Fruit Bowl and Food Basket
It’s difficult for me to think of another region (off the top of my head) that can hold a candle to Hawke’s Bay at this time of the year for fresh fruit and produce. Rebranding itself as Wine Country in more recent years, it’s been good for its growing reputation as a wine producing region but to me it’s still simply the ‘fruitbowl’ of New Zealand.
I returned to New Zealand in February this year wanting to hear the seasons change. Rural living to me serves as both an actual as well as a visual reminder of when and how the seasons change. My heart sings, I mean really out loud, full on Kimbra, ‘Simply on my Lips’ singing it’s that soul nurturing to me.
Eyeing half grown crops of sweet corn in the paddocks makes my mind-drool. I will the corn ears to grow faster because it’s one of my favourite vegetables. All things being equal, I heard on the applevine it’s going to be a bumper season for apples this year. The asparagus pickers have also been hard at it bringing in the spears, it’s back breaking work but it’s harvest time.
It’s berry season in the Bay right now and the air is punctuated with that tantalising berry smell, crisp and mesmerising. My tastebuds are forced into voluntary surrender just thinking about them! I live in a ‘foodie’s paradise’.
The Strawberry Patch
If you love berries (particularly strawberries) the place for you to be is at ‘The Strawberry Patch’ just on the outskirts of Havelock North. This local business is one of the most ‘ill kept secrets’ in the region. The berries are big but flavoursome and the reason people search the Patch out is because the ice-creams are made from the fruit right out of the paddock next door.
“In botanical language, a berry or true berry is a simple fruit having seeds and pulp produced from a single ovary. The true berry is the most common type of fleshy fruit in which the entire ovary wall ripens into an edible pericarp. The flowers of these plants have a superior ovary and one or more carpels within a thin covering and fleshy interiors. The seeds are embedded in the common flesh of the ovary.
The true berries are dominated by the family Ericaceae, many of which are hardy in the subarctic, the more commonly known ones are: Blueberry (Vaccinium spp), Cranberry (Vaccinium spp) and Strawberry (Fragaria).” So, you can pick your strawbs, they add the ice-cream or yogurt and within minutes you’re in paradise!
Soul Food
Around my home town of Waipukurau farmers are making hay while the sun shines and watching the hills brown up faster than a turkey dinner. City folk see it, country folk live it and people like me coming back to it hear the tribal earth rhythms. It’s music to our soul.
I don’t know why exactly but the whole tribal earth rhythms has made me think about the lake near the Waipukurau township called Lake Hatuma. One day I would like to see the original spelling of the lake’s name reinstated as Whatuma if only out of respect for the lake’s significance in the town’s history. It was the ‘food basket’ for both Maori and European settler alike. As organic as you got in that day and age!
Whatuma (Lake Hatuma)
The lake’s continued ecological function has not been lost on the plant and animal life that can still be found there. The rare swamp nettle (Urtica linearifolia) that is present in the willow forests of the western shore is now so abundant that it might be considered among the best populations in Hawke’s Bay. This endemic species is listed as nationally threatened. It is known from a handful of other wetland sites in the Hawke’s Bay lowlands including Lakes Poukawa, Oingo and Runanga.
Between 1999-2004 twenty-four species of waterbirds were recorded from Lake Hatuma though not all of them may still be present. The list included the N.Z. Dabchick (an uncommon endemic that gathers in the winter on the lake) and the Australasian Bittern (a rare native, resident at the lake). Both are listed as threatened by the Department of Conservation.
Rare Birds
The list also includes two native wetland birds a little more common nationally but now very rare in Hawke’s Bay, they are the Spotless Crake and Marsh Crake. Australasian Bitterns, however, were seen and heard calling along the western side of the lake over successive years and so it would seem at least one rare species is still present in reasonable numbers. It appears that this part of Lake Hatuma may be one of the best remaining sites for the species in Hawke’s Bay. The dense raupo backed by willow forest, whilst not good for recreational hunters, seems to suit these rare birds well.
Earlier this year, the Black-front dotterel, a species not previously recorded was seen at the edges of the wetland. The numbers of Pied stilt, Black swan and White-faced heron were higher than in a 2005 survey though there was no sign of the Australasian bittern. Surveyors say this may have been because the survey was not within the breeding season when the males are the most vocal. The bittern’s ability for camouflage also seemed to exacerbate the efforts of those trying to locate them.
Local experts from the Department of Conservation did confirm however that the Australasian bittern is still present at the lake as is the white heron, cattle egret and the marsh and spotless crakes.” Whether a ‘fruit bowl’ or a food basket, the region seems to have life. May it continue!
