Mangaroa Stories
News & updates from our local Mangaroa Biosphere.
Celebrating Core Team Members Moving On
Celebrating some of our core team members
and Jacqui Bray as they move on from Mangaroa Farms, and on to greener pastures in the north.
Sam "Grow-Lord" Gibbins has been an essential figure in our market garden, working closely with Jules, Dan and Casey to lay the foundations for our
Redpath Ideal Greenhouses and then later the Wash & pack shed (with help from his mentor Jodi Roebuck of ROEBUCK FARM. Along with the market garden team, Sam has led the
charge on the weekly vege bag operation, and setting up many of the systems we currently use today. With his help we have set up the magic and the beauty of the market garden, and we are beyond grateful to have had him on board in the valley for nearly 2 years.
Jacqui and her 2x dogs Grace & Ted have been staunch members of our farm team, holding it down through the sometimes challenging conditions of the Hutt Valley; Jacqui has spent multiple seasons with us managing livestock, training young cattle farmers, mending & installing kilometres of fencing, and cultivating multiple hives of bees. Thanks to Jacqui, our team safely completed the
Chainsaw course, and the deer population in the native planted areas have been controlled by the hunting she organised each week. We are grateful to have her massive input on the farm over the last 2.5 years - evident in the quality of the soil, and strength of our fences.
Mangaroa Farms Open Farm Day - Sun 12th March
Join us for the Open Farms open day on Sunday 12th March from 10am - 4pm for a variety of garden tours, planting & livestock demonstrations, and perhaps most exciting - a locally produced lunch! Bring a koha donation for some of Jules' smoked Mangaroa Farms lamb & fresh salad rolls + vegetarian options & more.
👩🌾
Tickets are necessary
Register by claiming a ticket here: https://www.openfarms.co.nz/event/mangaroa-farms-2/
You can arrive at any time and do a self-guided tour, or plan to attend to a few key activities across the day:
- 10:30am -11:30am: Guided market garden tour and demonstration
- 12:00pm - 1:00pm: Livestock handling demonstration and talk on how pastoral farming can contribute to rebuilding our ecological health
- 12:00pm - 2:00pm: Lunch. Please bring a cash koha (donation) - all proceeds will go to support those impacted by cyclone Gabrielle
- 1:45pm - 2:45pm: Guided market garden tour and demonstration
- 3:00pm - 4:00pm: Livestock handling demonstration and talk on how pastoral farming can contribute to rebuilding our ecological health
Wetlands, Soil & Resilience
Landslides, flooding and high winds have decimated farms, communities, homes, and businesses. Countless families are without homes, dry places to sleep, and a plan for surviving the next few months.
Many people’s lives will never be the same.
As communities band together to clean up the mess, and we see the real extent of the damage - it seems a huge amount of Aotearoa's main fruit & vege production areas have been heavily impacted. Some are not even sure where to begin with cleaning up - the question remains of the viability of even continuing at all.
Introducing Mangaroa Farms Lamb 🐑
Happy animals raised with love, roaming on our lush diverse valley pastures, these Coopworth cross-bred sheep are raised using low stress handling practices, and fed natural herbal treatments and supplements such as kelp, in order to help grow nutrient dense and tender meat, providing a delicate and flavourful eating experience.
You can see our full range of Lamb meat cuts (supplied frozen) here:
The Latest on the Farm Shop / Kete Kai
The sides are on and roof is up. We're grateful to the chippies working around the clock in the hot summer sun to keep things moving along.
In a few weeks time, the Farm Shop / Kete Kai will be our central pickup point for our weekly vege bags, and honesty fridge - including our eggs, merch, and local lamb & beef. There have even been whispers of a coffee / smoothie station - what would you like to see here? Stay tuned...
The Mangaroa Farms Honesty Fridge
The honesty fridge at 108 Whitemans Valley Road has been holding it down over the hot January period - with a great selection of local produce grown on the farm, including cucumber, zucchini, basil, lettuce, coriander, microgreens, mesclun mix, carrots, and the finest Mangaroa pasture raised eggs.
Our 100 Highline Laying Hens
Since late last year we have been housing a hundred hens in a mobile chicken coop or ‘caravan’ - big thanks to
Chicken Caravan for their ingenious design.
The portable chicken coop has meant our hens can be moved around on a regular and rotational basis to ‘scratch around’ on pasture (and poop!) in different areas of the farm leaving behind generous amounts of free fertiliser to feed the soil micro biome / biology.
Because we don’t use any synthetic fertiliser inputs, nasty weed killers or insecticides to treat our pasture, the chooks are able to eat plenty of organic plant matter, market garden scraps, supplementary quality grain feed, and live protein in the form of slugs and insects at their leisure.
Our hens also have the ability to roam freely to soak up the sunshine without the immediate threat of predators such as stoats and rats, with the security of a mobile coop and electric fence system.
A New Chapter: Welcoming Our First CEO to Mangaroa Farms
Excited to share that Mangaroa Farms has hired its first Chief Executive: Chris Upton. When we were brainstorming our “dream team,” Chris was at the top of our list. We’re thrilled to welcome him to Mangaroa.
Chris comes to us from Beca, NZ’s top engineering firm. Prior to that he served as CEO of Upper Hutt City Council, leading the revitalisation Upper Hutt has enjoyed in recent years.
Here’s some of what Chris will be working on:
Growing our education & hospitality operations, welcoming more people onto the farm for joy, learning, and wellbeing.
Developing our renewable energy systems.
Overseeing the harvest of ~500 acres of pine tree plantation and its replacement with a permanent, mostly native, forest.
Expanding on-farm housing capacity, especially rental opportunities, for staff and strategic partners.
Lending a hand with lettuce harvesting, dish washing, and firewood chopping.
