Our team have been busy bees as they put into practice the skills learnt through their apiculture course and extracted honey from the beehives at the garden. Over Spring we were able to utilise the seeds we saved last Summer to produce our own seedlings for the garden. Mere and Georgie also created natural fertiliser and pest control products for the garden utilising sheep manure, coffee and comfry. We extended our garden at Manunui and also partnered with local people who had areas of under-utilised land to help increase food security. The photos below shows Michael clearing overgrown grass and the pumpkin seedlings being planted and rugged up with wool to help them get established. We have harvested over 100 pumpkins from the Manunui garden alone and are aiming to harvest the rural pumpkins over the next month. The Vege Pop up has grown increasingly popular with the Wednesday market drawing people from the wider region (Te Kuiti, Turangi, Kakahi) regularly along to the Manunui hall. Many of the stall holders have commented on how much they love coming and enjoying the atmosphere at the Manunui Markets. It has been a good fruit growing season which meant lots of busy preserving and we have recently been able to harvest figs from our orchard.
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Some of the seeds saved during summer have been pricked out and donated to local schools to help them with their gardens. After a visit to the garden by Rata Street Kindy Georgie and Mere created a vertical garden for them by utilizing wooden pallets. Every Wednesday from 11am-1pm we have been selling vegetables and seedlings through a pop-up stall set up outside Manunui Hall.
We have come to the end of a rather unusual summer. The first two photos contrast the difference between February 2023 and February last year. The very wet weather made our vegetables and weeds bolt so everyone has been kept busy preserving and weeding. After asking for help to get on top of the weeds we had a wonderful response from the community and a number of people have continued to assist regularly in the garden. We have also been busy seed saving and the last photo shows some seedlings grown from seed we collected over Summer. In February we started up our market again which is held on the last Saturday of every month in the Manunui Hall. Last week we held a preserving class in Manunui Hall where people learnt how to preserve fruit and make chutney. Natalie from Whole Food Plant Based Cooking Classes demonstrated the versatility of vegetables by showing us how to make cauliflower rice. There have also been some great cooking recipes and tips being posted to our facebook page by some of our vege box customers. A budget vege box is being sold for $15 and is made up of 5-7 vegetables that are currently ready in the garden.
Busy, busy Spring with gardens being dug over, weeding, growing seedlings, planting out and lawns to mow. We extended the gardens to include a new patch for the corn, kumara and taewa (Maori potatoes). Mulched around the new seedlings and added a couple of avocado trees to our orchard. Everyone is very excited to see the strawberries ripening!
We have started a podcast to tell our journey and explain some of the thinking behind what we do. It is available on Spotify and you can access it by clicking on the link below
https://open.spotify.com/episode/1Ay9G6B3pgtnETcUru81tt?si=0f3a52391fd242f7 We have just finished a busy, busy Autumn period in the garden and are now transitioning to the new season and preparing to hold our Winter Wananga and regular markets again in Manunui hall. With the helpful assistance of Johno Arahanga arranging and operating machinery to trench our irrigation pipe, and a keen group of horticulture students from Land Based Training we were able to get our garden irrigation system setup. This increased our harvest and greatly reduced the amount of time our team needs to spend on watering the garden. After 2 summers labouring away with a hose and watering cans everyone is pretty stoked to be able to turn on the tap and let the pump, pipe and emitters do the mahi instead.
With help from MSD flexiwage we are now employing 3 of our volunteers and we have been focusing on fostering an entrepreneurial spirit. This means that our employees are involved in directing all aspects of running the horticulture operation. They have planned the garden crop rotations, grown and planted out seedlings, marketed, harvested and sold our produce to customers. The Board sees our role as that of supporting and uplifting our employees/ volunteers and creating a culture that nurtures innovation and growth. As the season changes from Autumn to Winter and the pace of growth in the garden slows we are adapting our activities with the changing season. We are starting up our market again on 28th May in the Manunui Hall (10-2pm) and we will be hosting markets on the last Saturday of each month. We are also planning to hold a Winter Wananga series in the hall and are looking to include cooking, preserving, rongoa, and flax weaving classes over the next few months. Feel free to get in contact if you wish to attend or have any other wananga ideas you would like to see happen. We are also looking to initiate some new projects in the garden over the next couple of months so keep following our journey and we hope to report next time on our progress with the Pataka, hens, and firewood operation. We're excited about our plans for 2022, with help from the Ministry for Social Development we can begin employing 3 of our dedicated volunteers which enables us to launch to another level. We are looking to expand our operations this year to include other enterprises such as firewood and raising some livestock. Keep an eye of our facebook page to get weekly updates on our projects and activities. Through our partnership with Land Based Training we have seen the maara being of assistance to horticulture students and also being utilised by the apiculture class. Just prior to Christmas we began selling $10 vegetable boxes made up of produce from the garden. Follow the link to the King Country News to read an article about how the Trust is responding to the rising costs of food.
https://waitomonews.partica.online/waitomo-news/18-january-2022/flipbook/0/ While Covid19 settings have disrupted some of our larger events at the hall such as the monthly market we will begin holding regular smaller wananga to build community and to help people develop self sufficiency skills. We are planning on building a multi-purpose building at the maara that can be used for shelter, education and vegetable preparation. Recently the team have been picking up sheep poo from local farms, this has been spread out over the garden to improve the health of the soil. Great way to make use of the local resources within our rural area. Meanwhile I had a week in Wellington and checking out Parliament as part of the Kelloggs rural leadership course. This is a 6 month course which involves doing a research project. My research question is how might we develop a food system that benefits everyone in community? I've been interviewing a range of locals (Iwi, farmers, education, health, social services, businesses, youth) and will be pulling out the main themes for my final report and presentation in October.
While in the Capital I was able to visit a few of the community gardens and steal some ideas for our garden. We are holding the Market at Manunui Hall again this Saturday (held every 3rd Saturday in the month). We have started a series of 'hairbrush interviews' where we talk with the different people who are involved in Taumarunui Whakaarotahi Trust. Our first interview was with Michael Arahanga. You can view it on our instagram or facebook page (link below). Michael is part of our leadership team and has shown incredible dedication by regularly contributing around 30hrs a week maintaining, watering and caring for the community garden. We are also looking to kick off our fruit picking and preserving efforts again. On Tuesday night from 6pm we will be holding a preserving class at the Manunui Hall -All welcome.
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CMBL9oYARu4/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link I was recently contacted by a young women from Iran (Zoha) wanting to do an interview for her instagram page @everyoneisunique. Zoha likes to capture the stories of everyday people from all around the world. We conducted the interview via Zoom at the Manunui community garden and you can watch it by clicking on the link below:
www.instagram.com/p/CLCGDjzHuIV/ For those who prefer more indepth radio interviews I also spoke with Holly Snape (Community Waikato) on Free FM recently and you can listen via this link: https://www.freefm.org.nz/Programmes/Programme-Details.aspx?PID=2c75dca7-b297-40ec-95d3-85c252190c0a Down at the gardens Merryn from Land Based Training has had her horticulture class busy digging holes and learning about the soil. In the meantime Riana has been toiling over the stove and making use of the garden produce by preparing chowchow and courgette fritters to sell at our stall at the Kotahitanga Festival this Saturday. |
AuthorBlogs are written by members of the Trust team. |