Home sweet home

Good life in a van and the vines

SOPHIE PREECE

ANGIE AND Nige Boyd were working full-time jobs and living in a “big flash” home in Invercargill, when they realised it just “didn’t feel right”.

Fast forward less than a year and they’re blissfully happy in a 7.9 metre campervan parked in a picturesque vineyard, with their working day just outside the door. “No overheads, no mortgage, no rates,” says Angie, adoring her van in the vines. “It’s made a huge difference to our lifestyle.”

“And we’re helping so many people,” says Nige, who loves the fact that their new lifestyle is doing something to address the labour shortages that came with Covid-19 border restrictions. “And if you have a good company to work for you have no rent, because you park on their vineyards.”

The day we talk, they started work at 6.30am, helping with a vineyard development up the Wairau Valley, and by 2.30pm they’re back “home” in their lovely campervan on Callum Linklater’s Renwick vineyard, looking over lush green vines and blue shadowed hills, while contemplating the evening ahead.

“They are so happy; they are living the dream,” says Callum, who has been employing the Boyds to work on vineyard developments and maintenance for Vit Management Ltd, the company he runs with viticulturist Stu Dudley. “They have no ties and can go where they want and work where they want.” And he’s pretty happy they’ve decided that for now that’s with him, having put off plans to leave after a month. The couple have already found work on Indevin’s bottling line for the 2022 vintage, and Callum hopes they’ll come back next spring. “They’re such good people and such good workers - reliable and diligent.” They’re also a “crack up”, he adds.

The admiration is mutual, and Angie laughs fondly at Callum calling them the pensioners, “the cheeky shit”.

The couple’s life changed quickly when they realised their “huge” executive home wasn’t for them. “We weren’t happy”, says Angie, who’d also had enough of working in retail, after 28 and a half years at Briscoes in Invercargill.

Nige, who was a storeman at the Southern Institute of Technology, where he won the 2020 Annual Excellence in Allied Service Award for a “selfless attitude in his approach to work”, was also ready for a change.

So, they sold up – “cap, shirt, Bata Bullets; the lot”, says Angie. “It was bizarre. It was meant to happen.” They’d never been campervanning, but jumped right in, picking up their mobile home on March 31 and driving straight to Central Otago. “We knew a lot of the orchards and vineyards were in trouble because of Covid crap, so we just said, ‘let’s go and help these people out’,” says Nige. He parked up and emailed 155 vineyards to offer their services, and after a “few bites” went to Ruru Wines for the 2021 harvest, where they began a massive learning journey.

From Central Otago the couple drove to Te Puke for the kiwifruit pick, followed by an avocado job at Cape Reinga. “Oh man, that was magical,” says Angie. There were a few other jobs on the journey to Marlborough, where they arrived in August. Callum, who’d received an email from Nige earlier in the year and told them to look him up when in Marlborough, admires the “old school” door knocking approach to getting a job. “It shows employers they are keen.”

And it’s a tactic Angie and Nige are suggesting to friends and family inspired by their transformed lifestyle, as they urge others to help in the vines and wineries. “We are doing a lot of physical hard work, but that doesn’t scare us and I don’t think it would scare a lot of people that we know,” says Nige. “It’s an experience not many people can have.”

And whether they’re parked on the site of their latest job, or back on Callum’s Renwick block, they are loving life on the row. “You wake up in the morning…and the sun comes up over the hills and you see it hit the top of the vines and you hear the birds,” says Angie. “It’s just incredible.”