Opie-Seager Family--Manuka Farm

I spent two great weeks with the Opie-Seager family in Marahau, a small coastal town on the northern edge of the South Island. The family has two veg patches, a large orchard, chickens, cows and bees which provide them with an abundance of tasty organic yields--I ate incredibly well during my stay. A Qigong session set the tone each morning before the days work on the homestead, which I think both contributed to and amplified the experience of the ambient tranquility to the place that was truly exceptional. The family was a wealth of knowledge on a wide range of topics from health to finances, to charting how the world really works--great conversation was non-stop and forever changed how I perceive the world in which we live.   

The family had their house built in the mid-1990s: extreme care was taken when choosing material to create a non-toxic environment using locally sourced inputs. The hills behind the house from which their domestic water flows is Able Tasman National Park...hard to beat!

Looking down the driveway to the ocean

Upper garden

Garlic harvest drying...look at it all!!!

Compost--my beautiful creation 

Suited up for the annual honey harvest which I was STOKED to experience! 

Capped comb fresh out of the hive

Rhonnie uncapping the combs

Uncapped

Super high-tech apparatus for spinning honey out of combs powered by a hand-turned crank.  

Ah yeah, look at that golden goodness--one hive yielded 17 gallons...talk about homegrown abundance with next to no inputs once the system is established! 

Red Pole cows--small-scale beef production for their personal consumption

Freshly weeded and planted

Alchemy: turning waste to resource--my second compost mountain

Great folks: Rhonnie, Anthony and son Tim with a possum he trapped and ate as an experiment in locavorism...there a non-native species reeking havoc on the endemic bird population, why not turn them into something tasty!   

Manuka Farm is quite a special spot