Biodynamic prep at Glendhu Bay

My friend Su Hoskins has recently started doing some work for John McRae out at Gelndhu Bay Station. I'm a big fan of both of these people and really support what they are doing in our town in terms of organic growing. Su asked if I would like to take the Wanaka Young Change Makers down to Johns place to learn about the biodynamic prep she is making and applying to his land. How could we say no?

After what seemed an age we eventually managed to leave a warm and dryish town only to drive down the road into what looked like a pretty thick purple rain cloud. Thankfully the rain bated.

Su did an amazing job of explaining to us about how you use a combination of poo, plants, water, cow horns and human energy to make this liquid inoculent. What really stuck in my head was her description of why weeds appear. She explained that when a plant grows it is the lands way of providing the nutrients it needs. After the plant has died it will compost into the ground adding the nutrients within it back into the soil. What these preps do is speed up this process a little. Soil it seems is not only amazing, but also very clever.

We helped stir the prep, a very important part of the process to develop the right constituency. Once it was right we applied it to the land in two different ways.


Throughout the afternoon Su and Si had been plating potatoes and armed with buckets full of the inoculent we threw it all over the potato patch. Once this was done we refilled the buckets, found a brush and took a walk around the paddock. The process was pretty simple, dip the brush into the liquid then with a flick of the wrist distribute it around the paddock.

We had a ball, thank you so much Su and John for making this happen for us!

Raumati South Kindergarten

If anyone tries to tell you that you can't do EfS with kindergarten aged children, tell then to check out Raumati South Kindergarten. Their place is AMAZING! One of the first things you notice are the incredible grounds. There is evidence of reuse everywhere. Which ever way you turn then you'll find some food growing, even at the start of winter. They even have their own aviary, how cool is that?

Inside the walls are plastered with truly inspirational work by the children. You can find out about how Maui tamed the sun. What is and isn't important when you are making houses. Some uber cool water experiments and heaps more.

The staff and students love being part of Enviroschools and haver certainly embraced it into their kaupapa. Well done Raumati South Kindergarten!!!!!

Central Otago Enviroschools Workshop - June 2010

With the success of the Central Otago Hui under my belt I felt it was time to step up and run the yearly Central workshop too. As usual I was nervous as, I wasn't sure if my programme was going to hit the spot, but thanks to some amazing help I think we got there.

The main subject was action planning. We've been doing things the Enviroschools way in Central for the last 3 years and I thought it was about time to focus a teacher workshop on planning the action. Fresh from the action competence workshops at the national hui the week before I was more inspired than ever.

To try to put things in context I chose the 5% Edible project to act as an example project. If you've been fortunate enough to avoid me prattling on about this submission I've made with some other cool people to our council, you can read all about it here.

After some introductions to new faces and contacts, we got stuck into the work.

We tried something new for the Central crew. Top of the mind. What exactly were you thinking about when you walked in the door, doesn't have to be enviroschools based at all, we're just nosey buggers and want to know what it is that you're all thinking about. And the top three are;

• Reports! That was the topic of the day for sure
• A feeling like we've done heaps but are now stuck in a little rut, how do we get out of it?
• New schools and new staff, how do we manage the transition?

Jinty ran an awesome session on linking the global issue of climate change to local projects / issues. Splitting into 5 groups, each group was assigned one of the enviroschools' theme areas. The task was to brainstorm how climate change becomes apparent locally within our theme area. Below are the results. I've uploaded these pics as massive versions, so click on the image to see it full size so you can have a good read.

As we all know the Action Learning Cycle is central to any Enviroschools action project. I've seen it heaps, loved seeing the new blank version but how much have I actually applied it to real life projects? A little but not enough. This is one of the reasons I chose 5% Edible as an example project. As part of me presenting the idea to council I wanted to have a better idea of how the project could develop, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to do one piece of work to fulfil multiple outcomes, that's all good in my book. After describing the project as briefly as possible I worked through the custom ALC I made for 5%.

I also wanted to reintroduce the 5 guiding principals of Enviroschools. If we are to carry out a sustianable action then we should have elements of each of these within the project. Therefore it seemd like the perfect opportuntiy to pull my planning apart and find how each guiding principal is supported within 5% Edible.

After we had some extremely strong coffee, great bread, muffins and dips it was time to get back into it again. Familiar with the theme areas, guiding principles and the ALC it was time to introduce some scenarios. We have 5, one for each theme area. The task now was to look at the scenario and use the tools we've learnt to put together a plan for an action project that could solve the scenario.

Living Landscapes 

A fruit tree near school is overflowing with fruit. The children have noticed that it is a waste having the fruit lying around. It is on public land. What could you do in term 2 to turn this situation into a community action project?

 Water for Life

It has been reported in the local paper that water usage in your community is extremely high. The council is currently looking at installing water meters using cost as a deterrent to using water. This has been discussed with the students as part of their daily news and they believe that they can help reduce their communities water usage.

 Precious Energy

The recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has really brought the issue of oil dependant travel to the students attention. Many of them come to school in their parents cars with a number of the seats empty. They would like to reduce their dependency upon oil based transport but feel it would be so much easier if we could all have a go together, not just for getting to and from school but for all of our short journeys around town.

Ecological Buildings

As part of the new community garden project it has been identified that there is a need for a potting shed. One of your students has been looking at the price of buying one from the local hardware store and believes that they could do a deal with the community gardens to design and build a shed using materials from the local recycling center. The difference in cost will be given to the schools sustainability fund by the community garden.

Zero Waste

After learning about recycling in class your students have identified disposable coffee cups as a problem. They now know that these cups aren’t recyclable as paper or cardboard yet that is where the majority of them end up, causing problems for the local recyclers. They would very much like to tackle this issue and work towards having a disposable coffee cup free town. 

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We closed off the afternoons mahi with a session about getting ourselves out of the rut and sharing a few ideas of projects that have been successful in school. 

 

There was discussion about integrating ES work into more of the other school life. Jenny and Jinty have a document linking the DARE programme and ES for instance. Have you considered learning assemblies where you invite parents along to find out more and want to become involved in action projects.

Glenorchy have had a great success in sending some of their students to community board meetings, what an amazing learning experience that would have been for them.

One great suggestion was to use blogs. I'm 100% into this and also understand the commitment that is needed to keep them going. I think it's worth it and we can start to use the technology we have available to us for free. Perhaps we should cover this more in our next workshop?

Reflection 

As everyone in with enviroschools knows we like to have a process of reflection at the end of everything we're doing, sometimes we have a few in the middle too, just to check we are on track. One of my favourites is the H form. Draw a rugby post on a piece of paper, the cross bar is an overall indicator of how good the event was, above the posts some popcorned ideas about the workshop, to the left the things you don't like and to the right the stuff you loved. Beneath the cross bar all the things you'd like to see happen next time round.

The scoring was extremely favourable with the average being in the 7 -8 out of 10 region, so I reckon we did get the content right. 

Next time we'll keep the introduce yourself session a little shorter and perhaps we can see if we can host the event not in the middle of report writing.

The next workshop should also be accompanied by a tour of the host school. This is making me wonder if you would like another workshop held in mid to late term 4 this year. I doubt I'd be able to get any teacher relief funding for it, but if you were willing to come for free I've a feeling it could be arranged, just please email me and let me know you are keen for it. It would also be useful to know any summer camp dates as early as possible so we can avoid that extra stress.

The activities were very popular, but next time we need more case studies. Do you have time to write one? Would you like some help writing it? Do you want me to write all of it for you? Case studies are really useful not just for us here in Central but also to show the rest of the country and world the fine work we are doing here.

In a nutshell, I think I've covered everything. I'd like to say thank you to everyone who came and made this such a success. Seeing everyone get into the work, network and share their success and failure stories made for an amazing afternoon.

Term 4 next one???? Let me know.......

Project Te Radar

At Kahu youth we decided that it would be awesome to invite Te Radar to come and visit us on World Environment Day.To make our invitation as cool and irresistible as possible we've decided to make a video.

We reckon he should come and visit Wanaka and help us inspire more people to join us on our regeneration mission! We are making a short film to show Te Radar all the cool things we can offer him when he visits.

Rob made a mean sign to use as a prop. When we were out on location we did realise that the next sign that gets made needs to be double sided, then you can point it in any direction. Meg is going to make him dinner and we'll take him to Wanaka Station Park for some fresh home grown walnuts Wanaka style.

Queenstown Primary have an Envirogroup

On a Thursday lunch time two students from each of the syndicates at Queenstown Primary get together to meet to discus all the wonderful Enviroschools work they are doing. They've created roles for everyone to do, a secretary, a reporter, a photographer even a presenter for QPS news. Everyone has a job to do.

This will really help to bring together all the work they are doing and help achieve a truly whole school approach. Well done Mrs. Gray, Ms. Reed and everyone else at Queenstown Primary.

Enviroschools at Kahu Youth....

Last week a few of us got together at Kahu Youth to discus the kinds of activities and projects that we would like to achieve in Wanaka for young people. One of the things that came up was that there is possibly a lot of stuff to do in Wanaka that no body really tells us about....

Since it's now school holidays we have Tuesday's down at the Crib set aside for Enviroschools activities. This week we set about finding out what these activities could be.....Myself, Richard, Rob, Jarrod and Noel all went on a journey of discovery.

First stop the library, perhaps their notice board would reveal a few activities to do....Nah, well nothing that we thought was that interesting. But did you know the uber fish feeding spot was just outside the library? I didn't, and judging by the amount of fish we saw in the creek neither did they.

We had heard though that you can buy fish food from the jet boat people in the log cabin and then feed the eels off the warf. I was a little sceptical, I mean how comes I hadn't heard about this before? But....for $2 you get a plastic cup full of stinky fish food, all we need now are some monsters of the deep and not hungry ducks.

After a quick stop for a bite to eat we ventured towards the Real Art road show. This is the uber mobile art gallery, started by a very kind lady from Wanaka. These refrigeration trucks hold lots of cool art and get driven around the country taking art to high schools and communities that don't normally have it. There are two trailers, one had left, but the other had heaps of cool stuff inside. Check www.realartroadshow.co.nz for more details.

One of our main missions for the afternoon was to get to Wanaka Station Park at the Roys Bay end of town. We'd heard about this place and thought there may be some cool fruit trees and generally fun outdoor places to hang out in. Pembroke park, with all it's size, is kinda boring, no trees, nothing much to do apart from a skate park, surely there has to be somewhere else instead.

On the way, amidst much discussion of conkers and how we don't seem to have any conker trees in NZ, we stopped off to practice skimming stones on the lake. It would appear that to skim well you need a very still calm lake, the slightest ripple causes your perfect skimming stone to be projected high up into the air and then sinking straight to the bottom the next time it hits the surface.....hmmmm. Still very good fun though.

Eventually we get to Wanaka Station Park, you have to look for a small sign at the bottom of the steps leading off the lakeside walking track. Once up there it was like a whole new world was opening up. A completely different feel to many of the outdoor public places in Wanaka. Large old trees everywhere and yes, quite a lot of fruit on the floor.

It didn't take too long to find a pear tree which a few people had beaten us to. Nothing ripe here......but we did find an enormous tree with lots of casings under it. What could this be? After throwing a few sticks up into the branches, rather reminiscent of getting conkers in the UK, we discovered that this was indeed a walnut tree. SICK!

After a little more exploring guess what I found? Yes, a conker tree, bursting with conkers....woo hoo. If you don't know about conkers then keep an eye on this blog, there will be a full description of what to do with conkers. Any of you readers who have spent any time in the UK at Autumn will be very aware of this ever popular game.

With our pockets and bags now bulging with the natural bounty we had foraged for, we realised it was time to get back to the Crib having had a way cool afternoon. We spent hardly anything and had heaps of fun.So it is possible to do this in Wanaka without playing sport.

What we need to do now is add some of this information to a map so we can share the information with others. We are looking at how we do this with Google maps and even a paper copy to go somewhere. For anyone familiar with Enviroschools you could be thinking "is this the start a vision map of Wanaka in the making", if you are, you'd be 100% right.........