Pānui Tīhema | December

He kai kei āku ringa

I have food at the end of my hands

Kia ora e te whānau

Where did 2024 go? The time has just flown by! As usual we’ve all been busy with our composting, gardening, hosting groups and education work. We are definitely enjoying the warmer days among the windy ones. As we all look forward to the more relaxed summer time, we are also looking forward to 2025 as our ten year anniversary and planning some awesome ten-year celebrations to come!

Before you head off for holidays and down time with your whānau, don’t forget to come along to our Community Open Day and the delightful Summer Solstice event to be held at the farm, or volunteer or join the Farm Whānau membership scheme. Read on for all of the information.

Ngā mihi - Kaicycle team 

We have our final Community Open Day for the year on Saturday 7th of December.

Join us to get stuck into some mahi māra between 9am - 12:30pm for our community working bee, pop by to enjoy the garden over coffee and cake, or BYO picnic, between 12:30pm - 1:30pm. At 1:30pm we’ll guide a farm tour where you can learn about our space and kaupapa, and at 2pm we’re hosting a koha workshop on growing micro-greens. Swing by any time between 9am - 3pm to get your hands on some seedlings, fresh herbs, and compost.

PĀNUI | NOTICES

The Farm holiday closedown

The Farm holiday closedown is from Saturday 21st December until Monday 6th January. Come and volunteer in the new year from Tuesday 7th January!

Composting service over the holidays

Collection service holiday closedown: We’ll be pausing our food scrap collections for two weeks, Mon 23 Dec to Fri 3 Jan, to align with many business' closedown periods. If you’re one of our collection clients, please take care to keep your bucket empty after your final collection on Wed 18/Thu 19 December. We tend to find a few hairy surprises every January…

Residential drop-off service: No changes here - you are welcome to continue dropping off your scraps all December and January. We will have a small crew keeping up with clearing the drop-off wheelies and keeping our compost healthy!

Tips for keeping your compost bucket smell-free: During these hotter months, there are a few things you can do if you notice your compost bucket getting a bit pongy!

If you’re doing fridge clearouts at the end of the week, consider shifting these to the day before your collection day (Wed/Thu), so dubious leftovers have less time to get more dubious.

Move your bucket out of direct sunlight, and into a cupboard if you have the space.

Avoid liquids going into your bucket, like the tail ends of coffee plungers.

Keep the bucket lid clipped on properly: we find that with people adding bits directly to the bucket, the lids get left loosely sitting on top rather than clipped on. This is usually fine, but if smell is an issue, you could have a smaller benchtop caddy for people to add scraps to that gets emptied into the bucket a few times a week (and the lid clipped on tightly afterwards).

A huge, warm thanks to all our composting subscribers for your support during 2024. It’s been a challenging year for many, and thanks to your ongoing support, we’ve been managing to make it through the woods.

Shout out to…Switched on Bikes

At the Farm this month

As the days are warming and with little rain in sight, you may find your soil is drying out. Rose, one of our wonderful Community Farm Managers has put together these helpful tips to keep your mara’s moisture levels up and your soil life healthy!

We’ve been super busy in the māra with plenty more work to be done. We’ve just directly sown lettuce, rocket, mizuna, radish, beetroot, potato and bush beans to keep up our supply into summer. We have sown the following into seed raising trays and will be putting them into the garden as soon as they are ready!: kale, perpetual spinach, NZ spinach, pak choi, parsley, sage, rocket, sweetcorn and saved blue corn from last year, dill, chives, thyme, four different types of saved tomatoes, yellow capsicum, egg plant, silverbeet, marigold, scabies, hollyhock, Salvia and echinacea! Plenty of variety is a key to regenerative gardening.

We've started to use the farm's irrigation system this week too. Thank goodness that was installed by Kelly-ann and Linnea in 2017!

ĒTAHI KAWEPŪRONGIO | OTHER NEWS

TŪTAKI AI I TE TĪMA | MEET THE TEAM

Meet Liam

A lot of you may recognise our amazing Compost Manager Liam from the many colourful hats he wears. You may have seen him drumming up a storm, as part of the Rubbish Trip (check out this awesome short doco), or if you're really lucky, you might even have sampled some of his delicious zero-waste snacks. We’re incredibly lucky to have him on the team and we wanted to give you the chance to get to know him a bit too!

1. Something about the composting job that brings you joy.

Being a composter really is a dream job - being able to work outside in the elements, getting plenty of physical exercise and time away from screens, but most of all being able to feel and deepen my connection to the living natural world and observe the magical composting process. It's so easy to be disconnected from life above and below the soil in a busy concrete-covered city, but Kaicycle is an oasis.

2. Your favourite food/recipe and why.

It might sound weird, but I really like turnips - I've always liked strong flavoured vegetables, and turnips are one of the best - especially good roasted! I think it must have something to do with my English ancestry. They are also super easy to grow, and the greens/tops are great too (supposedly even more nutritious than the root).

3. What turns you off?

Late-stage capitalism sure gets you down. Whether it's nice-guy politics that make destructive, exploitative and divisive policies sound OK, the fact that drinking your coffee and eating your lunch out of pieces of single-use rubbish is still so normal and acceptable, or just the blind faith invested in economic growth at the expense of healthy people and planet.

It makes the work of many amazing community- and iwi/Māori- led initiatives that grow community resilience and alternative economies all the more important.

4. What sound or noise do you love?

It may be cliché, but I just love the birdsong here in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. Every part of the city has something different, including the hilarious squeaking of juvenile magpies (we have a few hanging around Kaicycle). The screeching of kākā and kārearea are probably my favourite, although hard to go past tūī.

An exciting reminder that we are officially a registered charity!

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