Three well attended talks to appreciative audiences in Taranaki and Manawatu, resulted in a lead on a hidden 20 year old food forest in the Central Plateau.

Public talks

It was a short lead time, but this didn’t seem to matter, in these days of being able to share information rapidly through the networks. Kama Burwell, a very competent and active permaculturalist working at the Hive Taranaki Environment Centre, spread the word and drew in 40+ people on a chilly Monday night, aided by an interview on Access Radio Taranaki that morning.

One of the highlights for me was meeting Ché Rogers and seeing the tagged Facebook photos of his forest garden, taken with his daughter in the pictures for a sense of scale. He let me download them andadd some graphic tags of my own.

The following night 30 people came out in Marton, from the efforts of Lorraine Bartlett who invited us to meet in the Marton Arts Centre. It was a particularly warm and generous welcome, and the talk was followed by an abundant pot luck meal, which kept the conversations going for some time until we had to leave to head over to Fielding.

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We're holding the third of our monthly film screenings on key issues of our time. The aim is to try and inform and develop peoples thinking around these topics. We hope to encourage existing initiatives, and maybe catalyse some more!

This month's film is 'The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil (2006):
52 min - Documentary » Read more

From a simple impulse to connect a few people in a conversation, and share some stories of progress in the food forest space in Aotearoa (New Zealand), this webinar idea gained traction rather faster than I expected.

The inaugural Food Forest webinar – from Aotearoa

When I made a post on Facebook page to say there were 35 people signed up for the Webinar, it was at about 7 days to go. To date, there have been 75 people, from all up and down the country who have signed up. Not bad for two weeks lead time.

Even John Valenzuela registered to attend. John is the horticulturist, consultant and educator from Marin County California, best known for his work with rare fruit, home gardening, trees, traditional agriculture, plant propagation, and ethnobotany – I’m hoping we can get him back to present one day. By the time it arrived I had sent notifications to 70 people.

On the day, 43 attendees logged in and saw and heard the presentations from Finn MacKesy, Jon Foote and myself (or parts of them). There were some technical issues, for example some people couldn’t get in if they arrived late. I found out that I had overlooked the limit of attendees for the subscription level I had paid for (more on that later). My apologies. But overall it went quite well - as you'll see from the recording.

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Kia ora Koutou, the 2nd public meeting/workshop for Glen Edens urban plan is being held tonight (Thursday 4th July) at the Waitakere Ranges Local Board Office.   If anyone wants to meet before hand to consolidate more ideas before the workshop please let me know 818 8004, 022 544 4405.

Here is some more info - » Read more