Marlborough Express - Weekend Express
Kiwi food Homemade to order
Neil Hodgson isa food and wine writer who gets to meet artisan producers from across the top of the south. He recently caught up with Marlborough business owner Alys O’Shea.
Iregularly come across new products that are being made and sold by people starting their own business, but it isn’t often I find someone who is a little older, and should have retired years ago, creating a new business.
But that is exactly what Alys O’Shea is doing with her Homemade.Kiwi range of dried foods.
She may be based in Marlborough, but I think her story is worth telling, not just because she has started something new when she turned 81 (she was born on February 29) but because her products are incredibly tasty and available in Nelson.
I caught up with Alys a few weeks ago to find out what is driving her passion for this new range of products.
‘‘I used to make preserves when we had an orchard in the Wairau Valley and that started the idea of preserving food by drying it,’’ she told me.
Alys is in her early 80’s and tells me she has had lots of ups and downs in her life, ‘‘lots of dramas over the years, I have lost jobs as businesses changed hands or closed down and I had always said I was going to retire at 80 but not doing anything would drive me crazy.’’
No matter what life has thrown at Alys she has always been able to immediately turn to something else.
‘‘I believe there is always something else to do rather than just wallow in my sorrows, you have to have faith in yourself and believe in what you’re doing,’’ she says.
‘‘I lost my husband to cancer when he was young, so I took my two young children (aged seven and five at the time) to a housekeeping job on a farm.
Alys loved the farm life so much she married a farmer (not the one she worked for) and spent the next 20 years working on the land.
When major downturn in farming came along they diversified into horticulture but the weather in the Wairau Valley wasn’t kind to the soft fruits (apricots and nectarines) they had planted and the stresses involved meant the end of the farm and the marriage.
In the late 1990s she applied for a job as a chef at a winery,
a
Merlin Wines in Marlborough, and ended up learning about wine and working in the cellar door tasting room as well as the kitchen.
Her love of cooking resulted in three top-selling cookbooks, and she now has a large garden at home where she grows fruit and vegetables.
‘‘Having come from a farming background I grow far more than we can eat, and because I hate waste I needed to do something with the surplus, so I started dehydrating all sorts of things.’’
With her new business, Alys produces a range including dehydrated fruits that you can use in smoothies or for snacking, packs for soups, vegetable packs you can use to add to casseroles, packs to make fritters that includes a spice bag she makes and even a dried frittata blend.
A highlight of Alys’ products is that everything is homemade, including the curry powder used in some of the soups, and there are no preservatives and no added sugars in any of her products. They are simply packed with natural flavours and goodness.
You will find them at the Farmer’s Market stall in Nelson, at the Marlborough Farmers Market or you can email her at Alysoshea47@gmail.com.