Our obsession with Feijoas and the joy they’ve brought to Kate Evans
Kate Evans is a Kiwi whose fascination with the quintessential New Zealand fruit, the feijoa, has grown over the years, especially in her time living overseas. She’s written a book all about the joy it’s brought her and the fixation with the fruit around the world – it’s called Feijoa, and Evans will talk about it at this year’s Queenstown Writers Festival, which kicks off at the end of this month.
The book delves into the history of feijoas and the inspiring dance between people and plants. It explores how we need and change each other, and the surprising ways certain species worm their way into our imaginations, our stomachs and our hearts. Evans combined her journalistic background with travel and history to bring Feijoa to life, and is really looking forward to heading down here to talk all about it.
“I’m so excited – I haven’t brought the book to the South Island at all yet, so this will be its first South Island appearance,” Evans says. “Sometimes people say that feijoas are a North Island thing, but there actually grow extremely well in a lot of areas in the South Island – even in Southland in some places. I think if you’ve got the right microclimate they grow incredibly well.”
Evans lived overseas from ages 18 - 30, and whenever she’d get a hold of a feijoa in that time, she’d find herself feeling homesick. Cutting it open and smelling that distinct, familiar smell would transport her back to her childhood, growing up in the rural North Island. One of the most exciting things about coming back to New Zealand in 2014 was of course, “Finally I can have a full feijoa season and I can eat as many as I want.”
It was after returning home that she took some time to reflect on what it meant to be a New Zealander and what it meant for her to be living back in New Zealand – for the first time as an adult.
“I thought ‘that’s weird that the feijoa is the symbol of home for me when it’s not a native plant.’ I knew it came from South America, and in my years away I spent quite a lot of time in South America – I had an internship in Argentina and went back for work multiple times, I spoke Spanish and I really love South America. I feel super alive when I’m there. I found that interesting – there’s not that many links between New Zealand and South America, but that’s one of them.”
Her obsession with the delicious fruit drove her to start Googling and researching it – the story grew from there. She moved on to work in Indonesia, working with a tropical forest research organisation and was interviewing a lot of scientists who were studying the ways that people use different plants and the roles they had in their lives. This work shifted Evans’ way of thinking and over ten years she started to tack smaller trips onto her work trips, to go to different places around the world that have feijoas. She continued to work on the book on the side before getting it published after a few hurdles.
“My dream is for it to get translated into Spanish and Portuguese, so that people in its countries of origin can read it, in Uruguay and Brazil. I hope to one day return and bring the book to some of the people I met in Brazil and Uruguay and share it with them.”
Evans often gets asked if she ever thought there would be enough content to write a whole book about the history of feijoas, and it still surprises her that there was – and that it is all so interesting. She’s delighted to see it come to life, for now in Australia and New Zealand, and hopefully around the world in the future.
“What I discovered as well is that in telling this one story, it touches on so many other fascinating parts of science, history and people. The sessions at the festival, I think, will be a journey through lots of different parts of the world and lots of different facets of food, culture and life,” Evans says.
A Feijoa Fixation with Kate Evans will take place at Rippon Wānaka on Thursday, 31 October, at 5.30pm and at Te Atamira in Queenstown on Friday, 1 November, at 2.30pm. You can see the full programme for Queenstown Writers Festival and grab tickets at qtwritersfestival.nz/programme
We’ve got a double pass to give away to one Lakes Weekly Bulletin reader!
Simply send an email to info@qmg.co.nz telling us what you love about Feijoas and we’ll select a winner at the end of the day Tuesday, 29 October.
