Hapuku Lodge & Tree Houses shares the land with our family’s deer stud and oil producing olive grove – Hapuku Farm.

Hapuku Farm was created when Hapuku Lodge owner, Tony Wilson, returned to his country of birth in the early ‘90’s. Tony visited his nephew Paul, who had acquired a modest deer farm overlooking his favourite surf spot at Mangamanu Bay. Soon, Tony and Paul agreed to become partners in Hapuku Deer Farm.

The farm started out small, approximately thirty-five acres of rich soil on the upper plateau above the Lodge. Tony and Paul quickly realized they needed more land to sustain the growing deer herd and purchased the 120 acres of the lower farm, where the Lodge and Tree Houses sit today.

The deer industry relies on three main sources of revenue, venison, the harvest of deer horn velvet, and stags grown for their trophy potential. We farm some deer for venison, but mainly Hapuku is a stud farm concentrating on developing the best genetics for velvet and trophy farmers. We are proud of…

Tony has an enthusiastic appreciation for olive oil and decided to take a crack at producing a Hapuku Farm oil. In 2000, we planted a 1000 tree olive orchard of our favorite Tuscan varietals - Frantoio, Leccino, Minerva, and Pendilino.

In the autumn of the year we can be found, along with neighbors and friends, in the orchard hand picking our adolescent olive trees. The olive press, found on the ground floor of the Olive House, is a pneumatic press based on the original principal of applying pressure to pulverized olives to extract oil. A slow and labor intensive process, on a good day we press about 1 ton of olives producing around 30 liters of oil. Because the orchard is maturing, we source some of our olives from local farmers to turn out an adequate amount of oil.