The Hobbit's Big Riddle

I’m convinced Tolkien must have ridden the length of Highway 5 on the NakedBus before he conceived the Shire. Most of New Zealand is a farmer’s wet dream, of course, but this section of the North Island possesses the sort of aesthetic quality that inspires romantic poets to abandon the bosoms of young ladies for those of green hills. The view out my own bus window as I near the set of Hobbiton is not as jaw-dropping as much of the South Island, but the scenery seems a comforting, human size, even for those of the shortest of stature. I can just imagine the stodgy British professor glancing up from his notebook full of elf-scribbles, looking out upon the orderly fencerows and gentle blue ridgelines of this lovely landscape, and leaping over his writer’s block like a lamb over a half-wrecked fence. Even the sheep, elsewhere of twitchy tempers and insatiable stomachs, seem positively relaxed and content here.

Of course, these sheep are white-faced, coarse-haired Romneys, not the black-faced Suffolk breed you saw in the Fellowship of the Ring. The real Hobbiton, if one can be said to exist at all, is the bustling nearby town of Matamata, complete with car dealerships and primary schools. The hobbit holes are simple façades of white plywood, now nearing a decade old and barely holding back the bulge of soggy volcanic soil behind them. This may be disappointing to a heart longing to discover blooming gardens, thatched roofs and curly-haired little girls in woolen jumpers, but what better place to investigate the interplay between farming fantasy and agricultural reality?

Tolkien grew up in rural England before the Second World War, adoring the simple country life and abhorring the sweeping changes that resulted from the industrial revolution. He saw his childhood neighbors gradually move out of the fields they had farmed for a thousand years, and into factories which smoked like the foundries of Isengard. I’m not sure how the neighbors felt about this, but Tolkien was clearly unhappy with the progress of technology (or at the very least, with the impact of that progress on the people and their environment). These beliefs find a bellowing voice in his story: when his middle-management bad guy Saruman orders the cutting of the Fangorn Forest, it is the trees themselves that fight back. The central conflict of the novel, in fact, is the struggle to preserve “all that is good in the world,” embodied by the Shire, its fields and people, and the rhythms and habits of both.

Tolkien might recognize some hobbit-like characteristics in the Alexander family, who own the farm on which the Hobbiton exterior set was constructed. Not that they are particularly short or curly-headed, although the members I met did have a certain hobbitish stoutness about the tum. And not that they are excessively old-fashioned; with four and a half thousand breeding ewes, up to six thousand lambs and more than twelve hundred acres to police, Mr. Alexander makes ample use of a roaring dirt bike to get around. There is, however, a very hobbity stubbornness about their decision to keep producing Romney wool for carpet, though the main focus of New Zealand farming has shifted to dairying.

A decade ago New Zealand boasted 70 million breeding ewes, but now the country has only about 35 million. Most of those remaining are Merino, which produce fine-textured, high-quality garment wool targeted to the sort of market that deals in NZ$200 luxury sweaters and stylish Ugg boots. Farming is at least as subject to the capricious winds of commerce as other large industries, with the added negative that it takes an age to put together a smooth-running production system in the context of a variable climate. While any other business can reach a sort of maturity in five years, a farmer might still be working out the kinks after a decade or more, even without switching to a different product. Nevertheless, because the profit margins in farming are very tight, many decide to grow the next big cabbage rather than try to adapt their existing system to fluctuating economic realities. The Alexanders are of the latter type, continuing to carry on their family tradition.

Even the most traditional folks recognize a good deal when they see one, so recently the income from lambs and wool has been augmented by allowing fervent tourists to wander through their fields of sheep poo. Fans will already know the story of how Peter Jackson spotted the perfect Party Tree standing next to a glassy lake while flying over the region. The filming locations for Hobbiton had already been largely sussed out in several different areas, and Jackson was prepared to patch it all together in the editing room, but the Alexanders’ place was so perfect he scrapped the other spots.

Filming was scheduled to begin at other locations in a matter of weeks, so the contracts had to be agreed upon very quickly. And they were, thanks to that patented kiwi affability. Unfortunately, the negotiations that have allowed the Alexanders to share their special spot with thousands of fans took more than two years, thanks to that equally patented American obsession with technicality (at least, when it comes to money). New Line delayed repeatedly, and the restrictions were rather severe, but now we’re all free to pay our NZ$58 to walk up the very same stone steps that Gandalf did on his way to Bag End.

The stones are real, and the glorious radiata pine that played the famous tree is still glorious (albeit a little more saggy than in its movie star days), but it was harder than I expected to imagine rickety carts driven by jovial little folk clacking up the lane. Colored markers are all that is left to show where the bridge overarched the water, and where the Prancing Pony stood. Giant boards with blown-up photos of the area during filming show that little has changed in the background scenery during the intervening years, except that the magic has been assiduously removed.

This is exactly the point: like all carefully-constructed country dreams, the simple, comfy life of Hobbiton doesn’t actually exist. This farm is a giant sheeply monoculture, employing insecticidal dips and antibiotics to keep the ewes alive. Real farmers may eat very well indeed, at least in the developed world, but setting the table for six meals a day is an extravagance that is incompatible with the near-constant work required to grow that food. In fact, the greatest illusion in the movie (up to and including making John Rhys Davies look 5 feet tall) may be in the hobbit’s veggie garden. The vegetables were planted on-site and carefully tended to make sure nothing changed as the filming progressed, but Jackson was so concerned about the potential for destruction by possums that those luscious cabbages were pumped full of enough poison to throttle event he heartiest dwarf. They had to be buried at the end of filming to avoid accidental poisoning of people or stock.

Are picture-perfect country fantasies equally toxic? Certainly, the last great back-to-the-land movement left many city-born hippies frustrated, disillusioned and virtually destitute. The “grass is greener” symptom worms its way into suburban minds through writers from Tolkien to Thoreau, but the reality of 5 a.m. milkings, failed crops and blistered hands doesn’t quite line up with romantic notions of getting back to nature. I am certainly guilty of idealizing farming in my own mind, and must continually remind myself that whilst one day of digging ditches by hand may be sublime, a lifetime of it would amount to awful drudgery. If I don’t remember this, I might eagerly sign myself up for such a life, and ultimately make myself miserable.

I think, however, that the Hobbitons and Walden ponds of our imaginations are not all fluff, useless at best, dangerous at the worst. All fantasies tell us something about ourselves, about our deepest desires and needs, but they are meant to be one ingredient in a successful life, not the whole substance. If the farmers I have met in New Zealand and elsewhere didn’t dream in their hearts of a perfectly ecological agriculture, there would be no organic food for the rest of us, and even more toxic cabbages buried all over our landscape. Similarly, if dreams about a healthier world motivate every city-bound hippie to grow a little patch of carrots and buy with a conscience, then that is one more person interacting meaningfully and positively with the ecosystem around them. I don’t need to live in a hole with a round door to get real fulfillment out of eating good food and gaining self sufficiency. Neither must I give up my cherished country fantasies, if I remember to dig a ditch by hand once in a while, to remind myself of farming reality.