The Localising Food Project visited Mandy Brooke at Whanganui’s Quaker Acres settlement, where local food and togetherness go hand in hand. Mandy showed us some of the interesting crops she has in her garden, and how she combats couch grass and frost in an effort to produce a wide variety of local foods for her and her neighbours.
Canadian native Marie Manning lives in Katikati now, but she’s brought a little bit of her homeland’s indigenous culture with her and now boasts a beautiful bounty of produce in her tiny home garden. At just thirty square metres and only four months old at the time of filming, Marie’s wee garden is already feeding the neighbours and bringing joy to everyone who visits her.
Gabby loves knowing where her food comes from and Levity hates mowing the lawns – what a perfect excuse to turn their small, urban property into an abundance of food production! In this story, Gabby & Levity show us their ever-growing Takaka home garden, giving us some tips along the way and explaining why growing their own food is important for them and their family.
John Stansfield admits publicly that he is an appalling dancer but one thing he does well is grow food! Since moving to Waiheke Island over twenty years ago, John has found ways to grow plentiful food on a small piece of roadside reserve – providing for great connections with his fellow Waihekians and earning him the attention of a national news outlet. Check out John’s antics in this video.
Mary and her family have been living on this quarter acre section for over 30 years, and what started as a spade and a hole in the ground has now become an abundant backyard bursting with life, producing plenty of food to share with her neighbours. In this short story, Mary shares her passion for gardening and inspires us to take control of our food.
In this extended version of Mary’s story, she shows us some of the tips she has learned to make gardening easy:
It all started with a few beans. But Jack and the Beanstalk this is not — Sue has developed her interest in saving and growing interesting seeds into a flourishing, abundant garden that feeds her family and more. In fact, Sue now helps to teach others how to do it through regional council-run workshops. Check out some of Sue’s tips and find out why it is so important to save our heritage variety seeds.
Localising Food is a project of The Institute of Earthcare Education Aotearoa. As well as documentary production, Earthcare offers local food resilient workshops, permaculture design courses, community development consultancies and sustainability education resource materials. For further info: www.earthcare-education.org
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