Peihana Farm

I learn that Maria has a background of training and experiences both here and overseas. Serendipitously, this has led to her current ventures. Maria's journey has taken her from naturopathy workshops, Royal Horticultural Society studies, temping and waitressing in London, to celebrity speaker management. She did marketing for a software management company, handled international and community art collections, worked with plants and food, but it is people who have always been central. Storytelling and the ability to make connections with people appear to be the inherent character traits of Maria. She is a connector and networker in the region, and her ability to see the bigger picture or curate the story of what something ‘might be’ makes her an effective collaborator. I found that at any event to do with small-scale growing, sustainability, RA, initiatives around seed saving or crop swaps, Maria was always connecting people to people and people to ideas.

The Farmers’ market model requires a bountiful and appealing display to entice buyers, but this creates unpredictable demand levels, as experienced by several Taranaki growers who sell at the Taranaki's Farmers' Market. If excess produce is not sold, this benefits food recovery operators or free community pantries and pātaka kai, who the growers frequently pass their excess on to, to avoid waste. However, it represents labour and produce that has not materialised into profit. While growers have different perspectives on profit compared to those involved in large-scale market gardening or mainstream farming, SSGs still want to cover their costs and/or pay themselves an income.

In January, when I visited, Maria worked with 14 local growers and producers to create her grocery boxes and aimed for orders from 10 families per week. This, I noted, is the physical scale at which she can manage her gardening operation despite having a substantial available amount of land to utilise. If she had more customers, she would need to grow more produce, which would require more labour. She admits the workdays are long and typically seven days a week. Nevertheless, she enjoys this way of working. She knows each of her customers, and they purchase because they want "real food with dirt on it". Fresh food, grown locally, where you know how it has been grown and by whom. Some of her customers are from overseas and familiar with this way of purchasing local food direct from a grower, and others are parents at the new Green School who have an environmental philosophy synonymous with Maria's practices. Interestingly, I noted on her Facebook page that in November 2021, she was reaching out for more help on her farm, as she was now supplying 25 families weekly. This substantial increase in her productivity shows how a hyper-local business can stimulate economic activity within a community.