When Grow first arrived, I was awestruck by the beauty of it: the embossed letters on the green cover; the stunning photography which makes you want to do what author/photographer Sophie Merkens did and jump in a van to travel the length and breadth of Aotearoa interviewing fascinating people; the fact that the text is given space to breathe (although I’m still not entirely sold on the colour even if it does match the cover).

Then I started thinking more about illustrated non-fiction and its purpose, whether it endures beyond, maybe, a couple of years; if there are now better ways to present these stories and what number of people actually take the time to look beyond the pictures and read the text. I wondered, “Is Grow a beautiful book but one ultimately destined to gather dust on a bookshelf or coffee table?”

As I was contemplating this, I tested positive for Covid and opted to follow medical advice and rest -living with one chronic condition means I don’t want to be dealing with Long Covid - so I spent a week doing little other than reading and sleeping. Taking the time to read Grow, I was captivated and have no doubt I will be thinking and talking about it for a good while yet.

Covid forced Merkens, a freelance photographer, writer, food stylist and recipe developer, to think more deeply about the role of food in connecting us to our whānau, communities and the wider world. She toyed with the idea of a mini-series of interviews featuring just six wāhine but widened the ambit when she set off to travel our highways and byways, stopping at small towns and rural settlements to meet and interview a greater number of female food producers.

As she writes in the book’s introduction, it was a struggle to narrow down her interviews to just one book, “when there’s a book to be written in every town.” Merkens credits the 37 wāhine she interviewed with being the co-creators of Grow and thanks them for openly and vulnerably sharing their lives with her (more on that soon). Their stories are presented in question-and-answer style interviews, most starting with Merkens asking each for a food memory or about why they started their own food businesses or took up growing, gathering, foraging, hunting, fishing and/or sharing kai as a pastime (albeit an all-consuming one, in some cases).

The book is divided into nine sections: wonder, nourish, connect, gather, nurture, rise, bridge, belong and lead. Each interviewee’s story is explored with words and pictures over four – ten pages with longer interviews given to well-known food champions like Kay Baxter who founded the Koanga Institute. I would have liked to know more about why each of the wāhine ended up in the sections that they did and sometimes I wanted more from their answers – a follow-up question or two – but, as Merkens says, there is only so much space. Organising the book as it is makes it easier to dip in and out, to return to stories you want to read again and think more about – and there is a fair few of those because Grow is a book that encourages contemplation.

Merkens has found a veritable array of women and enterprises from those like Yasmin Moore in Taipā Northland making natural sea salt to wild food and restaurant legend Fleur Sullivan from Moeraki. You’ll find yourself googling them to find out more about the courses they run or how one goes about, for example, foraging for seaweed. Their motivations for taking a more hands-on approach to food are as varied as the locations visited. Even Rakiura Stewart Island features through Lania Davis’ story of “protecting and connecting” to her Māori heritage through harvesting tītī (sooty shearwaters or muttonbirds).

Some of the – dare I say, quirkier tales – left me joyous. Alice Nicholls, for example, from Ōwairaka Mt Albert in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, who’s a mushroom enthusiast and focused her MA thesis on human-mushroom connections! That thesis ended up challenging the idea that only humans have culture, questioned ideas about connection and mental health and lead to Alice working as a food researcher for a large non-governmental organisation (NGO).

Many of the wāhine talk with candour about mental health and how becoming more connected to producing their own food has brought solace but they don’t romanticise this aspect of their lives. They are frank about the trials and tribulations and how much work is involved; Merkens has asked them directly about the impact of work on their lifestyles or, equally as pertinent, lifestyles on work and they’re candid about families and upbringings.

She has also photographed each, appropriately attired, in their work environments so there’s blood in the hunting shots, dirt under fingernails and well-worn gumboots and swanndris. That’s what helps to make Grow different from those books that may strike a more Instagram-aspirational tone; the ones that leave you feeling ever so slightly inadequate and more envious rather than admiring when, in fact, little is really genuine. But Grow feels authentic and relatable because it is. The women in it look like those you meet at school pick-ups or see in supermarkets or out there contributing to lives and communities all over Aotearoa rather than just in our cities. Once again, I found myself asking why don’t we see more of them in the so-called mainstream? Hear more from them about the solutions they’re coming up with, often in quiet and non-combative ways, to future challenges?

Ultimately, Grow is a book with a seemingly modest premise – how do these women find meaning and connection through food – that quietly and thoughtfully ends up addressing big issues with simple but insightful stories and ideas and a refreshing dose of honesty. So, I sincerely hope it is read and thought and talked about and, perhaps, some of the ideas inspire others or simply give its readers a reason to feel better about the world. It is indeed a beautiful book - one that should not be left to gather dust on a bookshelf or coffee table.

Reviewed by Dionne Christian