When you visit Klaus Lotz on his small plot of community-owned land in the Far North settlement of Matapouri you'll first be offered a cup of coffee. That might seem like commonplace Kiwi hospitality, but what he's offering is a coffee heated with biogas made from cow dung recently collected in a wheelbarrow.
Photo: RNZ/Susan Murray
If you take milk, it will have come from the goat living beside the greenhouse.
The goats are fed on branches from Klaus's flourishing – and profitable – food forest. The waste parts of the branches will be chipped and used as goat bedding, which, along with any dung, will eventually end up as compost.
The food forest boasts over 200 species, some grown for their fruit, some just for erosion control or animal fodder, and mulch.
It's a verdant kaleidoscope of tropical texture – bananas, tamarillos, avocados, coffee, macadamias, pineapples, lucuma fruit, inga beans and cherimoya provide food for humans, as well as tui, kereru and kiwi.
Klaus and his family also run a market garden and workshop-based educational programmes in Matapouri.
Photo: RNZ/Susan Murray
Building up good soil is all-important to Klaus, and to get it he uses permaculture, bio-dynamic techniques (PermaDynamics), and something he learned as a young European town boy in the Amazon jungle over 30 years ago.
There, he worked alongside a man called Ernst Goetsch who'd developed a sophisticated system using a range of plants (native and exotic) at just the right time to boost the metabolism of the soil.
"It was mind-boggling. I knew this technique was good ... but it's, again and again, surprising how fast you can increase the organic matter in the soil when using this technique."
After spending a couple of hours with Klaus Lotz, it's also no surprise to hear him talk about flora in human terms.
"For me, any plant, even if it is a weed, it is still a staff member. Sometimes you have to make them (trees) redundant... Some might be permanently employed here, they might even outlive me."
That may not be usual farmer-speak, but Klaus has a farmer's desires.
"I'm passionate about making the land the most fertile it can be and producing the most diverse and high-quality food possible, and at the same time encouraging wildlife."
"We have a fantastic life quality. We have fantastic food to eat, a great environment to work in."
It's hard work, but fun and Lotz jokes that the "greatest fine liquid fertiliser we use is called sweat".
"What we're doing here is something like frugal hedonism."
