wanted to add something. Here, you can think for yourself without being asked for a permit for everything. The pace slows down, people slow down. When people come into a good shop they slow down and they treat themselves. Finding something just right for you, something you will treasure, is a way of healing. I love being able to contribute to that.”

Healing treasures.


horsin' around

Building life in the dull horse

By Ben Longwell

Last month we discussed working through the challenges of a flighty horse. Now we’ll look at a few tips for handling a dull or “over-desensitized” horse. Equines that are naturally quieter usually take to our training more willingly, at least on the outside, and deal new experiences with less reaction than their “spookier” cousins. Quite often, this type of individual has been over-handled and/or mishandled. This leads to a misunderstanding in the horse’s mind about how we actually want him to respond to the stimuli of cues and to interact with people in general. This can be particularly dangerous because they appear so safe and quiet, yet if there’s not a foundation of respect, trust and understanding, when push comes to shove we’re at risk of being stepped on, run over, bucked off or crushed. This type of horse nature may be lazy (i.e. he’s not really that well trained, he’s just too lazy to “react”) or of a particular willingness that some horses naturally possess that make them incredibly “easy” to train and work with. In any of these cases, the fact still remains that without thoroughness in their foundation training the horse will have “holes” that will reveal themselves at inopportune times in the future. Looking at the classic case of a dull, over-handled horse that has a streak of laziness, we have to understand that we need to build responsiveness back into him and that will require some extra “life” from us. In order for an unresponsive horse to become

sensitive again, we must consistently give him the chance to respond to light cues and lower-pressure body language. If we always ask him to do things with a high level of “life” or physical contact (leg, rein, etc), or if we nag at him, then we’re contributing to his dullness. At the same time, it is crucial that unresponsiveness is always met with increasing “life” or pressure until the moment there is a “try” towards what we are asking. The properly timed release of that pressure is what will cause the horse next time to look to do the same thing that resulted in the release this time. Many times it is during this process of rebuilding “life” and responsiveness that we discover “Mr. Easygoing” is only such as long as he’s basically left alone or everything around him is in his comfort zone. This is one of the holes I referred to earlier and it is much better for it to come to the surface while we’re looking for it, rather than catching us by surprise in a situation out of our control down the road. It is up to us to prepare them for that situation and build trust by taking them out of their comfort zone in a controlled environment, then showing them how to come back to “response”. As always, these training scenarios need to be set up so that the horse finds the right thing to do because it’s the easy thing to do. Mishandled and dull horses can be made light and responsive again, it just requires consistency, understanding and patience on our part.

Rt Hon John Key MP for h el ens v il l e

365 Main Road, Kumeu p 412 2496 e John@Johnkey.mp.net.nz w w w.johnkey.co.nz

www.national.org.nz

RURAL LIFESTYLE ISSUE 59

13


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