Weathering the dream

From the law courts of London to organic pig farming in the wilds of Wairarapa

Steve Hart and Pippa Cain dreamed of New Zealand's green hills and sunny skies when they were closeted for long hours in a London law firm.

When a big job was on it was not uncommon for them to work nonstop for 24, even 36, hours.

"We used to talk about going to a place where the weather mattered," says Steve, a Tawa- born specialist in legal management software. "If you're in an office all day the weather isn't a factor, just something happening outside. Here, it's part of your life."

"And some," adds Pippa.

Now they are living the dream on a 120-hectare block of manuka and kanuka hills at the head of the Mangatarere Valley, west of Masterton.

There they are raising their three daughters and a menagerie of animals, including 45 organically farmed pigs, eight cattle, assorted chickens and ducks, five dogs, three cats and a sheep that thinks it's a pig.

And the weather matters. Their house is powered by a hydro-electric turbine in a nearby creek. If it rains too hard, the creek floods the turbine and they lose their power.

The long, liberally pot-holed gravel road to their house fords the Mangatarere Stream twice and crosses a rickety bridge and a delicate culvert. If it rains too hard, the stream becomes impassable.

None of this worries them. "We know this life isn't for everybody, but it's like a tonic to us," Pippa says. "In midwinter it's bloody hard; things will always go wrong at the worst possible time. But it's part of the price we pay for being here and we don't mind."

They feel they have a lot to be thankful for. They have been in the valley for 10 years and are accepted as part of a lively community – regular parties in the local hall attract 50 families.

Their girls, Emily, 8, Jessie, 6, and Sophie, 4, prefer playing outdoors to sitting in front of a computer screen. And Steve is able to work from home.

He and two others, who work from their Nelson homes, run Legal-e, a support company for Legaloffice, the software he has written for legal practices' management systems.

He runs the help desk, keeps the firm's books and is away on sales trips two or three nights a month. Most importantly, it allows him time to do what he really likes best – pig farming.

He is sure he could make – if he wanted to – a decent living from processing just two pigs a week. At present he kills just one and makes it into bacon, ham and sausages.

He won't say what his return is but says the retail prices of the meat from an organic baconer's 70kg carcass are $34 a kilogram for the bacon and ham and $27 for the sausages.

The money is far above supermarket prices, but the key word is organic. The pigs have 120ha of hills to roam across and their diet is mainly the ferns, bracken roots and grubs they root out of the stony soil, supplemented with a grain mixture of wheat, barley, maize and peas.

They are partial to the Jerusalem artichokes Pippa grows and have been known to eat eggs, baby chickens and dogs' bones.

Their life couldn't be more different from those of commercial pigs that are kept in small indoor pens and fed on a carefully controlled diet of grains, meal, milk, vitamins and minerals. Those intimate living conditions allow viruses and parasites to build up in a herd.

Steve and Pippa, who are in the last year of their three-year organic certification, don't use antibiotics on their pigs and don't use artificial preservatives in the making of their ham and bacon.

All this – the pigs' natural diet and freedom from chemicals – shows in the taste of their meat. The flavour, colour and texture is enhanced; supermarket ham and bacon seems pale and tasteless in comparison.

It is what makes the extra expense worthwhile, Steve says. "Yes, it is $27 a kilogram, but you can be assured that pig has had a good life on a farm being run sustainably. And, on top of that, the meat tastes fantastic."

He met Pippa, a secretary, 20 years ago when they worked in the same law firm in London. Her Kiwi mother had brought her to New Zealand for holidays when she was young and she and Steve often talked of making it their home some day.

They stuck it out for another 10 years at the firm, the long hours being matched by high wages that were hard to relinquish, before finally making the break in 1997. Within a year they had moved to the remote Mangatarere Valley, on the edge of the Tararua Forest Park.

"We'd done the big city, living in a third-floor flat surrounded by a mass of people," Pippa says. "We wanted to do something completely different."

They found a warm welcome. "There's a strong bond here," Steve says. "You're away from people but you know more people – it's lovely."

AT FIRST, they made a two-hour commute to jobs in Wellington, but then Emily was born – followed at two-year intervals by Jessie and Sophie – and Pippa has stayed home since.

Steve gradually began to work more from home and when he started his own business that became easier.

Then came the pigs. Pippa went away for a weekend with friends and about the time she was buying Steve a porcelain pig as a gift he was at a Masterton sale buying a real one. "When I got home this great black hairy beast lumbered by and scared the life out of me," she recalls.

Steve finds it hard to say why he bought the pig, a sow. "I've always had an affinity for pigs; there's something about them that appeals to me. They're an incredibly smart animal, very friendly and social and easy to farm. Unlike cattle and sheep, they don't need shearing or drenching."

At the same time, he and Pippa had become more aware of green issues and farming organically was an obvious step.

Their initial idea was to have just a few pigs to satisfy their love of pork but when friends who came to dinner remarked enthusiastically about the flavour the decision to expand into a business came naturally.

At first, they sent two pigs a week to Feilding organic butcher Daan Langstratt to be processed but when he went out of business a year ago they turned to Greytown butcher Gavin Green.

Now, it's down to one pig a week and Steve rents space in the butchery to make his own bacon, ham and sausages.

They are sold in Greytown, at Commonsense Organics shops in Wellington, at the Organic Green Grocer in Nelson and at farmers' markets in Masterton and Paraparaumu. Pippa runs a stall for Wairarapa Organics at the Masterton market and sells hen and duck eggs.

For the couple, the years of hard work in London are just a memory. "We're still working hard," says Pippa, "but this is fun."

Seeing her girls growing up in a natural environment is her biggest delight. "They are seeing all aspects of life and death in the real world. They are the first to cuddle a piglet when I bring it inside but they know, too, not to get too close because it has to leave the farm some day.

"These are experiences that will stay with them all their lives."

Steve feels pride and satisfaction. "I've proved you can keep pigs humanely and make a living from it."

- © Fairfax NZ News