It’s relatively uncommon for someone to upgrade from a five-acre property to 50 acres. But Rochelle and her husband Mike knew exactly what they wanted to do with the extra space. Having been jarred by the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the couple sold their much smaller property in 2022 to find one where they could keep livestock, grow their own food, live off-grid and be completely debt free. The new property, 52 acres of forestry land overlooking the Ngātīmoti Valley near Motueka, ticked all the boxes.
“We didn’t want to worry about the pressures of rising costs of food, and access to water and energy. That’s what led us here. It’s off-grid with solar, there’s plenty of space for chickens and ewes, as well as gardens, and all this timber! It provided a way for us to fall back on our own resources.”
While there’s a considerable size difference between their old and new properties, the move was softened by the existing infrastructure on the land: a relatively new brick home with double glazed windows, rainwater tanks and a small solar system. Best of all, there is ample space to setup other dwellings – something Rochelle’s adult daughters capitalised on almost immediately.
She doesn’t mind though. In fact, she’s delighted.
“It provides us an opportunity to give each of our children a little site of their own, where they can make themselves self-sufficient and don’t have to worry about renting. It’s quite hard out there for people in their 20s. But we’re all on the same page in terms of our desire to live sustainably and independently.”
With a daughter in healthcare, a son who’s an electrical engineer, and a husband working in forestry, Rochelle’s family has ample skills to live a life of true self-sufficiency. Although he lives in Christchurch, Rochelle’s son is often up at the property installing solar systems and other critical pieces of infrastructure.
“He’s even done the plumbing in the tiny houses!” she says. “He’s never done plumbing before but he’s giving it a go. The same with my husband, he’s doing all the fencing, looking after all the pumps and filters – he’s become a jack of all trades really.
“And my daughter’s a nurse, so it’s really nice to have that knowledge when you live a bit out of town.”
Rochelle, on the other hand, brings her food growing skills to the party. Along with having the space to keep livestock for meat, the property also has an abundance of fruit trees and shrubs: sanguine peaches, nashi pears, ‘Bosc’ pears, passionfruit, blueberries, lemons, oranges, grapefruit, plums, apples, feijoas, avocados and cranberries.
There’s also plenty of space to set up an extensive gardening system that allows for year-round food production. While she has a large outdoor garden with raised beds that’s highly productive in the summer, growth slows down during the colder months. That’s when her 10m-long Morrifield Tunnelhouse comes into its own. Carefully positioned to capture every ray of the feeble winter sunlight, Rochelle’s tunnelhouse is teeming with produce year-round, yielding multiple harvests even in the winter.
“I had a few crops in my outside garden last winter, but it gets very cold up here and they were really struggling. Whereas in my tunnelhouse I’m doing rotations of six to eight plants so that I’ve always got different produce to harvest throughout the year. This past winter I had lettuce, chillies, turmeric, silverbeet, spinach, bok choy, celery, cabbages, cauliflower, broccoli, peppers, and even a pineapple growing in there.
Growing heat-loving crops like chillies and pineapple throughout the colder months is just one of the advantages of having a good quality tunnelhouse that maintains a consistent temperature four to five degrees higher than outside.
But it’s not just in winter that the tunnelhouse proves its worth. In spring it protects tender crops from late, unexpected frosts, and in summer it creates a subtropical microclimate that allows hot weather crops to grow with incredible speed
and vigour.
“It’s in use year-round. In summer, the brassicas move outside and the tunnelhouse hosts tomatoes, capsicums and cucumbers. Previously we had an eight-metre model but we upgraded to a 10, which gives me more space to grow food for myself, my husband and my two girls. I’ve also got a cheaper type of seed house and it couldn’t grow half what I can in my Morrifield.”
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While she doesn’t describe herself as a passionate gardener, she’s a disciplined one. The secret, she says, is to be in the tunnelhouse every day, and plant a new crop as soon as she’s finished harvesting.
“I’ve always liked growing vegetables for my family and have done so for 30-odd years. I enjoy the comfort that it gives me when I can pick my own produce that I’ve grown from seed – the Morrifield gives me a way to maintain that comfort throughout the year.
“It’s amazing when you’re sitting down to your meal at night and your lamb’s off the land, the potatoes and broccoli are homegrown in the tunnelhouse, the lemon meringue pie is made from the lemons off your tree and the eggs are from your own chickens. The feeling of satisfaction is indescribable.” ■
Rochelle’s tunnelhouse tips
Rochelle’s Tunnelhouse in Mid-July
- As soon as you’ve harvested one crop, fill the space with new seedlings for maximum yields.
- Water regularly or set up an irrigation system and fertilise with seaweed liquid fertiliser twice a week.
- Stay on top of bugs, using insect sticky pads and organic sprays if necessary.
- Each season, replenish soil with compost and manure, and adjust pH as needed.
The trick to keeping your tunnelhouse gardens looking good and growing well through the year is to be in it everyday.
I keep my tunnelhouse doors closed during winter and open the vents only on sunny days to keep the temperature more consistent. In summer it’s the opposite: everything is open during the day to help cool down the house but closed up each evening. We have a 2000l water tank exclusively for the garden and tunnelhouse, which is distributed through irrigation on a timer.
I’ve always had a garden of some kind. Growing food is a means to an end for me, but having this tunnelhouse means I can have some form of food growing throughout the year