NZTCA Franklin Branch Jun 2014 Newsletter

NEW ZEALAND TREE CROPS ASSOCIATION FRANKLIN BRANCH NEWSLETTER

In this edition...

Volume 35, Issue 2 - June, 2014

Walnut tasting at the National Convention field day

Forthcoming events...

Trees For Survival at the 2013 smallBlock Sunday Seminar

Medlars at the Auckland Botanic Gardens field day

Sunday smallBlock Seminar

June 22nd - smallBlock Sunday Seminar

Sunday June 22nd, 10.00 am for setup, doors open at 12 noon.

July 5th - Franklin Pruning Workshop

Puni School Hall, 343 Waiuku Road, Pukekohe

- Waikato Branch plant sale July 19th - BOP Branch plant sale Sunday July 27th, 1.00pm - Food Forest at Ohinewai with David Whyte August 17th 10 am - Grafting Workshop Details this issue.

Reminder All TCA members are welcome at other meetings so look at the web site to see Events coming up www.treecrops.org.nz Articles appearing in this newsletter may be reproduced in whole or in part provided that credit is given to the Franklin Branch of the NZ Tree Crops Association and the Author.

TCA Branch Newsletters

Each area Newsletter Editor receives a copy of the other branches Newsletters by email. If you are interested in getting these forwarded to you, please let Heather Douglas know at email: heather.douglas12@gmail.com

Welcome to New Members: Sian Noble-Campbell Rajesh Prasad Kirsten Corson Julie Fox

Market stall for sale

This second seminar series is for people who want to get more out of their lifestyle block.

We will again have a good turnout from non-TCA people and need your assistance on the day for set up (from 10:00 am) and for looking after visitors to the seminar (from 12 noon).

Please let Raewyn know how you can help on 09 292 5051 or email rjarkie@gmail.com

2014 Franklin Pruning Workshop Saturday July 5th, 1.00pm - meet at Pukekohe High School. The Glasgow Road entrance has easy access to the orchard.

We will spend 1 to 1.5 hours here pruning Persimmon, Pears and Kiwifruit. Please everyone, bring your own secateurs/loppers and have a go (ladders are not required).

Then it is on to Ian Cooper’s place at Upper Queen Street for a look around the orchard (plums, avocados and the opportunity to prune some pears and apples), the glasshouse (bananas have bunches at the moment) and to have afternoon tea.

Field day will go ahead regardless of the weather. Car pooling available from the school.

Waikato & Bay of Plenty Field days Saturday 5th July, 9am - 1pm. Waikato Branch Annual Plant Sale @ Hamilton Gardens.

Saturday 19th July. BOP Branch Plant Sale. A&P Showgrounds.

Details on the TCA web site.

A Food Forest - with Waikato Branch Sunday 27th July, 1:00 pm start.

At David & Tiffany Whyte’s property 38 Ohinewai North Road, Huntly.

2014 Grafting Workshop Sunday 17th August, 10:00 am start At Ian Laing’s barn.

MM6 rootstock will be available at $3 each. This is your chance to learn to graft with expert assistance and then take home and plant your new trees.

Please bring scion wood for the tree you are wanting to grow - save the wood of the same thickness from any prunings in July. We will have some donated scion wood but varieties won’t be known until closer to the date.

Franklin TreeCroppers TCA Franklin newsletter

A 230 year heritage for us to build on

The National Fieldays that starts in Hamilton this week is a fantastic show case of rural technologies, agribusinesses and agricultural equipment suppliers.

The roots for this event stretch back 230 years to the establishment of Scotland’s Highland Society of Edinburgh in 1784. That society held its first show in 1822 with the goal of encouraging agricultural improvements.

Sixteen years later the English founded the Royal Agricultural Society which also held shows to promote the use of science in farming.

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The first New Zealand agricultural show was staged in the Bay of Islands in 1842 by recently arrived settlers. The following year, the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of Auckland was established and held it’s own shows in Auckland.

The first Canterbury show, held in 1859, was followed by the establishment of a local Agricultural and Pastural Association four years later. Hawke’s Bay set up its own A&P association the same year and Auckland followed in 1877.

Letter from the Chair

We have our second smallBlock Sunday Seminar coming up and I do hope to see you there. It is a very informative afternoon and also a great way to meet others in the Franklin area with an interest in the growing of treecrops and other activities that we tend to do on smallBlocks. This year it is being held at the Puni School Hall. Check out the details in this newsletter. To help with the cost of advertising, we held a draw for naming rights. This involved approaching numerous businesses in the Franklin area and the winner of the draw was Farmlands. You will notice the prominence of their logo on all our advertising for the Seminar.

We have a pruning workshop coming up in early July and a grafting workshop in August. For the grafting workshop we will have mm102 apple rootstock available for you to do your own grafting.

If you know of anyone with a good apple variety that you would like to graft make sure you ask them to save some of the wood when they prune the tree. This can be kept wrapped in a moist, not too damp, paper towel and put in a plastic bag (so it doesn’t dry out) in the vege crisper bin of your fridge. Bring along any spare grafting wood you have to share with others and we will also have different varieties available to use. The cost of the rootstock is $$3 each. As there is a limited amount of rootstock available please phone me (Raewyn on 09 292 5051) to place your order.

See you at the SmallBlock Sunday Seminar Raewyn Jarkiewicz

The role of the A&P societies was to promote farm improvements through education lectures, political advocacy and shows.

As the agriculture industry developed, other groups took over the education and lobbying roles, leaving the A&P Society to focus on its shows.

Franklin Branch Chair Raewyn opens the inaugural 2013 smallBlock Sunday Seminar

In 1924, our own Royal Agricultural Society was formed and became the umbrella organisation for A&P associations around the country.

With entertainment becoming an ever-growing feature of the A&P shows, a new type of show emerged to meet the needs of farmers. Field days, showcasing machinery and technology for farmers, started in 1953 with the first South Island Agricultural Field Day. The North Island’s major field day were at Mystery Creek and the event morphed in to the first National Agricultural Fieldays. The first one was held in 1969 at the Te Rapa Racecourse.

Over the years since, the National Fieldays event grew and grew. The 45th Fieldays, in 2013, provided space for almost 900 exhibitors and attracted over 125,000 visitors. It is now a global event and the largest agribusiness expo in the southern hemisphere.

Well Franklin has its own, albeit low-key, Field day event.

Aimed at lifestyle block owners and organised by the Franklin Branch of the New Zealand Treecrops Association, the second smallBlock Sunday Seminar will be held the week after the 2014 National Fieldays close.

Catering to the needs of those who want more from their

lifestyle block, the seminar is an informative afternoon of presentations on a range of subjects. These are supported by product displays from local rural suppliers and community groups such as the Franklin Bee Club.

Each presentation is 25 minutes long and a range of subjects are to be covered.

Interested in alternative energy sources? Come to the smallBlock Sunday Seminar.

Considering financing the development of your lifestyle block?

Campbell Tyson will cover that for you.

Lynda Hallinan will discuss the ten fruit trees that appeal to her.

The final session covers how to build biodiversity on your land through organic and biological systems.

Supported by the Pukekohe branch of Farmlands, the seminar opens at 12 noon on Sunday 22nd June.

There is a $5 cover charge which includes refreshments and the opportunity to mix and mingle.

These humble beginnings reflect those of the Highland Society of Edinburgh and look where that went over the following 230 years.

John Allen

Chestnuts at Gordonton Field trip to Godfrey & Jackie Larsen’s property, directed by David Klinac.

What started out as a very wet Sunday afternoon saw a dozen or so people partake in a very interesting field day.

The chestnut trees on the Larsen’s property are approximately 2025 years old and Godfrey & Jackie run this as mainly a “pick your own” business. All trees are grafted with ‘1005’ which is an early variety. There are also a few trees of ‘1015’. The main block has been planted at 12 metre spacings and has a better harvest than the block planted at 6 metre spacings. This latter block is very shaded and does not produce as well.

Chestnuts need to be treated like a vegetable in that they need to be chilled after harvest to maintain viability, increasing the cost of storage. Godfrey has about a 6 week harvest time per season.

Chestnuts need be chilled to maintain their viability and this adds another cost to the production of any product.

David would like to hear from anyone who would be keen to try the various products.

He is also after anyone interested in growing chestnuts for timber, coppicing or wood-turning.

A few of us returned to the Larsen’s property to purchase a bag or 2 of chestnuts before heading back home.

Contact David Klinac: Dklinac@xtra.co.nz Raewyn

June, 2014

We viewed the shelling and peeling machines and David had some hand peelers available for sale.

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We then car pooled up the road a little way to the sheds where David Klinac showed us the shelling and peeling machine in operation and also explained the many products and by-products they are producing from chestnuts. These range from dried chestnut crumb to a stock feed tonic from the peelings.

TCA Franklin newsletter

Godfrey demonstrated his chestnut sorting table and barrel sorter in the shed and by the time he had finished, the sun came out and we ventured outside to walk the chestnut block.

Franklin TreeCroppers

Franklin TreeCroppers

Field Trip report: Auckland Botanic Gardens On Sunday May 4th Nicky Reynolds took us in a tour of the Auckland Botanic Gardens. This collection of images is from the day.

Franklin Treecroppers at the Auckland Botanic Gardens

TCA Franklin newsletter

Arrowroot

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June, 2014 Es pa lie re d

ap pl e

Espaliered figs

Learning from others at National Convention Treecrops Convention 2014 turned out to be a new experience for Dorothy and I.

Our first visit was to the Ashburton Domain where we were given a tour of the gardens with parks manager David Askin. He explained his planting theme and the attributive plantings to special people, for example Mother Theresa, Princess Dianne, King George and others. This year celebrates 150 years since its inception. It also claims to have the longest continuous brick wall in New Zealand built during the depression.

The delegates meeting note can be found on the treecrops web site. One futuristic suggestion to come from this was to hold central body meetings by email - it may take longer to complete an event but the cost of travel and accommodation is taken out of the equation.

(2) Waipopo Orchard is a franchise grower to Honeycrisp Apples U.S.A. 30,000 trees on 40 ha producing a very popular apple for the winter season in America. None of these apples are sold in New Zealand as they bring $3 each in American outlets. 7 other orchards also produce on franchise to Waipopo. At the height of the harvesting season they employ up to 250 people, many brought in from Vanuatu. To enhance the colouring of the fruit, kilometres of aluminium backed polyethylene is laid down to reflect sun and heat from the base of the trees.

As this is a degradable material. It is used once only and then absorbed into the soil. Packaging for export is in cardboard 20 kg boxes and also wooden crates for bulk passage. Apple stems are cut from each fruit as it is picked to stop damage in transit.

The apple is said to be very crisp, full of juice and flavour. The flesh is said to maintain its whiteness after cutting and is very desirable for apple pies and flans. With the closing of Allentons nursery Waiopo has taken on board several heritage apples with the intention of continuing to grow and propagate them into the future.

(4) Cracker of a Nut, West Melton. Buying walnuts from near and far to use the capacity of their operation Peter and Jenny Lawrence have found many uses for the walnut and no wastage is the aim of production: walnut butter, oil, dukkah, chutney, soap and honey.

Meyrick variety has a special place and is cracked by hand and sent off to be coated in chocolate. The shell containing residue of nut is used as chicken food. The full half shell is ideal apparently for landscapers. The finely ground shell has found favour with BMW where it is used to scour oil galleries in test motors as it is not so abrasive as sand.

In summary we found that although much of what we saw was beyond the realm of DIY growers, there was much to be learned from the people we visited and from other attendees as comments and questions flowed freely.

Even those who had opinions outside the “normal� range were given the opportunity to have their points heard.

Keith Dixon

June, 2014

Sorry no photos it was wet and no-one got off the busses.

The farm is well mechanised with a nut sweeper/gatherer which does a one pass pick-up so late nuts are not gathered. A vacuum sorter sees to the sorting and bagging of the hazel nuts .

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Field days. (1) With the essence of the conference being WATER THE ELIXIR OF LIFE we were taken on a bus trip to see the Rangitata flood water retention site which consisted of 7 x 50 acre ponds each with an 8 metre depth. When full, this scheme will drought proof many farms and orchards and with advanced moisture monitoring systems now being used the over use and wastage of water will be negligible.

(3) Les and Unda McCracken’s hazel nuts at Temuka. A lesson to be leaned here: the nut trees were planted at the same time as the shelter on the presumption that as the nut trees grew slower than the shelter trees, they would do well. The first 5000 nut trees suffered and large numbers had to be replaced.

Subsequent plantings are growing well and producing 2 to 3 kilos at present.

TCA Franklin newsletter

We were surprised that some Branches had a difficulty with getting members along to field days and in filling positions on committees including the National committee.

Franklin TreeCroppers

Franklin TreeCroppers TCA Franklin newsletter

Franklin Branch Committee Chair Raewyn Jarkiewicz 09 292 5051 Email rjarkie@gmail.com Hon Secretary Lois Allen Ph: 09 2381357 lois@puriridowns.co.nz Hon Treasurer Ian Laing Ph 09 236 3796

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Newsletter Editor Heather Douglas Ph 09 232 1103 Email heather.douglas12@gmail.com

June, 2014

Membership Coordinator Stephanie Coles 09 236 3554 rosscoles@xtra.co.nz

Want more from your lifestyle or small block? Then come to the

2014 Farmlands’ smallBlock Sunday Seminar presented by the

Franklin Branch NZ Treecrops Assoc at the Puni School Hall on Sunday 22nd June 2014 12 noon 1:00 pm 1:30 pm 2:00 pm 2:30 pm 4:00 pm

- doors open for product displays - What Power Crisis?

- Lynda Hallinan “Trees for your block” - Financing your development - Organic and biological systems - doors close

Field Day Convener: Stephanie Coles 09 236 3554 rosscoles@xtra.co.nz Committee: Ian Cooper Ph: 09 238 6400 coop.family@clear.net.nz Keith Dixon Ph: 09 235 2453 keithdixon@xtra.co.nz Dorothy Dixon Ph: 09 235 2453 keithdixon@xtra.co.nz The date on your newsletter label shows when your membership is due for renewal.

A Field day at your property?

This can be useful if you have something you would like to show us, some problem that we can discuss and help with, or you need ideas of what to plant.

Please have a chat with someone on the committee or just let us know that you would like us to include your place, and the best time of year for you.

$5 cover charge for non-Treecrops members please register at www.smallblock.org.nz or let Keith know you are coming on 09 235 2453

The results of an afternoon shelling my dried beans which were planted on the 6 November 2013 and harvested on the 3 March 2014.

They survived a herd of cattle through the garden!

Now to cook them and see what they’re like.

Dianne Smith

Buy Se ll & Swap

p h o n e N an cy & Viv 09 23 6 68 93 o r em ai l at m il n e@ p s. g en .n z

Field Day driving directions. smallBlock Sunday Seminar Sunday 22nd June 2014.

Driving Directions to Puni School Hall, 343 Waiuku Road, Pukekohe, The Puni School is 6 km from Pukekohe and 14 km from Waiuku town centres.

TCA Franklin newsletter

to ad ve rt is e h er e, fr ee to m em b er co n ta ct H ea s, th er D o u g la s at H ea th er @ co ld o u g .c o m -- -- -- -- -- -- --- -- SM A LL P R O D U C E STA LL th is is av ai la b le to an yo n e w h o h as th e n ee d o f o n e.

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Franklin TreeCroppers

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Pruning Workshop Saturday July 5th, 1.00pm

Member web sites: Do you have a Web site that we can put a link to on the Newsletter?

Please email us and we can add it on the next Newsletter. A short note on what the business is will help.

Rural Connect:.org.nz Assisting rural people and businesses in the broadband society

Around 2:30 pm, we will drive to Ian Cooper’s property at Upper Queen Street, Pukekoke. Car pooling will be arranged from the High School.

A Food Forest - with the Waikato Branch Sunday 27th July 2014, at 1:00 pm.

David & Tiffany Whyte’s property at 38 Ohinewai North Road, Huntly is 47 km (allow 35 minutes) from Pukekohe - drive south on SH1, turn right on to Tahuna Road, turn right on to Ohinewai North Rd and go 400m.

SAFETY DECLARATION. For the purpose of Field Days, the properties we visit are designated as work places. As there are multiple hazards, please take particular care.

Parents are responsible for their children.

June, 2014

Meet at the Glasgow Road entrance to the school (off Manukau Road, Pukekohe).

In this edition...

Advice of Field Days in June, July & August 2014

NEW ZEALAND TREE CROPS

Report on the NZ Treecrops assoc National

FRANKLIN BRANCH

Convention and AGM Report on April and May Field Days Articles on:

smallBlock Sunday Seminar

NEW ZEALAND TREE CROPS ASSOCIATION FRANKLIN BRANCH NEWSLETTER Secretary: P O Box 1200, Pukekohe 2340