Building a sustainable backyard
Virginia Winder meets a down-to-earth couple who have created a sustainable backyard in Stratford.
Three dogs swarm the visitor’s car, bark-barking, eyes bright, tails wagging wildly.
These ‘‘fierce’’ canines are friends not foes and the garden writer stoops to pat heads, offer soothing words, then hugs their owner, Catherine Groenestein. She introduces the trio as Felix, 11, a black and white heading dog, Tangy, 8, a blue heeler, and Cassie, 2, a red heeler.
Throughout this garden outing, the canines bark at passing cars, herald the photographer’s arrival to the sunny home, and tumble over each other like pups.
The old cottage sits high on the land, a ship upon a sea of rhubarb that is mass planted out front. It’s a bright day, a glimpse of Mt Taranaki through trees on one side but too cloudy to see the mounga of the central plateau on the other.
They had a choice – shelter or views. They chose vistas and with that has come wind.
At the kitchen table, fresh coffee served alongside just-made rhubarb and ginger muffins, Catherine and partner Phil Bielawski talk about living The Good Life, like in the English TV show from the 1970s.
‘‘That’s what I originally came down here for was to be like River Cottage. I think they got a lot more help behind the scenes,’’ she says.
Catherine and son Gabriel, 15, have been on the property for 10 years and Phil, nearly as long.
This weekend, the Warwick Rd block is one of 23 properties open for the Taranaki Sustainable Backyards Trail. It’s the one called Upcycle Acres.
‘‘I milked a house cow (Lucy) for three years. I made butter and didn’t have to buy milk.’’
While milking, she found great peace and would often sit there thinking of ideas for a lifestyle column she used to write for the Taranaki Daily News, where she now works as a full-time reporter based in Ha¯wera.
‘‘It’s really hard trying to get a relief milker for one cow,’’ she laughs. ‘‘It makes for a long summer.’’ But the cow and any other big animals had to go before Catherine faced major surgery in October 2012.
She was living with scoliosis, which meant her spine was slowly becoming more and more twisted. If left untreated, she would eventually become disabled.
But she could have surgery, which meant having her back fused with a metal rod from the waist to the base of her neck.
The specialist, who gave her green light for surgery, told her: ‘‘I think in five years you will be glad you did it.’’
That time is now, and Catherine knows she made the right choice, but says the recovery at times seemed interminable.
After the surgery, she couldn’t drive for five months and when she finally could, had to have six pillows to support her.
She had to resign from her job, then teaching computing at Feats, and gradually started doing freelance journalism work, including writing for the South Taranaki Star. Two years ago, and much better physically, Catherine began working full-time for the Daily News covering the region’s south.
The garden is her solace after the frenetic pace of working as a reporter, a job she loves. ‘‘It’s a privilege because you get a glimpse into so many people’s lives.’’
But home is her buffer against the world and she can feel resentful if she has to leave it at the weekend.
Phil, the constant gardener, has also had health issues. He spent 30 years working in the family business, Bielawski Scrap Ltd, but falling scrap metal prices and declining body, led to its closure in May last year. It had been part of the town for 50 years.
Lugging metal wore Phil out. He has osteoarthritis in his neck and shoulders and tennis elbow in both arms. He’s since had surgery on his elbows and, it appears, nothing keeps him down, although his body does keep him in check.
‘‘If you do too much it flares up and you get quite grumpy,’’ he says. But like Catherine, he finds working in the garden soothing. ‘‘When the weather’s like this, there’s not a better place in the world to be.’’
The 1.88-hectare lifestyle block isn’t perfect, but it’s a healthy place.
They have a worm farm, make their own compost, brew seaweed tea and scatter used coffee grounds throughout. They’ve also built garden beds, wind breaks and even a tunnel house using recycled materials. To keep weeds away and to feed the soil, they lay down cardboard collected from the transfer station and use calf shavings from the neighbour as mulch.
Catherine has kombucha brewing in the kitchen, a bin of wheat and a grinder to make flour, regularly makes her own sourdough bread and only uses eco-friendly products in the house.
‘‘The only chemical I use regularly is to flea treat the dogs, because you have to do that.’’
They also drench their selfshedding Wiltshire sheep to keep them healthy. They have 11 ewes and now 10 lambs, including pet sheep Lamington, born last year, and this year’s arrival, Molly.
‘‘Lamington is a bit special,’’ Phil says. ‘‘Her mother had twins and this one was compromised.’’
Catherine says most farmers would have put down the ailing lamb, but they persevered with antibiotics and feeding until she came right.
They also have chickens – bantams and Orpingtons.
Phil describes the latter as ‘‘the sumo wrestlers of the chicken world’’, but Catherine sees them differently. ‘‘No they aren’t – they are like old Victorian matrons with big bustles.’’
The hens, all good egg producers, lay in lawn mower catchers, and the big Orpington roosters become roast dinner. ‘‘They are really good eating. They have a decent life and the dispatch is very quick and humane,’’ she says.
There’s more food from the garden. In the paddock out front, they have planted an orchard of plums, apples, hazelnuts and an apricot.
‘‘I tend to choose things by their names,’’ she says.
That’s why they are growing an apple called Kentish Fillbasket and lettuce varieties, Drunken Woman Fringed Head and Oscarde. Among the orchard, they have a bed of garlic in a fresh plot. They hope it will fare better than last year’s crop, which succumbed to rust.
Adjoining the orchard is the main vegetable and berry garden, which consists of raised beds made by Phil using scrap metal. These are home to blueberries, strawberries, potatoes, spinach and other greens. Feijoas are also growing here, but not in the beds.
There are flowers and comfrey to attract bees, but only ones that fly by. After attending a beekeeping workshop together at Hollard Gardens, Catherine was buzzing with plans to have hives. Phil was strangely quiet until he finally told her that if she wanted to have bees, she’d have to do it herself.
‘‘It’s the only time he’s balked at an idea I have come up with,’’ she says.
Both have completed courses with permaculture specialist Dee Turner and have found a community of sharing friends in the sustainable, organic world. Catherine was also one of four people to set up Stratford’s Crop Swap.
One of their biggest allies is Lorraine Kelsen, who helped Phil build a tunnel house against the barn, a wooden wheelbarrow Christmas present for Catherine and put together an outdoor storage ensemble out of recycled pallets.
The tunnel house, built last summer, is ideal for growing frosttender vegetables, especially tomatoes and chillies. It’s also a warm place for weather-wary humans in winter.
With friends at their side, the Stratford couple keep gardening, although Catherine still finds it tough to bend, reach and pull. She tends to kneel beside raised beds to weed and sticks to lighter duties like raising seedlings and ordering seeds.
So, if you ever doubt your capacity to create a garden, build a lifestyle, think of Phil and Catherine. They not only show what can be done on a piece of wind-swept land, they are an example of overcoming adversity to live a dream.