Shifting Soil + Sentiments
How two decades of living a dream changed one New Zealand eco-commune
By Alyson Sheppard
During my junior year of college in 2007, I studied environmental and economic issues in New Zealand with the International Honors Program. While studying there, I became increasingly interested in how one’s socio-economic status affects his or her environmental consciousness. During the first week of March, I lived on a commune run by an enthusiastic group of environmentalists. The following piece is an exploration of the past, present, and future of this commune and an assessment of what happens to good environmental intentions when a contrived community gets its hands on some serious cash.
Standing like a tree
With my roots down deep
My branches wide and open
Robina McCurdy sang as loudly as her 57-year-old voice would allow, stomping her bare feet in rhythm onto the cement. This was one of her favorite songs, and she loved sharing it with visitors. The group of student guests was in awe. Some tried to sing along, some just stared at her: bare soles tapping, thick from years of trotting through thorn-laced pastures and gravel roads; stringy hair dangling, bleached from spending decades in the sun. Her oversized t-shirt made her body appear smaller and frailer than her smile suggested. And her bright, happy eyes never let on that she and everyone around her were hiding a crushing, dark truth.
Robina is the creator and a founding member of the Tui intentional community of Golden Bay, New Zealand. Named after a local indigenous bird, the charitable society of roughly 35 members has striven to live in harmony with nature and each other for the past 22 years.
“We are experimenting with being the change we want to see,” Robina says.
In 1984, Robina and a small group of her friends were tired of living in a fast-paced world that increasingly marginalized communication between communities and the environment, so they formed their own village where they could make the rules and live as they wished. They bought roughly 130 acres of land overlooking the beaches of Wainui Bay, on the edge of the Abel Tasman National Park, for NZ$180,000 (a little more than US$107,000).
The 13 adults and nine kids (a mix of New Zealanders and Germans) lived in temporary accommodation for a year to “get a feel for the land before digging in,” Robina says. “Getting the relationships right—the human and the environmental—was more important than rushing.”
The group then obtained building and water permits and worked side-by-side to construct homes for each other, which, combined with their daily vegetarian communal meals, made the families bond very closely. “It was an emotional and passionate time,” Robina says.
The founders of Tui also planted an organic garden and a permaculture orchard, both of which are still cultivated year-round. Originally, the larger Golden Bay community was skeptical of Tui, but according to Robina, their alternative lifestyle is now accepted. She says that even though they are different, they have good intentions and people from other philosophies and nationalities have expressed their approval of the close-knit Tui community.
In recent years, though, some people have expressed their dissatisfaction with the community’s way of life. Some no one expected.
Down Comes the Rain
Over the years, Tui evolved a structured hierarchy of inhabitants. At the bottom are the visitors and Willing Workers on Organic Farms (WWOOFers), volunteers from all over the world who come and go, staying only a few weeks at a time. WWOOFers perform four hours of labor a day, six days a week in the organic garden and then receive a free room in the substance- and meat-free community house and free food from the garden. Visitors wanting to stay on the property without working must pay $25 a night into the Tui Charitable Trust—the financial institution responsible for maintaining the community.
Next in the hierarchy are the residents who have come to the farm and liked it enough to stay for an extended period. They usually work in the garden, but live on the Tui property in personal, mobile homesteads, such as converted buses. They pay dues to the Trust, have access to the garden, and attend regular bi-weekly community meetings. But they are not allowed to participate in the meetings.
After residing at Tui for a few years, a resident may apply for membership, which is then voted on by the members. Acceptance is dependent on work ethic and personality. Members pay dues, participate in two communal meals a week, and vote in meetings. Members are also allowed to build a permanent home on a location they choose on Tui land.
Reigning at the top of this Tui hierarchy are the founding members. They vote in all member meetings and sit on the Trust board, where they make monetary decisions on behalf of the entire community. In recent years, however, a handful of founding members have created controversy and rifts within Tui by ceasing associations with the community as a whole and opposing personal involvement in community affairs.
Called the “extended community,” these founding member trustees do not participate in communal meals, work in the organic garden or orchard, or even extract from these locally grown fruits and vegetables. They live in large houses in the hills and keep to themselves. Robina and Franz, a Dutchman, are two founding members who are not part of this elusive sector. Keith, however, is an extended community member who has been in Tui since the beginning. He says he has recently decided to step back and let the young families in to live the same dream he did.
“It’s not a question of just withdrawing and being separate,” Keith says. “We’re still fully part of the Tui community; we just have a different relationship.”
The extended community members are also board members for the Tui Balme and Wax co-operative company, which began in the Tui community but became so profitable it was annexed and is now run by only eight of the founding members. While it is economically independent from the Tui community, $20,000 a year is donated into the Tui Trust.
William, a tall man with knotted blonde hair and wrinkles who wears board shorts, became a member six years ago. He is in charge of labeling at the Balme company, and he calls the extended community members the “old hippies” of Tui. His says they have paid their dues and now want to live as they wish. If they want to drive a BMW sports car, they will, and they do, he says. William says the extended community members are millionaires—rich off real estate speculation in the nearby city of Nelson.
“This is an intentional community where people can experiment with what they want to try. And if capitalism is what they want to experiment with, that’s fine,” he says. “But if they get good at capitalism, I’m not OK with that.”
The riches of these founding members put them in an advantageous position over others in the community. All families are responsible for paying the $255 weekly dues into the Trust with money from their own income. Some members work in the co-operative Tui Bee Balmes and Waxes business, which Franz says pays well because the business is “super, super successful.” But most people have occupations outside of the community.
“For the people who come here with their own businesses, like crafts, or their own financial backing, or they work out in Golden Bay, finances are fine,” Robina says. “But for those who don’t have that, and they come here and need to make an income in a rural area…it’s tough.”
Robina supports herself by teaching educational seminars on eco-communes. She works with visitors on the farm and teaches them useful tips, such as saving seeds and caring for plants through to harvest. She incorporates the ideas of crop rotation and soil health.
“Because of the dues, people cannot really afford to just live here,” William says. “A lot of people are forced into leaving for periods of time and then returning later. You could say that it’s not really sustainable.”
Out Comes the Sun
Community sentiments are not the only things that have changed since the birth of Tui. In the beginning, the founding members avoided digging too deeply in the ground and constructed all of their homes by hand, using unconventional materials. Keith’s home has telephone poles for beams and mussel shells for insulation. Today, however, many homes are developed by contractors and built with all prefabricated materials. Septic tanks are also routed to drain into a pond near the beach.
After paying NZ$14,000 to lease a section of property (Tui does not believe in owning land) and having it approved by the trustees, members may begin building. There is a limit to how much they can spend on each square foot, but they may develop as they wish, as long as members care for the land as the board instructs them.
Franz stands at a new construction site and examines the progress of a new home. A bulldozer has recently come through to clear land for a driveway. “You used to have to beg the community to scar mother earth like this,” Franz says, shaking his head, “But times are changing.” And priorities have changed, too.
Despite the changes within Tui, new people keep coming and most members are satisfied. William says that even though he is disgusted with the practices of the extended community, he still wishes he had been on the farm since the beginning because he feels that he wasted his life being self-centered.
“Here, I feel protected,” he says. “Protected from myself. This place keeps me honest, you know? We remind each other of what our purpose is.”
Robina tries to bridge relations between the original members and younger residents by encouraging both of them to work in the garden, participate in communal meals, and sing old Tui songs.
“As people get older, their interests change,” Franz says. “It’s hard to keep people motivated. When we started out, we were quite cohesive and our cohesion was visible. Now we have a bunch of older people who don’t do so much anymore and we have a bunch of younger people who come in and see them and say, ‘Oh, it’s kind of optional.’”
Tui now wants to attract mainly young couples and has made the maximum age limit for acceptance 34 years old.
Born is the fruit
Of the heart that is open to be
Standing like a tree
“This is an experiment and we ain’t the greatest model,” Robina says. “We’re just one among many and we’re just driving. We’re not getting it perfect.”
Robina and Franz worry about the direction in which their old friends are going and about what direction the new members will take them in. The complex contradictions within their community are hard to ignore. The argument that environmentalism is a plight only of the middle class proves itself in the Tui eco-commune, as the poor can’t get in and the rich can’t wait to get out.
“I don’t mean to complain,” Robina says, “but people here are too self-absorbed.” She is afraid that people do not work hard enough to make up for the Tui resources they consume. Even though the orchard grows everything from kiwis to avocados, Robina still must buy produce from town to feed visitors. Next year, she is planting more crops to increase productivity.
“I want to make this place really accessible to young people without sabotaging ourselves,” Robina says, letting out a deep breath strong enough to blow all the seedlings off of a whitened dandelion. “Because if things go my way, we’re going to be here forever.”
Alyson Sheppard recently graduated cum laude from Boston University with a B.S. in Journalism and a minor in International Relations. For her junior year, she traveled with the International Honors Program “Rethinking Globalization” to England, Tanzania, India, New Zealand, and Mexico.