Situated on 1.7 hectares (4.5 acres) of council-owned land, as part of Hukanui Reserve, Kelmarna is a busy, small farm, largely tucked away behind rows of houses on Hukanui Crescent and Kelmarna Avenue.

Kelmarna is Certified Organic through OrganicFarmNZ, and we use regenerative organic methods to build the health of our soil, water, and biodiversity, while sequestering carbon into our soils and growing nutrient-dense food for our community.
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Based on the principles of permaculture design, our small farm features a range of diverse farming operations that work together to form an integrated whole.

Each of our farming operations serves multiple purposes, forming the basis of our educational and therapeutic programmes, as well as generating income to cover some of our costs, and providing food for local people.

If you'd like to find out more about the role that animals play on the farm, please read our Farming Animals page.

Vegetable gardens

We currently have just over 600m2 in vegetable gardens, the majority of which is managed communally by our team and volunteers, and the produce is sold to our community and restaurant customers. As well as production beds, we also have plots dedicated to our horticultural therapy and education programmes.

Food forest

​Our multilayered food forest contains a large variety of fruit trees, perennial herbs, and companion plants, as well as annual crops like pumpkins and potatoes that form the staple foods of our volunteer lunches.

Paddocks

Our site includes around 9,000m2 of pasture, divided into 7 paddocks, sloping away from the gardens down to Cox's Creek. These are now populated with many varieties of fruit trees, a mobile layer hen flock, and our sheep which are rotated around the paddocks to graze.

Chickens

Bees

Composting

Kelmarna is home to a flock of layer hens in a mobile hen house, moved to give access to fresh pasture every couple of days. Their pecking and scratching creates spaces for new seeds to germinate boosting the biodiversity of the pasture. Their varied diet of insects, greens, fungi and more means their eggs are packed full of flavour and nutrition. Eggs are for sale in our shop, and soon also through a  community supported agriculture scheme.

The hives at Kelmarna are managed organically, the bees are supported by the many and varied flowering plants across our site, and in the surrounding area. Kelmarna Honey from our hives is normally available to buy in our Farm Shop.

We demonstrate diverse composting systems on-site, including hot composting, worm farming, and bokashi, as well as offering composting options to local businesses and households through our community composting social enterprise, Soil Factory.