Puriri Farm

Simeon Theobald

Playful Innovation and the Beer Economy

Innovative Practices in Small-Scale Farming

Heidi McLeod | April 2021

Swings, treetop huts and platforms create an outdoor haven, reflecting the playful nature of Simeon's engineering mind. A sky hammock is planned too.

Simeon and Bronwyn live with their teenage daughters on a 4 hectare property in Bell Block, Taranaki. With the goal of increased self-sufficiency, healthy lifestyles and reduced waste production, Puriri farm is a hive of activity and ‘work in progress’ activities. Simeon who has a background in information technology with a strong engineering focus, loves “hacking on hardware” and combined his desire to improve his health and the lifestyle of his family by getting out from behind the desk to undertake a horticulture course. “I’m a physical, making, doing kind of a person” - it’s about getting more ‘doing’ into his daily life, rather than a life sat behind a desk. Having brought an engineering/scientific focus to sustainability and regeneration initiatives within the sustainability community in ventures through Startup Taranaki, he has now created a thriving ecosystem of composting, growing vegetables, and raising livestock.

Simeon brings an obvious playfulness, curiosity and a desire to innovate to his small scale farming endeavour with clear results. He has created new technologies and practices which provide space and opportunities for new futures in urban agriculture and regeneration. Puriri Farm is a full time pursuit for Simeon now, and he has become a well known ‘connector’ in the dynamic Taranaki community of urban agriculturalists. Their next focus will be on extending the ways they share their excess produce into the community.

Innovation, problem-solving, testing, new spaces of possibility

There’s no escaping the fact the Simeon brings a playful approach to her zero waste or reuse policy - a wander through his tree studded paddock of treetop swings shows how he is the master of the beer economy - trading shipping rope, dead Christmas trees and macrocarpa for biochar, used machinery for beer or labour to create new tools and resources. Simeon is one of those people who always knows a guy, and is “repurposing, recycling and diverting waste streams”. Other people’s waste is Simeon’s resource for another purpose. This approach is a perfect example of a diverse economy framework in action through exchange and bartering.

Small scale farmers and growers are able to invest significant amounts of time and effort into testing different approaches to their growing and customising their practices to exactly meet the requirements of their specific locale. One size does not fit all, and the industrialised nature of our modernised food systems creates numerous restrictions on the food we consume through monocropping, terminating seeds and increased pest and disease resistance. Small scale farming creates excellent opportunities to apply organic, sustainable or regenerative principles and to sow heritage seeds and locally significant crops.

Innovators are problem-solvers, and at Simeon’s farm he is maximising the health of the soil, diverting waste, improving carbon sequestration, and increasing biodiversity. This is improving the quality of the food he is producing as well as the wellbeing that the family experiences living in a semi-rural location. The family are hands-on and have an embodied understanding of what it is to tread lightly on the earth, to work in harmony with nature and to be respectful of the land and its ability to provide for them. Such spaces of endeavour illustrate how food production can be different.

Champion Compost Chef - Simeon is a keen compost cook, producing a hot compost mix capable of killing weed seeds.

Fish hydrolysate spreader - Simeon created this device with a capacity of 100 litres, making the job of fertilising his 10 acre property much easier than with a back pack. This tool has cunningly been engineered and calibrated to disperse the hydrolysate at his walking pace, with 1ml per 1 square metre of coverage. Its battery came from his brother’s wrecked van alongside several other nifty deals. The rear arm tilts up to nicely roll through gateways.

In a way, the distancing eaters have experienced from the origins of their food, may also have been experienced by growers, farmers and producers through a distancing from the technologies and practices that were an inherent part of their past, traditional farming lives, or indeed the indigenous customs of first inhabitants. Hugh Campbell has recently discussed the tensions and ambiguities of visible and invisible farming worlds, in his book which looks at multiple elements of the practice of farming in New Zealand today (2020). As small-scale farmers rediscover ways of producing nutrient dense foods that also benefit the biosphere, a return and also a reimagining of technology and practices is occurring, which problematises the modernity of agriculture that we may have once valued. A reconsideration of mātauranga Māori and land ownership also encourages us to be innovative, adaptive, and willing to create new spaces of possibility for the production of food for our communities.

Connected Community Economies

Puriri Farm is an example of the connections that can be created within communities when linkages evolve through small scale farming and urban farming. Acts of trading, swapping, reusing, sharing and engaging all benefit the community in different ways based on the conscious production and use of materials. This care in utilising the environment and engaging with the community efficiently and effectively in order to return it to the environment and the community is a core strength of regenerative food systems.

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