It was ‘unthinkable’ (Bourdieu 1990:52–65) for these orchardists not to be ‘doing’ something for the rest of their lives. One green orchardist who used to be a dairy farmer said it was a ‘lifestyle choice’. He and his wife used to work ‘seven days a week for 23 odd years…we’re both still working full-time. I can’t see us ever…stop doing completely. You gotta retire to something you can’t retire from—that’s my belief anyway’ (Man, green).
An exchange between an orchardist and myself on this subject went like this:
Interviewer: And when you say you like doing things, what do you mean by doing?
Orchardist: Well just mowing and repairing and…Well, just maintenance really. Instead of sitting around doing nothing, you’ve gotta do something. (Man, green)
A former teacher spoke of his desire for his future: ‘It’s lifestyle, it’s wanting something that will carry us from teaching through to a productive retirement…and we don’t imagine that we will retire and do nothing’ (Man, gold).
Another spoke of his orchard in this way: ‘It’s an asset that can earn…a reasonable sort of income for us when we retire, and even perhaps…semi-retire, as I can’t see myself staying here till sixty-five and stop working. I’ll be needing to be doing something, and both physically and mentally’ (Man, green).
An element of ‘doing’ is that it is an indication that these orchardists will still be working hard. They made comments about how their city friends had the idea that kiwifruit orcharding would provide a nice lifestyle in which the orchardist did very little and sat around sipping wine, but ‘a relatively small block of land can mean an awful lot of work’ (Man, gold). Another spoke of his first impressions and how wrong they were:
I’m an ex-engineer—[from] Auckland. I came down in ’91 to visit my partner’s father who’s got [an] orchard down at Pangaroa. [I] [l]iked the place. And saw these old boys sitting on their backsides and all the fruit was growing and I thought, that’s a good life. And they sucked me in nicely, didn’t they? I haven’t worked so many hours, for such a long time, in my life. (Man, organic)