FARM & FOOD
Taranaki’s food movement is growing from strength to strength. Our region is diverse in its growing climates and the soil rich, making it a ripe to diversify our primary industry – in particular a transition in dairy farming both to regenerative and or diversified agriculture. These are just the sort of inspired clients Greenbridge’s enjoys working with. Past projects range from small-scale-commercial urban market gardens growing micro-greens to supply the local farmers market, a synergistic farm to plate experience and venue to iconic Mt White Station in the upper South Island.
FARM DIVERSIFICATION BASE MAP for Duane's whanau owned farm in South Taranaki; mapping the land is the beginning of the design process to explore potential diversified farm income(s) while regenerating the land.
FARM PLANTING PLAN. Best practice, incorporating measures to recharge the landscape (springs hold special significance for whanau), extensive shelter and fodder belts, riparian protection and chook trailers following the herd to mitigate worm load and provide secondary farm income.
FARM SHELTER & FODDERBELTS
MULTIPLE FARM INCOMES PLAN. The initial vision described by Duane was a farm that will be as “sustainable as possible”. While dairy farming is the whanau’s main business and this is important, there is a desire to explore diversifying the farming operation, by utilising areas less suited to dairy farming. A question was posed: “How many family livelihoods could be provided on the farm?”
Northland Farm, 300 hectares AERIAL & BASE MAP, Greenbridge was asked to generate designs whereby the farm is an educational platform, to inspire, demonstrate and spread knowledge of sustainable agricultural practice.
Northland Farm, one of three CONCEPTS, exploring potential permaculture practices, soil restoration and natural ecosystem preservation. This CONCEPT A, is a mixed farm with holistic grazing approach.
Northland Farm, CONCEPT B looks at a mixed farm with organic diary and CONCEPT C looks at large scale forest gardening and fishing.
KIRSTY JONES cake designer and business owner 'The Cake Diary', asked Greenbridge to design her a year round edible flower garden in which to decorate her cakes and to sell to restaurants - fabulous!
BASIC SKETCH DESIGN - Kirsty's Edible Flower Garden
Cecily grows micro-greens for the New Plymouth farmers market, marketed under 'Thula Greens'.
Celcily and her husband Tom, already avid gardeners, asked Greenbridge to help them redesign their existing gardens to enable micro-green and salad green production for sale and to supplement income.
Cecily's urban garden was SOLAR MAPED, which is an important tool when designing for productive gardens as it helps identify the areas which will support productivity and allows this to be integrated into the over all garden design.
More Thula Greens, shows how small urban spaces can produce alot of food.
MULTI-LIVELIHOOD FARMLET CONCEPT A. Alex & Tania are planning a unique venue and a catering/foodtruck business – aka Rhino – on the family farm. All (or most) of the food for the business will be grown on the farm – seasonal, fresh, and sustainably produced and the whole animal will be used nose-to-tail. Educating & delighting people will be a key part of the enterprise, which is integral to a great family lifestyle with heart and soul. farm. This event venue is one-of-a-kind, with heart & soul. Tania and Alex are creating a great lifestyle for themselves and their children.
MULTI-LIVELIHOOD FARMLET CONCEPT B.
Alex and Tanya BASE MAP
Matt and Melissa run Kahu Glen Farm which grows feijoas for their juice range. “We won a competition run by Greenbridge (a sustainable property design company), about $800 worth of consultancy fees. It’s kind-of permaculture design and they helped plan it, and they also helped us out with a 12 month planting orchard, helped us pick the trees, so we get fruit right through the year. The maps they do are awesome, and you get a calendar with months of the year in a circle and what fruits you get.” Matt & Melissa
Kahu Glen Farm BRAORDSCALE DESIGN, depicting potential land use based on small scale commercial income from feijoas and tree-crops. You access Kahu Glen via FB and read about Matt and Melissa's hemp house journey here.
Mt White Station, around 40,000ha (near Arthurs Pass) asked Greenbridge to design the growing HOMESTEAD COMMUNITY. The station is remote so all the staff live on site. The new owners want to ensure the growing staff community, including families with children, all live a happy life in warm comfortable homes, in a beautiful community setting. Sustainability and resilience is important, with self-sufficient in food and energy generation. Wow what a project!
To get up-to-date and accurate aerial photography of the homestead area, we arranged for this ORTHOPHOTO to be taken by drone. Fantastic detail can be seen when you zoom in.
To get accurate topographical information, we arranged for a Canterbury-based surveying business to do a TOPO-SURVEY of the homestead area. We used the topo-survey, our site assessment drawings, and the orthophoto, to form our base map, from which to generate concepts.
Much of the existing homestead area is on a south-facing slope. So we did some 3D SUN MODELING to determine the best locations for homes in this mountainous climate, where sunshine makes a big difference to warmth and the ability to grow food.
We did several CONCEPTS for the community design, which includes building several new homes and farm buildings, developing food production on site, and increasing resilience. This concept utilizes existing infrastructure and clusters the homes for more community connectedness.
This board explains and illustrates many of the ideas incorporated in the concepts – very helpful for educating and inspiring the client team.
80 ha dairy farm: Helen & Irene are integrating shelterbelts, riparian planting, & other plantings... to increase animal health, landscape beauty, farmer wellbeing, & farm profit. In this concept plan, 8ha of mostly low value pasture (wet or steep/eroding) would be fenced off & planted, and 10.5 ha of pasture would have deciduous trees spaced over it. Most of the planting would qualify for Billion Trees funding, and the farm would earn an average of $11,500 per year from carbon credits.
A close-up of part of the concept plan. To enable riparian plantings to meet Billion Trees criteria and earn carbon credits, deciduous trees are spaced over pasture alongside.
A shelterbelt design for pastoral farms. The living poplar/willow fences work well, cost less than treated fence posts, and also provide valuable fodder (especially valuable during drought).
