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Yum yum yum…

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I am not sure that I will be very popular with our local trail users on the Farm Forestry Trail as I write this. It has been quite a good year for blackberry, so good in fact that we are considering that we may need to do a wee bit of control otherwise this time next year we will have no trail.

It the mean time we have a nice staggered ripening going on which means that pretty much each day there is a good amount of ripe spray free berries. I would much rather see these berries consumed by humans either as part of a healthy breakfast or as jam than by the birds. It is not that I think the birds are bad it is just they are very efficient seed distributors. If you are planning to make jam, you want mostly ripe, black berries but you should also have a few (1%) of the red ones as they will help your jam to set properly.

In the mean time I will assure you that we will do no control on the blackberry on the trail this season and that should we choose to do some control later in the year it will be very well signposted and we will use dye to make it obvious.

At the moment the best crops are nearer to the Sandspit Road end of the trail to Hamilton Road. Bring your gloves.

Planting Success

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Largely due to the call to the passionate call to action made by the Snells Beach Ratepayers and Residents Association we we able to get all of the plants into the ground on the Grange Street walkway. The well spread out group planted more than 600 plants in just over an hour. The plants were all grown by the Snells Beach School children as part of the Trees for Survival programme. Normally the school children would plant the trees themselves but the lockdown has prevented them from doing so this year.

Socially distant bubbles of planters in action at Grange Street. Photo – Roger Grant.

A big thank you to all of you who attended. The weather gods smiled upon us and the clouds burst not long after we had finished and packed up. The plants will be well watered in and we can admire their growth over the coming years.

Planters in action on Grange Street Walkway

Planting Back On – Monday 24th

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We have decided to have a volunteer planting day to plant the 720 or so plants that were planned to be planted by the Snells Beach School children last week.

If you wish to help, the planting day is now Monday 2th August at 10am. The planting site is the middle of the trail and you need to enter from either end. There is parking at the end of the seal on Hamatana Road and limited room at Grange Street. We will have a meeting station where we will collect your details and we will have a Covid QR code for those using the app.

You will need to bring your own spade (a small one rather than a shovel), gumboots, gloves raincoat, food and water.

You can read more here on the event page.

Inaugural Society Meeting

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On Tuesday 4th august at 7pm we will be holding our inauguaral AGM for the society. Our guest speaker will be Chris Charles. The meeting will be at the Betty Paxton room in the community centre on Hamatana Road in Snells Beach.

We expect the AGM business to be brief. Also if you are AGM averse because you think you may end up on the committee, don’t panic, we require such nominations to be in writing and before the meeting.

We have invited Chris Charles to speak. Chris works for Auckland Council in a position that has been funded by Walking Access Commission. Many of you will have heard of Chris but I suspect only a few know who he is and why he put is hat into the ring to do his job a year or so ago. Chris will talk about himself, his hobbies and his past and also the sucesses that have occured in establishing walking and cycling trails as a result of his position in Auckland Council.

So even if you are not a member (yet), please come to our meeting and meet up with some like minded trail builders, trail users, tree planters, pest controllers, bird counters……

The AGM business can be read here on the event page.

Pest Control Plan @ Duck Creek Catchment.

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It’s exciting times for the future Duck Creek Walkway. (It will probably have a different name later – but that’s another exciting story).

As part of the myriad of tasks to do for the future when this section of trail will be open we have had Auckland Council assistance to prepare a Pest Management Plan for four farms which border the trail and the water catchment. As soon as supply chains allow us (this was written during Covid lockdown) we will be starting a trapping and control program to help protect this amazing space from predator species such as possums, rats, and stoats. Duck Creek Walkway is an ‘on lead’ option for dogs but just in case I have currently chosen to use no toxins.

Already I’m doing bird counts so we can hopefully show enhanced counts in the future.

Duck Creek in the big picture.

There is a volunteer opportunity here for someone or several someones to check traps on the trail.

And anyone or everyone can do bird counts.

Silvereye on Duck Creek Walkway. Photo credit Gary Heaven

How will you contribute

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The opportunities for volunteers are limitless and every contribution is valued.

What can you do to help?

Contributions so far include;

20000000 combined hours from the committee

trail builders

trail maintainers

the loaning of equipment

managing contractors

scoping new trails

polishing the red tape of beauracy

donations of all kinds – money, materials, time.

Young on the tractor not so young on the rake. Oh well. Photo Credit Shelley Trotter

In the future we need;

All of the above and

tree planters

pest controllers

weed exterminators

bird counters

volunteer coordinators

visionaries

administrators to manage the new beast called Mahurangi Trail Society

ecology evangelists and ecology soldiers

educators

Hard at work at a recent working bee. Photo Credit Shelley Trotter

publicity coordinators

someone to make the morning tea for the volunteers

a photo person to record our labour’s and our successes

a marketing department

Wonderful progress Photo Credit Shelley Trotter

And Maybe

A nursery to grow plants

seed collectors

Not just tracks and trails

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At Mahurangi Trail Society we are passionate about not just connecting our communities but about the amazing natural environment that we live in.

Long-finned eel caught above the box culvert before the fish pass installation. Photo Credit Gary Heaven

One of the behind the scenes activities that we have been engaging in is monitoring the fresh water ecology. Also with the help of Whitebait Connection a fish pass has been installed on a perched box culvert on Duck Creek.

Fish Pass at the start of the winter rains. Photo Credit. Shelley Trotter


Native fresh water fish. Kokopu. Photo Credit Gary Heaven


The first blog post

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The first post for the site is very important as it sets the tone for the site. This presented somewhat of a challenge for me as I think it needed to be very significant. The post also says more about me than it really should, it is like a window into my soul.

Then I thought that maybe just an irrelevant picture would be just as good. Somebody will come along and re-write history and delete this post. Or worse, somebody will tell ME to delete it.  So in anticipation of the inevitable, here is an irrelevant picture for marking the first post of Mahurangi.nz website.

Mr Hamburger rules.

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