The growing season is in full swing at Aho Aho, the māra kai at Ōtaki college. The students have been busy prepping the soil and planting out their seedlings, and the bees have been busy in the orchard where the trees are now loaded with tiny fruit. The students will be taking a well deserved break over the holidays, so we are having an end-of-term working bee to finish off any last jobs in the garden. Come along on Saturday 17th December 10am-12pm to lend a hand in the māra. Afterward will be a chance to try some of Mike’s weird and wonderful ice cream experiments, and we'll get the pizza oven going in the orchard. Please bring along any favourite tools and sturdy footwear, and your favourite pizza toppings or other snacks. Over the holidays we won’t be running our usual teacher’s veggie box, instead there will be an opportunity for the wider community to try our garden goodies using the same community supported agriculture (CSA) veggie box model. The boxes will be packed with a mix of beautiful, seasonal, freshly picked veggies which will vary each week, but likely include a salad mix, tomatoes, beans, zucchinis, herbs and other good things. Boxes will need to be pre-ordered on a weekly basis (you don’t need to sign up for the whole holiday!),and collected from the college at a set time. We ask for a $10 koha for each box, which will go towards our plans to expand the gardens next year (watch this space..). If you would like to learn more or be involved in the box scheme, please contact Rosa ASAP as numbers will be limited (gardenswithrosa@gmail.com or 0220658492) Best wishes from the garden crew : Jack, Mike and Rosa