Photographer Alan Gibson’s new book For The Love Of The Country highlights the everyday beauty in the work of New Zealand’s farming families. Here’s an extract on Tauranga’s The Good Farm, a family
of organic farmers supplying the Bay with “good medicine”.

Loren Gibbs and partner Michaela Good own The Good Farm in Welcome Bay, Tauranga, and run it on organic principles, selling the milk, veggies and eggs they produce to locals. Loren Gibbs explains: “My mum always said that food is medicine. So, if you are eating good food, you are getting good medicine.

“At The Good Farm, we are on 10 hectares, and we are running mainly a raw-milk dairy herd. We milk between 14 and 16 cows during the day. We are not certified organic, but we like to think that we work alongside the principles of organic agriculture and gardening. We are spray free on our pastures and our vegetable garden. We don’t use synthetic fertilisers, any chemical pesticides or herbicides.

“We have a farm shop and that’s where we make most of our income. All the milk from our cows gets sold on the farm through a self-service dispenser. That’s about 180 litres a day. All the produce from the veggie garden and our eggs get sold through the shop as well, on an honesty system that works well. We get hundreds of people through the shop every week and they come from all walks of life; they are not all a bunch of hippies. The only thing they have in common is that they all want fresh, raw milk and that they care about their food. That’s the main thing.” 

Purchase
For The Love of The Country

at all good bookstores.