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Jan 2024

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After 37 orbits around the sun, I’m finally beginn

After 37 orbits around the sun, I’m finally beginning to understand that I am being guided by a benevolent force that favours me with abundance whenever I want it.

2025 felt turbulent, full of ebbs and flows. But amid the oscillation, I came to realise the truth – I am the architect of my own reality. The universe is working in my interests, I am free to live a life of purpose and passion, and create a living doing what I love.

2026 is the year I start harnessing that knowledge, committing fully to my mission and vision.

So this year, I will:

-Continue growing On the Land into a thriving independent storytelling and educational platform, an outlet for creatives to share their work, and a place where people can escape the miasma of digital tech and AI.

-Use my skill with words to champion the crucial role of small farms in New Zealand, and the power of growing your own food as a form of rebellion against avaricious corporate interests.

-Relaunch the On the Land podcast as a platform for inspiring discussions with people living off the land.

-Tend and nurture the beautiful whenua that I’m lucky enough to call home.

-Be the best father I can be to my little ones.

-Start working on something exciting and secret, due in 2027…..watch this space!

My sincere gratitude to everyone who has supported On the Land and allowed this lucky fella to live his dream.

Michael
On the Land founder

Issue 8 is out today - just in time for summer!

Issue 8 is out today - just in time for summer!

Weaving with willows, sewing with possum fur, keeping Dexter cattle, the best lettuce varieties, beating weeds naturally - this issue has the slow reads you need!

Welcome back to the cover @gillian.swinton

Order your copy today to get yours by Christmas.

》ontheland.nz

📷 @francinephotomachine

All our covers over the past year since On the Lan

All our covers over the past year since On the Land was first published.

You can definitely see a theme developing here! 🙃

Thanks to all our photographers for their exceptional talents – and our models for shining bright!

1. Lisa and Awa from @frogsongfarmer, captured by @francinephotomachine

2. Sonia from @urbanselfsufficiencynz, captured by @liv.vanleeuwen

3. Regina from @nics_mt_nicholas_honey, captured by @francinephotomachine

4. "The girls" from @threesistersfarm_ captured by @sophiemilson

5. Mati from @permadynamics, captured by @danescottcreative

6. Charlotte from @charlottegrahamarts, captured by @sophiemerkens

7. Caitlin from @wild.things.wanaka. captured by @ellepiggott

#photography #covershoot #longliveprint

For many people, there’s often a long time between

For many people, there’s often a long time between first viewing a property and making the decision to buy it. Caitlin and Max Ovenden did it all in a single day. 

It was 2020, just after the COVID-19. lockdowns, when the Wānaka-based couple accompanied some real estate agent friends to the property in question – a sprawling, six-acre “hodgepodge” of weed-tangled market garden beds and tumbledown greenhouses in Hāwea Flat.

Having just had their second child, and feeling rather “fishbowl-esque” in their newly built house in suburban Luggate, the couple were immediately enchanted with the scale and potential of what they saw. 

“It has an old station house from the
late 1800s and a little pond, and there are big trees everywhere, and so much land. We fell in love immediately and put in an offer that day.”

Originally from Washington State, Caitlin didn’t have much hands-on experience with growing food. But with a desire to be at home with the kids, and the generous mentorship of the property’s previous owner, she felt a strong calling to take the plunge into serious gardening.

“The old owner spent two months leading up to the settlement of the property showing me what she had been doing out here. She gave me lots of books to read – you know, Jean-Martin Fortier and others – and I read through all of them and then said, ‘Let’s give it a try’.”

In the five years since, that casual try has turned into unmitigated success. Each summer her garden beds bulge with tomatoes and salad greens which she sells to local restaurants and through her own farm shop – an outbuilding at the end of the driveway.

Meanwhile, thanks to hard work and a commitment to creating a closed-loop system, the once-tired property has come to life, providing an abundance of food for the family. The sheep and cattle grazing the pasture provide a supply of meat, while 70-odd hens out in the paddocks yield a steady supply of eggs.

.................

An extract from our lead feature in Issue 7, featuring the family from @wild.things.wanaka

Pick up a copy at your local store to read the full story!

🖊 @mikeydescribes
📸 @ellepiggott

#marketgarden #marketgardener #smallfarm #regeneration

A note from On the Land founder and editor @mikeyd

A note from On the Land founder and editor @mikeydescribes on the future of the magazine.

Making On the Land has been one of the most fulfilling things I have ever done. It’s difficult to describe the satisfaction I get when a new issue is nearing completion; when the spreads have been designed, and I see all the beautiful words and images – the brilliance of so many people – laid out and ready to be printed on paper.

But like many print media businesses, we are feeling the pinch of increased production costs and diminishing advertising revenue.

This year, NZ post has once again raised its prices by 30%, and more businesses are choosing to give their money to Meta and Google, rather than locally owned platforms.

Despite this, I am determined to keep On the Land going. I love this magazine, I love what it stands for. I love the community it serves, the fact that we use human writers and photographers over AI, and the eternally appealing subject matter we cover – people living off the land.

But to give On the Land a future I need your help. To keep this magazine going – and to grow it to a financially viable level, I need to increase our subscribers from 1500 to 4000.

Every subscription matters, and 2500 extra ones will allow me to offset the loss in ad revenue, invest more time and energy into the magazine, and continue commissioning brilliant photographers and writers across NZ to produce high quality content.

If you’re keen to support old-fashioned, non-AI, print storytelling in NZ, go to our website, subscribe/buy a gift, share about this campaign, and be a part of something increasingly rare and special in today’s digital world.

➡ www.ontheland.nz

Gratefully,

Michael Andrew

In a lush hilly vineyard, a Clydesdale named Duche

In a lush hilly vineyard, a Clydesdale named Duchess pulls a plough through the soil beneath the vines. Behind her, steering the plough, walks Emma Rossignol, a French native doing the same job her great-grandparents might have done.

But this isn’t 1910 Bordeaux – it’s 2025 Marlborough.

People have told Emma she’s stuck in the past. She says it’s quite the opposite. “I truly believe that there is a place for me in New Zealand with this work,” she says.

The work – undervine management using a horse and plough – is both traditional and radical in a fast-paced, mechanised, chemical-heavy industry. But for Emma, it’s as much about the future as it is about tradition.

“People are starting to understand the impact on soil and that we need to come back to something a bit more soft,” she says.

.............

An extract from Issue 7, featuring Emma Rossignol and her awesome business @terroir_and_us. Originally from France, Emma is passionate about offering traditional horse and plough vineyard management, which used to be commonplace before agrochemicals and machines began dominating the industry in the early 20th century.

Subscribe or buy a copy to read the full story ➡ ontheland.nz

Note: AI was not used in the production of this story – only talented humans! ✨

🖊 @madeleine_anetta
📸 @peanutbuttervibesphotography

#soilhealth #regenerativeagriculture #horseriding #horsesofinstagram #vineyard #winelovers #winelover #organic #carbonneutral #traditionalagriculture

A visit to Beverley Swanson’s property in the Poha

A visit to Beverley Swanson’s property in the Pohangina Valley is a journey of smells. First, I’m greeted with the citrus-like notes of Mexican marigold and pineapple sage growing on either side of the front gate. Next, I smell the alluvial Pohangina River, only a stone’s throw away, holding the narrow and long property in its curve.

Then, when I step into the house, I’m engulfed by the herbal odours that have soaked into the walls from the four decades this home has been used to make Kereru natural products.

Bev’s journey on the land goes back to the 1980s, when she was in her early 20s with her first born Huia on her hip. Browsing the local paper one day, she saw a for-sale advertisement for a three-acre block of land, bare except for the old Komako school house, built in 1901. “It was cheap, $9,500, that’s how we decided it was for us,” says Bev with a grin. She and her then-partner Rex Swanson bought the land, and the tumbledown building, with all its rats and history, became their new home.

They moved in with very little money, no power and no plumbing, but a huge capacity for adventure. “It was basically like camping,” says Bev. “We were young and it just seemed like a lot of fun. You get swept along and you can see a life being made that’s your own.”

..........................

An extract from Issue 7, featuring OG permaculture advocate Bev Swanson and her business @kererunaturalproducts, which has been supplying natural body care products from her Manawatu property for 40 years.

Purchase the magazine to read the full story or subscribe to receive it directly to your door. Link in bio.

📸 @reneemmaphotography
🖊 @carlyjthomas

#naturalproducts #naturalbalm #permaculture #herbalmedicine #herbalism #livingontheland

On the Land Issue 7 has left the printers and is o

On the Land Issue 7 has left the printers and is on the way to letterboxes across the country – one year since our first issue was released.

Dreamers, pioneers, hunters, gatherers and growers – this issue is filled with stories and advice from people creating businesses from the land, nurturing their resources and living abundantly.

→ Market gardening in Central Otago with @wild.things.wanaka

→ Making natural body products in Manawatu with @kererunaturalproducts

→ Using horse and plough to weed vineyards with @terroir_and_us

→ Cooking rabbit with @alesha_tomasi

→ Poultry basics with @gillian.swinton

→ Using eucalyptus in a food forest with @permadynamics

....and much more.

Subscribe to get your copy: ontheland.nz

Cover 📸 @ellepiggott
Cover model @wild.things.wanaka

Every morning, for seven months of the year, Charl

Every morning, for seven months of the year, Charlotte Graham walks a few hundred metres from her home in Piha to the Pā Hue – a cultivated gourd garden.

She fills watering cans at Marowhara, her ancestral stream at the base of her tūpuna maunga (ancestral mountain), then begins watering up to a hundred plants by hand, connecting with the taonga and the whenua.

Hue (Lagenaria siceraria) are part of the Cucurbitaceae family and are heavy feeders. To nourish them, Charlotte uses homemade fertilisers made from seaweed, fish frames and guts, kina, manure and compost.

Above her, Te Wao Nui o Tiriwa, the great forest of Tiriwa – also known as the Waitākere Ranges – towers in lush, dense greens.

Charlotte, now in the fourth year of a ten-year revitalisation project, works alongside her cousin Josie Wall (Kaiārahi Mātauranga for Te Kawerau ā Maki), with the endorsement of their iwi Te Kawerau ā Maki.

“The project is called ‘Hue as a Taonga – the revitalisation of taonga species and a taonga people’,” says Charlotte. “It centres on sharing Mātauranga Māori and the deep cultural and spiritual significance of hue, alongside traditional practices of growing, preserving and drying them.”

……..

An extract from Issue 6 (on sale now), featuring @charlottegrahamarts (Te Kawerau ā Maki, Ngāti Whanaunga, Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki, Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Tamaoho, Te Ākitai Waiohua, Ngāti Kotimana), and her incredible project growing hue.

Subscribe or purchase Issue 6 to read the full story about this amazing wahine connecting with the taonga of her ancestors.

Link in bio.

🖊 and 📸 @sophiemerkens

There are so many seeds that led to the creation o

There are so many seeds that led to the creation of On the Land magazine, but the main catalyst was the magnificent piece of land that my wife and I purchased in 2021.

A bare block in rural Waikato with epic sea and sunset views, the 2.5 acre property became my classroom and canvas, inspiring me to learn everything there was to know about being a good kaitiaki of the land, growing plants and food, and creating sustainable closed-loop systems.

So when the job for editor of NZ Lifestyle Block magazine came up in 2022, it seemed like the perfect way to fast track my journey of discovery and learn from clever and resourceful New Zealanders across the country.

Over the years, as we saved our dollars, filled our minds with knowledge and I purchased NZ Lifestyle Block and rebranded it as On the Land, our whenua gradually evolved – from bare block, to family campground, and finally – last year – to the building sight of our very first house.

Finished in late 2024, our little off-grid house has been our home for almost 12 months. Perched on a hill over the wild Tasman sea, our home and land provide an endless source of inspiration, for both the magazine and our lives. It shelters us from storms, incubates our dreams, and nurtures our family.

My son was born in one of the rooms, and my daughter’s whenua is buried under a pohutakawa –the first tree we planted on the property – now growing strong against the wind with hundreds of others.

To be able to “own” land and a house is an incredible privilege, and we are grateful for the opportunity to be good stewards and students, to honour the people who came before, and leave it in a better way for the people who come after.

@mikeydescribes
Founder and Editor

Few places in New Zealand are as isolated as Mt Ni

Few places in New Zealand are as isolated as Mt Nicholas Station, especially if you’re in your third trimester of pregnancy.

The 36,000 hectare run is one of the country’s largest – and most spectacular. The eastern boundary is 18 kilometres of lakefront on the western side of Queenstown’s Lake Wakatipu.

Head west and you’ll travel nearly 30km before reaching the farm gate. The only way in is a boat ride across the often-choppy Wakatipu, or 80km over a bumpy gravel road towards Te Anau.

It’s where Regina Bernbeck has called home since 2010. Originally from a small town near Munich in Germany, Bernbeck moved to Mt Nicholas with her partner who grew up on the farm.

The couple settled in a cottage on the station and Regina learned the ropes as a shepherd, working with the farm’s 29,000 merino, and got a job spinning wool for tourists at the neighbouring Walter Peak,

But when Regina became pregnant in 2015 she found herself increasingly confined to the isolated farmhouse and began looking for a way to contribute to the farm closer to home.

The answer: honey. She began studying beekeeping remotely via Telford (Southern Institute of Technology) and got her first hives while her first-born, Heidi, was a baby.

After a year, with the number of hives growing, she decided to go into business, launching Nic’s Honey with mentoring from an experienced apiarist from Alexandra.

“I enjoyed it, I was passionate about it, so we started to make it bigger.”

Regina now has about 30 beehives, which produce up to a tonne of honey each year. The couple’s three children – aged 5, 7 and 9 – have their own beekeeper suits and also help check-up on the hives.

The station has plenty of bee food, with a variety of wild flowers and native plants, including manuka, as well as clover in the pasture.

“It’s just beautiful to eat your own honey; to watch the bees, work with them and harvest it and eat it. Without these pollinators, we wouldn’t be here.”

.....

An extract from Issue 3, featuring the amazing @regina.bernbeck from @nics_mt_nicholas_honey.

Purchase the back issue to read the full story. Link in bio.

🖊 @georgefdriver
📸 @francinephotomachine

One of the biggest issues when building a house is

One of the biggest issues when building a house is dealing with all the construction waste. But for Matt Low and Melissa
Burleigh-Low, building a house from hempcrete on their 10-acre lifestyle block allowed them to recycle much of the
waste back into the land.

“There’s not a lot of waste from hempcrete,” says Matt. “It was created from natural materials with hemp, lime and water to get the main mix. A lot of the waste we used out on the farm as organic matter.”

Matt and Melissa purchased the property in 2012, having run out of space for vegetables and chickens on their 800m2 urban property in nearby Bell Block.

With only bare paddocks and a feijoa orchard on their new property, the couple started with a conventional build in 2012, before Matt decided that building with hemp was the right way to go.

“We were always conscious of what we were about to do and how we could align with sustainable or reusable principles with little impact on the environment. We wanted lots of natural material in the process, with little use of synthetic products.

“I’m an engineer not a builder, but the process was simple once we knew what we were trying to achieve and the
systems to build it.”

..............

An extract from Issue 6 of On the Land, featuring the couple from Taranaki's Kahu Glen and their amazing hemp house.

Including a thriving feijoa orchard, Kahu Glen will be part of this year's @sustainablebackyardsnz, opening up to the public to learn all about hempcrete.

Subscribe to read the full story about Kahu Glen and other properties on the trail.

📸 @emmalouisab
🖊 @mikeydescribes

#sustainabletaranaki #sustainableliving #sustainablebuilding #ecobuilding #hempcrete #hemp #passivehouse #passivehaus

In the first of our poultry info series in partner

In the first of our poultry info series in partnership with @topflite_nz, we explore pastured poultry and why it's becoming an increasingly popular system.

Started by Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm, pastured poultry involves allowing chickens to graze alongside cattle, sheep or other livestock at certain times of the year.

On @threesistersfarm_ near Nelson, owners Tradd and Lisa run this system and say there are three main benefits.

1. The chickens feed on the larvae in the manure, gaining access to a high source of supplementary protein to support egg production, which reduces feed costs.

It also helps reduce the worm burden in the pasture, preventing cows from re-ingesting parasites.

2. Through their foraging and scratching, the chickens help disperse the manure through the pasture, allowing the nutrients to break down in the soil faster. This leads to more fertile soil and quicker grass growth, which means more feed for grazing animals throughout the year.

3. Their presence in the paddocks means the chickens leave their own rich deposits of manure, which adds to soil fertility and grass growth.

When they are in the paddocks, the hens are contained by portable electrical netting most of the day, unless it’s late summer or autumn when they are allowed to free range behind the cows.

At night they return to their main coop, which, mounted on a trailer, is also moved every day to follow the cattle rotation.

The roosters and cockerels are kept permanently in mobile chicken tractors (built to Joe Salatin’s design) to graze the pasture. Tradd moves these tractors twice a day with his quad.

“We have noticed a massive improvement in our grass growth and soil health since running this system,” says Tradd.

Read the full story about Three Sisters Farm in On the Land issue 4.

An apology from founding editor @mikeydescribes on

An apology from founding editor @mikeydescribes on this issue's cover line calamity.

…..

As readers may or may not have noticed, the cover lines on the current issue of On the Land are wrong and have been repeated from the previous issue. I only just discovered it after I returned from holiday and saw the magazine for the first time.

Upon investigating the issue, I discovered it was the result of a bottleneck of duties on the final day before the print deadline, and the wrong file was uploaded to the printer.

Ultimately the buck stops with me, and I should have been involved right to the last second of the process.

I’ve always said I’m far more comfortable writing than editing, and putting a magazine together has been a steep learning curve. It’s impossible to achieve perfection. Even with a proof-reader, sub-editor, myself and a team of writers reviewing the files, there’s always some error, somewhere, that gets through.

Once it's sent to the printers, that's it, it's locked in. There's no changing it. I guess that sense of permanence is part of the reason print so special.

My sincere apologies to all our wonderful readers and subscribers. I will do better and I hope the error has not taken away from your enjoyment of what is otherwise a magnificent issue.

Michael
Founding editor

On the Land is the official media partner of @unde

On the Land is the official media partner of @undergroundfestivalnz 2026!

.............

One of the greatest pleasures of running and editing On the Land magazine is getting to learn from so many amazing farmers, growers, homesteaders and regenerators across the country.

With a young family at home however, these interactions often happen at a distance, on phone or email or through social media.

I speak with these people, learn their stories, and often publish their words, photos, hopes, dreams and wisdom, but I seldom meet them unless they live in my region.

Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to attend the inaugural Underground Festival in North Canterbury and see, face-to-face, so many of the people I have admired for years.

Humming with optimism, creativity and resourcefulness, and with an intense focus on soil health and food sovereignty, Underground seemed to align in every way with On the Land and its mission, and I knew we had to be involved.

After chatting with festival creator @franbaileypr, I'm so proud to announce that On the Land has come on board as the official media partner of Underground 2026, flying the colours of the festival's kaupapa in our pages and on our digital channels!

We'll have a stall at next year's festival in Feb, sharing about the power of storytelling and photography to amplify the regeneration, while learning as much as we can through all the amazing workshops and speaker sessions.

If you're keen to attend a beautiful and educational event full of dynamic and inspirational people and ideas, clear your week and book your tickets – you will not regret it!

Michael
Founding editor

📸 @sentientimagery

#undergroundfestival #soilhealth #foodsovereignty #regenerativeagriculture #regeneration

At 78, Kerry Eggeling knows what it means to be re

At 78, Kerry Eggeling knows what it means to be resilient. A farmer and fisherman from Haast, he’s spent much of his life
getting stuck into the hard graft, toiling land and sea to make ends meet and put food on the table.

“We would get up at 4 in the morning, go fishing and be back here by 10.30 to get on with the farm work for the rest
of the day,” he says. “The kids had to get themselves up and away to school on their own. You’ve got to be self-sufficient
and resilient out here and you have to love it.”

One of countless people in New Zealand with a lifetime’s worth of untold wisdom forged in a far simpler yet harder
era, Kerry is one of the first subjects of @landlines_nz – a new project sharing the stories of rural elders that may otherwise be lost to time.

Started by Central Otago photographer Francine Boer, Landlines is about meeting people like Kerry in their homes, having chats over cups of tea, and creating a space for decades-old tales and tips to come forth.

Fran is animated when she talks about it: “Aotearoa’s history is rich and has gone through an incredible transformation in
recent times We want to capture and preserve the stories from decades past while we still can, to create a deeper
appreciation of the people that have done life before us. Hopefully it can give people that spark to respect and protect our land, cultures and people.”

..........

An extract from our latest issue, featuring @landlines_nz, the awesome new project by @francinephotomachine, @gillian.swinton and @carlyjthomas

Subscribe to read the full story in issue 6 out now! Link in bio.

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