Our Matariki Harvest Celebrations

June is the time of Matariki, the celebration of the Māori New Year and a time to bring in the final harvests. So harvesting and celebrating is what we did!

We harvested our carrots, which was very exciting as we’d been watching them grow week-by-week and had been patiently (or impatiently) waiting for our chance to pull them up. It was worth the wait, we had lots of colours and some very interesting shapes! A little bit of magic from Papatūānuku, especially enchanting for some our our junior gardeners :)

We also dug up the the kumara and potatoes last year’s Kai Growers had planted in kōanga (spring). All year these beds had just sat at the back of our garden area, growing leaves and not getting much attention. Who would have known that in fact they held an underground treasure hunt! It was a lot of fun to discover what was growing under the soil – so many shapes and sizes. Every time we thought we’d found all there was to find, we would rummage under the soil again and find more.

We gathered everything up and put them in a box. Miss Hunt said she’d take them home and roast them for us.

A couple of weeks later we were actually glad for a rainy day, because Miss Hunt brought in the carrots, kumara and potatoes she’d roasted, and fried them up in the electric frypan. Hot vege chips, what a feast!

Before roasting the veges Ms Hunt had put half of our kumara aside for making kumara and orange soup. Our job was to prepare the kumara and once again we surprised ourselves with how much fun this mahi turned out to be – we were queuing for the peelers! We washed, peeled and cut up the kumara.

While we were clearing up the kitchen area we got thinking about the big pile of kumara peelings we had left over. We considered what we could do with them.

Worm farm?

Compost bin?

Or… how about trying to cook some? Miss Hunt fried them up with oil, salt and some thyme from the herb garden on her verandah. Turns out they were absolutely delicious and we hoovered them up in literally a few seconds. There was barely time to snap a photo before they were gone. Sorry worms :)

Some of our gardeners went down to the orchard and returned with six huge oranges (thanks, orchard!). We gave three to Miss Hunt for the soup, and decided to share the other three between us all. They made a sweet, juicy dessert for our feast.

After all that, the only thing left on our table was a small pile of kumara tubers that had been too little to peel. But we are a No Waste bunch here at Kai Growers. Miss Hunt showed us how we could take these tiny tubers home and turn them into beautiful houseplants. All we need to do is put the bottom bit of the tuber in water. In a couple of weeks kumara leaves will start to sprout from the top and form a beautiful vine. We can even use some of these sprouts to grow new kumara plants (tipu) for our garden next spring, so the cycle will continue.

Thank you Miss Hunt for all your mahi helping us turn our harvests into a Matariki feast.