27 January 2011

Community Trust of Southland Support

Report on Summer Events

Food Co-op turns 20!

Riverton’s 175 year’s street day

The Centre was asked to add to this day by running scavenger hunts for children and adults! Robyn made these interesting and informative and this was very much appreciated by contestants. 34 children did the scavenger hunt on the beach. The great pictorial sheet Robyn made will be available from the Centre for families to use when exploring the beach as it includes names and descriptions of what you might find. The Ultimate 175 year one was planned to be an impossible challenge where in 175 hours families had to find two specific objects from each decade. 6 well known Riverton families came along to present their items and all were nearly complete and one was perfect – they even had the original old matches in the tin match box. One of the pre 1980 used school exercise books was 1886! And the school and rugby club photos got us chuckling, seeing how our older local identities looked in their youth. Local extended families got to work and turned our in force for the judging which was carried out by two representatives of the early settlers museum. It was interesting to see how things were made to last in those days; cast iron pots, leather school satchels, glass milk bottles etc. still usable if they were needed. As with the old 28 inch bike collection the Guyton’s own and did up to ride around on in the parade. Many just needed a squirt of oil and the tyres pumped up and they were ready to go after being in storage for 15 years! Modern ones always seem to need repairs, new tubes etc

Funding Success

We continue to be very grateful to have the on-going support of the Community Trust of Southland who have granted us $40,000 p/a year towards our operational costs. This is funding is rolled over for a further two years and enables us to focus on education and projects rather than fundraising to stay open. They have sent us a very attractive plaque to display in order to acknowledge this support. With 10 projects on the go and the Centre open 45 hours a week we are still spread quite thinly and will continue to try and secure more funds nationally to increase our paid hours. Robyn and Geoff both attended the workshops for the new Ministry for the Environment “Community Education Fund’ which is the Sustainable Farming Fund, Sustainable Management Fund and the Environment Centre fund all lumped together competing nationally for just over two million dollars so competition is going to be hot! We have to have our application in by early February and we will find out if we have been successful in July. 12 million is available nationally for the Waste minimisation fund but none of our projects presently fit neatly in that category although almost everything we do is education that supports this e.g. Farmers’ Markets which reduce travel miles and packaging.

COMING UP:

Recycling Night this Thursday 3rd February 7pm

While the op-shop is closed many of us are gathering some clothing items we would like to give away so Doetie has organized a fun recycling swap night. Bring some snacks and drinks to share along with your pre loved clothes and unwanted gifts. Once you have selected some “new’ things to take home you can make a small donation to the Centre for them. Anything not needed by the end of the night will be taken to the Salvation Army in Invercargill. This will be out third night and they are always lots of fun and a great way to meet some new like-minded folk.

‘The Three legged Coyote’ fund raising Concert

15th March. Dana Lyons is an internationally known singer-song writer from Washington, known especially for his song ‘Cows with Guns’. You can see a cool animation of that song on you tube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5s5qGg01nE He contacted us ‘out of the blue’ to offer us this concert to raise funds for our projects while he is touring NZ.. He had heard great about our ‘eco town’ from his friend Huckleberry who co-tutored our Riverton Permaculture Course in 2008. Of course we said yes please! $15 single, $25 double $40 family (up to 4 people) and he will have his CD’s for sale if you want to buy one. Could members please bring a plate of supper food for the intermission. Tickets will be pre sold and we will have door sales at Aparima College Hall as well. Spread the Word!

Al Brown visiting Farmers Market

Al Brown is a chef who is travelling around NZ’s coastal communities with Farmers’ Markets and blending local in-season fish with local in season produce. Even though our market is very small they are still very keen to come (19th February 10.30-12.30), especially when we talk of some of the interesting fruit and vegetables we grow down here. So keep and eye out and do come and bring some of your produce to make the market look great or make a crowd, you may even get on TV or Al Brown could buy your produce and you can watch him cook it on TV later in the year!

Our Heritage Harvest Festival

This is on again the last weekend in March 25th 26th and will include a selection of Harvest theme mini workshops so keep that weekend free. We are having interactive displays in the Hall and a 175 year Harvest Feast. We need a team to help organise these - please leave your name at the Centre if you can help. There will be fortnightly meetings with things to help with then a need for many hands over the weekend.

Education News

We now have a specific email address for courses and school based activities to make co-ordination easier: education@sces.org.nz. If you wish to be contacted bi-monthly to remind you about existing and new courses please email that address to be on our mailing list. Also please use this address when making suggestions about courses you would like, course registrations etc. We will be emailing our present education emailing list and asking schools to reply to this address for continued contact. We would like ideas and requests for courses for autumn 2011 A.S.A.P. ( In the next two weeks we hope to produce our autumn course flyer with dates for this quarter (mid February to mid May) and all courses with 6 confirmed and paid for will run. Registrations with pre-payment will take preference if the course is booked out. Sadly last year we had many registering and not turning up which meant that our courses ran at a loss. Please contact us if you can no longer attend. We can hold extra workshops at anytime as well if the demand is there or if a tutor is visiting our area. If you are in another group or township you can request a workshop on a date that suits you- we are able to hold these anywhere in Southland. We also have some great presentations for meetings- so if you require a speaker inquire about the range of topics we can cover.

What Happened in December?

Beginners guide to beekeeping course was held at Peters place at Otahuti and those attending appreciated being able to see the whole process in action. A Cob Oven (Outdoor Pizza oven) course was held at Isla Bank school. This was the most challenging Cob oven made to date – but also the most well protected! The base was built inside one of those round concrete sheds and it was quite tricky trying to build it evenly all around when the access to the back was so restricted. But they managed it! There will be another workshop very soon as we have a lot of interested people already. A big thank you to Peter Aalders for being such a great tutor for both these courses. Due to popular demand we are running both these course again in autumn as both courses are limited to eight people get in quick.

Green Fingers Garden Club

We were fortunate to receive COG’s funding for this new project to keep the packs at $2 each and already several schools are offering this Summer Holiday gardening project for their students. We will have them available to children by ‘Correspondence’ for $5- this includes postage $1.80 to post the pack out and another $1.80 for the certificate sent out once we receive the journal and pictures/drawings of their square metre vege garden. These will also be available from the Centre for $4 as a gift pack. A great gift idea for any primary school age child seeds and instructions on how to grow their first garden! When they return their journal we will post out their certificate.

Thanks Carolyn

Carolyn who was our marketing promotions, course co-ordinator in 2010 has resigned. Her life with three children, a shift-working husband and involvement in so many committees was very busy and trying to fit hours in around our busy schedule and busy office became just one thing too much. We wish her well and thank her for the 101% she gave to the role.

Food Co-op News

We are starting to get summer fruit in but it is quite expensive at first, prices will drop as the season develops. Or computer system is now working well and saving us a lot of time. We still have one or two glitches but these are getting fewer and farther between. We have got a great team behind the scenes in the office each utilizing their skills. We are appreciating Derek’s great computer skills as he has taken over doing most of the new data entries in the system and printing of the bar codes. Karla has taken over the banking three days a week. Yvonne continues as the group secretary writing out the cheques each week which Jolene our accountant organizes as she keeps the ‘books’ up do date on the computer. (This adds up to six paid hours a week ) Our volunteer team out front is also doing a great job not only serving customers but other things needed to make the co-op run smoothly. The ordering, cleaning, packing and stocking is now all going like clockwork. Our Customers often lavish praise on us as they really appreciate the great service we offer and this is not only just Southlanders but travelers from all over the world love us! So keep up the great work team!

The Food Co-op is 20 years old!

Our 20th Birthday Party is coming up in April. In 1991 Robyn, Shirley and Lynnely from Riverton Organic Gardening Group started the Fo-od Co-op in the Guyton’s garage and didn’t know then it would end up to be one of the longest running not-for- profit co-ops in NZ. At that time there were no organic foods in any shop in Southland. We are going to have our bi-annual AGM in April followed by a bit of a party inviting back all our old volunteers from over the years and have a trip down memory lane. Look at our first price lists and sales books and photos. (All organic summer fruit was only $1 kg in 1991!) If you are not part of our team yet but would like to join us just let us know when you come to do your shopping. You can volunteer for as little as two hours a month. We also would like 2-3 others to join our management committee so if you are committed to support the Co-op for the next two years please put your hand up. We hope to complete the process of making the Co-op into a Charitable Trust this year to put it in good stead for the future.

Orchard News

The Good: The West Plains Heritage Orchard Collection (270 trees) is looking fabulous; all survived the changeable summer well and have been cleared around, some staked and most limed. We are going to have a two hour working bee to clear round the trees a bit wider and mulch them before autumn (There are a few Californian thistles involved so you need to bring gloves and wear good shoes!). Please let Robyn know you are keen 03 2348249 and when you are available and we will do it on a nice day or evening in early February. A great chance to see the collection gathered from over 40 heritage orchards and picnic food and drinks provided free for participants.

The Bad: The weather has been so unkind to this year’s baby grafted trees; snow in spring, hail in December, droughts and deluges in January. We did two of each tree we needed and mostly one survived but not always. So we will have to do a few more visits and grafts again next year about 50, (about 100 different ones look like they will be okay)

The Ugly: Hares can do some unkind things to young fruit trees. The lovely collection of 30 trees at the Otautau Arboretum looked great one week and then 7 days later, 10 of the 30 trees were nibbled, or rather gnashed, to bits by hares. Some were back to a forked bare stick. The creatures stand on their back legs and nip at the bark up to a metre high. Aagghhh!! It was a quick return trip with chicken netting stakes to protect what was left. We hope the 10 damaged ones will survive but they may be set back a year.

The Office Carpet

We had been given a lovely piece of carpet for our office some time ago but no-one appeared very enthusiastic to do the swap over- it was going to be a mission! Last committee meeting we decided to have a working bee Saturday night and complete it Sunday morning. And it was a mission taking everything out, lifting up the old carpet, cleaning, putting down the new carpet and putting everything back in. We had a great team some so enthusiastic they started three hours early! Everyone did their part- the strong ones lifted and shifted the big things, the nimble shifted all the littler things and Geoff reconnected all the computers etc back together again. Next morning all Leah and Robyn had to do was the final sort of the things that didn’t seem to make it back in. Pop you head in and have a look it has made huge difference. So thank you all and to the Grimwoods once again for donating the carpet. Thank you also to the Aalders for donating two nice chairs for the Centre and Wayne Hill for the new couch; we were able to retire the tired looking chairs and couch.

Visitor from Nelson Environment Centre

Derek Shaw from the Nelson Environment called in to our Centre this month. We first met him around 20 years ago when we visited the Environment Centre in Nelson. We were so impressed we dreamed of one day hoping to have something like it in Riverton. So it was a special moment for us when he called in and complemented us on what we had achieved down here. They have our ‘Open Orchard’ project well under way up there and I am sure next time we visit them we will get other ideas of what could be done down here.

Keep a watchful eye on our wild life

Robert was shocked to see visiting dolphins endangered by jet skiers and Southland Times published this letter: ‘We were very lucky out here in Riverton at the weekend. A family of little Hector’s dolphins swam up the river to a spot under the bridge were they spent an hour or two feeding on fish that were coming up with tide. Plenty of locals enjoyed watching them from the bridge and a lot of photographs were taken. There were a couple of tiny calves with the parent dolphins and they kept in close to the adults for protection. They were lucky too, the Hector’s dolphin family, that they weren’t hurt by the thoughtless jetskii riders who swept back and forward over the tiny family, trying to get a closer look. ‘ Since then he found out if you are harassing wild life (like the jet skiers were) even if they aren’t physically harmed you can be fined up to $250,000 or 6 months jail. Maybe we need to educate our locals more about respecting wild life if we want to continue seeing dolphins in our estuary.

NZ clothing and Up-Cycled Clothing New shop now in Riverton.

Sandra one of our volunteers now has her own shop on the main street called ‘Square pegs’ - Up-cycled clothing is where good quality fabric and clothing is re-made into something special.