Pānui Tīhema |
December Newsletter

Kia urupū tātou; kaua e taukumekume

Let us be united: not pulling against one another.

Kia ora koutou,

It would be amiss if we didn’t pause to reflect on the gloriousness of Kaicycle’s 10 year birthday party in November. What a spectacular day of celebration, community and resistance! The sun was out, the cordial was flowing, the strawberries were sweet and the mauri was strong. Everywhere you looked there were smiling faces! (Some of them were captured in Teirangi’s incredible photo album).

The last decade hasn’t been easy. So many people have poured their blood, sweat and tears into Kaicycle to keep the kaupapa and whenua alive. So, taking the opportunity to pause and reflect, reminded us that Kaicycle is as much the sum of its people as it is a physical space.

During the day, I overheard someone saying, “this is why I live in Wellington...” Were they talking about the farm? Or were they referring to what it stands for? A sense of belonging and meaning in life. Relationships built on mutual care and reciprocity. Locally available kai, free from pesticides and genetic modification. Collectivism, kotahitanga and whakamana. The fight for climate and social justice.

Whether you popped in to drop off a homemade cake, had a kōrero with an old friend, bought a tea towel or raffle ticket, asked a question during the farm tour, or took home some free seedlings to start your own māra kai - we hope you left feeling full, peaceful and hopeful of what the world could be.

HUGE mihi to everyone who came through and to those who helped make it happen, with special thanks to:

• Ali and Kurt from Taranaki Whānui for blessing the site and opening the event

• Our guest speakers MP Julie Anne Genter and Councillor Laurie Foon for sharing their whakaaro and tautoko

• Sheldon and Anna for sharing the whakapapa and history of the māra

• Commonsense Organics, Kowtow Clothing, Frank's Coffee & two/fiftyseven for generously donating the raffle prizes

• Simon from Tuatua Cafe for preparing the delicious savoury treats

• For Future’s Sake Choir for sharing the guitar and waiata

• And all the cake bakers, organisers and helper-outers!

Somehow this is already our last newsletter for 2025 (eeek!). Although things are starting to wrap up, we still have one Saturday working bee and workshop on the 13th of Dec (read on for more info…). We won’t be publishing our newsletter in January, but will be back with our 2026 pānui from February. Wishing you all a safe and happy festive season. May your plants grow lush and your tomatoes be plentiful!

Community Working Bee

Saturday 13th Dec, 9:30am - 12:30pm

Join us for our December community working bee. Always a great start to the weekend and an awesome way to meet cool people. We’ll be tackling both farm and composting jobs. The working bee will be followed by a shared lunch so please bring some kai to share if you can. We’ll provide tea, coffee and cake. Please register on our volunteering page so we know how much cake to bake!

This is a koha workshop and we ask you to pay what you can afford. If that’s a gold coin that is completely fine! If you can afford more we really appreciate it - we are a charity and rely on donations to be able to carry out our mahi. Koha can be paid in cash or by bank transfer.

MAHI AROHA | VOLUNTEER

Firstly, the most massive thank you to everyone who has volunteered with us in 2025! We truly couldn’t do what we do without you and we are immensely grateful for your support (and patience with weeding grass). With over 1200 volunteer hours at the farm alone, not to mention the hundreds of hours put in by our governance and newsletter volunteers, we’ve been able to achieve some incredible mahi this year for kai resilience and climate justice. Our final volunteer session for the year will be Friday 19th December, and we will start back up Tuesday 6th January.

MAHI WAIRĀKAU | COMPOSTING

The curse of the fruit stickers

Ever questioned why fruit sold in supermarkets still come with plastic stickers on them? A rough calculation estimates that 5 billion fruit stickers are produced in Aotearoa each year. Producers use them for branding and classification, but do customers look up this information? And surely it can be communicated in other ways? 

These little pieces of plastic don’t break down in our composting system and end up entering the soil and ecosystem, eventually turning to microplastics and leaching chemical additives along the way. While each one might seem small, they add up. We recently counted that we collect 300 stickers per week in our food scrap collections - that’s over 15,000 stickers per year! We remove as many as possible by hand - which costs us time/money, and is not an easy task when you’re wearing rubber gloves, so many get missed.

We recently pitched for funding to run a project to reduce sticker contamination, which we should hear back from in December. We have dreams of collecting these stickers and presenting them to the Minister of Environment to call for supermarket regulation on fruit stickers and a producer-pays model. In the meantime, you can do your part by removing the stickers from your mandarins, kiwis and bananas as soon as you get home from the shops, so that they don’t end up in the ecosystem. One day, we hope that plastic stickers on food will be a thing of the past!

Note for our subscribers: A heads up that we plan to update the A4 poster print-out of what we do and don't accept in 2026 to include things like fruit stickers, paper/tissues/cardboard, bodily waste (hair, nail clippings, tooth floss) etc. If you ever need to check what we do/don’t accept and why, click through to our compost guide on our website. 

PĀNUI | NOTICES

Auē, Tīhema (December) is upon us! But never fear we've got some snazzy and sustainable gift ideas for your loved ones this festive season. Not only do you get the satisfaction of not giving your money to a big corporation (yay!), you get to support local climate justice mahi and community resilience. What a win!

Looking for a way to get your hands on our produce?

With the summer flush on the way, get your hands on some of our fresh local produce through the awesome online co-op Co-shop. Our kai is available at the Hauora Kai Central Park pick up location and ordering is open Saturday to Monday. Or join our Farm Whānau to get the PYO benefits!

MAHI MĀRA | Crop talk - On the farm

It’s been a big year for us on the farm with a few minor disasters (tunnel houses blowing over…the current Government etc) and some huge wins (celebrating 10 years on the whenua, hosting every year 9 from Wellington High School and so much more!)

One of the things we’re most proud of is our continuing donation of fresh nutrient dense kai to those in need in our community. We donate much of what we grow to community organisations and volunteers, with weekly donations to the Newtown Community Centre and Home of Compassion Soup Kitchen. So far, in 2025 we’ve donated more than 260kg of produce to our community. This feels especially important as food prices rise and access to good healthy food continues to be treated as a luxury and not a basic human right.

Here's Scott from the Home of Compassion Soup Kitchen, collecting veggies from the farm to cook up for the community.

A reminder that we are a registered charity!

This means that when you donate $5 or more to support us, you can claim tax credentials.