Want to farm and don’t have the land? Well, you could try producing salt and drinkable water from the sea.

Two enterprising small-scale farmers in the Far North have developed a unit for evaporating and distilling seawater which could fit in a large backyard or small paddock.

They have already put the prototype into production and, with merely the heat of the summer sun and the power of gravity, should be able to make 3000 bottles of water and 100 kg of salt a month, according to James Moore, founder of The Taipa Salt Pig, based near Taipa.

Moore is keen to set up a co-operative which would help others into salt and water production rather than up-scaling his own business.

“I’d like to share what we’ve got with other people and give them all a little taste of what’s a really cool lifestyle,” he told Country Life.

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James collects seawater by hand from Cable Bay in Northland
Photo: RNZ/Sally Round

The idea of making salt came to Moore on a bike as he was delivering the mail 15 years ago. 

He had become a postie in Hamilton after losing his business selling large machinery during the Global Financial Crisis of 2008.

He made his first batch of salt out of the waves crashing onto the beach at Raglan, enough to realise his dream might just work.

The Taipa Salt Pig took off in 2015 after Moore and his wife Yasmin moved to Northland. 

On two hectares of gorse-covered land, he built a series of evaporation chambers, perfecting his design over time.

The seawater he collects by hand from a nearby beach is placed in shallow trays in the pods and left to evaporate, a process which can take up to four weeks.

“One thing about being a salt farmer, you have plenty of time on your hands,” Moore joked as he took Country Life on a tour of the farm.

Gertrude the Glorious and Crystal Palace, set into a bank in his garden, are like “greenhouses on steroids”, but Moore needs to double production and that’s where the new prototype comes in.

Salt evaporators built into the hillside in James’ garden
Photo: RNZ/Sally Round

Saltwater crystalizing after being in the evaporator
Photo: RNZ/Sally Round

“There’s definitely demand for [the salt]. We sell everything we make no problem. The goal in starting this was to make a business that was simple, ecologically friendly, but it had to produce an income for someone to live off.”

Respecting the wishes of iwi not to collect seawater from his original collection point on the Karikari Peninsula, he can now be found bucket in hand at high tide in Cable Bay, still overlooking Doubtless Bay, a few kilometres from his home.

The finished product is tested to ensure it meets health standards.

Hand-made and sustainable are values James embraces, from collecting the seawater right down to the hand stamped paper package the salt comes in.

One of the mottos for the business is “leave nothing but footprints”, Moore said. 

“It’s just a man and his bucket really.”

Sunset over Doubtless Bay. James’ motto for his salt farm is “Leave Nothing But Footprints”
Photo: RNZ/Sally Round

The seawater is collected in repurposed olive barrels
Photo: RNZ/Sally Round

With business partner Zarv Whitford who is involved in sister company Ocean Water, a sparkling and table water product distilled from the seawater, Moore saw the potential to grow income and allow others to get into a small sustainable business. 

The prototype salt-and-water-farm fuses a standard flat-packed desalination unit, used in water-scarce developing countries, with an evaporation system. It looks like a sloping array of solar panels with small greenhouses at the front.

The prototype combined salt and water farm in the Whitford’s backyard
Photo: RNZ/Sally Round

Communities with their own salt and water-making units could be a small step towards dealing with one of Moore’s “bugbears” – how food is produced and distributed.

“It’s one of the reasons why I want to build a network of these around the country, rather than scaling this up and making tons of salt and shipping it right down the country. To me (that) doesn’t make sense.”

Devyn Whitford and her mother Stephanie Nash in The Taipa Salt Pig production room with the salt and Ocean water ready for tasting
Photo: RNZ/Sally Round