SOLD: Beautiful Happyzine

By Hayley Gale, Pohara, Golden Bay

Day One

Location: Sylvester Hut, Kahurangi National Park.

When I signed up for the Eat Local Challenge I hadn’t given much thought as to how I would manage if I was away from home.

My first meal on this glorious sunny day, April 1st, is being eaten at 1,310 metres above sea level sitting on the deck of Sylvester Hut overlooking the mountains of the Kahurangi National Park.

I’m munching a bowlful of blueberries picked yesterday from our garden in Pohara, along with a couple of slices of my home-made organic wholemeal bread, topped with goats cheese from Meadowcroft Farm, Golden Bay. It’s delicious but I’m wondering how it’s going to sustain me on the climb up to the top of  1,695 metre-high Iron Peak, that I can see clearly today from the hut window.

Even more to the point, it will be the first tramp I have undertaken without chocolate!

As it turned out, the tramp was a classic, although I must confess I really would have enjoyed a bar of Cadbury’s on the top of the mountain.

With a wonderfully productive veggie garden, four chooks, an orchard and a freezer-full of lamb and mutton, my partner Steve, our 17-year-old son Sam and Oak, our hard-working WWOOFER(Willing Workers on Organic Farms) have all agreed to take part in the Challenge. We plan to supplement our own produce with other locally sourced ingredients, such as goat’s cheese, olive oil, nuts and maybe even some beef to give us a bit of variety. Steve has promised to go fishing off Tarakohe Wharf and I will collect mussels from Wainui Bay.

We have chosen organic wheat as the one grain permitted by the challenge, as we make our own bread and also have a pasta-making machine.

So far so good!