Jared Hiakita has been germinating a seed of an idea while nurturing his food forest at the off-grid family farm in Hokianga. The seed has grown into a charity which will grow and donate fruit tree seedlings to local marae so locals can grow and harvest their own fruit.

It's hoped a fruit tree nursery taking shape in the Far North will help local people rely less heavily on supermarket shelves.

Jared Hiakita is co-founder of the charity ōNuku and is driving the venture on the north side of Hokianga Harbour, where he lives off grid in a "tiny house" with his young family.

The pandemic and extreme weather events have made people realise how quickly food might become scarce, he says, so his social enterprise wants to help more locals grow their own.

The plan is to nurture and donate fruit tree seedlings to marae and kura in the area and also sell the trees in order to fund the donations.

Knowledge has been lost, according to Hiakita, who also wants to help restore gardening skills.

"My uncles told me these amazing stories about their gardens that they had growing up, that my Nan and my Koro were responsible for, and that they would have to go and pitch in to maintain.

"By the time I was being told these stories, that's all they were. They were just stories. It wasn't real anymore because like everyone else, they got caught in the wave of urban drift and kind of moved away from that way of life."

He hopes the nursery will be operational by the end of the year with fruit trees being propagated from a 300 square metre shade house and potting shed, being built around the corner from the home he shares with partner and co-founder Rangimarie Mules.

"Since Covid I've definitely noticed a huge rise in people's interest and desire to learn how to grow food so that we can get through, you know, hardships."

The nursery will become headquarters for not only propagation but education.

"It'll become an orchard in itself and just a space of learning, a space where resources are created and disseminated out to the community."

It's not Hiakita's first venture into humanitarian work. In 2019, the Muhammad Ali Centre in the United States picked him out as one of the world's top change-makers for his work providing free education and resources to Maori.

As an activist for zero waste and affordable housing, he is living his principles and showed Country Life his solar-powered home surrounded by a flourishing food forest.

On terraces below his home, he practices a dense and varied food growing system known as syntropic agroforestry, learnt with the help of the Lotz family, previously featured on Country Life…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details