Have you ever made a promise it would kill you not to keep?

A promise to yourself so important you would die of a broken heart if you couldn't keep it.
40 years ago artist Jane Crosbie had a vision. She saw a place so filled with life and light it glowed like a precious jewel. Dazzling colour shimmered over the land. So vibrant, so powerful was the land its energy uplifted people the nearer they came to it. The land had Mana. It was a magical place. A sanctuary.

Says Jane, 'with the vision came the foreknowing that this place would one day be mine. I felt a shift in my life, techtonic plates moving in my heart. I couldn't help myself. It was love at first sight. I made a promise to myself that if I could, I would bring this dream into being.

Then I came to my senses and laughed. The gallows laugh. It was an impossible dream. My husband and I had recently had our 3rd child. Having just bought our first home in Auckland we had 2 mortgages. Most days we were so broke we barely scraped together enough money to buy bread for our kids school lunches. So I put the vision to the back of my mind, laughed the gallows laugh again, and forced myself to forget all about such a crazy dream. There was no point dwelling on the impossible.

Fast forward 12 years. A Waikato property comes onto the market. Around the same time one of our children gets badly hurt. The experience is so traumatic I lose my short term memory. My long term memory is fine. But I need a place to heal, to recover my memory. My husband and I negotiate 3 mortgages to buy the property. We organise 2 mortgages to spread the risk, and operate a revolving credit facility to help. It was hard. It's taken a lifetime to pay the banks back. But dreams are powerful things. There's always a price to pay.

I believe I am Kaitiaki,of my piece of land. A guardian with an obligation to the land, responsible for its well-being. I love this land with all my heart. I bought it to uplift people. To heal people. This is the land on which the North Waikato Sustainable Art Festival will be held. The objective of buying this land was to create a private ecological reserve, to be a positive element to the land, to live in harmony with nature - Papatuanuku - the most powerful force we know. I am committed to holistic and regenerative practices that improve the health of the land, plants, and community.

As soon as we purchased the land we made it organic to manage the land in an environmentally sustainable way. We have been totally organic ever since, treating our natural spring water as 'living water', protecting our property's wetland habitats and ecosystems, allowing our native totara and manuka and kanuka forests, and surrounding bush endemic to the land to regenerate naturally. Decades before sustainability became a fashionable buzz word I studied Chemistry at Massey university, Civil engineering at M.I.T. and Botany at Hawkes Bay Polytech, in order to learn how to facilitate innovative environmental initiatives. I wanted to design my own systems that were naturally renewable, more abundant, more diverse, more beneficial to Papatuanuku.

I wanted to see the natural wetland habitats and ecosystems on our land achieve their own balance, to see the natural restoration of soil fertility occur, and the greater biodiversity and species density that comes when you nurture natural ecosystems. My family planted native plants, establishing Pa Harakeke, planted shrubs and trees assisting the regeneration of natural forest, protecting and enhancing the biodiversity of the native flora and fauna, providing a sanctuary for at risk endemic species. We planted organic vegetable gardens and orchards to become more self-sufficient. With great delight we've watched the land change greatly in our time here, with many species of New Zealand native birds making our regenerated forest and wetland habitat their new home. It is a joy to see.

My goal is to continue rewilding and developing our ecological reserve by planting more native species and forest, to enhance the natural beauty of my community and the Waikato. My 33 acre property though small, is one of the few privately owned blocks of native totara forest left along State Highway 1 between Auckland and Hamilton. I am immensely proud of that. My dream is also to improve the place for visitors and establish a 'sustainability centre', teaching people around the world to work with nature to live more sustainably. I want to show others how working the land through holistic and regenerative practises is a deeply spiritual practice that improves the health of the land, and our community.

Part of that dream is starting an annual North Waikato Sustainable Art Festival. Art is a gift that shows the best that humanity is capable of. Art is a healer, like the land. Art is medicine. Medicine heals the body. Art heals the soul. The body cannot thrive where the soul is famished. Like the land, and the science of ecology, art is part of the solution. 40 years ago I made a promise it would kill me not to keep. I fell in love with a vision that taught me what was real and what was not. . We live on a finite planet with finite resources. We need to change, become more sustainable, to become part of the solution - not more of the problem.