If Claire Ganantchian's life were a film, the opening scene would feature a small girl playing with plastic cows and horses in a modest high-rise apartment in urban France, writes Seven Sharp's Paul Casserly.
Ganantchian remembers looking at a globe and pointing to Australia — where she would go one day, as she told her teachers. Years later, in 1990, when she was offered a job training horses in New Zealand, she jumped at it.
Today, she lives at Haruru Falls near Paihia on an ex-Landcorp block of about 40 hectares, farming a modest flock of 20 cattle beasts on land that could easily take a few hundred. Sustainability isn't just a buzzword for Ganantchian; it's a religion and a calling.
While I cosplay saving the planet by collecting soft plastics and driving a hybrid, Ganantchian keeps it real.
Two years ago, she ditched her car in favour of her horse, which she sometimes rides to the shops in Paihia, despite the danger of state highway traffic.
"Getting [the horse] used to the traffic was a big thing," she said.
A year ago, she sold her tractor and began training an ox to pull things around her farm in her quest to live as simply as she could. Ox, by the way, are "bovine with an education". Cows that have been trained to pull things. Oxen being the plural.
She has three of these beasts of burden: Pebbles, Bamm-Bamm and baby Wilma.
Naturally, I assumed she must be a fan of The Flintstones, the modern Stone Age family of cartoon fame whose daughter Pebbles Flintstone was best mates with ADHD poster child Bamm-Bamm Rubble.
"I've never seen it, but my partner named her Bamm-Bamm because she used to throw herself against the walls. She was very difficult to handle," Ganantchian said while pointing at a beautiful grey cow who recently gave birth to Wilma.
"My partner explained to me what the show was, so now they're all going to be named after The Flintstones, which is quite appropriate."
There was undoubtedly a strong Stone Age vibe watching Ganantchian being towed in a cart by Pebbles as she doled out the hay on her farm.
A work in progress
While the Flintstones craved new technology (they had a pelican as a waste disposal), Ganantchian is looking backwards to a simpler time. She grows her own vegetables, milks her goat, runs chooks and lives in a tiny house that could barely be 20m square.
"It's too big for me. I want to build one half the size and ditch the solar panels. I don't need a fridge. I eat straight from the garden."
She's also trying to do away with money, but that's a work in progress.
"I've got my costs down to $150 a month; that is my budget," she said, not boasting, more disappointed in herself for not doing better — "but I’m cutting it back."
Her son recently got her on to a cheaper mobile plan, the smartphone being the one concession to modernity she can't do without.
"We have next to no costs, no tractor, no quad bikes, no dogs."
Selling 20 cows a year brings in just enough and her son — who lives on the property with his girlfriend — looks after the rates and insurance. She recently sold off a small slice of the land and paid off the mortgage.
If you're wondering where this intense drive to live so frugally comes from, blame Tateos, Ganantchian's grandad. He was an impressive character who escaped the Armenian Genocide "by walking and walking, for day and night and day and night — that's how he would tell the story, and that's all he would say".
Her grandfather eventually walked his way to France, where he met Ganantchian's grandmother. Back in the 1970s, Tateos was full of dire predictions of global warming and environmental depletion, and Ganantchian was clearly listening.
She studied agriculture and ecology, and at 21, she rode across France with her horse and dog before setting up her own riding school. A visiting Kiwi noticed her equine skills, which led to an invitation to work in Northland. She's been there ever since.
She was already good with horses and had to learn to handle oxen. Books were consumed, and Facebook groups joined. She figured it out. Pebbles, Bamm-Bamm and Wilma are just the start.
"Eventually, I want a team of six; I have these three and two in the oven with a couple of Friesian cows" which a friend is incubating for her.
Ganantchian is over cities. She hasn’t been to Auckland for 15 years, hasn’t been south of Kawakawa for five and goes to Whangārei only “if I need to go to the hospital".
Shopping is minimal, to say the least, and mainly involves heading to Facebook Marketplace to buy oxen-related items. Her latest purchase is a harness that set her back $30.
With the help of her friend, she's learning to weave and hosts a weekly workshop in her barn where a convincing-looking saddle bag made of flax sits on a table next to a bounty of kumara from her sprawling garden.
A passion for sailing
But as anyone who watches Country Calendar will surely know, getting "off-farm" is all important. For Ganantchian, this comes as weekly sailing excursions in nearby Opua.
"Sailing is my other passion,” she said. On the water, she also enjoyed one of the many jobs she's had on the way to creating her life of simplicity.
"I worked for Fullers on the ferries and loved working for them. There was no sexism on that job… compared to France."
A small inheritance gave her a deposit to buy some land on which she built and sold a house. She repeated the formula some 10 times before arriving where she is today.
It's been a journey with a few bumps.
"I started in a working-class family living in rentals. I was widowed with a baby 10 days old. But it can be done. Once you have that dream, focus, focus, focus. And downsize, downsize."
Before leaving, I asked if her surname, Ganantchian, had a meaning in English.
"Oh, it’s quite funny; it means ‘green family’."
I suggested that her grandfather would have been proud of her achievements.
"I think he would be. My horse is named Tateos after him. He was a follower of Gandhi. He always warned about attachment to material possessions," she said.
"I'm very grateful to him for the joy he's given me, to be attached to the living is so enriching, the connection with the animals and the land, the people, and cultures around me.
"He opened my heart."
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