His name may still be unfamiliar to many but chances are you’ve seen Shai Brod at the local growers market selling fresh greens, gigantic onions, elephant garlic and the new-to-Raglan kohlrabi or turnip cabbage better known by our European community.
Kohlrabi is an alien-looking vegetable to be sure – and one Kiwis here had never heard of until Shai began selling the cabbage one recent summer from his stall down at the popular weekly market on Stewart St.
“I had to explain what it was,” Shai recalls. But then people started coming back every week for the unusual variety. “We love it,” they’d tell him.
Kohlrabi can be eaten raw and thinly sliced – and maybe dipped in salt like a radish – or pan-fried and added to whatever really to bring out the flavour and almost sweetness.
Shai is proud to have introduced this humble vegetable to the local market.
He’s been working his gardens – five kilometres along Ruapuke Rd, not far from Te Mata – for six years now. “There was nothing here,” he says, surveying the rows and rows of flourishing vegetables before our eyes, a shade-house or two and a huge compost heap beyond.
The five acres was a shared family purchase, Shai reveals, with his father back in his native Israel and a brother now in Perth. They were happy to invest in the property with its modest house on site and let Shai – who visualised a shelter belt, sun trap potential and so on – develop it by hand.
No heavy machinery is used; it’s a labour of love, says Shai.
He sees himself as the caretaker of this family land, indicating his 11-year-old son Yonah who is living with him. The endeavour is a multi-generational thing, Shai explains, carrying on the tradition of the subsistence agriculture he grew up with in his own village back home.
Yonah is home-schooled and was busy making meringues with the eggs from their many chickens when the Chronicle visited. He was just a tot when Shai brought him across to Raglan from the east coast about 10 years ago.
Shai worked on a big farm in the Coromandel for a few years as a woofer before focusing on market gardening.
He learnt there about the process of becoming organic certified, and now uses seeds “as organic as possible” on his own land as well as saving seeds himself. He’s also into companion planting and pairs lettuce with celery, rocket with cabbage and radish with the edible-pod sugar snap pea.
Once in Raglan he honed these skills while gardening up at Solscape eco-retreat overlooking Manu Bay. It was back when Phil McCabe and Bernadette Gavin owned the property. They asked if he knew anything about gardening. “A thing or two,” he replied.
They wanted good, fresh produce to support Solscape’s Conscious Kitchen, now called Sol Kitchen under its new ownership. He stayed on and worked there through Covid times, and then went on to fulfill the dream of gardening his own plot at Ruapuke.
“I like growing things,” says Shai in something of an understatement. He also likes to produce a bit extra and support the community. Call it serendipity but the growers market got started about the right time for Shai to get his “extra” produce out there.
The Stewart St market wrapped up recently for the season but Shai acknowledges philosophically that winter crops grow slow and there simply isn’t the diversity.
Even so there’s always plenty in his garden to share in the form of veggie boxes for enthusiasts keen on freshly harvested produce.
Supporting local growers, Shai adds, keeps food close to home, reduces transport and strengthens community resilience.
