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Kaicycle

Pānui Ākuhata|
August Newsletter

Nāu te rourou, nāku te rourou, ka ora ai te iwi

With your food basket and my food basket the people will thrive

Kia ora koutou,

Mānawatia a Marariki! It’s well and truly the new year of Aotearoa, which is a time to reflect on the past and look to the future. It was wonderful to share this with many of you at our Matariki event on the 18th - check out the pictures below.

With the turning of the year, it’s time to let you know that Kaicycle needs you. Kaicycle’s work is more urgent than ever: 

  • People are going hungry. Kaicycle’s mission to get kai to the people who need it most is more urgent than ever - we donate most of the kai we grow to the community. 

  • Urgent climate action is needed. The effects of climate change are real and urgent - storms, weather warnings, flooding - we need to divert greenhouse gas producing food-scraps from landfill NOW. Kaicycle is diverting almost one tonne of food scraps to compost every week. 

  • Tamariki and rangatahi don’t know where their kai comes from. We’re so disconnected from our food systems that many young people don’t know where food comes from - we host free school trips allowing kids to get their hands in the dirt and to understand food systems. 

  • Industrial agriculture is destroying our whenua. Monocropping and adding industrial fertilisers and pesticides is killing our soil. Kaicycle teaches thousands of people every year about regenerative Hua Parakore growing methods & composting. 

Funding is harder to find than ever, and this mahi is more needed than ever before. That’s where you come in - you can be a part of our Farm Whānau and make this mahi possible. Regular, reliable funding is crucial to do this work and that’s where you can help by signing up as a monthly donor at kaicycle.org.nz/donate - you’ll even get some perks, like a seasonal lunch at the māra and free entry to our workshops! 

This is what grassroots climate action and thriving community look like. You make it possible. 

Ngā mihi, 
The Kaicycle team

 Donate now 
 

HUIHUINGA | EVENTS

Ākuhata Community Open Day - 1st Ākuhata / August, 9.30am-3pm 

Join us for this wintry Community Open Day! We’ll be doing a morning working bee in the māra, followed by a shared lunch, optional farm tour and a Grow Your Own Mulch workshop! Come along for as little or as much of the day as you like. Full details and timings for the day are here.  

Working bee - 9.30am-12.30pm

Join us to do mahi in the māra and get your hands in the soil - we’ll provide the coffee and good vibes, you bring yourself and your friends! Sign up here under ‘Community Working Bee’.

Grow Your Own Mulch workshop - 1.30-3pm

Mulch makes a huge difference to soil and plant health. It protects the soil surface from weeds, erosion and moisture loss while also feeding worms and microbial life. Instead of buying pea straw or wood chip, there are many plants we can grow to use as mulch - from cannas and lupin to kawakawa and buckwheat. At Kaicycle we are planting a large mulch/flower/pollinator border to support our veggies. Come and learn how to apply this in your own gardens. Registration essential, sliding scale costs - FREE for our Farm Whānau members. Sign up for the workshop here.  

 

MAHI AROHA | VOLUNTEER

Volunteer spotlight on Leisha! 

It’s awesome having Leisha at our Farmer Life volunteer sessions, bringing her big smile, EXCELLENT weeding of couch grass (hero) and real kōrero - thanks Leisha!

How long have you been volunteering at Kaicycle?

I first walked into the māra eight months ago. Perhaps I'll bring cake on my one year anniversary. 

What is your favourite thing about volunteering at Kaicycle?

We all come to Kaicycle for the gardening and composting, and these are wonderful in and of themselves, but Kaicycle offers so much more. I find holistic hauora and hope at every session.  

And if you were a vegetable what would it be and why?

Corn? It's a bright, sweet vege that loves to hang out with its friends in the sun ☀️ or indoors with a movie 🍿


Are you inspired to volunteer? Sign up here!

 

PĀNUI | NOTICES

Looking for outdoor work? Love cycling?

We’re looking for a new member to join our awesome Kaicylist team! Confidence in cycling in urban areas is key as well as being physically fit and able to safely lift heavy buckets full of food scraps. If you’re interested, take a look at the job description for more details & how to apply. Applications open until August 16th although we will be reviewing them on a rolling basis & starting interviews in the first week of August so get yours in asap! We’d love to hear from you.

 

MAHI WAIRĀKAU | Composting

Compost winter sale 40% off!

Prepare your home garden for spring with the highest quality compost around! We have heaps of compost ready to go - it’s so nutritious that multiple customers have told us their veggies have never grown better! It’s been tested by soil scientists, and is full of microbes, worms, protozoa and fungi. Order online and collect from our farm in Newtown. 40% discount applies for all orders made in August.

Did you know we donate compost too?

We were stoked to donate a trailer load full of Kaicycle compost to Newtown Primary School last month! The tamariki loved hunting for worms & have used the compost to build up the soil health along the school fence lines to plant a food & pollinator corridor. If you know any community projects, gardens, schools or marae who would benefit from a donation of the best compost in town, let us know!

Food rescue pilot project

Kaicycle are trialling a food rescue operation with three of our customers who we collect food scraps from (shout out to Frank’s Coffee Newtown, Te Whaea Dance, and Utilities Disputes!) to reduce the amount of edible food being thrown into compost. Read more about it in our recent blog post.

 

ĒTAHI KAWE PŪRONGO | OTHER NEWS

Thank you Bunnings Lyall Bay!

In this cold rainy weather, our volunteers and staff really need good gumboots and rain pants AND we’d recently run short on gardening tools! Huge mihi to Lyall Bay Bunnings for generously helping us out with all of these items. They may even be able to support us with refreshing our old crumbly wash station lino (watch this space!)

Kaicycle in the context of Systems Change Theory

With the help of the wonderful Mika who completed a very cool course on structural injustice and civic action as part of his politics and law degree, we have put together a blog exploring how Kaicycle fits into the context of Change Theory! It was really interesting for us to take a look at some of our mahi through a more academic lens. You can read it here.

Mānawatia ā Matariki! 

We loved celebrating Matariki with many of you in July - thank you for marking the new year with us. We held a ceremony of composting the things we wanted to leave behind by writing them on rangiora leaves and tossing them into a steaming hot pile of compost which was very cathartic. We also got to eat a delicious soup prepared almost entirely with vegetables from our māra by the very talented El from Seeds to Feeds.

We were also very lucky to have Irihāpeti with us sharing her incredible knack for teaching raranga - lots of beautiful harakeke flowers magically sprung up in our garden beds. A huge mihi to both El and Iri and everyone else who helped out on the day. Also a shout out to the amazing array of bread and the bread bakers, it was the perfect compliment to the soup. We came away feeling nourished in our tinana and wairua, and so grateful for the wonderful community we have around us. Mānawatia a Matariki!

 

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 - get in touch to explore this!

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

 DONATE 

With thanks to our supporters.

Kaicycle

Kaicycle Urban Farm and Composting Inc, 5 Hospital Road, Newtown, Wellington, 6021, New Zealand

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