Table of Contents
It is assumed that anything to do with ‘the rural’ is in decline but no account has been made of the flow of ‘older’ people into the countryside—those people who after successful careers elsewhere are moving to rural locations to set up new, supposedly less stressful working lives. In this chapter, I explore the way in which some couples in New Zealand are creating new and meaningful lives by growing kiwifruit, an activity that fits well with those who seek an active and graduated retirement.
These people saw orchards as actors capable of a moral exchange: ‘if we make an orchard like this then it will reward us by giving us indications of our care’. Two different orchards were constructed. One was an orchard that was so wild that it needed to be made tidy and productive and the other was an orchard that was so needy it required nurturing. Are these ‘new’ orchardists really creating new lives or are they creating orchards that represent their old identities but in a different medium? What are the implications of their practices for the resilience of the environment, the countryside and the kiwifruit industry?