local food

Last year I was teaching social media to a group of Graduate students at The Centre for Sustainable Practice, one of the Otago Polytechnic schools, based in Wanaka. That's where I met Andy Cambeis, who's major project was to establish a food forest on public land in Hawea Flat. What I didn't realise until the end of the year, was that he was documenting the process in a way that others could benefit from.

When I read the first draft of his "Manual for creating a Food Forest on Public Land" I was delighted and excited. Here was a paint-by-numbers process, written in a beautifully summary form, with links to every detail one could possibly want, and all very relevant to the New Zealand situation. I knew this was my project for 2013 - to establish the first public access Waiheke Food Forest.

But what's been happening in the last few weeks has been quite astounding... beginning two weeks ago, as I prepared for presenting our Waiheke Food Forest project to the Waiheke Local Board, I learnt of three new Food Forest projects across Aotearoa, and this was a hint that there was some real movement in this space.

Four days later I received a persistant phone call – on the third ring I finally answered it, and I'm glad I did. A polite and well spoken man was wanting to know if I was using www.foodforest.co.nz, because if not he wanted it.

I was clear that I wasn't about to hand this over but suggested we meet. Over a coffee two days later, as we shared our stories, it was clear, we both saw Aotearoa abundant with forests of food. This proud Manawatu farmer shared his vision of 10 acre food forests, up and down the country, in those highly visible locations some farms are blessed with. We’ll be meeting up again soon – with time to flesh out some details and explore possibilities.

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With all the talk of local food and the increase in backyard and community gardens I guess it's not surprising that more websites are coming online to make it easier to find information, trade produce and setup enterprises which together are helping re-build the food web.

I've made mention of Ooooby in the past and the new Bucky Box initiative, two of my favourite home grown (NZ) initiatives.

Lately I've been supporting and following the Hawea Flat Food Forest project. Andy is the driving force behind this project and is making good use of social media, crowd funding and the open sharing of information.

The website which Andy told me about today is Practical Plants, a wiki with an abundance of information about just that, plants with practical uses.

If you're interested in being part of this growing and evolving local food movement, and so many of us are, even in small ways through purchasing from local producers, then you may find some of the links here worthy of some relaxed inspection over these holidays.

Enjoy!

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On Sunday the 29th of July 2012, we provided 520 fruit trees to local schools, early childhood centres and Transition Town groups. All 520 fruit trees from the 2012 project now have their roots down all over Auckland.  The 3 main aims with this project are to support families with lowering their grocery bills, encourage local food production, and teach children how to plant and care for fruit trees. We'd like to thank all the teachers, parents and volunteers for getting involved and sharing our vision of free and healthy food. » Read more

Written by Pete Russell. This is a summary of considerable dialogue on the matter of where our food comes from...