Sunflower Fest 2025

Sunflower Fest 2025

Last month we opened our farm up to the public over three weeks. Along with raising $5,700 towards the education and wider work of Ruamāhanga Farm Foundation it was an opportunity for people to walk along the restoring wetland, see and harvest the many sunflowers that...
Becoming a charity

Becoming a charity

Words by Lucy Riddiford Nearly a year ago, I wrote a blog about ‘my why’, explaining my role with the Ruamāhanga Farm Foundation.  Whilst I enjoy being outside, I am not so strong on the hands on skills – but I have different skills I bring to the enterprise. I...
Broadcast

Broadcast

Words by Yvonne Riddiford On the last volunteer of the year we had a different activity than usual, it involved mixing seed which was then broadcast as an understory cover crop and then planting a number of trees into it. This time we had a very small group, only two...
Safe Space

Safe Space

I had gone to bed with the intention to write in the morning and managed to get up in time to see the dawn, with its rivers of pink and blue, streaming above the sharp outline of the hills in the distance. For me writing has been a way of slowing time down, dwelling...
Hairy story about a Hare

Hairy story about a Hare

“I’ve got something to show you” my brother-in-law Rod said to me one morning recently in a low-key sort of way. I wondered what. Turns out he’d shot a hare that morning – no mean feat. He was wondering… very politely like … if Yvonne and I might like to um,...
The Flood and the Wetland

The Flood and the Wetland

We have recently had a flood, not a big one by our standards but enough to close the road and cover a large part of this farm for about 30 hours. It was not a real concern as we are used to having one or two floods per year. However this was the first significant...