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Working with the earth

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Coral Ramiro is the manager of Earth Stewards certified organic urban farm in Kirikiriroa Hamilton, and an alumna of the Earthworkers Hort 101 programme.

She tells her story to Sarah Smuts-Kennedy.  

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Coral’s journey to organic regenerative growing 

Sarah began by asking Coral how she became a regenerative grower and how the Earthworkers course helped shape her path.

“My journey into regenerative farming began far from the soil and was an unexpected turn,” says Coral. “I actually trained as an interior designer in Spain, but had to move to London in 2008 after the recession made it impossible to find any work there. It was in London while living in a tiny flat with no access to nature, that I started to notice I was developing a longing for a connection to the outdoors.”

So when the opportunity arose to volunteer at one of London’s educational farms, Coral joined the team.

“I have always been a vegan passionate about sustainable food systems, so I quickly gravitated towards the growing team, where I discovered a deep sense of belonging with like-minded individuals who shared a desire to create a food system that nourishes both people and the planet.”

ABOVE: Left – polycropping at Earth Stewards; right – Coral Ramiro
Photos: Sarah Smuts-Kennedy

Challenges: catalysts for change

But despite her growing passion, she faced challenges breaking into the sector due to a lack of experience. This was a catalyst for Coral and her partner embarking on their big OE (overseas experience), first going to Australia before ultimately landing in New Zealand.

“I completed my Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) at Whanganui Eco School before I was lucky to secure my first role in the sector at Earth Stewards in 2019, just as the farm was getting off the ground,” says Coral.

During Covid-19 Earth Stewards lost its manager and Coral was encouraged to step up and take the reins. It was a daunting task, but luckily six months later, she was invited to take the Earthworkers Hort 101 course, which proved to be a pivotal moment in her career.

Earthworkers course: valuable learning

“The course really opened doors for me,” says Coral. “It helped me become an informed decision-maker. I needed to understand something before I can truly embrace it. The course gave me the base knowledge of why we do what we do, especially when it comes to growing regeneratively and organically. I came away with answers that gave me clarity and confidence in my role as a market garden manager.”

One of the key takeaways for Coral was understanding the science behind regenerative practices, particularly the relationship between soil microbiology, chemistry, minerals, and nutrients.

“It was overwhelming at first. I had a headache for days trying to absorb all the new information, but by the end of the course, I really understood how everything fits together.”

As a creative person, Coral also loved how polycropping allowed her to apply her design skills to farming.

“I get a lot of joy from the colour patterns that appear across the beds over the growing season. We got really excited at Earth Stewards as a team about planning our polycrops, and it gave us a simple way to contribute and learn together.”

“I needed to understand the why behind what we do—why we grow in ways to protect the soil and the whole ecosystem” – Coral Ramiro

Supportive network of growers

In addition to the valuable knowledge gained, the Earthworkers course provided her with the opportunity to connect with other like-minded growers.

“Through the course, I met Jenny Lux of Lux Organics and Brit from Tomtit Farms, and we’ve formed a lasting, supportive connection. Our farms collaborate by sharing produce, seedlings, and knowledge, and we’ve visited each other’s farms, like Jenny’s in Rotorua. It’s been a reminder that we’re not alone. Being part of a network of like-minded growers makes all the difference, especially in a field where the challenges can feel isolating.”

Coral has found the Earthworkers support network to be crucial for her and the Earth Stewards team, especially when it comes to managing pest and disease pressures.

“Having access to the post-course WhatsApp group has been vital. It’s reassuring to see other growers experiencing the same challenges—it makes you feel better about the difficulties you’re facing.”

ABOVE LEFT: Earthworkers participants at Highwic House, left to right: Coral Ramiro, Richard Conyngham, Jenny Lux, Pippa Hayes and Kaitlyn Lamb
ABOVE RIGHT: Coral, standing in the centre, and Brit Stembridge at the front, with other Earthworker participants at Highwic House, learning ‘flipping beds’ with no-till systems. Photos: Sarah Smuts-Kennedy

Stepping up to share knowledge and innovation

“Brit and I are excited to host the 2025 Earthworkers Hort 101 course at Earth Stewards and Tomtit Farms. The Earthworkers course was a game-changer for us, and being able to see these practices in action at the FTLOB (For the Love of Bees) model farm OMG in Auckland really made it feel real and achievable. Now, as we step into hosting the course on our own farms, we hope to inspire local growers in Waikato to embrace biology-first regenerative growing systems.”

Coral’s enthusiasm for soil science as a result of the Earthworkers course led her to undertake more study with Dr Elaine Ingham via the Soil Food Web. Participants in the next Earthworkers course in March 2025 will be able to see some of the research project she did.

Earth Stewards is certified organic with OrganicFarmNZ. It has come a long way since its early days, and Coral and the team will share some of the farm’s innovations with course participants in March.

Enhancing soils with compost and cover crops

“One of the things we’re really proud of is our ability to grow all the inputs we need to produce high-quality compost. We’re now self-sufficient in compost production, which we use for our seed-raising mix. Knowing that we control the quality of our seedlings has made a huge difference.”

“We’ve also had our first successful season managing our cover crops, allowing us to have in-situ mulch on most of our beds. This has drastically improved our moisture management and weed control, while also providing nutrition to the plants as they grow.” “This season while we were planting out our seedlings we experienced the soil being bouncy underfoot for the first time, and found preparing for planting carrots much easier. Over time we are seeing a change in the physical conditions of the farm as a result of the practices we are using.”

ABOVE: Abundant growth in the Earth Stewards greenhouse. Photos: Sarah Smuts-Kennedy

Finding the best sales model

At Earth Stewards they have also made real progress with their sales system, which they discovered is just as important as the growing.

“We started out doing farmers’ markets and had just started implementing the CSA (community supported agriculture) model as Covid started,” Coral recalls. “In a few weeks we went from doing a few CSA boxes to over 100, which put us under untenable pressure. It took us a while to find the right balance, and model, for selling our produce, but now we have a thriving shop on site which is open one day a week with talk of opening another day.”

“On sunny days there is a queue to buy produce which comes from a few local growers we are collaborating with. This gives us a very practical way to contribute to local growers who are also needing to sell their produce.”

The importance of a sense of community in organic regenerative farming is huge. Farming can be isolating, especially when you’re committed to healing the ecosystem the community gets even smaller. But for Coral and others the Earthworkers network has helped them feel supported and connected to others who are facing similar challenges.

“Together, we’re learning, growing, and turning our farms into models of biology-first regenerative practice.”

Earthworkers Hort 101

24–28 March 2025, Hamilton

Hosted by:

  • Coral Ramiro and team at Earth Stewards
  • Brit and James Stembridge of Tomtit Farm
  • Chris McIntosh at Ethos Café’s new start-up farm

These three farms will showcase regenerative farming practices in action. Participants in the course will learn from these growers who have experience of managing farms and offer models of what’s possible using biology-first regenerative methods.

Find out more and ENROL HERE by 9 March 2025.

ABOVE: Earthworkers lead agronomist Daniel Schuurman showing soil samples to Earthworkers participants at OMG in central Auckland. Photo: Kate Micaela

Earthworkers alumni – continuing the journey

Since it was launched in 2020 the five-day Earthworkers Hort 101 course has encouraged nearly 200 alumni to turn food production into an ecosystem restoration tool. Continuing this support via post-course mentoring they have established a network of optimistic like-minded growers who help each other in the day-to-day stresses and joys of learning how to work alongside nature to feed their local communities.

As a result, Earthworkers lead agronomist Daniel Schuurman and Earthworkers co-founder Sarah Smuts-Kennedy are developing the Earthworkers Educational Pathway to include opportunities for those wanting to take their learning to the next stage.

In 2024 For the Love of Bees (FTLOB) ran the Communities of Regenerative Learning (CORL) programme) in Tāmaki Makaurau, supporting six urban growing projects engaging alumni to step into mentoring roles. In 2025 this is being rebranded as the Earthworkers Alumni Research Group and will support a small group of alumni who want to deepen their knowledge using their own projects to do this.

Sarah Smuts-Kennedy is the founder of For the Love of Bees and OMG (Organic Market Garden in central Auckland), and co-founder of the Earthworkers programme. 
Gorse in flower

Stop, look and listen to the weeds

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Paige Murray explores how we can work with weeds as organic gardeners and growers. 

Growing organically, as you well know, is not without its challenges: weeds in abundance, certain insects wreaking havoc out in the fields, not to mention the constant soil remediation and conditioning.

While these obstacles may be at times overwhelming, there are ways to manage them – and let’s be brutally honest here: if you’re taking the leap and growing without synthetic chemicals, it’s unlikely you’ll achieve completely weed- and pest-free crops. 

Monarch butterfly on Scotch thistle

  

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Paige Murray lives near Christchurch and loves any excuse to get outdoors. Passionate about organic and regenerative agriculture, she works for Quorum Sense and Streamside Organics, and spends most of her free time gardening, making cheese and preserves, or climbing up rocks.

Steve Erickson, second from right, and group in pasture

Creating on-farm fertility

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By Jenny Lux

Chaos Springs at Waihi run regular workshops about soil health, composting, and creating on-farm fertility. Jenny Lux reports on a recent workshop.  

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Chaos Springs workshops 

I have been an avid follower of Chaos Springs since I first went there in 2014 on a field trip as a student doing an evening class in Level 3 organic primary production. Recently I did a cheeky entry into one of their competitions for a free place in a workshop and I won!

So on a sunny spring Friday in October I attended the Creating On-Farm Fertility workshop taught by Steve and Jenny Erickson. This proved to be equally useful and stimulating to me, a market gardener, as it was to the many pastoral farmers, orchardists and general public attending, who all had a common interest in living off the land in some way.

ABOVE: Jenny Erickson (left) and Steve Erickson by the vege garden, looking at the health and quality of the soil. Behind Jenny is a huge lemon verbena.

The biological engine

It all comes back to what Steve calls the ‘biological engine’ and getting that really humming. It’s an analogy that suits a mechanic like Steve, who is the man behind the innovative Cyclone multi-task sprayer. This machine allows you to combine compost, minerals and fertilisers in a liquid format for a single application onto land, and can handle particles up to 15mm – an amazing tool!

Steve (centre) with workshop group and the Cyclone at right
Steve Erickson (centre) with barrels of comfrey extract

The day began with a couple hours of lectures, and a sumptuous morning tea, followed by a BYO packed lunch and a farm tour. We started looking at the plant extract facility, then onto the commercial composting area (with a demo of the Cyclone), and a walk through some paddocks to dig holes and observe soil structure and visible biological activity. We finished at Jenny’s biodynamic home garden, where you could see and also feel the energy of plants growing in balance.

This Chaos Springs workshop attracted a lot of practitioners with many years of knowledge, so there was a really rich exchange of ideas and advice. My only criticism was that it didn’t really seem long enough!

If you are managing any piece of land, I would highly recommend attending one of the Chaos Springs workshops. There is an on-farm composting workshop coming up on 29 November.

https://www.chaossprings.co.nz/events

Jenny Lux, immediate past co-chair of Soil & Health, is an organic market gardener at Rotorua.

ABOVE: Jenny Erickson with her ashwagandha plant inside her glasshouse.
ABOVE: Steve Erickson of Chaos Springs (second from right) speaks of his journey in pasture management over the last 22 years, from a fairly degraded base of ragwort-infested conventional dairy pasture on clay, to a currently thriving mixed sward on a darker clay-loam that provides optimal nutrition for his animals and is maintained only twice a year with a biological liquid spray, all made on farm.

When Micromanaging is Good 

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Microbes are a big name in organic agriculture – in fact, they are the reason for everything. I’m not exaggerating here: the first life forms thought to have existed were – you guessed it – of such tiny proportions that you and I would have thought nothing of them.  Story and photos by Paige Murray. 

Paige Murray

I’m sure you know the basics, but to be clear, ‘microbe’ is the broad term to describe organisms of microscopic size – too small for us humans to see, thus we give them far less credit than they deserve. In this case, I’m referring to the microbes colonising our soils and helping our plants to grow big, strong and healthy. Microbes are like colostrum for babies: without them, our plants would be sickly, weak and lacking a whole heap of important nutrients.

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Paige lives in a tiny house on the outskirts of Lincoln, and loves to get her hands dirty in all ways homesteading. A childhood of growing up on and around farms was the perfect way to understand that agriculture got us, as a human race, to where we are today… and it will shape who we become tomorrow. 

The past five years saw Paige working on an organic market garden. It was here that she learnt (in spite of what all her agricultural science lecturers told her) that organics can be economically viable, and is a pretty good way to grow and produce alongside nature, rather than fighting her.