Country Life: Innovation meets tradition at Rotorua kūmara harvest

Volunteers at the food growing collective Kai Rotorua are excited about their new kūmara storage house made from hempcrete - a material made up of the woody stems of the hemp plant, mixed with lime.

It is hoped the hempcrete panels, which make up the three-by-three metre hut at the entrance to the charity's small vegetable farm and fruit orchard at Kaharoa, will create a dark environment with an even temperature for the root crop, and spark interest in hempcrete.

Follow Country Life on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart or wherever you get your podcasts.

Pests, fluctuating temperatures, moisture and bad airflow are all enemies of the kūmara after harvest, according to one of Kai Rotorua's founders and projects manager Te Rangikaheke Kiripatea.

After leaving the vegetable in the sun for a few days to harden off "you can then wrap it in newspaper, and that's a sort of an insulation, and you can place that in a dark place, in your whare, as long as it's nice and still, and temperatures have got an even level", he told Country Life.

"My mother used to put it under her bed."

"Today, we've taken into account all the dampness and all the heat and all the fluctuation, and we think that this [hempcrete storage house] will keep that level temperature."

The crop was traditionally stored underground, in storage pits or rua kūmara as on Mokoia Island in Lake Rotorua where Kiripatea's forebears lived.

Of Te Arawa and Rongomaiwahine ki Kahungungu descent, his interest in kūmara was not only horticultural.

He weaved whakataukī (proverbs), mōteatea (chanted songs) and maramataka, the Māori lunar calendar, into his korero about the kūmara.

The storage house will be embellished with a carving of Te Arawa ancestress Whakaotirangi, who carried kūmaru seedlings on the waka's journey to New Zealand.

Te Arawa refers to this as "Te kete rokiroki a Whakaotirangi".

"What that translates to is the secure basket of Whakaotirangi which she had tied around her waist, and she had all the seedlings in there. She's going to become our guardian.

"We're bringing together new technology with our tupuna ancestress, and we're going to carve it in such a way that it tells its story.

"She brings that spiritual, that wairua, that historical matauranga, all of those elements she brings to our work that we're doing here with the kūmara."

Kiripatea said harvest time was a time for real connection to what he described as a forgotten kai, but a particularly important one for Māori.

He found joy in hearing people exclaiming as they uncovered kūmara in the beds. It's "wow!" from the kids and "far out" from the adults, he laughed.

"You can't connect a Māori to a carrot. The minute you start talking about the kūmara, everybody in the room sits up and listens.

"There's a connection that Māori have had since the arrival of the waka and before the waka to the kūmara. The kūmara is in our whakapapa. It's in our DNA."

Learn more:

• Learn more about Kai Rotorua here.
• You can also find out more about building with hemp here.