Mangaone Wetland and Pihitia Station back to back!

These two days of EOTC back to back were full of learning and experience for the tamariki of Honu!

Mangaone Wetland:

This is a special long term project that involves collaboration with the Land whanau, the Shadehouse crew and WBS kaitiaki.  

Each year the Shadehouse crew gather seeds and cuttings of native plants to care for, last year 300 were planted at Mangaone Wetland and this year the Shadehouse crew and Honu teamed up to carry on by planting 100 new plants, as well as weeding and mulching the ones planted in 2019.  

The tamariki took to their jobs with a huge amount of energy and enthusiasm, it quickly went from a weedy wetland to a loved wetland.  Each little group focused on identifying a native plant, releasing it from grass and weeds, laying newspaper as mulch and then making a doughnut of bark, once that was done they carried on to the next native plant they could I.D.  

At lunch we climbed a hill to get a birds eye view of the wetland, it was larger than we realised and it could be a continued project for years to come.  

It was interesting to learn that 20 years ago a group of WBS tamariki and adults planted and fenced a valley above the wetland.  The tamariki felt inspired to imagine what their planted area will look like in 20 years.    

The Land whanau extend their welcome to you to use the wetland, you could pull in to check out the great job the tamariki have done, have a picnic on your way up the coast, or even do a spot of weeding.  

As the song says, "We are the guardians, we are the kaitiaki."  

Pihitia Station:

The very next day we clambered onto the bus ready for another day on the land!  A big thank you to the Williams, Thomas and Land whanau for all the organisation that happened behind the scenes so that you were ready to deliver an interesting day of learning about how our kai get from the farm to the table.  The tamariki were highly interested in all of the different technology that is used on the farm to help make the job of the farmer easier.  

Shearing

Milking

Butchering 

Sheep weighing station