How a Northland family is using pumpkins to tackle soaring food prices

Nikau Aplin, Shanti Aplin and Gaia Aplin sit with the incredible harvest of pumpkins. Photo / Supplied.

A Northland family are using their flourishing pumpkin garden to help feed their community in the face of surging food prices.

Anna Gentry's orchard alongside the Ngunguru River has produced almost 300 pumpkins for the coastal community.

The abundance of pumpkins cultivated from Gentry's long-lasting love for the environment was a pleasant surprise to the orchard owner.

"I planted about 20 pumpkin plant saved seeds and what eventuated was crazy," she said.

"Everyone laughed at me all summer. No one could come to our place and not go 'Oh my God, look at your pumpkin plants'."

Gentry said she has been growing pumpkins for as long as she can remember.

"I have a love of growing plants and food, and probably for the last 22 years I've been growing food for our family.

"We've got four kids, and they're part of the pumpkin world, they help in all the gardens. It's a team effort."

Gentry and her family live off the food they grow as much as possible and any excess is placed straight into the community.

The family drop off pumpkins at Ngunguru's community free-food stall, where she said they are, "gone in half an hour."

Anna Gentry's son, Nikau Aplin with a potato and kumara harvest he dug and washed. Photo / Supplied.

"We're really aware of how [hard] living is for a number of people and families and that whole conversation about the cost of living. We get told there's a pending food crisis.

"So we wanted people to make the most of them," she said.

Soaring food costs have put pressure on Northland families, with annual food prices hitting a 10-year high in March, according to Stats NZ data.

The latest Food Price Index figures show fruit and vegetables rocketed up 9.4 per cent in April, compared to the same month last year.

Gentry has also donated pumpkins to Hare Krishna Food For Life Northland, which provides food relief to the Northland community.

"Some of them are so huge they're the sort you put an axe through and feed four families for two weeks.

"They just keep giving and giving," she said.

Gentry even hands them out on the sidelines of her kids' soccer matches in Ngunguru.

The word about Gentry's pumpkins got out online when she posted a photo of the pumpkins as a guessing competition for her friends on Facebook.

But the post grew almost as fast as her pumpkins and currently has almost 600 likes and 100 comments.

"When I put it on the Tutukākā and Ngunguru Community Facebook page, it just went crazy."

Anna's pumpkins at the "Grow free" stall in Ngunguru. Photo / Supplied.

Gentry said the experience has made her think about how we look at food as a commodity, rather than a basic necessity for human health.

"How do we move to a world where everyone gives what they've got? Wouldn't that make the world an amazing place?"

Supermarket prices have been under the microscope this year after the Commerce Commission's final supermarket report was released in March.

The report concluded that Foodstuffs and Countdown operated effectively as a duopoly, driving up food prices for New Zealanders.

This month Consumer NZ launched a petition calling on Minister David Clark to put consumers first and address the major supermarkets' excessive profits in times of rising costs.