In September 2018, Nicki Murray-Orr and Shane Rush hosted a dinner party. It was for Shane’s belated 50th birthday, and to celebrate the occasion, he asked his guests to each prepare a meal and bring it along to share. But there was a catch – each dish was to be cooked with an organ from the couple’s freshly butchered homegrown cattle beast.
Liver, heart, kidneys, cheek and tongue – the guests got their pick of the meat and were charged with turning it into something edible.
The dinner was a triumph. Liver pâté, tongue terrine, heart kebabs, kidney dumplings, beef cheek soaked in chocolate and blueberries for 48 hours – each chunk of offal and flesh had been miraculously transformed into gourmet exquisiteness for Shane’s jubilee. Bellies were full, taste buds were tingling. Fine dining had come to Waikino.
Full credit, of course, has to go to the talent and creativity of the chefs, who rose to the challenge in sumptuous fashion. Yet those dishes would never have been without Nicki and Shane’s paddock-to-plate values and their desire to use every part of the animals they raise – from nose to tail.
“We just know how good all of those parts are for us,” says Nicki. “That’s a big part of why we’re raising animals – to eat the full range of nutrition on offer with all the different cuts from a beast.”
“We live in a society where so much stuff gets thrown away – it’s shocking,” adds Shane. “But everything has value.”
It’s a philosophy that underpins a lot of what they do on their 2.5-hectare block at the southern end of the Karangahake Gorge. With extensive permaculture-run gardens and food forests, and pastures with regeneratively grazed cows, sheep, chickens and pigs, the property is a paragon of conscientious living, running on a commitment by its owners to nurture the soil, grow healthy food and make use of every resource available.
“There’s an ethical and moral imperative to get our hands in the soil and grow some of our own food,” says Shane. “And there’s a desire to live lightly. To live a more considered life.
“It’s about attitude – we’re actually doing this for ourselves and to help our planet. I think what keeps us going is it feels like we’re doing the right thing. It becomes easy, it feels good, and it’s satisfying.”
Special skills
When the couple purchased the land seven years ago, it was as bare as feet, nothing but gently sloping pasture with a stunning north-facing outlook over the Waitekauri Valley and surrounding hills. In the years that followed, they sculpted it into a home for them and their two girls, putting in a driveway and building a solar-passive house – while living in a couple of tents under the trees in the process – and developing their gardens and paddocks.
Fortunately, the couple possess what could be the most valuable skill set for lifestylers in New Zealand. Alongside his day trade as a builder, Shane is a qualified permaculture designer, allowing him to construct the family house and design the property in a way that makes best use of the natural resources at hand.
Having completed a holistic grazing course with regenerative agriculture stalwart Greg Hart of Mangarara Farm, Shane is able to manage his stock in a way that ensures both his soil and animals are as healthy and nourished as possible. He also works part-time as a sales rep and product applicator for seaweed fertiliser company AgriSea, taking care of the local lifestyle block market.
Nicki, on the other hand, is an edible gardening expert who works with a range of clients and holds educational workshops on their property. Her knowledge has allowed her to create an abundant garden system on her land, ensuring a constant supply of healthy fruit and vegetables for the family and to share with the community.
But it’s the couple’s shared side-hustle helping other people develop their land that is the true testament to their complementary skills. It all started through Nicki’s day job at the Falls Retreat, where she manages an edible garden for the chefs, and runs gardening workshops. The success of the workshops gave Nicki the confidence to start doing the same thing on her property targeted towards lifestyle block owners
and permaculturists.
At the same time, some people who did Nicki’s courses wanted her to visit their properties for private consultations. It didn’t take long for the couple to realise there was a market for their skills – especially when they combined them together into one dynamic package.
Much of Shane and Nicki’s resilient lifestyle has been influenced by their time living at communities such as the Koanga Institute, where Shane did a biointensive gardening course.
Vital Harvest
Knowing that so many lifestyle block owners struggle to realise the growing potential of their properties, Nicki and Shane decided to channel their pool of knowledge and experience in farming, construction and gardening into a permaculture design consultancy named Vital Harvest.
Together, they meet with clients, inspect their properties, and then tailor design solutions around their goals, providing bespoke plans that help clients optimise their land use. Sun, soil, topography, water, wind and local climate are all assessed in the plan, allowing clients to design their blocks to maximise efficiency around their time and the natural resources at hand.
“Everyone wants everything on their land,” says Shane. “They want accommodation and they want animals and they want veggie gardens, glass houses and sculptures, but they don’t have a plan right from the get-go to see where those things should go or what the flow of the property is going to be. They might end up in trouble because the place where they put a glasshouse might be the one place where they need to put an access way to the back of their property.
“That’s what we’re trying to help people out with. So we do a conceptual drawing that shows the key areas where things will go to give the client a clear plan to work towards.”
The Permaculture Zones
Permaculture zones are used to break the land into five to seven different categories based on their frequency of use. Gardens, animals, dwellings and other resources are all placed within the zones according to how much time is spent within them on a daily basis. Breaking your property into zones in this way lets you determine the most effective “flow” and locate features and amenities accordingly.
A key part of their approach considers permaculture “zones” – a method of breaking the land down into different areas based on their intensity of use and maintenance. For instance, zone zero relates to a property’s house or dwelling, and zone one the immediately surrounding area, usually comprising kitchen gardens and other amenities. At the other end of the spectrum is zone four and five – relatively remote, unmanaged areas such as bush and forest that don’t need regular observation
or maintenance.
Nicki says that although they could both perform each other’s roles, their different strengths and passions allow them to provide a comprehensive plan that covers every permaculture zone.
“When we talk to clients, I describe myself as the zone one and two specialist and Shane the three to five. So I’m the gardener and composting expert – anything close to home – whereas Shane’s more of the animals, fencing and that kind of thing. That’s where the complementary nature of the relationship works really well.”
Thanks to Shane’s building experience, the couple have the ability to advise clients on what could be one of the most important zones to get right and what many people get wrong – the home, or zone zero. This includes the most efficient design, orientation, materials, and, if the land is completely bare, the location on the property.
“We had one consultation where the people didn’t know where to situate their house,” says Nicki. “And so Shane put his builder’s hat on as well as the permaculture designer hat and gave them some tips to
get started.”
“It’s about designing homes to be thermally efficient,” adds Shane. “Because at the end of the day, permaculture is all about creating efficiencies through good design and good use of resources.”
Home experience
Developing a bare block and building a passive home themselves also gives them a great deal of insight into how the design process evolves long-term. In fact, Shane used the property as the subject for his permaculture design course (PDC) project, hand-drawing plans that formed the basis of the block’s development over the years.
“We’ve still got that plan, and we show it to people and they say ‘I want one of those,’” says Shane.
Enveloped within two sloping arms of land like a natural amphitheatre, Shane and Nicki’s property generates its own microclimate, and is perfectly situated to maximise energy efficiency and growing potential.
It gets all-day sun, and because of the location half-way down a hillside, it has different areas that are frost free, allowing subtropical trees to thrive.
By observing these natural characteristics from the beginning and designing accordingly, Shane says a property owner can create a highly productive, efficient property in a relatively short period.
“We started with a bare block, and we’ve seen what can be done in six, seven years –
it’s amazing. We are in a really great growing area but you can achieve a lot in a short amount of time when you get the trees in early and get the home designed really well.”
This experience, he says, is a big part of why the consults have been so well-received. “Everybody’s got lots of ideas about what they want to do on the land, but when you can go to somebody’s place and you start looking at it with fresh eyes, and you’ve got a bit of a skill to read the landscape, you can enchance those ideas. It’s something we really enjoy and I think we’re getting better and better at it as we
go along.”
Although the couple’s typical week is split between a medley of building jobs, gardening workshops and site visits, their property remains the base of operations
and inspiration, providing endless opportunities to hone their methods and connect with the land.
Nicki practises a form of organic, no-till gardening – in the same style as Kath Irvine, whom she cites as an inspiration – where healthy soil is hallowed and nourished through the heavy use of homemade compost and mulch. By planting a wide range of flowers alongside her edibles, she can ensure that the garden is humming with beneficial insects and pollinators year-round. Her two golden rules, she says, is to always encourage diversity and to never leave the soil uncovered.
This method has created a highly productive operation that provides much of the family’s food throughout the year. “For me it’s about having that freshness everyday. When Shane and I cook, Shane will go to the freezer and select some meat and then base his dish around that, whereas I’ll go to the garden and base my meal around that.”
Sitting on the slope above the garden in a frost-free zone is the food forest – a diverse assortment of subtropical fruit trees, shrubs, and ground-covering plants that are designed to thrive together in a symbiotic ecosystem in the same manner as a natural forest.
Each species in the food forest fills a role based on its distinct characteristics. For example, the comparatively tall Japanese raisin tree (Hovenia dulcis) provides light shade for subtropical plants, attracts pollinators with its flowers and provides fodder for chickens in the form of its fruit, while tagasaste grow fast, support young trees, fix nitrogen, provide stock fodder
and can later be used as firewood
and mulch.
Then there are ground-covering plants such as nasturtium and alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum) also known as horse parsley, which out-competes invasive grasses, and provides rich organic biomass to nourish the fungi on the forest floor.
“It’s about improving what’s happening underground, providing shelter, and keeping beneficial insect pollinators throughout the year,” says Nicki.
“And the other thing we’re trying to do long-term is change out what is a pastoral-dominated [soil] environment, which is quite high in bacteria, to a more forest-like environment, which is higher in fungi. So that’s going to be a more productive growing setting than simply planting trees in the middle of pasture.”
Now in its sixth year, the food forest’s infrastructure has developed enough to produce a reliable yearly yield. It even provides an excellent environment and source of food for the free-range hens, who roam through the understorey foraging comfrey, nasturtium and sorrel.
Holistic grazing
Although Shane also loves gardening and aims to one day be able to spend more of his time with Nicki sowing seeds, planting and harvesting, much of his work on the property involves managing the stock and ensuring the pasture is in the best possible shape through holistic grazing.
A concept of regenerative agriculture, holistic grazing considers animal health and soil health as intertependant components of the same system. By rotating cattle onto new breaks everyday, Shane can ensure they graze only a portion of the grass, allowing it to continue photosynthesising nutrients for the soil. After moving cattle from a break, the goal is to leave behind a portion of grazed grass, some trampled grass, and generous deposits of manure, all of which work together to protect the soil, maximise fertility, and support a vibrant community of underground microorganisms. This produces more nutrient-dense grass, nourishing the animals, which ultimately results in healthier meat for Shane, Nicki and their family.
“The soil is always covered,” says Shane. “It’s either covered in trampled grass or it’s covered in long grass, so in the heat of summer when the sun is beating down, it’s not drying the soil out, it remains protected.”
A key advantage of this type of farming is the certainty of feed throughout the year. Because the soil is protected, it can retain moisture throughout the dry seasons. Meanwhile, the grass is kept long enough to constantly photosynthesise, allowing it to regrow quickly. This creates a highly productive pasture system in which there is always grazable grass for the cattle throughout the year.
“Because we’re moving them everyday, you can see what’s ahead of you and what’s growing behind you and it becomes easier to manage the feed. In the six years I’ve had this property, I’ve barely ever had to buy in feed, even in long dry seasons. I look at other farms and they don’t have a skerrick of grass, but I’ve still got plenty”
Of course, six cattle will make short work of a tight break of roughly 100 square metres, and Shane must head out there everyday to shift the animals and keep an eye on grass height.
It also requires the right equipment for strip grazing, such as movable hotwires and water infrastructure that can allow the animals to drink no matter where they are in the paddock.
With his system, Shane has portable troughs that he shifts with the stock. Water from a header tank up the hill flows through a series of pipes laid throughout the pasture, each of which ends at a hydrant. Shane can plug his trough into whatever hydrant is in the break he’s using, providing the cattle with water access.
“One of the things I would say to people is to get your fencing and water reticulation throughout the property sorted early. How are you going to get water to the different paddocks if it’s not already in place? You can’t move a big concrete trough each day, but if you want to graze holistically, you’ve got to be able to get water to the stock.
“You need enough positions where these hydrants are sited so that you can access the entire area strip by strip.”
Then and now
The crumbly richness of loam soils, the warbling of tūī in the food forest, the fecund scent of compost and leaf mould: Nicki’s daily sensory experience is a far cry from the teeming streets of New York city where she once lived and worked in investment banking. She often reflects on her journey and the person she was during that phase in life, but having grown up on a farm in Gisborne, she has, in a way, completed a circle, bringing her back to the land and plants for which she’s always had a passion.
“When we came back to New Zealand, we definitely wanted to extract ourselves from the cities and that corporate, commercial environment, and be on a piece of land growing our own food. We did go and live in a couple of communities with the focus on self sufficiency. So I guess that just continued to turn the wheel a bit further and we got a bit more deeper into wanting to live more resiliently.
“The more you explore and learn, the more you realise how important it is to start eating healthier, and to do this you need to grow your own vegetables and grow your own meat.”
Despite working as a full time gardener, the first thing she does when she comes home is tend her own garden.
“I work full time as a gardener, that’s my job, but I come home to garden. That’s my happy place, that’s my downtime. There’s nothing more satisfying.”
Having been a builder for much of his life, Shane is excited to gradually reduce that side of his worklife to make way for the permaculture consultancy and more work on the land. Like Nicki, he is just as satisfied with his place in life on his slice of paradise, which started as a hand-drawn plan, and manifested into reality through passion, hard work, and an authentic connection to the earth under his feet.
“I love getting out there and having
the connection to the land early in the morning when I move my animals,” he says. “We’re not trying to push the land. We’re wanting to regenerate it and feed ourselves – hopefully we’re being good stewards on this bit of land, improving it as we go along.”
Although managing the property, family and their many jobs and projects requires plenty of juggling, the couple know they’re exactly where they want and need to be. They wouldn’t trade it for the world.
“It’s been a fantastic journey. We’re both just incredibly happy here,” says Shane. “There’s a huge amount more work to do and there are loads more projects. I don’t think the work will ever end. But it’s a great spot to be and we feel very blessed.”
Who: Nicki Murray-Orr and Shane Rush
Where: Waikino
What: Permaculture-designed property with regenerative agriculture and gardening workshops
Land: 2.5 hectares
Insta: @vitalharvestpermaculture
Facebook: vitalharvestNZ