Author. Charles Buenconsejo — 05/ 08/ 2021
Months before the government announcement of Level 4 lockdown to fight COVID-19, New Zealand society started to resemble my experiences of America’s ‘Black Friday’ shopping hysteria. Grocery stores and garden centres had bare shelves, but I was fortunate enough to have my own mini DIY polytunnel.
Author. Charles Buenconsejo — 29/ 08/ 2019
Back to my roots. Words and images by Charles Buenconsejo
I grew up in paradise, in a small town called Consolacion on the beautiful island of Cebu in the Philippines. Reminiscing about my roots, I can’t stop thinking about the way our entire community used to be and how beautiful the town was before progress arrived.
Author. Stone Soup — 27/ 08/ 2019
Organic material, particularly from food, makes up the largest proportion of waste in the average Auckland refuse bin, and qualifies as the largest domestic contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.
Author. Stone Soup — 27/ 08/ 2019
Some people are born gardeners.
I’m not among them, but my partner, Phil, can literally make the desert bloom. When we lived on the northern edge of the Sonoran Desert, Phil grew my go-to oasis on the small square of our back patio, a container garden just outside the kitchen door. It came complete with a small fountain fed by stored rainwater, serving hummingbirds as well as me.
Author. Angela Clifford — 19/ 10/ 2018
As a family, we love mushroom hunting, and from open paddocks for ‘fieldies’ to forests for porcini, North Canterbury provides no end of habitat for adventure. It was pretty exciting stuff when my babies were little – nature’s own treasure hunt, full of intrigue and mystery. They would make so much noise that I’d tell them that if they weren’t quieter, the mushrooms would get scared and pull their heads below ground again.
Author. Stone Soup — 03/ 03/ 2018
I have to confess I am already a fully signed-up cow-shit lover. Woofers that stay with us at Maunga Kereru, our biodynamic lifestyle block 45 minutes north of Auckland, will tell you that you can’t stay here long without getting down and dirty with our cows’ green gold.
Author. Ginny Grant — 03/ 03/ 2018
I just couldn’t seem to co-ordinate a time to get to one of Jerome’s sourdough baking classes. But knowing half a dozen bread obsessives that have done his class, the odds of getting my hands on some starter and the recipe was always looking good.
Author. Martyn Pepperell — 02/ 03/ 2018
Over the last five years, Olly Perryman, the Christchurch-raised electronic music producer better known as Fis, has marked himself out on the world stage as one of New Zealand’s most adventurous, open-eared and celebrated experimental music makers.
Author. The Next Meal — 02/ 03/ 2018
This fermented tomato and chilli recipe was inspired by tomatoes going bad at home as well as already-gone-bad tomatoes at markets – you can pick up kilograms of them from markets like Avondale or Otara in Auckland for pocket change.
Author. Stone Soup — 04/ 10/ 2017
Food for Soil, Bugs, Plants, Humans.
The clay seed ball has been used for thousands of years as an effective tool and technique for the growing of agricultural crops and re-greening large areas of land. In recent times, they have been popularised through the Guerrilla Gardening movement. Seed balls are especially well known through Masanobu Fukuoka, a permaculture father figure who used them to naturally farm record breaking yields of rice on his organic farm.
Author. Stone Soup — 14/ 09/ 2017
A dyed-in-the-wool maker and an artsy type by trade, Jess Hemmings has a magpie’s eye for lost things. “It’s so ridiculous,” she says, “but I always come home from places with all this stuff in my pockets.” Could be a bit of greenery, a feather, anything. When her flat ran out of teaspoons a year ago, her thoughts drifted to a pile of gnarled sea wood she’d brought back from the beach. She decided to carve out her own spoons. “And I just found the shapes really interesting,” she smiles, “So I got them cast.”
Author. Stone Soup — 28/ 02/ 2017
We’ve always had a tangy-tongued approach to food, constantly craving the power of sour that pickles and ferments can bring. It’s only recently on our own bacteria-driven journey that we’ve developed a new appreciation for what can be done with some salt, water, vinegar and a bunch of beautiful produce. Ingredients you thought you knew develop a whole new personality – our pickled watermelon rinds are a good example of this – but the best part is capturing the abundance of one season and celebrating those proceeds all year round.
Author. Aaron McLean — 08/ 02/ 2017
“The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common,
But lets the greater felon loose
Who steals the common from off the goose.”
— anonymous protest poem from the 17th century.
Author. Aaron McLean — 10/ 06/ 2016
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” – Chinese Proverb
