Hearthstone Farm - Growing food and a future in Kihikihi
As part of the Quorum Sense Farm grown community case study we wanted to go back to grass roots, small scale farming to provide nutrient dense locally grown produce for kiwi communities.
Nina Parker is transforming a 9.5-hectare farm in Kihikihi, into an off-grid regenerative homestead and market garden. Using biointensive growing methods and natural inputs like forest soil and wood chips, she’s restoring the land’s health.
In just eight months, Nina’s market garden is thriving, with plans for silvopasture and an interest in herbalism, she’s building a regenerative food hub, including a farm shop and community space. Nina is a woman on a mission to create a sustainable, local food system, shifting the Waikato region toward regenerative practices.
In just eight months, they’ve transformed the bare property into a thriving, off-grid homestead with multiple systems in place but only moved in 8 weeks ago!
Building a regenerative future
Nina Parker’s property is a testament to her incredible vision. Nestled just outside of Kihikihi, New Zealand, her 9.5 hectare farm sits atop a ridge, offering sweeping views but also presenting its own set of challenges. The land is exposed to high winds, has an arid climate, and receives significant winter rainfall influenced by the surrounding mountain ranges. Despite its degraded state from years of conventional agriculture, Nina and her family saw potential in the land and dove headfirst into its regeneration.
In just eight months, they’ve transformed the bare property into a thriving, off-grid homestead with multiple systems in place but only moved in 8 weeks ago! They are half way through planting out their planned 2,000-square-meter market garden, which is flourishing. The market garden is set to be complemented by 84 medicinal herbs, 26 fruit and berry varieties, and a mix of culinary crops, again around half planted. While the infrastructure is still being built, the grazing is currently managed by a neighbour’s cattle, with plans to introduce a silvopasture system incorporating sheep, ducks, and horses.
The project has been a massive undertaking, requiring not just hard work but also community and family support. With the help of Nina’s father, a developer who believes in their vision, they were able to finance the transition from blank land to a working farm. Their off-grid setup isn’t just for their home either, it powers a commercial-scale workshop for Nina’s husband Hayden, a joiner, while providing valuable byproducts like untreated wood shavings for carbon in the garden.
Partnerships and vision to create a curated, intentional future
This farm isn’t just about growing food; it’s about creating a curated, intentional future. With a farm manager’s residence, a processing and wash facility, a farm shop, and a community koha space for workshops and training events, Nina is building something far bigger than just a family farm; it's to be a place where nature, people, and regeneration come together, and ancient knowledge is given space to thrive once again.
Now, Nina’s vision extends beyond her own farm. She has partnered with a herbalist who plans to use their farm shop as a dispensary, offering natural remedies. But her ambitions don’t stop there. She’s currently compiling a directory of organic and regenerative growers and producers in the Waikato, ensuring their practices align with a set of regenerative criteria. Taking it a step further, she’s lobbying for infrastructure support—pushing for a delivery truck to serve these small farms, improving access to local markets with the support of a bank
Looking ahead, Nina is working on establishing an Ooooby (Out of Our Own Backyards) producer hub, which will allow consumers to order from multiple small-scale farms in one go. With collaboration at its core, this initiative could revolutionise access to local, regenerative produce, creating a ripple effect of positive change throughout the region, and potentially beyond.
A deep dive into biointensive growing and regenerative practices
While in the midst of running her initial growing business within 5000sqm lifestyle block, she discovered the man, the myth, the legend, Jodi Roebuck, a leading advocate for biointensive farming in New Zealand. Training under Jodi then opened the door to further learning, including mentorship from soil health expert Nicole Masters.
"The smartest thing I ever did was take Hayden with me," Nina says, laughing. "It made it real for him."
Through this immersion, Nina realised she had unknowingly been absorbing regenerative principles long before she even understood what they were. Biointensive growing, rooted in deep soil health and microbiome balance, resonated with her and when New Zealand introduced organic regulations, she recognised many of the principles as those she was already following. While she never formally studied permaculture, elements of it naturally found their way into her practices, especially agroforestry principles.
One of the most significant takeaways from her training with Jodi was proving to her husband, Hayden, that this way of farming wasn’t just viable but profitable. "The smartest thing I ever did was take Hayden with me," she says, laughing. "It made it real for him." Seeing the success of Jodi’s farm helped solidify the concept that regenerative farming wasn’t just an ideology—it could sustain a business.
The art and science of soil regeneration
Beyond structured training, Nina’s approach to soil health became deeply intuitive. She looked for the richest sources of biology in her bioregion and actively inoculated her land with it. She sourced soil from untouched Kiwi bushland, gathered seawater from biodiverse lakes, and even traded jars of homemade oregano tea for a chance to collect forest dirt. This hands-on approach ensured her soil had a diverse and thriving microbiome from the start. She likes to encourage others to think about soil inoculation on a micro level: even one handful of healthy forest soil can introduce trillions of microbes into depleted land, acting as a catalyst for regeneration.
When Cyclone Gabrielle struck, toppling century-old oak trees in Cambridge, she saw an opportunity. Knowing that oak trees develop deep taproots that mine nutrients from deep underground, she tracked down the contractor handling the cleanup and bought an entire 50 cubic metre pile of wood chips. "I went to the piles and smelled them," she explains. "You could tell which one was the most biologically active from the smell - I was looking for the smell of the forest when it rains. I pulled it apart. It was full of mycelium. So I took the lot.
Her belief in these principles extends beyond soil, it’s about forming a relationship with the land. When she and her family moved farms, she brought soil, compost, and seed-raising mix from their previous property. "It was like introducing myself to the new land," she says. "Here’s where I’ve been growing. Here’s the biology I’ve been working with. This is my intention."
Transforming soil health through natural inputs
Having the garden established for just six months, Nina has increased plant rooting depth from 3 cm to as much as 8 cm in some areas using only wood chips and diverse plant species. At her previous site, she transformed the soil’s pH from an acidic 2.6 to a balanced 6.5 in nine months, relying solely on compost applications and adaptive management.
She has also observed significant improvements in the flavor profile and shelf life of her produce. The tomatoes grown on her farm are unmatched in taste, and local chefs report that her pea shoots would last up to five weeks in the fridge without spoilage. Upon relocating to her new site, she initially noticed a decline in nutrient quality, prompting her to adjust best-before dates. However, through careful soil management, she is restoring and enhancing product longevity once again.
Challenges and creative solutions in small-scale farming
Although it’s easy to romanticise, farming is full of challenges and, for small-scale farmers, breaking into the market can be one of the biggest hurdles. Nina Parker has faced her fair share of obstacles, from struggling to establish a viable sales channel to finding innovative ways to streamline operations.
"If you're a small farm trying to get to market, there's no framework to help you do that," Nina shares. She initially started by drafting a memo for funding a truck, but the document grew into an in-depth analysis of the food industry.
Selling at farmers' markets alone wasn’t enough to generate a sustainable income, and having a young family, spending her weekends at markets, unsure of how many sales she will make was not what she recognised to be a good business decision. Supplying cafes meant working six days a week to keep up with demand, again, not suited to her family dynamics and values. The licensing required for commercial sales posed another challenge, as most businesses were already well-supplied. Finding a gap in the market became a constant effort.
Pivoting to a profitable model
After experimenting with different approaches, Nina settled on a salad business. "I was growing microgreens, and by osmosis, we ended up focusing on salads," she explains. She developed a system to measure efficiency, ensuring that her time was valued properly.
"My record is processing around $2,000 worth of food in seven hours. I track my income while processing, keeping a running total on my whiteboard. Every 10 bags, I update it, ensuring I’m making a minimum of $117 per hour. That’s my benchmark for a functional business."
By carefully planning her product offerings, and being intentional around her own value and efficiency, while not compromising on running a profitable business, she created layered mixes: peashoots, microgreens, and additional greens combine to form the salad mix.
Balancing work and family life
On top of the market garden, Nina homeschools her children meaning she has limited time.
Instead of planting a bit of everything, she often secures contracts before planting. "We get contracts for 400 to 800 kgs of different produce each year. Selling before planting means I know exactly where my produce is going."
Given that time is precious, through trial and error, Nina looks for ways to reclaim her time. "Weeding is not a high-priority task," she admits. During the lockdown, she found a surplus of hessian table runners from the wedding industry and used them as organic, biodegradable weed barriers in her pathways—eliminating the need for manual weeding.
Harnessing bees for growth
Nina observed an unexpected benefit from strategically placing beehives in her garden. "I designed my garden with a 5-meter service lane, placing a beehive at the end of each row. What I didn’t expect was how significantly they would improve vegetable growth and disease resistance."
A visiting physicist provided insight: bees create an electromagnetic field that influences sap flow, resulting in healthier plants. "The kale and silverbeet showed massive growth, and the plants leaned toward the hives. Now, we’re exploring how bees can enhance plant vitality."
As Nina talked about earlier, she has embraced birds as an integral part of her ecosystem. "I let birds eat my last tomatoes each season. Their biology helps them select the best ones, and when they drop seeds, they unknowingly plant around 200 of the strongest seeds for the next year which I replant where I want them once they’re growing strong"
Birds also regulate pests. "They weren’t eating snails at first, likely because the soil wasn’t healthy (therefore the snail). But as the snails developed stronger shells, the birds tested the shells and when they were hard enough started eating them, showing a natural balance returning to the land."
Using birds as soil whisperers
Nina Parker has taken an unconventional yet insightful approach to understanding what her land needs—by watching the birds. She set up feeders with ten different types of seed, recording which ones the birds flocked to first. This simple but effective experiment acts as a feedback loop, offering clues about soil health and nutrient requirements.
In her case, the birds favored plantain, chamomile, and lamb’s quarters—plants known for their deep root systems and nutrient-accumulating properties. The high demand for lamb’s quarters, a plant rich in nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, aligned with the history of her land as 15 years of maize cropping had left it compacted and nutrient-depleted. By observing these natural selectors, Nina is not only reading her soil’s needs but also using birds to help reintroduce diversity into her pastures.
This approach showcases a harmonious way to work with nature, letting wildlife guide the restoration process.
Observing biodiversity and ecosystem health
From growing up on homeopathics to a single book that changed a trajectory
For Nina Parker, the journey into regenerative farming wasn’t a planned career shift, it was an unfolding process, guided by her upbringing, curiosity, intuition, and an insatiable hunger for knowledge. Having grown up with natural medicine and homeopathics, the idea of working with nature rather than against it always made sense to her. Her husband, Hayden saw the change that came about and explained, "It’s less of a doing and more of a becoming."
The turning point came in an unexpected moment—an ad on Spotify for How to Grow More Vegetables by John Jeavons. Feeling a strong pull, she ordered the book, and it happened to arrive just before the first lockdown in March 2020. What started as reading quickly spiraled into deep study.
Nina’s background in naturopathy, alongside the book, helped her see the connections between plant and human biology. She started applying principles of herbal medicine to her gardening, experimenting with using sourdough starter for fungal and bacterial balance and as her understanding deepened, so did her view of farming—it wasn’t just about growing food; it was about regenerating ecosystems and communities.
Nina meticulously tracks changes in her farm ecosystem using the Soil Mentor app and shares her weekly experiences on The Dig in her own OMF (On My Farm) channel. In the short time they have been on the new farm, she has noted an influx of beneficial insects such as ladybugs, centipedes, millipedes, and previously unseen spider species. The arrival of wasps, a new species to add to her journal, signals a shift in the ecosystem’s balance. These observations reinforce her belief that a thriving biological system invites beneficial organisms, reducing the need for pest control.
Nina’s philosophy toward pests is unconventional too: she does nothing to deter them wherever possible. Instead, she focuses on improving soil health which in turn strengthens plant immunity. Over time, she has noticed that pests such as whiteflies and snails no longer pose a significant threat. Her plants emit pheromones that deter attacks, and even snails living under her broccoli seedlings do not consume them. She has also stopped killing slugs and snails, instead providing alternative food sources and encouragement of natural predators. This has led to an explosion in their population without noticeable damage to her crops since the increased bird life controls the populations.
Nina draws a parallel between human and animal consumption patterns. She believes that when pests are nutritionally deprived, they overconsume, much like humans who lack proper nutrients tend to overeat. Her approach is to plant sacrificial crops, such as kale, to support the pest population while protecting her preferred produce. Over time, as the ecosystem balances itself and soil health improves pest pressure naturally declines, leaving responsive adaptive management as the primary method of control.
Her work challenges conventional agricultural practices by demonstrating that a thriving soil ecosystem reduces the need for pesticides and external inputs. Nina’s farm is a testament to how regenerative principles can enhance both environmental sustainability and the quality of produce, ultimately leading to healthier food systems.
A range of short and long term goals on the horizon
The initial short term goal is to finish the development project for an exciting filming coming up in nine months time and for her first event happening in May. This includes digging all the garden beds!
A longer term goal is to open the shop this year and also promote it as a community space. She also has a quiet desire to be on The Market Gardener Podcast hosted by JM Fortier who was mentioned earlier as inspiration for Nina.
Long, Long Term: Nina envisions her farm evolving into a landmark destination showcasing sustainable agricultural systems. She plans to develop a self-sufficient shopping village where multiple businesses operate in a closed-loop system. This includes a butchery, a general store, and spaces for artisans who use farm-sourced materials—such as a local candle maker purchasing wax from the farm’s beehives.
Her lofty but not inconceivable vision is to one day see this food system being accepted as normal in the Waikato, as opposed to the weekly visit to the supermarket. “Clunky is better than not at all. It takes vulnerability. Don’t wait for something beautiful.”
Author's note: One thing that struck me while talking with Nina was her acute level of observation. Of the soil, the land, the birds, the insects. Because of this, she is able to support and increase the rate of regeneration as she can see what each element within the ecosystem is asking for. A lesson for all of us.
Reading recommendations:
John Jeavons: How to Grow More Vegetables
Eliot Coleman: The New Organic Grower
JM Fortier: The Market Gardener
Lady Eve Balfour: Living Soil
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