Friends of the Farm (FoF) partnered with the Māngere-Ōtāhuhu Local Board to run a competition to see who could collect the most Moth Plant pods. Moth Plants are a pest that can smother and weigh down trees. If left unchecked, they can destroy native vegetation. Each Moth plant pod can produce up to 1000 thistle like seeds that can parachute in the wind for long distances.
This is the first time The Moth Plant Pod competition has been run in our community and four community groups and five local schools entered. They gathered pods in the different places around the Local Board area – in public spaces like parks and waterways, and on private property.
Friends of the Farm provided a large skip bin over the weekend 7-10 May for locals to safely dispose of other pest plants.
Around 60 community members descended on Ambury Farm on 8 May at a family fun event hosted by FoF to celebrate their achievements. Community prizes were won by Morris Sinclair from the Tararata Stream Team and by Gabb, a Māngere Bridge local and active community volunteer, who collected pods from the Watercare Coastal walkway. Their combined total was over 3000 pods! A special prizegiving will be held for school groups later in June.
To celebrate the occasion FoF set up a seed-ball making table and a beeswax wrap workshop so that competition entrants could have some fun and make gifts for Mothers’ Day on 9 May. The bicycle powered sewing machine was there too, always a popular drawcard. A sausage sizzle kept everyone well fed. Shearing was taking place at the same time and a few lucky people were shown how to hand spin wool.
This FoF competition and community event not only built whānau connections to the farm park and demonstrated care for our environment at a local level but also kept more than 30,000 Moth Plant seeds out of our whenua.
