Kia ora koutou!
Nau mai, haere mai.
Welcome to HiTech Hippies,
A website run by Meg and Mark Smith. We are passionate about using the best technology to live sustainably. Our goal is to inspire people by sharing our journey and make it easier to access tech solutions that enable personal sustainability.
We had been apartment dwellers for years when we bought our dream property in Aotearoa, New Zealand. At the time, our friends couldn't imagine how we would handle moving to the country; we were known to rely on city conveniences like Uber Eats and 24-hour services. People asked Mark how he would manage without high-speed internet. Meg quickly clarified that he wouldn't have to and coined the phrase 'HiTech Hippies' to describe how we would approach living rurally.
To us, combining HiTech tools with a Hippie heart means using the latest tech innovations to make living sustainably more attainable. The hippie movement of the '60s and '70s wasn't just about flower power and peace signs. At its core, it was about seeking a deeper connection with the world, living in harmony with nature, and fostering a community built on love, understanding, and sustainability. Rather than being at odds with this philosophy, we see technology as enabling a simpler lifestyle that allows people to be better kaitiaki (guardians) of the whenua (land).
The pandemic accelerated our move from the city to the country. We hastily moved into our recently finished colour steel barn when the country went into lockdown. We had a single light bulb, one double power point and a chemical toilet inside, and a garden hose connected to a water tank outside. The day before lockdown started, a local plumber sent one of their guys over to install a gas califont system so that we could craft a makeshift shower outside from waratahs and plywood.
Over the last three years, we have transformed our barn into a home and our overgrown paddock into a park. Our whānau has grown, and it’s a privilege to raise our tamariki (children) in the home we’ve created. We have big dreams for the future. We're exploring permaculture and syntropic food forests. And at some point, we'll build our forever home. Our ambition is to make enough money off our land to cover the running costs of our property.
We created HiTech Hippies to share what we are learning on our journey in the hope that we can make it easy for people to find out how technology can support their efforts to live a more sustainable life.
Mauriora!
