Life is sweet on this Dunedin berry farm. Kim Dungey pays a visit.
When they were teens, Hannah Booiman and her brothers brought a ‘‘nifty 50’’ scooter home from a tip shop and rode it up and down a steep paddock on their Fairfield property.
When they weren’t having fun on scooters, dirt bikes and grass carts, the trio were picking fruit from the family’s blueberry bushes, canoeing on the nearby ponds and building huts in the bush - an idyllic lifestyle that is now being enjoyed by Mrs Booiman’s own children.
After travelling overseas in their 20s, Mrs Booiman and then boyfriend Vinnie returned to New Zealand and married in the garden on her parents’ blueberry farm.
They have since taken over Blue Willow Blueberries, selling the fruit at the Otago Farmers’ Market, supplying organic store Taste Nature, running pick-your-own sessions and selling frozen berries year-round via their website.
Two years ago, they also built a sprawling but unpretentious house where Mrs Booiman rode the bright red scooter as a teenager.
Gorse and gum trees had to be removed, and substantial ground works and backfill were required to create a building platform on the sloping ground. But the reward was a superb view of their picturesque ponds and sheltered garden.
‘‘Earthworks, engineering and retaining was a huge part of the job and absorbed a large portion of our budget before we even got out of the ground,’’ she says, explaining that a retaining wall on the property is 30m long and 2.7m at its highest point.
Architectural designer Simon Clegg, now of Clegg Geremia Architecture, ‘‘nestled’’ the house into the hillside and went for a subtle mid-century feel.
‘‘It’s very long and narrow so all the rooms are built to the front, with the hallway down the back,’’ Mrs Booiman says, adding the house was built by C. Marshall Builders.
‘‘We basically get all-day sun and [it’s designed] for passive heat to come in and heat the concrete floors.’’
‘‘The exterior cladding is Siberian larch and the idea was that we would paint it black so the outside was darker. Then, on the inside, we tried to keep things bright, fresh and natural with concrete and timber.’’
Her sister-in-law, who is an interior designer, helped with the styling and after hearing what it would cost to build the driveway up to the garage, suggested a rethink.
Instead, they turned the garage area into the main bedroom, giving them a larger space and extra storage; the move also freed up their original bedroom for guests.
In another example of family input, one of Mrs Booiman’s brothers made their dining table from totara and built the butcher’s block that serves as a kitchen island, using a 3.7m long slab of matai from the West Coast.
Mrs Booiman says they wanted the house to be liveable and tried to ‘‘do things very reasonably’’.
‘‘I read articles where people have splurged on a $10,000 bath from Germany or got something craned into their place from wherever. We don’t have that sort of stuff.’’
The features they did invest in included underfloor heating, floor-to-ceiling bathroom tiles and a Stovax log burner for ambience in winter. They also added a Bora induction cooktop with a built-in extractor fan, which meant they could keep the kitchen more open and the view to their fruit trees was not interrupted.
The open-plan kitchen-dining-living area is positioned slightly lower than the other rooms, resulting in a higher ceiling in that part of the home.
The narrow building platform meant there was no space for a mud room or a butler’s pantry but they did get the indoor-outdoor flow they wanted, thanks to a large deck at the front of the house.
This outdoor area is the ‘‘best place to sit after a day’s work’’, Mrs Booiman says, adding there are still jobs to do around the property but running the organic orchard, raising children and holding down day jobs - she as a nurse, her husband as Silver Fern Farms’ general manager of livestock - doesn’t leave them with a lot of spare time.
The orchard was established about 60 years ago by a man who exported the fruit and employed local children as pickers, she adds.
‘‘He paid the boys more than the girls. You’d never get away with that now.’’
Gradually, they cleared the scrub, put up nets and increased the number of bushes from 800 to 2000. But it wasn’t until the Booimans bought the business and began marketing it on social media that it really took off.
Now, it’s not uncommon to have more than 300 members of the public picking on weekends in summer.
While the Johnsons still take turns manning the market stall, Walter and Willow Booiman, 5 and 7, also like to help out - whether it’s picking fruit, moving firewood or checking traps with their father as part of the Chain Hills Restoration Project.
Possums might be unwelcome on the property but other creatures, including pet ducks and lambs, chickens, kunekune pigs, bees and dog Otto, are a large part of family life.
Owning a lifestyle block is often referred to as a ‘‘life sentence’’ because there is always work to be done, Mrs Booiman says. However, being active keeps them fit and healthy.
‘‘I feel very grateful that all our hard work means we have the ability to give our kids all the experiences I had growing up with pets and a vegetable patch.’’
‘‘To meet Vinnie, spend time travelling overseas and know we both wanted to come back and end up living this lifestyle is a dream come true.’’
‘‘It really is our tranquil oasis and there’s nowhere we would rather be.’’
