We have recently been able to see the impacts of development of the Waiotira Primary Schools Māra Kai Nui. They have redeveloped the original site of the school which had remained under-utilised for many years into a garden. The development of this has been driven to continue producing kai for the school and wider community. Kai is also made into items for sale in their roadside stall as a fundraiser.  While promoting healthy fundraising and eating, this has also connected the school even further with its community. Links have been with Trades Teams from the local college, local hardware suppliers, contractors and trades people. Many of these people have seen the value in the work and have donated time and goods. Ākonga have engaged in the construction and maintenance of the garden, learning life skills. They enthusiastically engage in physical activity and learning in this environment. 

Waiotira Primary School Māra Kai Nui - Written by Amanda Ball, Kaiako at Waiotira Primary School

100 years ago, the original school building was located on the left hand side of Ararua road above the domain in what we now call ‘the school paddock’... Between 1959 and 1961 the school building was relocated across the road. The original school site continued to be owned by the school and local shepherds grazed the paddock. 

On the original school site, a kauri tree had been planted and it had grown nice and straight. A well-known historical Waiotira yarn is about how a few of the local boys at the time decided the kauri tree would provide the perfect timber for a bow and arrow and chopped it down. A new kauri tree was planted in replacement, but it sadly did not survive. Surprisingly, the original tree sent out new shoots and to this day it stands tall and strong at the entrance of our māra kai nui. We want to protect this precious taonga and so have had the Whangarei District Council come out and educate us about kauri dieback and how we can best look after it.

Last year it was decided that we would like to start using the ‘school paddock’ again and decided to plant some fruit trees and begin to develop an orchard that the community could enjoy in years to come. We wanted the sheep to still help with maintaining it, so we put removable cages around the trees when the sheep are put into graze. 

We didn’t want to make anything permanent in that space until we got a feel for how we could best use it, and we wanted to have the sheep continue to graze. Initially we created some tyre gardens and successfully grew watermelons, zucchini and some pumpkins over the summer. We transported water over the road and managed to get a hose to reach over the road to fill up drums with water to make watering easier. We put mesh up around the gardens to protect them from the sheep, but it quickly became apparent that we needed some source of water over there if we wanted to continue to grow vegetables in this space. 

We shared this idea with our local builder, and he drew us a plan of how we could capture and collect water. We received funding from the Whangarei District Council Enviro Leaders grant which helped us to purchase the timber, we had 2 x 1000L tanks donated to us and Phil our local builder, donated his time to build the water capturing structure. Within the first week of it being ‘hooked up’ we had captured 2000L of water ready for summer!

We have continued to plant more fruit trees in our māra kai nui, which most have been donated to us by local families and Bunnings Warehouse Whangārei. We had our local fertiliser rep come and take soil samples over in the māra kai nui and then he came and talked to the students about the test results and the type of soil we have out here and suggested what we could do to improve our soil.

We then had the Tauraroa Area School Trades team, which is a group of students who complete building projects in local schools, come out and build four raised gardens for us in the māra kai nui and we have filled them with compost donated by Fonterra.  We are very excited to get our new summer seedlings planted into our new gardens, which we have grown ourselves.

For many years our school has had bees and we have taken part in the Tahi Bees Friends programme. We receive support from Tahi Bees to look after them and we are given the honey collected from the hives. We sell this honey as a fundraiser and also give it away as thank you gifts. Recently we have moved the hives into the māra kai nui.

Our vision is for this space is to be collaboratively maintained and enjoyed by and with our community. Phil, our builder, also built us a sharing trolley that we put our honey, fresh produce and anything we have made to share and wheel it out onto the roadside every morning.

On our whanaungatanga Fridays students will also harvest, cook and enjoy the fresh produce too.

We would like to make this space a place where our whānau, friends and community want to come and hang out and enjoy the fresh produce grown by our students.

Waiotira School on it’s original sight, which we now call the ‘school paddock’.  1952

Article written by Amanda Ball, Kaiako at Waiotira Primary School