When people are able to step on the land where their food comes from, it sparks something special. A connection between people, and the earth. Dylan Parker, who is involved in many food growing projects in the Christchurch area, knows this first hand. When he was a kid, Dylan’s grandparents owned a biodynamic farm in Fairlie. He spent time there, as well as in the Marlborough Sounds, foraging for berries and mushrooms. Deeply passionate about growing food and cultivating a relationship with land, he dedicates his energy to help more people have the opportunity to connect with place, even if they are living in urban areas.
The questions Dylan’s work seeks to address are ones we want to answer through Village Agrarians too. How can we help more people be empowered to grow food and to have a relationship with land and place? How can food be produced in a sustainable and equitable way? Many of the projects Dylan is working on in Christchurch contain answers to these questions.
Cultivate Christchurch, Dylan’s mainstay, provides paid internships for young people where they learn to grow food as well as develop job skills. He says one of the most powerful things about this work is when older interns have the opportunity to teach newer interns. He enjoys watching knowledge passed between people and he believes the internship is a valuable life experience, showing young people you do not need to have a job in a building, that working outside is valid too. The program is an entry point for some of the interns to go on to study Organic Horticulture at the BHU. Dylan mentioned that while many interns become very interested in sustainable food production through their internship at Cultivate, difficulty in accessing land and jobs in the field is a challenge that sadly prevents many from continuing.
While the challenge new growers face in finding land is ongoing and something Village Agrarians hope to help address, fortunately, Dylan and some friends have accessed land through the BHU to steward a project called Crooked Roots. Crooked Roots is a farm focused on a mixture of really slow crops, for example Burdock and Celeriac, as well as dye plants like woad and Japanese Indigo, and seedlings trees. The friends all work on the project on their days off, and are open source with anything they are growing. The group is keen to share seeds and knowledge with anyone who is interested, and is glad to have the opportunity to grow what they want, focusing on crops that are too slow, or different, for many growers to cultivate. Excited to have dye plants that will be red, blue and yellow, Dylan looks forward to using these primary colors to make ink for woodblock printing!
In addition to these two projects, Dylan is moving intentionally to help activate a new project in the Red Zone along the Ōtākaro Avon River Corridor. It is a beautiful resource the city has, and the project aims to create a community engagement site with demonstration gardens so that people can connect with place, and be empowered to grow food themselves.
We were so excited to learn about all of these projects that Dylan is involved with and the ways that they are creating the more sustainable, equitable and connected food system we are envisioning for tomorrow. If you want to connect with Dylan to learn more about his work, check him out on Instagram at @Crookedroots.nz and @Farmerdillo. You can also read about and support the work of Cultivate Christchurch on their website.
Written by Naomi Morgan
Photos by Dylan Parker
