Rural Living - 3 March 2023

Allan Noble - Page 4-5.

Photo: John Borren.

It’s like the Field Days but with a twist – it’s the rst of its kind and its being held right here in the Bay of Plenty.

Introducing the Bay of Plenty Rural Lifestyle Expo! Hosted at the Te Puke Showgrounds, the expo is this weekend March 4-5 and there’ll be something for everyone. “It’s our version of the Field Days but we’ve got a little bit of a twist… there’s a di erence because it’s all about the rural lifestyle,” says event

organiser Ernie Stewart. is two-day event won’t just be about agriculture. ere will be everything from tents, motorhomes, trucks, canoes and kayaks, EVs and E-Bikes, and boats on show, as well as gardening, outdoor action and agricultural equipment on o er.

Something local Pondering during the pandemic, Ernie says he wanted to bring something di erent to the Bay of Plenty region. “ e reason why I came up with it

is because when Covid-19 rst hit and the Field Days were cancelled, there was a bit of talk around people that I knew in the agricultural industry about thinking while why can’t we do something of our own here in the Bay and keep it a bit more local.” And there you have it! “It’s our version of the Field Days but we’ve got a little bit of a twist there’s a di erence where because it’s all about the rural lifestyle.”

Celebrity-style kai

It wouldn’t be an expo without food either, where there’ll be plenty of food trucks and stalls o ering up scrummy meals and snacks. Celebrity Chef and the original winner of MasterChef

New Zealand, Brett McGregor, will be cooking up a storm as the expo’s special guest. Ernie is a fan of Brett’s kitchen know-how and are. “He’s really clear with what he’s doing, how he’s doing it and passionate about what he does as well.” Sending delicious scents of tasty kai through the show grounds, Brett will be cooking using only a barbecue and fresh, locally-sourced produce. And of course, there’ll be taste testing too so you’ll get to experience MasterChef quality morsels!

Tractors and fun

Among all the exciting toys on show, Ernie will be keeping his eye out for John Deere tractors. As a mechanic who has worked on

agricultural and diesel equipment for 45 years, Ernie has grown an appreciation for these trusty machines. “I like working on them because they’re easy to work on and a good machine.” ere will also by tractors by Massey Ferguson, McCormick, and Power Farming at the expo too. And if that doesn’t entertain you, then there’s plenty of fun and family activities to enjoy including a bouncy castle and animal displays! “I’m just looking forward to people and families coming along and having a good day out.” Get along this Saturday, March 4 and Sunday, March 5 at the Te Puke Showgrounds and explore this rural living wonderland.

Georgia Minkhorst

Ex-mechanic Ernie Stewart knows his way around a tractor and is looking forward to the impressive array at this weekend’s expo.

Photo: John Borren.

results come from small actions

from waterways and native land and looking at regenerative practice. We can support them with funding for community groups that work with farmers to use best practice for the environment.”

Kat says even on a lifestyle block scale, positive changes can make a di erence.

“Commercially there are many challenges we all need to work through. Farming needs to be nancially sustainable as well as environmentally sustainable. Of course, it’s much easier on small-scale.

From childhood, Kat Macmillan was aware of the potential damage to the environment that human activity can have.

“My dad is a Greek sherman and when I was small, I would go out on the trawlers and see the devastation caused by drag net shing.

“ e sponges, the coral, everything would get pulled up and die – and I used to spend my time trying to throw as many ‘junk sh’ as I could back into the ocean in the vain hope that they’d survive. I switched to a plant-based diet when I was seven. I’ve always been a big animal and nature lover.”

Later at university, Kat studied for a Degree in Zoology.

“When you see the science of mass extinction and loss of rain forests, and now with climate change as well, it’s a real call to action. I don’t want to see our planet losing all its wildlife. at’s what we’re in danger of right now.”

Neglected orchard

When she and her husband bought eight acres at Welcome Bay that had a small neglected avocado orchard on it, they were determined to restore it using sustainable practices.

“ e trees were overgrown and very hungry. e previous owners had also been burning their household rubbish in the orchard so even 11 years later we’re still nding charred plastic.”

e Macmillans cut the trees to half their size with some drastic pruning.

“If you let them grow too much, they form a high canopy so underneath there’s nothing growing and you need really tall hydraladders to pick them so it’s not e cient. Pruning them back does improve the yield but you must do it in the right way.”

She is also a big fan of composting.

“From our shelterbelt trim, we had a big pile of pine chip and mulch, so we let that rot down for about four months and we’re now feeding that out around

the orchard. If you do it too early, it can be acidic. All compost is good, because the roots need some cover otherwise, they get soggy. When we prune the avocados, we spread the chip back around the trees.

It’s a circular thing.”

No pesticide

e small orchard is not certi ed organic but Kat won’t use pesticide.

“If you have healthy insect life, then they can help manage pests like thrips and leafroller. Our fruit’s not blemish-free but it tastes amazing because it doesn’t have any spray on it.”

Now she’s on the Bay Plenty of Regional Council, Kat wants to advocate for restored ecosystems, fresh waterways and clean oceans, sustainable green growth and a low-carbon future. She’s keen to work with communities, to get the best outcomes for all.

“We need to get things right now so that our grandchildren have something to inherit that’s as good as what we’ve had. If we don’t make the right decisions now then things are going to get pretty bad in terms of our biodiversity, the climate, fresh water, depleted ocean – all those things are happening now so for me becoming a regional councillor is the best use of my skillset.”

Positive change

She’s aware that the environment problems seem overwhelming. “I don’t want to ram the doom and gloom down people’s throats. We need to showcase positive change and I think it’s important that people see that good results come from small actions.” ere’s a lot that can be done by those working the land, says Kat.

“Our farmers and our food producers work hard,” she says. “I’d like to be able to support farmers with best practices like riparian planting, retiring and replanting natives on steep land, looking after their waterways, not overstocking, fencing o

“On our land, we’ve planted about 500 native trees and shrubs along the drain-way that runs through our property, and we have more tui and fantails than when we rst moved here.

“It makes me so happy because if we allow the land to regenerate and put in the right native species then the wildlife recovers. Some parts of our eight acres, we don’t see it for a few months and when we go back it’s like ‘whoa! Fantastic – ponga with little koru fronds and birdlife has returned’. It’s beautiful and all we need is for each person to do it on their own little patch.”

Residential or Commercial, big or small, we do it all.

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Debbie Griffiths

BOP regional councillor Kat Macmillan is determined to lead by example as she advocates for more sustainable practices on rural properties. Photo: John Borren.

He should know his onions. His father grew them, and when Allan Noble bought his signature State Highway 2 property at Katikati 60 years ago it was the rst crop he put down.

But it was almost his undoing; it could have sent him to the wall.

“ ere was a glut of onions. e world was awash with onions.” He can laugh about it now, but at the time people were suggesting he wouldn’t last ve years. “We had a bank manager who was leaning on us and saying: ‘You still have to pay us the money’. It was a tough entry into the real world.”

But Allan is a pragmatic and curious person, and if there’s a problem there’s always a solution. So they set up the ‘drop-in’ vegie place, retailing to locals from his own backdoor, to generate some cash, to keep the wolves away from the door.

“Too many farmers, growers, horticulturalists complain about having a bad year. Well, get over it – life’s like that. Do what you can and learn from it.”

60-year celebrations

Allan learned. And from those lessons he has just celebrated 60 years of marriage to wife Jill, 60 years of owning just one property, the Onion Vegie Place – which is a local institution – and 60 years of doing the same job!

“If you are enjoying it, why change the game?” And he’s still enjoying – the 82-year-old started work at 8am the day e Weekend Sun dropped by – and he planned going through to 5.30pm. “And eight days a week.”

e ‘Onion Man’ they call him, but he doesn’t even like onions. He’d prefer a nice Agria spud – not to waxy, not too oury and a robust avor. “ ey’re a complete food. You wouldn’t get sick just eating a potato.”

But he does eat onions, only raw ones, because they’re good for you. Every day an onion and honey sandwich. Before you gag at the idea, there’s bush science at play here. Allan was “on holiday” at an onion conference in Australia – he gures if you are not going to work, you may as well learn something – and a presenter was describing a project involving onions and pigs. Feed them a high fat diet and watch the cholesterol soar, then add onion to their diet and watch it come down again.

Potato juice

Good enough for the pigs, good enough for Allan who also had a cholesterol issue. He started on his daily onion and honey regime when he got home from the conference and the problem was sorted. “No, not my favourite vegetable, but my health needed onions, so I am grateful.” It prompts another subtle shot at his nemesis. “I prefer the onion way because I am not into supporting the pharmaceuticals.”

This year Allan Noble celebrates 60 years of marriage to wife Jill, and 60 years of owning and working on the same property, the iconic Onion Vegie Place at Katikati. Photos: John Borren

...and onion and honey sandwiches

en he starts pitching potato juice which doesn’t quite have the same pull-power as mango, cranberry or pomegranate. “My mantra is there must always be another way…” And perhaps potato juice might just be the way. Allan was on another holiday, another conference, this time in China, the world’s biggest potato producer, and they were handing out cans of potato juice. “I thought it might need something else like raspberry to make it vaguely interesting.” What about the nutrition, the goodness. “It’s not bad for you,” says Allan. “It’s good stu .” Maybe!

But then Allan is not a bad advertisement for some free thinking… and potato juice, and honey and onion sandwiches. At 82, he’s still doing eight hours, he’s very mindful of his health and wellbeing, and still enterprising and entrepreneurial. “I have a whole lot of creative, fascinating things going on to keep the interest levels up.” As they say, the more we do, the more we can do. And a busy person never has time to be unhappy.

at’s the cue for Allan to climb on his soapbox…to hammer the case for

the use of ozonated water in growing our vegetables. “Ozonated water –sterilised, completely pure water, devoid of contaminants. It’s great stu .”

Ozonated water

Allan’s dabbling with ozonated water for crop sanitation, to control funguses on those crops.

“It’s easy to use, it’s low cost and helps reduce and prevent diseases.” Again, his bugbear with pharmaceuticals re-emerges.

“For 60 years the attitude has been that chemicals will x anything. And it’s been found those things that were initially sold as wonderful are dangerous.” But now, says the apostle of ‘better ways,’ there is a very safe and e cient alternative. And he points to his large heads of broccoli on sale at his ‘drop-in’ as case and point.

“Ten to 15 per cent improvement in good nutrients, 10-15 per cent improvement in size and 10-15 per cent improvement in taste.”

In the meantime the self-confessed ‘bush scientist’ o ers a detailed travel plan for his 2023 ‘holiday’ – a 16-hour

operation at Waikato Hospital to remove cancerous bone from his jaw. As with everything in Allan’s life, he has done his research. ‘Listen, observe and ask the questions’ is another of his mantras.

“ ey’ll cut out the a ected bit of jaw bone, screw in a piece of titanium, they’ll harvest some bone from my leg, hook up the veins that keep the bone alive, throw away the cancerous bone and start reconstruction.

Spooky

And the ‘Onion Man’ might have to ingest his honey and onion sandwiches through a straw for a couple of weeks. But he would have thought that through too.

Hunter Wells

eh?”

The ‘Onion Man’ Allan Noble isn’t a fan of onions – but he does eat a honey and onion sandwich each day for health reasons.

“My mantra is there must always be another way…”

From saving 7000 plastic bottles going to land ll to cleaning up millions of micro plastics from local beaches – the volunteers of Sustainable Waihī Beach have hit the ground running since launching six months ago.

Sustainable Waihī Beach is a fairly new community initiative that kicked o their sustainability e orts by opening seven water fountain and bottle re ll stations on September 10, 2022.

“[We know] 865 million single use plastic bottles go to land ll in New Zealand a year – and if we look at the statistics for Waihī Beach alone it attributes to one million of that number,” says Sustainable Waihī Beach co-founder Pippa Coombes.

e water stations were installed along Waihī Beach to reduce the number of single use plastics going into land ll.

SWB ambassador, former Prime Minister, Helen Clarke opened the water stations.

“Helen was in attendance with other notable gures supporting us to become the most sustainable beachside town in New Zealand. To date we’ve saved 7000 bottles going into land ll with the usage of the water stations.”

Coast and community

e group’s recent e orts have seen them leading clean ups from Waihī Beach’s coastline after Cyclone Hale stirred up Bay of Plenty seas and spat out micro plastics on the beach town’s sandy doorstep.

“We have undertaken an emergency beach clean, which obviously showed huge

community and agency support, and we’ll continue with that as our high risk, high priority area at the moment because there’s still millions of nurdles (microplastics) on the beach.”

SWB’s sustainability e orts aren’t just making positive change for the environment – it’s also making positive change for community dynamics too.

Pippa says SWB is helping to bring people together of all walks of life. “So we get to collaborate with some amazing people and groups such as the Menz Shed, the tamariki/children at the school, and we have huge support from local hapū Te Whanau a Tauwhao.

“ ere are many other di erent groups and agencies working together…so it really is just getting everybody on board and trying to achieve a common goal.”

e next major sustainability initiative SWB is looking towards for 2023 is achieving predator-free status from Bowentown Heads through to Albacore Ave, Waihī Beach.

Predator-free trapping is will involve running trap lines, monitoring and working with Western Bay Wildlife Trust to look at little blue penguin and other native species numbers, says Pippa. “We’ll have meaningful data coming out of this which will obviously bolster the fact that predator-free trapping and monitoring actually works and brings back the natives. We are trying to commit to the community and actually evidence this as something that needs to be done Waihī Beach-wide.”

To join Sustainable Waihī Beach, visit: https://sustainablewaihibeach.co.nz/ Georgia Minkhorst

Some of the Sustainable Waihi Beach crew with one of the seven sustainable water stations.

Photo: John Borren.

From to rural fun!

A new rural wonderland is ready to be explored and enjoyed – on foot, bike or horse – by Western Bay of Plenty residents and visitors alike with the o cial opening of the Waitekohekohe Recreational Park this weekend.

e recreational park located on ompsons Track, about 15 minutes’ drive south of Katikati, opens this Saturday, March 4 – six years after a concept for a park comprising of horse riding, mountain bike trails, and bush walks was initially proposed.

e park is a council-owned reserve in the upper hill slope catchments of the Kaimai-Mamaku Forest Park, covering an area of 87.982 hectares and includes an estimated 5km of the main Waitekohe Stream margins.

Horse riding space

In 2017 the previously-leased forestry block returned to Western Bay of Plenty District Council ownership at the same time as local horse riders were looking for spaces for horse riding.

Katch Katikati manager Jacqui Knight called a public meeting to gauge interest in building horse trails in the forestry block. “We had about 80 people attend and half of them were mountain bikers. From this meeting we formed a small committee to start making plans,” says Jacqui.

e plans were eventually adopted into

WBOPDC’s Long Term Plan, which came into e ect in 2021 when funding was also available to start development of the reserve.

To date the park has ve mountain bike tracks, an equestrian area where existing forestry tracks have been cleared and new trails created –o ering about two hours’ worth of riding, along with a jumping alley and galloping track.

e mountain bike carpark at 360 ompsons Track is complete and awaits a toilet and weather shelter, while the equestrian carpark at 252 ompsons Track is nished and includes a toilet, corrals, weather shelter and washdown station.

e project, developed in partnership between Katch Katikati and WBOPDC, has involved a large and diverse group of locals. “Our volunteers have put in hundreds of hours marking out tracks, installing signs, and meeting to discuss plans and management issues,” says Jacqui.

Future plans for the park include building more mountain bike tracks and an additional equestrian track on the Lund Rd-side through the pines.

Hills to Ocean

With the distance from the reserve to the coast just 5.5km, the idea of linking ecological and archaeological signi cant areas in a ‘Hills to Ocean’

concept is a goal for the reserve. e ‘Waitekohekohe’ name was gifted by Ngai Tamawhariua in reference to the ancestral name for this area and its relation to spiritual waters, a sense of yearning and climbing tree and vines.

Pest control

Environmental

group Project Parore is a project partner –with their volunteers already undertaking pest control on the Lund Rd side of the block and will look to extend this across the whole reserve. e aim is to enhance biodiversity and habitat of the Waitekohekohe Reserve.

e park has been created and will be managed by e Katikati Recreational Park Development Group, with its major partner WBOPDC contributing sta expertise and a budget of just under $1m million during ve years for development of this project.

“ is is a project that will bring great bene ts to Katikati in many ways and enjoyment for many locals and visitors,” says Jacqui.

“ ere aren’t many horse riding places in the district and we’ve heard people will be travelling from out of town to make use of the park. e mountain bike tracks o er about an

hour of riding on exceptionally good tracks.” Dog walkers are also catered for with many tracks available for walkers and dogs under control. Everyone is welcome to the o cial opening of Waitekohekohe Recreational Park this Saturday March 4 at 10am at 252 ompsons Track, Katikati – it’s a great opportunity to explore the reserve on foot, check out a swimming hole or ride the mountain bike tracks.

e park is open seven days at 252 & 360 ompsons Track. Visit: www.waitekohekohe.nz

A new, rural, horse riders’ paradise awaits at Waitekohekohe Recreational Park near Katikati.

Mountain biking enthusiasts of all ages will enjoy the five mountain bike tracks at Waitekohekohe Recreational Park.