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!

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.

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.........