Rich pickings AT A FEIJOA WINERY
FROM DETROIT TO MAKARAU
In August 1971, amidst the foment of civil rights, Vietnam War protests and the new push towards organic food, twenty-year-old Dale DeMeulemeester left his native Detroit, USA, headed for New Zealand. He was intent on setting up an organic fruit production unit.
He knew nothing about growing food but got work on orchards around Huapai in West Auckland. Chris Smalley, who was quite ill from the effects of the conventional sprays he’d been using, owned one of these apple orchards. When Dale and his partner found the 41 hectares that became Lothlorien at Makarau near Warkworth, Chris helped them work out how to grow organically.
Lothlorien was named after Tolkien’s woodland faerie realm, but the land was fenced bare pasture with a few pines and macrocarpas when they moved onto it in 1972. Over the period of a year, 11 friends who’d shared the organic fruit production dream with Dale in Detroit gradually moved to Lothlorien. Initially peaches, nectarines, Poorman’s oranges (New Zealand grapefruit), and feijoas were planted.
CHILDHOOD PEACHES
By 1975 Lothlorien was selling their produce at nearby
