The Harvest

Kia ora koutou,

Summer has finally given way to fall. You can feel it in the fresh whip of a breeze. Morning and evening are closing in, leaving fewer daylight hours to play with. But in the garden, the plants are busy bearing fruit. Which means the interns are busy picking it.

Georgia harvesting silverbeet.

I’m always amazed when I see crate upon crate of nutritious, organic food that Common Unity has managed to grow on a humble bit of disused sports field. All this food - lettuce, silverbeet, parsley, kale - could have been shipped from miles away, maybe even from overseas! Instead, with a bit of inspiration and many hands, we can grow all this goodness right here.

A cornucopia of green leafy goodness.

We try to harvest early in the morning so we can get it to the Unity Kitchen by the afternoon. Back at the ReMakery, each crate needs to be weighed and recorded. This helps Common Unity collect data for planning.

All our food is harvested, weighed, and recorded.

Right now we’ve got plenty of tomatoes and cucumbers, though the latter is slowing down. Pumpkins and butternut are ripening up, and quite a few cauliflowers are on their way. We’ve dug up most of the potatoes, and I’m impatiently waiting to see how the kūmara have done. The zucchini are still prolific, with a few marrows having gotten away from me.

Cucumbers in the tunnel house.

I’ll close off with an oddball plant in the garden, magenta spreen. I’ve seen it pop up in my garden, with fantastic hot pink leaves. It’s pretty tasteless, but very nutritious and the pop of colour looks great in salads. What I didn’t know is that this hot pink colour rubs off. I’ve heard it called “fairy dust”, but I hadn’t heard of it as makeup until Hannah gave us a tutorial.

Hannah demonstrating how this nutritious plant can double as rouge.

Thanks Hannah! The garden is full of surprises :)