Pānui Āperira |
April Newsletter

Te toto o te tangata he kai, te oranga o te tangata, he whenua, he oneone

While food provides the blood in our veins, our wellbeing is drawn from the land and soils.

Kia ora koutou,

The last month has been a big one, full of many ups and many downs. Our hearts are aching for our global whānau and the current injustices unfolding before us. It’s a very heavy time and we’ve been feeling incredibly grateful to be here in Aotearoa, with access to land to grow good kai and a wonderful and supportive community to do it with.

Some of the lovely ups that we’ve had of late have been our collabs with the amazing people at Seeds to Feeds. They have magical skills that make everything they cook incredibly delicious and they joined us for our March Community Open day to make a tino reka chutney from veggies from the māra and those people from the community brought, AND we managed to convince them to come back for our Neighbours month celebration and cook a soup for our post volunteer session lunch (which was obviously blimmin’ tasty, and made even better having done some hard mahi before hand). This soup was extra special as every ingredient in it, apart from salt and a little bit of oil, came from our māra.

Cooking and sharing kai together has to be one of the most human and wairua enhancing experiences, made all the more special when everyone there has been directly involved in growing and harvesting the kai.

Ngā mihi, 

The Kaicycle team

April Community Open Day, Saturday 11th April

Join us for our community open day in April! Come along for as much or as little of the day as you want. 

• 9.30am-12:30pm - Working bee - do some mahi in the garden - could be weeding, planting, sowing seeds, sifting compost or more, depending on what the māra needs at that time! Register and find out more here.

• 12.30pm-1:30pm Lunch - BYO picnic lunch to eat or some kai to share! 

• 1pm-1.30pm - Farm tour - If you haven't been to our urban farm before, this is a great opportunity to find out what we're all about and how our farm and community composting works.

• 1.30pm-3pm - Koha workshop -  Introduction to Seed Saving - more details below.

Introduction to Seed Saving Workshop, Saturday 11th April, 1:30pm - 3pm

We know many of you couldn’t make it to our seed saving workshop in March, so we’re going to run it again for April! Seed saving is an ancient practice and an essential tool in creating a circular and resilient food system and enabling kai sovereignty. It also allows us to select for seed that will thrive in our micro-climates, strengthening crops year by year. We'll wānanga about the importance of saving seed, understanding the whakapapa of seeds and plant reproduction, and what you need to know to start saving seed yourself. We'll put our learnings into practice at the farm, saving and processing seed from our summer crops. Details here.

Registrations required - email community@kaicycle.org.nz to sign up.

Elsewhere in Pōneke

• Monday 30th March 7pm is your last chance to get quizzical and support us at the MOON Bar quiz in Newtown. We're the sponsored charity of the month, so your quiz entry money will come direct to Kaicycle! We sent a team down last week and had a great time (we did not win though hahaha shocking). More deets here.

• WCC’s Climate Festival is kicking off in April with a whole range of events across the city - we'll have details of our event on our website soon at kaicycle.org.nz/events and in our next newsletter!

• Seeds to Feeds are still hard at work putting together beautiful, wholesome community kai events so make sure to have a look at their events page to find one to go to!

• Te Matapihi ki te Ao Nui, Wellington’s newly re-opened Central Library, is hosting a panel discussion on Hua parakore, māra kai, kai sovereignty, and more on Saturday April 11, 1-2pm. Our own Composting Manager Liam will be on the panel. More details to come soon. 

PĀNUI | NOTICES

You can buy our veggies right now!

Did you know you could be buying our veggies from coshop.nz right now? On top of what we donate, we sell a small amount of produce through this local grower space, so if you’ve got the craving for some fresh as kai, jump on and order now - choose the Hauora Kai Central Park option, which is where you’ll be able to pick up your veggies on Thursday, after we harvest them fresh that morning.

Seeking untreated sawdust

Are any crafty wood workers out there amassing sawdust that they would like to donate to a worthy cause? We’d love some to use in our māra. The important thing for us is that the sawdust is untreated as we don’t want to be putting any chemicals into our precious soils. If you’ve got some flick us an email to community@kaicycle.org.nz.

Ko te wā | End of financial year - can you help support our mahi?

We don't often ask, but Kaicycle is at a pivotal moment. We're doing some of the most meaningful work we've ever done, and to keep going, we need to build a broader base of community support. If you've ever thought about donating, before 31 March is genuinely the best time to do it: as a registered charity, donations of $5 or more qualify for a 33% tax rebate through Inland Revenue, meaning a $150 koha effectively costs you $100. Whether it's a one-off gift before the financial year ends, or setting up a small regular contribution - every bit of support helps us plan, grow, and keep showing up for this community. 

You can donate at kaicycle.org.nz/donate - ngā mihi nui.

MAHI AROHA | VOLUNTEER

The end of daylight savings sadly marks the end of our Tuesday evening farm volunteer sessions. We’ll be restarting these once the lighter evenings return. Our Tuesday and Friday morning sessions, 10am-12pm will stay the same!

However, if you are still keen to get into some Kaicycle mahi during weekday afternoons, our composting team will be hosting TWO sessions every week throughout Winter! It’s a great opportunity to learn more about our composting process, meet the worms and microbes that make magic happen, and do some physically active work to warm you up during those cooler months. These composting working bees will be on Mondays and Thursdays from 3pm - 5pm every week!

We’ll also still be having some Saturday sessions going forward, and you can sign up to any of our volunteer sessions at kaicycle.org.nz/volunteer.

MAHI WAIRĀKAU | COMPOSTING

Food waste data for businesses

April marks the end of the financial year, and many businesses will be writing up their sustainability & impact reports for the year. If you’re subscribed to our collection service, we track the volumes of food scraps we collect from you every week, meaning we can share how much you’ve composted in litres/kilos and estimate carbon emissions saved from landfill over the last year. For a fee of $30 we can share this information with you for your reporting - get in touch with us at compost@kaicycle.org.nz if you’re interested!

Who do we collect from?

If you love maps as much as I do (Alex), take a look at our new map that shows the 100+ organisations in central Pōneke & Newtown that we collect food scraps from every week using our e-bike & trailer. We’re so appreciative of all our dedicated subscribers who day-in day-out conscientiously collect their food scraps in one of our Kaicycle buckets for composting instead of rotting in landfill - ngā mihi nui. Learn how you can sign up your workplace to our sustainable & impactful composting service here.

ĒTAHI KAWE PŪRONGO | OTHER NEWS

Kai for community

We donated one of our BIGGEST hauls ever to the Compassion Soup Kitchen on 20th March - more than 16kgs of potatoes, tomatoes, leafy greens, celery and more!

Did you know that the majority of our veggies go direct to the community? We proudly supply the Soup Kitchen, the Newtown Community Centre’s Quick Kai and Free Soup Friday programmes, as well as having a Pick Your Own area and donating to other one-off community events. Getting kai to the community!

TŪTAKI AI I TE TĪMA | MEET THE TEAM

We’re so sad to be saying goodbye to a HUGELY valued team member Liam Dakin who has worked at Kaicycle on and off since 2017! Here’s some notable highlights from his time here:

• Liam brings a singularly ‘Liam’ energy to the team - he’s a ray of sunshine, always lifting people’s spirits, quick to pull a joke, great for book recommendations and is unflappable even in the worst weather & on the days with multiple punctures.

• From setting up tunnel houses, to installing new taps and irrigation systems, to building a extra storage on the farm bike - he’s helped us advance our infrastructure & quality of life over the years with his great DIY skills.

• With a strong artistic flair, he’s helped design the Kaicycle zine and had us bemused and crying with laughter when performing his potato poem of epic proportions at Kaicycle's potato growing competition back in 2021.

• Liam is such a trouper and always so helpful - checking if anyone else needs help before finishing off for the day.

He’ll be sorely missed and we wish him the best of luck in his next adventure joining an off the grid community up in Ōtaki. Maybe one day he’ll come back to design the Kaicycle matching tracksuit of his dreams…

We need your support to continue our climate justice mahi & vision to regenerate Wellington!

Ways you can support us:

• Make a one-off or monthly donation

• Buy our organic veggies or our biologically active compost

• Sign up your office in Wellington to our weekly food scrap collection service

• Bequest a parting gift to Kaicycle in your will or trust (see Go With Grace for support)

• Sponsor one of our programmes

Kaicycle is a registered New Zealand charity (CC58759) which means your donation is eligible for claiming 1/3rd of the value through tax credits.