Heartwarming: Kara Rickard meets the people going back to the land. Photo / Supplied
Heartwarming: Kara Rickard meets the people going back to the land. Photo / Supplied
The practice of māra kai, the mātauranga associated with growing food crops, has been undergoing a quiet comeback in recent years – although you might not have noticed because the comeback has largely developed in out-of-the way places. Perhaps one day there’ll be a whizz-bang prime-time show about doing itin your own back yard. Until then, there’s Once Were Gardeners.
Whakaata Māori’s new series is a gently paced look at the rediscovery of traditional practices, aligned with maramataka, the Māori lunar calendar, and what it means for the people doing it. In the second episode, presenter Kara Rickard meets Tūī and Ricco, who have returned from Australia to Tūī’s family land in Hokianga to establish a papakāinga. It’s home for them in different ways: for Tūī, it’s her whenua; for Ricco, gardening is a recently learned skill, but also what his tīpuna around Raglan did. Half of what they grow on their 20ha is shared around whānau and the local community.
On a small patch at the foot of the maunga in Rangitīkei, Meretini introduces Rickard to “seaweed tea”, a foul-smelling ferment of kina juice and seaweed that makes her raspberries fatter and juicier. Again, there’s a home-to-the-land story – she grew up in Whanganui until her mother came back for a tangi and decided the family was moving home.
In Rāhui Pōkeka (Huntly), we meet Whaea Ramari and her daughter Joyce, veteran activists for whom an environmental mitigation agreement with the power station meant a chance to buy back family land. And when Covid hit, Joyce explains, they thought, “If this is going to continue to happen, let’s make some kai. So essentially we got down on our knees, cleared the area and started to dig.” It’s now a community garden.
Along with these personal stories, Once Were Gardeners might have benefited from more of an overarching picture of where and how this renaissance of traditional permaculture is happening nationally. At times, it makes Country Calendar look racy. But Rickard’s easy manner and the way the people she meets find meaning in what they’re doing make it heartwarming television.
Once Were Gardeners begins on Whakaata Māori on Monday, October 27, at 7pm and on Māori TV+.
