by Robina McCurdy

In Easter 2000, Earthcare Design embarked on the ecovillage design of Valley Farm, situated between Paeora and Thames, at the base of the Coromandel Peninsula in Aotearoa New Zealand. It is 400 acres of pristine, fertile river valley surrounded by rolling hills, a wilderness sanctuary dense with native forest.

This particular ecovillage design called on everything I knew. The client-landowners are practical visionaries, with enough group involvement, `getting the job done' and business experience behind them not to get too `starry eyed'. Valley Farm is a designer's dream — it is a primarily north facing valley with all of the elements present. There is an abundance of water for irrigation, with sufficient head on the streams for household water supply and to power a water ram for electricity generation. Forests have regenerated on most of the hilly area after heavy logging by early settlers, and there is minimal erosion. The pastures are in already in mixed herb ley, bringing vitality to the soil and health to the cows that graze on them.

As we familiarised ourselves with the site, the zoning became obvious. The neck of land through which everyone must pass to enter the wider valley should be the village `Cultural Centre': the interface between residents and visitors. There we placed a multi-purpose community centre, administration office, cafe, display nursery, arts-craft businesses, small landscaped recreation park, car park, visitors accommodation and another major business.

The middle part of the farm is a `Settlement Area' — for housing, Zones 1-3 gardens and tree crops, interspersed with smaller livestock. Surrounding this is the typical Zone 4 production area, with high value timber trees and large animal grazing. The back part of the valley, which has a different quality about it, is a `Wilderness Area' — for light eco-tourism pursuits and retreat cabins, with the valley area fenced off and managed by cows on an ecologically sensitive rotation.

There is a question of where to place an intensive use, `outside world interface' commercial area in an ecovillage. My experience has been that mixing commercial use with residential areas is a recipe for conflict. The highest visitor turnover for Valley Farm will be their Educational Centre, planned as a small scale NZ equivalent of the Centre for Appropriate Technology in Wales and the Permaculture Research Institute in Australia, and catering for environmental education school groups, independent workshops etc. We positioned this on an area of land separated by a stream, and adjacent to the Cultural Centre, at the entrance to the valley.

Housing density was another major question for our team. My personal bias towards `cluster housing' was tempered by the client's preferences for a more spread out approach, the tendency of the lower areas of the land to rare `freak flooding', and the restraints of the Resource Consent (an application for conditional use of land to the Local Authority, required by law under NZ's Resource Management Act). Denis Scott will take our broad scale design to the next level, pulling in specialists in hydrology, archaeology, roads etc., to assess and validate the ecological viability of the site for this kind of land use. Denis's guesstimate of the permissible number of house sites is 13-15. House site selection will be effected via dialogue with the Te Hue Land Trust, and after common agreement a site is secured by an agreed deposit payable to the Land Trust. House site boundaries will be determined by the Trust in consultation with the resident, with fences bordering grazing pasture being the responsibility of the Trust. There will be adequate space for each household to have a small family garden. Community gardens will provide fruit and vegetables to meet the majority of household needs.

Where houses are close together and the topography is suitable their grey water will feed into a central evapo-transpiration bed, and more isolated houses will have their own grey water systems. Each household is required to have its own composting toilet system.

The financial investment these households bring will freehold the land and meet the capital costs of developing the infrastructure and establishing on-site cottage industries.

Cottage industries will include a bottled `mineral water' plant, time-share cabins, native tree nursery, honey production, medicinal herb farming and a possum-based "Eco Fur" business (in NZ, these introduced animals wreak havoc). A little eco-tourism, including pony trekking, is planned as well as field days and building workshops demonstrating innovative, eco-friendly building methods. This project not only provides investors with stunning home sites, but will also provide income from cottage industries that they may not even work in. There is also potential to work in these ventures. Valley Farm's projected income from cottage industries on the property for the next 12 months is $192,339.

The legal structure is a Land Holding Trust with shareholders being trustees or directors of the Trust. If the resident (shareholder) needs to leave the project, the share can be surrendered or redeemed for initial investment plus appreciation and improvements, so that provision is made for people to leave without losing their life savings. There is also provision for capital gain on the portion of investment allocated for the development of the cottage industries. These industries, while controlled by the shareholders in the Land Trust, will be operated under a Limited Liability Company administered along co-operative lines.

Valley Farm is poised between being a farm and an ecovillage. The bridge between present and future, dream and reality, is a special kind of people — people prepared to invest in a balanced relationship between humanity and the natural world, which blends the physical, spiritual, social, economic and ecological. All enquiries welcome.

Robina McCurdy
Earthcare Education Aotearoa Tui Community,
Wainui Bay, RD1, Takaka Aotearoa/ New Zealand
E-mail: robina@win.co.nz