Once Were Gardeners

Group shot taken at the Mangaroa Farms site visit.

You might have heard that we’ve embarked on a little haerenga to revive maara kai and look to grow our kai on our whenua.

We have given the project the name ‘Once Were Gardeners’ as we know that for the most part, mahinga kai and maara has been an essential part of our whakapapa.

We’ve already heard some awesome kōrero from our kaumatua – that the pa was once filled with orchards before houses were built, that huge maara covered the whenua where the wharekai now sits and also how we used to travel by waka across Raukawa Moana to harvest and return to Porirua with kumara.

We are currently working on a scoping document to look at what a large-scale maara kai would look like in our community. This project sits under TOA-TRA the Social Service arm of the Rūnanga but touches on all aspects of the mahi that we do.

L to R: Jasmine Arthur, Steven Johnson and Rob Small (Maara Curator) taken during the site visit of Te Pourewa (Ngāti Whātua ki Orakei).

The aim of the scoping project is to address the pātai, “How can we effectively utilize our whenua to establish a sustainable maara kai, based on Ngāti Toa mātauranga and values, with the goal of addressing food insecurity issues?”

Our project seeks to revitalize traditional maara kai practices as a means to tackle these challenges, leveraging the wealth of knowledge held by Ngāti Toa Rangatira, kaumatua, iwi members, our partners, and the community.

We hope that this initial stage of the project will help us to understand the current ecosystem through traditional methods like maramataka and collect historical evidence to determine the best approach.

To date, we have been fortunate to have been hosted by several large-scale maara kai, community gardens and community services. We have been humbled by the work that they each do and will look to incorporate these observations into our plan.

L to R: Lyman Moriarty, Neta Greening and Raymond Katene - providing valuable insight at the Ngāti Toa Kaunihera Kaumatua hui.

If you have a few minutes, we’d love to hear your whakaaro. We have pulled together a quick questionnaire for whānau to complete here: https://forms.office.com/r/kVDSaxgNp8

Or join our Facebook page (3) Once Were Gardeners | Facebook for updates, a place to share ideas and kōrero!

Mauriora ki a tatou!