Easter Clean-up 13th April 2019

It’s been a while since Friends of the Farm has had a community Easter Clean-up at Ambury Farm.  For the past five years, we’ve supported the Sustainable Coastlines’ ‘Love your Coast’ Campaign on the Manukau Harbour instead, with a large number of schools coming through the Farm to collect rubbish from the Ambury foreshore.  With ‘Love Your Coast’ coming to an end in our area, this year we returned to our roots with our traditional Easter Clean-up.

Friends of the Farm co-ordinated the clean-up on the Ambury foreshore, as well as supporting the Tararata Stream Team to host a clean-up there. Although it was a small turn-out, it was great to see our regular Easter clean-up supporters returning, as well as some new faces.  Some participants commented that there didn’t seem to be as much rubbish around as on previous clean-ups. However, you do have to have a keen eye to notice all those tiny pieces of plastic out there.

During the clean-up, we ran a competition to guess how many rabbit poos were in a jar, and lucky Lenna had the job of counting them! In total, there were 1409 rabbit poos.  The prize was the jar, and an Ambury Farm hat.  It was a beautiful afternoon, and participants’ efforts were rewarded with stacks of Easter eggs and a sausage sizzle.

The clean-up was a simple event for FOF to organise, and participants enjoyed the feeling of taking action to care for the environment in such a beautiful setting.  A small group meant were plenty of Easter eggs to go around!

Community orchard working bee- 30 March 2019

This year has been a really successful one for our community orchard, with the feijoa trees producing the biggest fruit we’ve seen yet!  We put this down to our thorough pruning and thinning out of the trees, which created more light for the fruit.

The working bee focused on creating a better bed for our blueberries, by removing kikuyu and adding some top quality worm castings from the big worm farm at Ambury farm, as well as mulching.  We also took the opportunity to mulch the other trees, prune our espaliered trees, (which are growing beautifully) and build a temporary hen enclosure under the feijoas.

We’ve been working hard to reduce the guava moth in the feijoas this year, by spraying with neem oil, picking up the fruit from off the ground (where the larvae like to grow) and by trialing the use of chickens to help clean up the fruit on the ground and eat the grubs.  Our orchard neighbours are enjoying the chickens, although their egg laying is a bit sporadic! 

We had a lovely turn-out of locals at the working bee, and were once again treated to a feijoa cake (thanks Rose!), on completion of our work.  The orchard has been well used this year, with lots of neighbouring families enjoying the fruit.

The citrus trees are producing beautifully now, and there’ll be plenty to share once it’s ripe.  We still have some work to do to improve the shelter belts for some of the younger trees and extend the orchard further.  Keep your eye on our Facebook page for future working bees in our community orchard.

Ihumātao reclamation Festival 2nd March 2019

This history-making event was organised by local group SOUL (Save Our Unique Landscape), who wanted to create a celebration on land at Ihumātao which is currently under threat from a proposed housing development.  Thousands of people turned out on a stunning Summer’s day to see the many great acts, and to sample the delicious food and workshops that were on offer.

To show our support for the cause, Friends of the Farm offered to help by creating a zero waste event, and to feed all the hardworking volunteers on the day.  Prior to the event, we worked with food vendors to help them source compostable packaging, and funded Koia Teinakore (ME Family Services) and his awesome team to man bin stations.

Four bin stations were dotted around the event, and we were thrilled by how respectful concert attendees were, with minimal litter left behind to clean up. Everyone truly grasped the significance of this special place.  Friends of the Farm was pleased to be able to contribute our mahi as a koha to the hard working SOUL campaigners, who’re tirelessly working to save a very special place in our community.

Bike Powered Sewing Machine

After nearly two years of research and co-ordination, Friends of the Farm is proud to present a  Māngere Bridge (possibly Auckland, maybe New Zealand) first- our bike-powered ELECTRIC sewing machine!  Not only is our Tote All Recall bag library scheme helping to reduce plastic bag use in the Bridge, but our sewing operation is now able to go totally off the grid. All we need to boost the solar panel on our sewing machine is pedal power – kindly supplied by our enthusiastic visitors.

Seen for the first time on Saturday 8 December by the lucky few who were visiting the Māngere Bridge library, this video footage captures just how keen people were to join in.  Keep an eye out for us in the middle of a paddock somewhere near you! We’ll be sewing bags to refill the Tote All Recall boxes in the Village, where you can borrow a bag for your shopping convenience.  Boxes are located at the library and at Māngere Bridge Fruit and Veg. 

We're always looking for new sewers, so please ask at Māngere Floral Studio or contact us on friends@fof.nz for more information about how to get involved. We’ll provide fabric and a pattern; all we need is your time and expertise.

With huge thanks to the Tread Lightly Caravan for their starter pack and to Graeme from The Auckland Teaching Gardens Trust Inc. for his engineering brilliance. We look forward to continuing our alliance. Our bike was inspired by Harriet Riddell in this video https://www.facebook.com/bbcoxford/videos/1428540333855050/

Eco Christmas Workshop

Friends of the Farm members Caroline and Meredith transformed the Ambury Farm barn into a homemade Christmas wonderland recently, for their Eco Christmas workshop.  Using natural materials like wool, paper, wood and fabric, they managed to create zero-waste gift ideas, wrapping paper and decorations that were not only affordable and kind to the environment, but also beautiful.

Workshop participants were given the opportunity to try their hands at wet felting Christmas tree decorations and making hand-made paper infused with seeds.  These activities were popular with children and adults alike, and gave people time to reconnect with old friends and catch up on neighbourhood news while creating their masterpieces. 

    

        

There were plenty of edible Christmas goodies to sample as well, including peppermint candy, personalised Christmas biscuits and the ever-popular Christmas mince pies.  DIY edible gift ideas like homemade lemonade and “biscuits in a jar” were also on display, providing quirky alternatives to the usual Christmas fare.  
 

The workshop gave us all inspiration for making the coming season a time of beauty and creativity, in stark contrast to the excessive consumerism and wastefulness we see around us.  If you weren’t able to make it, we hope the photos (and the internet) will give you some ideas for creating your own eco-Christmas this year.  Many of the items made for the workshop are now having a second life in a ‘Homemade Christmas’ display at ME Family Services in Mangere.  

Edible Paradise- Film Screening

Friends of the Farm (FOF) hosted our first ever film screening in the barn recently, with 15 adults and eight children joining us to watch ‘Edible Paradise’.  Several of our FOF members, had attended a screening of the film through Films for the Future (For the Love of Bees), and wanted to share it with our local community. 

‘Edible Paradise’ is set in the Christchurch ‘Redzone’, documenting the work of local communities (supported by the Council) in transforming the now uninhabitable land into edible gardens, heritage orchards and food forests.  FOF was keen to see whether there was interest amongst the Māngere Bridge community in exploring the possibilities for producing more food in and around our neighbourhood.

The film generated different ideas for different people.  Some were keen to identify the heritage fruit trees in our community already, and think about how these can be preserved.  Where old trees are being removed, or a tree is dying, graftings can be taken and replanted elsewhere to ensure the tree continues its life.  FOF is looking into the possibility of running a grafting workshop so that we have the capacity to save our special fruit trees before they’re lost. 

Others were excited about the potential for creating a food forest in our neighbourhood.  Food forests mimic natural forests, which have different layers of planting; bigger trees, smaller bushes, and an understorey.  The only difference is that everything is edible!  Food forests are a natural and efficient way to produce food, as the different plants and trees support each other and create their own eco-system of beneficial insects and birdlife as well. Our Māngere Bridge orchard would be an ideal site to try this method of growing food.

The film screening included a micro-workshop making seed bombs, which when planted will provide food for bees and other beneficial insects. We hope this will be the first of many more film screenings at Ambury Farm!

  

October News

It’s been another busy month for the Friends of the Farm (FOF) team, with a pop-up stall at the library, a sewing bee, our ever-popular beeswax wrap workshop and supporting the Department of Conservation and Ambury Farm with the Kiwi Guardians Walk. 

Our pop-up stalls at the Mangere Bridge library continue to be a great opportunity to talk to people about the different initiatives FOF is involved with in the community, as well as to give one-to-one support to reduce household waste.   

The beeswax wrap workshop last month attracted a group of 24 people and was, once again, a lovely time to meet and talk rubbish!  A smaller group joined us for the bi-monthly sewing bee at the Farm, adding a few more bags to our growing Tote All Recall community bag collection.  With Fresh Choice set to ditch plastic bags very soon, the time is certainly ripe for our reusable cloth bags.

The Kiwi Guardians walk, run by the Department of Conservation, is promoted as ‘an activity programme for kids to learn about nature, earn cool rewards and go on epic family adventures’.  This month, Ambury Farm hosted the event and FOF stepped up to lend a hand, providing volunteer support from our community for the various activities on the day.  Around 1000 people attended from all over Auckland, enjoying the opportunity to take part in some farm activities, including feeding the animals, making butter, exploring the lava cave and milking a cow.  Big thanks to our young people and others who helped out with the activities on the day. 

WHAT’S PLANNED FOR THE REST OF 2018

-       Saturday 3 November, 2.30pm Screening of the film ‘Edible Paradise’ in the Barn, in partnership with Live Lightly. The movie was made over five years as part of the Localising Food Project and travels to the four corners of Aotearoa to meet local food campaigners instrumental in creating community orchard and food forest projects in their patch.  Come along and meet like-minded locals, mingle and share ideas over a cuppa and cake and make clay seed balls to take home.  If you’re worried about baby-sitting, fear not, one of our lovely volunteers will be just next door doing crafts and games with the kids.  Please RSVP to friends@fof.nz for catering purposes.

-       Wednesday 7 November 5-6pm Foreshore clean up from the carpark at start of Kiwi Esplanade . 

-       Saturday 24 November Pop-up at the Mangere Bridge Library.  Come down and find out more about FOF and how to reduce waste at your place.

-       Saturday 24 November, 2-3:30pm Eco-Christmas gift workshop at the Farm.  If you’d like to know how to make seed paper, cute wet-felted gifts, advent calendars and stocking fillers as well as alternatives to wrapping paper.  Keep an eye on our Facebook page  for details and be sure to RSVP at friends@fof.nz .