About Kat’s Garden
Who we are and how to contact us.
Meet Kat
In 2019, I moved with my partner to The Outpost, located near Kaeo in Te Hiku (Far North), New Zealand. We have 15ha, including over 5ha of native bush. My aim is to turn it into a thriving native ecosystem and food basket.
At the moment, it’s still mostly grass, however we’ve planted hundreds of trees since we’ve been here. It’ll take a few years to realise the goal, but we’re well on the way.
I hold qualifications in Organic Horticulture; Horticulture; New Zealand Native Plants; Lifestyle Farming; and Landscape Design.
I work part-time as a gardener, and am always interested in helping people combine native and edible plants to create sustainable ecosystems.
Lately I’ve developed an interest in my family genealogy and sometimes I write about that here too. If you’ve found me because we’re related, I’d love to hear from you – drop me a line in the contact box below.
Meet the Family
Kat and Richard met like any modern couple, on Tinder in 2016. After a year of long-distance romance, they moved into their first shared home in Waipu in 2017.
In 2019, they packed up their entire life into a 20ft container, and took their cats and chickens to move 2 hours further north.
Richard is a small-motor mechanic, working in a local shop in Waipapa. He’s in charge of all the machines – a very helpful skill on a lifestyle block! Having him around means things get done a little quicker.
His special talent is the ease with which he has with all animals. Kat calls him Doctor Doolittle, and it’s one of the reasons she fell for him.
Samurai, aka Sam, aka King Sam, is a former feral kitten. Richard found under a car in Waipu. He was the first member of the zoo to join us.
Sam is occasionally mistaken for a possum. He likes pats in laps, sleeping in dirty laundry, and disappearing before curfew.
Over time, this anxious kitty has become a homebody, giving some of the best smooches around. She has the softest fur and is Kat’s Nip’s biggest fan!
Patu was originally caught by a neighbour under a bucket in the milking shed. Later, he began sneaking into our house for biscuits, eventually moving himself in and coming with us to The Outpost.
Patu enjoys climbing trees, chasing chickens, entering and exiting the door, and attacking Kat’s hands as she gardens.
We adopted Roxy from the farm next door in 2020. She was a bit of a ‘mistake’, but we feel like she was born just for us.
She has a tail that will wag you off your feet, and a bark that will leave your ears ringing.
Roxy enjoys possum hunting, digging holes, chasing things, jumping gates, and running.
Hine arrived at The Outpost following the sudden death of her mother in 2021. We kind of inherited her.
She loves car rides, sleeping on the human bed, and chasing whatever is running away from her.
We currently have 13 chickens. Most of them are Hylines purchased from a pasture egg farm at 18 months old.
But we also have a random black chicken, two roosters, and a Hyline-cross hen. Like most of our animals, they’re all a bit random and mostly unwanted.
In 2023 we finally succeeded (or, I suppose our hen succeeded) in raising two baby chicks to adulthood, which added Pam and Tommy to our flock.
The chooks roam under our plantings. We move them every two to three months. The trees keep them safe from predators. In return, the chooks tend to prevent the grass from choking the trees – keeping the workload down for us.
We’re onto our third herd of cows since arriving at The Outpost now. These are dairy-X born October 2021.
Just a word of advice: if a livestock agent ever describes cows as ‘fresh’, you don’t want them.
These cows are the reason our electric fences actually work now. Every time we try to move them, you might as well be playing the Benny Hill theme behind us as we chase them around the paddocks. They are not fond of humans.
However they are fond of each other, and eating nice fresh grass, which we have heaps of.
They are not beginner cows, but they are beautiful. A range of colours and patterns makes it easy to identify which one is being a dick on that particular day.