Community Orchard Working Bee

Community orchard working bee

In the days leading up to our country’s unprecedented state of emergency, Friends of the Farm managed to squeeze in a productive community orchard working bee on Saturday, 23 March 2020.

Being outdoors for a couple of hours, with a dozen local, like-minded people, passionate about our community and the environment, turned out to be a nicely social and calming experience during the nation’s build-up to lockdown. Everyone was super vigilant about staying two or more metres apart from one another to avoid any possible community transmission of the virus.

Our committed community volunteers, including immediate neighbours of the orchard, collectively contributed around 24 hours of volunteer time. They pruned trees, removing dead wood and thinning small branches to allow in light. They also mulched around the base of trees and did other preparations for winter.

Held twice a year, these working bees aim to support the establishment of the orchard in anticipation of bumper crops in the future. The orchard has a variety of trees including various citrus, walnut, almond, avocado and even banana trees. There are guava berries and espalier apple and pear trees being carefully trained to grow along a freestanding trellis.

A local Z service station has a policy of allowing employees to do community service as part of their work time, and one employee joined the working bee as part of that scheme.

Auckland Council is a key partner in this community-led initiative and values the way in which it fosters community connections, wellbeing, resilience and volunteering as well as teaching practical gardening skills that people can apply in their home gardens.

In the coming months, Friends of the Farm are planning to offer a root stock grafting workshop and develop a project that maps heritage trees in Mangere Bridge.

The community may now be in lockdown but many residents seem to be making the most of the warm weather by walking in our beautiful area, where the mountain and the farm meets the sea.