Dunedin organic market garden owner ditched a career as an engineer to pursue a dream of farming sustainably.
He and his wife Skye Macfarlane run Vern Paddock Project on their 11ha property in Mihiwaka, about 3km east of Ōrokonui Ecosanctuary.
The couple moved from Auckland — where Jed worked for Fisher & Paykel and Skye studied naturopathy — to Dunedin in 2016.
"We wanted to find some land, somewhere in the South Island where we could grow medicinal herbs or start some kind of farm business."
He was born in Whangārei and his family moved south to go dairy farming near Winton in 1996, catching the wave of dairying that hit the region.
He studied engineering at the University of Canterbury and was in a graduate job at the F&P Mosgiel plant for a couple of years when the company announced it was moving its manufacturing offshore in 2008.
"One of my last jobs was flying over to Mexico and helping them set up one of the production lines."
The couple went travelling and when they came home, Jed returned to working as an engineer at F&P in Auckland, but he dreamed of a career change.
"I’m not sure what it was about farming but it kept calling me back."
He wanted to produce food because he believed it provided more job security than producing whiteware.
People would always need food, he said.
Another driver to go farming was it allowed them to pursue an environmentally friendly profession.
"We wanted to do something for the planet as soon as we could in our life."
After moving to Dunedin, he continued working at F&P for four days a week and running the market garden.
The customer base for the market garden built slowly, supplying crops, such as salad greens, to grocers and chefs. It ramped up and he was working "crazy hours".
He recalled finishing a day of work as an engineer to return home to cut and bag microgreens until nearly midnight.
"We would get up at 4am and pick all the salads, wash it, bag it and deliver on the Friday."
When he was an engineer, weekends were spent putting more crops in the ground and they did that for several years.
Holding down a day job, meeting demand for their produce and raising their toddler Fred became too much.
"We were quickly getting to burnout before we started."
To avoid exhaustion, he left F&P to work fulltime at the market garden about three years ago.
Produce was grown on about a third of a hectare across about 180 garden beds, mostly outdoors.
The crops included a range of leafy greens, root vegetables, herbs, edible flowers and microgreens.
Suppliers of their produce now included New World supermarkets in Dunedin and Four Square in Port Chalmers and FreshChoice in Roslyn.
Supplying local retailers reduced their food miles, a way of measuring how far a product needed to travel before reaching a consumer.
"It is scary to think how much of Dunedin’s food is brought in by truck," Jed said.
He enjoyed supplying and supporting small businesses in the city.
"Businesses the same as us — little cafes run by a couple."
Development of their business was based on three pillars — economic, environmental and social.
"The financial side has never been the priority, as long as our business is surviving, that’s good enough for us. We put a lot more priority on the environmental side and the social side of community support and growing food locally."
Asked if he ever questioned ditching an office job when harvesting crops as the wind howled in from Otago Harbour on a wet and cold day, he replied: "I’d be lying if I said no but there’s something about being outside and being against all that weather that really drives you to keep going. There is something magical about getting out on the land and working."
— Shawn McAvinue
