Today’s workshop was a little bit different, we had a group of our beautiful whānau come together that have been on our garden and chicken mentoring programmes. We shared challenges and aspirations, problem solved together and celebrated our achievements so far on this journey. These whānau have now completed their mentoring time and will continue on their own kai sovereignty journey.
We started out with a simple intro each sharing our name, street they live on (so people can see who’s close to them) which worked well. Also our most exciting thing about having their gardens/chickens and the most challenging thing they had had.
People talked about the joy of eating, the taste, watching produce grow, sharing with others, the excitement and involvement of other whanau members and challenges included eating it all and having an empty bed, the bugs eating it all, the chickens escaping, the poor drainage in the tipu tubs among other things and the connections between everyone as similar experiences shared were very cool.
We talked about how the bokashi was working for them and a couple were amazed at how much fresher stuff stays in the fridge bags. Kim and Chloe were both traumatised after epic failures of their bokashis but after hearing from the others were thinking of trying again. Carla and Anna absolutely love them, while Teresa and Deb forgot about them, so will pull them out and have a go. It was good to build on experience knowing how these work for everyone.
Then I talked about the challenges they had mentioned earlier with their gardens and showed them a pic of my very weedy garden showing that gardens are a journey and sometimes they will be amazing… and sometimes they will be a mess, but we can always pick it up again and start over. That no matter who you are we are always learning. We went into more depth about weeds and our perceptions of them. About foraging and how our ancestors didn’t go to the corner diary for a watery lettuce, they foraged. About mulch, and how people will rake all this up (I had a bucket of twigs, leaves and plant debris), throw it into landfill and then drive to mitre ten and buy mulch. We discussed seed raising and the savings we can make by growing our own seeds. $3.98 for a pack of 100 seeds, or $3.98 for a pack of six seedlings. Then I talked about how many things affect success and maramataka and the moon’s influence is a biggie. How we can become in tune with the earth’s natural rhythms. I also handed around a bucket of compost and said, from all my waste, I had made this beautiful rich soil. We also looked at how to make hoops out of old tent poles and hose with a net thrown over, how to lessen our snail numbers and how to help improve drainage.
They were all very engaged and lively. The ones with chickens talked to each other about how special the chickens were to them and the gardeners talked about getting their gardens back up and running. It was very cool when at one point everyone was chatting and I was superfluous to the group!
They were all asking when the next workshop was and for a foraging workshop if we can work on getting one of these sorted.
I said now I was supposed to back away from the group but actually, Just text me any questions and I would be happy to help them.
Loved it! Beautiful people, beautiful whānau and a beautiful project. Keep in touch guys, we look forward to seeing where this takes you all!
Rākau Tautoko 