For Waikato organic farmer Brittany Stembridge, the key to producing the best tasting vegetables with low environmental impact is all in the soil.
Recently winning the Organic NZ Emerging Leader of the Year award at the Organic NZ Awards is validation for the hard work she has put into making her business Tomtit Farm a success.
“The award recognises somebody working in an inspiring leadership role in the New Zealand organics/kai atua sector with under five years’ experience, and this year there was a particular emphasis on environmental protection and leading the way to mitigate climate change, and build a just society in harmony with nature and the planet. So that’s what we took away this year, which is really cool.”
Being certified organic Brit says is all in the health of the soil and coming from a background of nutrition, she likes to think of the soil like a human stomach.
“Our number one goal is to have really healthy living soil. For example, when a person has a diverse variety of foods in their diet with lots of different colours and different vegetables they build and fuel a healthy gut microbiome, and this results in a healthy person. It’s the same with the soil – if you have lots of different plants growing on the top of the soil, you’re going to build more life and diversity underneath the soil. So essentially we are building a living ecosystem in the soil, which builds healthy plants above the soil.” she says.
Located in Matangi, just ten minutes out of Kirikiriroa, Hamilton, Tomtit Farm is the veggie patch Brit and her husband James created in 2019.
Having worked in nutrition for many years, Brit was keen to use her knowledge in a way that would have more influence on people’s health and wellbeing.
“I had been working in health research, and I wanted to make an impact at that grassroots level with my nutrition.”
The opportunity to utilise a hectare of land on Brit’s parents’ lifestyle block was the kickstart to their market gardening enterprise.
“We thought – why don’t we have a go at growing good quality sustainable food. If we can get a few people to eat some local, healthy food that’s probably more than I can ever achieve in my whole life by just telling people,” she laughs.
With the good life beckoning, the couple upped sticks from Auckland, found work in Hamilton and began gardening.
For Brit this meant a part time job at Waikato University so she could put time into developing the garden, while James found full time work in Agri-banking utilising his financial skills in the business.
“It was quite full on, trying to do a job and run a farm at the same time. We had to be quite smart about the way we set the business model up.”
The farm offers harvest boxes of seasonal vegetables. Customers can choose to order weekly, fortnightly or for the season with a seasonal community supported agriculture (CSA) subscription.
“We’ve always run it as a subscription base/veggie harvest of the week model because when we first started it was just me and I was still working part time. I didn’t have time to go to markets on the weekend.”
Little did they know that the Covid pandemic was just around the corner when they first started and what this would mean for online businesses.
“When Covid hit, it was kind of good timing because everybody slowed down. We were already set up online. It was good and bad because we were so small and new to growing, and we had so much attention and not enough food to feed all of the families who wanted to support us. Not that it’s a bad thing. We got our name out there and just did our best at the time.”
At the end of 2020, Brit gave up her job at the university and went full time in the garden.
“I found it really hard to focus on my other job when all I wanted to do was be outside in the garden. And it’s been really awesome working full time in the garden every day. I feel very lucky to have that opportunity. Don’t get me wrong when it’s raining and freezing cold, I am so envious of everybody inside,” she laughs.
Sticking with the CSA model, Tomtit Farms has organically grown since Covid put some wind in their sails.
The model is an important part of the young farmer’s ethos; it’s a way for Brit and James to build meaningful relationships with their customers that go beyond a basic sales’ transaction.
Tomtit Farm customers commit to purchasing a season’s subscription; where they are investing in the farm for the upcoming season, and in return they receive a share of the harvest each week.
“This is a way the community can get behind and support their local farmer and local food system. Throughout the ups and downs of the season without any price fluctuations. Ensuring the farmer gets a fair price for the food they grow and allowing the farmer to focus on growing good quality food for families in their community.”
Building those relationships with customers includes more than just selling them vegetables, Brit also has set up a Facebook community page to sell seedlings, share gardening tips and recipe ideas.
“We’re trying to build that real community around food. Building confidence in cooking with seasonal vegetables, and just thinking outside the box and having fun when it comes to food.”
As well as selling organic vegetables, herbs, salad greens and micro-greens, they also sell flowers and hold Pick Your Own Flowers’ days which usually run from December – May.
“On our PYO flowers days, all you can hear is laughter, people enjoy being amongst nature. The rows of flowers are nestled amongst the vegetables to show how everything is grown and providing an opportunity for people to think about where their food comes from.”
Produce is also available at their farm fridge at 165c Matangi Road at the Front Paddock Cafe.
They also deliver locally to Hamilton, Matangi, Tamahere, Cambridge and Te Awamutu on Tuesdays.
Check out what the farm has to offer at www.tomtitfarm.com.
