Awhi Farm

I took a camper van last week and went first to Opotiki visiting Kazel Cass, then down to Turangi to visit Bryan Innes and Jo Pearsal, conveners and organisers of all the past Eco Show events in NZ. Bryan and Jo took me out to Awhi Farm, the site of an old Ministry of Works depot on the highway in Turangi, where they are helping Lisa establish a permanent Eco Show and a NZ version of a Centre for Appropriate Technology.

I took a lot of video on my android mobile phone, then edited them before posting to YouTube.

The first one is about food, and the second one focuses on the buildings they are putting up.

It has long been clear to me that much of what ails us as a society is the crippling debt that people get into, when they ‘borrow’ money from a bank to buy a home, and often end up spending the next 25 years paying it back. If people built sensible and sustainable shelter using local and available materials, they could free themselves up from this uniquely Western and ’acceptable’ form of modern slavery. Free of that lifetime bondage they could use their time differently and who knows we could find ourselves spending more time getting to know each other, and involved in local community initiatives. More time with our families and more time growing, preparing, and sharing locally produced food.