The Kaiapoi Food Forest Trust is incorporated under the Charitable Trusts Act 1957 the 13th day of the September 2017.
Certificate of incorporation number 2681451
The trust have a licence to occupy the land agreement with the Waimakariri District Council to create and maintain the food forest.
The purpose of the Trust is Connect, Nourish, Educate, Rongoa and Inspire:
The following is a list of our Trustees,
Brent Cairns, Shirley Cairns, Kath Adams (secretary, treasurer) Glenn Foley, Gordyn Hamblyn (chair), Chris Sutherland, Carol Bisseker, Natalie Leary.
Food Forest Trustees
Since the earthquakes it’s been my goal to have a food forest in Kaiapoi. I said at one stage to Roger Sutton who was heading CERA the Government deparment who undertook the earthquake recover “I want to put kai back into Kaiapoi”. Utilizing the fruit trees that were left behind by the families that used to live in the red zones ( a wonderful legacy).
The food forest is a worthwhile, awesome legacy project that will bring people to Kaiapoi, to experience one of the best river towns in New Zealand, I am proud to be part of building the food forest for the community. I am not much of a gardener I have a crack at growing things, if they survive they must be hardy.
I started grafting fruit trees after watching a video on Youtube… some of our fruit salad trees will be in the food forest, plus we give 10-50 black boy peach trees away a year to schools and community groups..trees that we have grown from seed. Come and visit our food forest, at the time of writing this, the area is bare, but not for long, we will be planting and building up the layers over the next few years… we have so many ideas, of how this area will look like.. we have a great team of volunteers.
Brent Cairns
Growing up in Southland my Dad and Mum provided nearly all of our vegetables and fruit from a large backyard garden, using the rotary hoe on the back of the tractor turned the ground which was worked over so then Dad and I were then able to plant rows of potatoes. Mum thinned carrots, beetroot, we picked gooseberries, blackcurrents, peas, lettuce, cauliflower and cabbage, much was frozen and blackcurrent pie was often had during cold winter nights. This skill of providing a garden to grow our food is such an important skill to have in this day and age but unfortunately the opportunity to do this decreases as house section sizes decrease, the back garden becomes smaller and so does your food crop yields.
To be part of the Kaiapoi Food Forest is such a huge opportunity to again put those past skills back to work and also learn from others.
Shirley Cairns
My major interest is in supporting communities to meet their own needs as I believe there are tremendous abilities at the grass roots level. This interest began in the early 80’s when a group of agencies working with young people began with, what was then called, the Kaiapoi and Districts Community Development Trust. (This developed after Local Government Reorganisation in 1989 into Waimakariri Development Trust and then even later into Wellbeing North Canterbury). As the Guidance Counsellor at Kaiapoi High School I became the first Chair of the Kaiapoi Trust and then the other Trusts until 2001 when reorganisation of the Trust led to a different structure. This time saw many community initiatives and projects to meet the needs of the community, including the Young Parents’ College, Safer Schools and Youth Support Workers’ Programmes. Through these activities I was a member of the Safer Communities Council and Injury Prevention Waimakariri. As a District Councillor between 2001 and 2007, I was involved with activities that eventually led to Social Services Waimakariri that was supposed to create a partnership between Local, Central Government and NGO’s and also with Rural Canterbury PHO.
Involvement with the R 13 Trust (back to supporting young people) finished in 2015 (partly through frustration with the direction of Government funding strategies!)
Since then I have returned to real grass roots with Kaiapoi Community Garden and You Me We Us, two very grounded Trusts! Other Trust experience is with the Kaiapoi Railway Station Trust and Kaiapoi Care and Employment. I am looking forward to the opportunity the Food Forest offers of adapting the community participation and involvement model to such a valuable community project.
Kath Adams
As more recent members to Kaiapoi, Kate and I have enjoyed the community and the access to the environment.
My hope with a project like the food forest is that we can learn some things that have been forgotten over time. Hopefully in time looking after our environment and community will be something we all do.
I look forward to adding my skills as a builder to the group to get this project up and running.
Glenn Foley
My name is Natalie Leary and I am honoured to be a trustee of the Kaiapoi food forest. With my imput, I endevour to help and educated in the traditional maori herbs and medicines which is my passion, not only in this area, but in all areas of educating our future generations, on how it is done. I too, am looking forward to learning new ways and cannot wait to get started.
Nalalie Leary
From an interest in ecological interactions and forests at an early age I moved into mixed farming and then production forestry as an adult. Reading the first book on Permaculture gave me an awareness that replicating naturally stable mixed species systems had advantages over the reliance on inherently unstable monocultures. After another stint of mixed farming I undertook some formal training in Permaculture and then was able move into Permaculture education and edible landscape design with a special interest in Food Forest Design.
Now I am heavily involved in the design and implementation of the Otakaro Orchard in central Christchurch and annually lecture on The Principles of Food Forest Design at the Biological Husbandry Unit, Lincoln University. I am on the Board of the Food Resilience Network and am also one of a small team working on setting up a Permaculture Design Certificate course in Canterbury.
Gordyn Hamblyn (Chair)
Chris Sutherland who is a keen local gardener and business owner and Carol Bisseker a local resident, qualified accountant are also Trustees
You can design and create and build the most wonderful place in the world.
But it takes people to make the dream a realityWalt Disney
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