Eco-vision blooms in Miranda

A couple's vision to upskill the unemployed lies at the heart of a busy nursery built from scratch on a Miranda dairy farm

It's a bit hard to know what to make of it at first: In the big yard on Adrienne and Gary Dalton's farm at Miranda on the Firth of Thames there seems to be a lot going on; there's the familiar milking shed, various shipping containers converted into storage units, a huge adjacent native plant nursery, many more people than you'd usually find on a dairy property, and a smiling woman appears from one of the containers with a big bowl of porridge.

It's 9.30am on a soggy Tuesday, and the team is gathering for breakfast, taking a seat in a bay of the calf-rearing shed which is now a smoko room. "We're calving, so we're quite cramped because we're down to the last bay," Adrienne says, describing how they desperately need more space and better facilities. About 16 or so men and women are talking, drinking coffee and tea, eating porridge, fruit and lashings of toast, fuelling up before they go back outdoors. The Daltons are there as well, Gary in a workmanlike blue boiler suit and Adrienne in polar fleece sweatshirt and gumboots, every inch the hardworking dairy farmers but like their multi-purpose farmyard there is more to this couple than that.

Their property is the headquarters for Te Whangai Charitable Trust, the unique business the Daltons started last November, an eco-nursery growing native New Zealand trees, shrubs and other plants, staffed by people who have found it difficult to get into the labour market. Te Whangai Trust offers jobs and skills training to people who have generally been unemployed for some time, disadvantaged in the workforce through circumstances or illness, referred to them by Work and Income. Te Whangai's goal is to support its staff through to finding fulltime jobs in the workforce.

The Daltons have built their project from scratch; they secured funding from the Social Development Ministry, put up an amount of their own money which they politely decline to elaborate on, and they leaned on old friend Bill Ward, well-known horticulturist and broadcaster, to become Te Whangai's technical and nursery manager. "We said to him, `are you mad enough to join us'," Gary grins. Ward grins back at him; he's been on board since the start, when the farmyard was strictly a farmyard, before native seedlings, shipping containers, potting sheds and a plethora of other apparatus appeared.

Ward, a former Hamilton city councillor, now based in Waihi, was looking for a change when Adrienne and Gary approached him. He lives on site during the week and heads home at the weekends. He's had a huge hands-on role in developing the nursery.

Ward, the Daltons and Te Whangai workers started with the basic farmyard and bare paddocks, and today the place has the air of a purpose-built village, with the nursery at its heart. Ward recalls the strong support he got from industry colleagues, with Phillips Nursery at Te Awamutu and the former YTT Nursery at Bombay being particularly helpful. Says Adrienne proudly: "In our first nine months we have melded a team of 16 unskilled people, have collectively goal set and created a nursery with about 120,000 native plants."

Under its contract with the Social Development Ministry (the amount of which is confidential, a spokesperson says), Te Whangai cannot compete on the commercial market and it sells to ratepayer and taxpayer funded environmental projects, mainly through local councils, Environment Waikato, and to industries, farmers, schools and others planting for compliance or conservation on a not-for-profit basis. It has clients lining up for its products and various services, and in the project's first nine months, nine of its staff members have found jobs in the wider community at such places as a hedging nursery, a kiwifruit property, and in building and demolition work. Te Whangai also acts as an agency for Hauraki and Pukekohe Corrections Department, with at-risk youth and probationary prisoners also on site at times.

Gary Dalton describes the philosophy of "hand-ups, not handouts" that underpins Te Whangai: "It is about people, not money, it's about changing our community. People complain about welfare payments but nobody is prepared to do anything about it. The people here have designed and built this, they've used skills that haven't been recognised. It's not their disadvantages that are the problem, it's our inability to harness their abilities."

As well as receiving horticultural training, Te Whangai employees are given advocacy support and helped with health care. They also learn life skills such as budgeting, cooking and nutrition, and breakfast and lunch are provided each day. "Te Whangai is Maori for nurture or adopt and that's what we are about; we nurture people to nurture the environment," Adrienne says.

Adds Gary: "Many of them have had the shit kicked out of them. We build their self-esteem, earn their trust, move forward together. We've provided them with the tools and the ability to feel good about themselves. We set them on the track so they can be employed fulltime."

As Gary and Adrienne talk, the crowd in the smoko room starts to thin, and the staff head back to the nursery to work. Adrienne mentions that quite a few of them were here on Sunday after the weekend storm, working in the rain to rescue plants after a potting shed was destroyed. "Their passion and commitment is humbling."

 

THE DALTONS are in their late 50s, and Gary is a fifth generation farmer in this rather off-the-beaten-track area. His forebears, the Findlay family, arrived in Miranda in the 1860s; Gary left Miranda when he was about 10 years old but he and Adrienne came back to farm after they were married in 1971. They've raised their four children here, Adrienne worked for many years as a special needs teacher, and they have long been committed to protecting and restoring ecological areas on their farm which borders Miranda's seabird coast.

At a time when the couple might be thinking about taking things a bit easier, they're working huge hours with the farm and Te Whangai. Family tragedy has played a part in the establishment of Te Whangai Trust: The Daltons' 33-year-old daughter Leigh was killed in a car accident two years ago, and she had been passionate about the environment, and about helping other people.

It was through Leigh that Adrienne and Gary first got involved about five years ago in employing a Taskforce Green team to help them restore an area of native bush on their farm.

 

The couple worked side by side with the Taskforce crew, weeding, planting and fencing. They got to know them as people, and quickly became involved in their lives, often acting as advocates for them, cheering them on when they found  jobs or met other success. Eighteen of the 20 Taskforce people who came through their property now have fulltime work.

More recently, a Government move to shorten Taskforce Green contracts from 12 months to six months prompted the Daltons to stop taking new workers. Adrienne says six months isn't long enough to make a difference, to sort out issues and get people into a mindset where they want to work at something they enjoy.  

When Work and Income Thames asked Adrienne and Gary to continue the relationship, they saw an opportunity to set up Te Whangai.  Part of their motivation was in memory of daughter Leigh, and her strong belief in helping others. ``We feel her spirit here in many ways,'' says her mother, as she looks out over the thriving nursery. 

Staff work 30 hours a week, they come from throughout the area, and several from Thames are picked up each morning in a Te Whangai van. Their pay is subsidised under the Work and Income skills initiative programme for 12 months, then they need to find employment or, if Te Whangai can afford it, they might move into a supervisor's role on the project.

Sandy Simmons has been at Te Whangai since its inception, and she's now a supervisor and a dedicated plantswoman. This morning, she's planting potting ake ake seedlings, with Donna Hart and newcomer Kingi working alongside her. It's labour intensive,  with hundreds to be done, but the trio work quickly and efficiently. Sandy had previously run her own nursery in Ngatea, but she was unemployed when she joined the Te Whangai team: "It's a lovely place,'' she comments, as she deftly places the fragile seedlings in containers filled with potting mix by Donna Hart and Kingi. ``I can't wait to get to work in the morning, it's a nice atmosphere and I meet different people.''

Donna Hart says she hadn't been working for quite a while before this opportunity came along, and she's learned a lot of new things. Her husband Jackie Hart is also on the project; he joins in the conversation to say that Adrienne and Gary are good people, "they've been good to me, I like it here, we are well looked after.'' Solo mum Doris Jenkins from Thames is on her first day, ``it looks a nice healing place, everyone seems happy''. Warren Vercoe, a former chef, has been at Te Whangai for three weeks and is enjoying the tranquility after the stress of kitchens. ``It is a new start,'' he says, as he works with a cluster of manuka seedlings.

Bill Ward moves  among the troops, and he's clearly proud of them: "We're imparting knowledge to people who really want to learn,'' he says. "Many of them have been disadvantaged; if they learn how to care about a plant they will care about other things, they will stand tall. Some  haven't worked for 15 years. We've seen a huge growth in self-esteem, they are all stars here.''  

Karl Tapp spent about five months at Te Whangai, then moved on to a job with  Jim Banner of  DB Builders; he is currently working on a $4 million house the firm is building near coastal Kaiaua. Banner has also taken on Tapp's teenage son Tony, and is impressed with both of them.   He says Karl Tapp "came as a labourer, and now he's one of the commanders-in-chief, he's excellent, just the best in the book, the hardest-working man I've ever employed over 50 years''.

Tapp says he had alcohol problems when he started at Te Whangai, and he was helped with this and other personal issues.   

"They (Te Whangai) have been real supportive, they make things so much easier. They've helped others as well. If you grab what they offer then you will go a long way, pull yourself out of the rut.'' He's learning from Banner, too: "He's teaching me, bringing me up to be more than a labourer.''

 

 

- © Fairfax NZ News