Thoughts on What Could Be and What Already Exists

Sometimes I find myself dreaming away…envisioning what could be of this community and what we can create for future generations.

We can enrich the community through local food systems. What if we had a system where we mapped out where all the fruit trees were and had volunteers/time bankers going around and harvesting it all? What if we could Spin Farm (Small Plot Intensive) certain parts of the land? What if we had a CSA (community supported agriculture) farm? What if we had market gardens right here in Lyttelton? What if we had festivals celebrating abundance of produce, tomatoes. plums, pears, or one of my favorites, black boy peaches? What if we had a Co-op Restaurant that the excess flowed into? Sound like a dream? Well, now this is becoming a reality with the funding that Project Lyttelton has recently secured.

Now I know to achieve this level of abundance it is going to take a master plan, a diversity of systems working together, time, teamwork and development. This is all very exciting!

For my family and I after the earthquake the three best things were food that we had growing in our garden, our immediate neighbors, and the community of Lyttelton. The earthquake may have destroyed a lot, but our food was still growing without a problem. Imagine not having to go to the super market, just to the garden to get what you need. It definitely saved us from going out into crazy Christchurch for a while and even more importantly we were still eating really well. Our neighbors even shared food from their garden with us. Imagine that sense of security amongst all of the chaos. We all checked on each other making sure we each had the basics water, food, and more or less a safe shelter. Our neighbors brought us flour, we made them bread. They brought us black boy peaches and we made them black boy peach jam. The night of the February quake we went and camped on the grassy as we were afraid to be in our house and felt safe with the people, the community. That night people played music and sang all night, which helped to drown out the aftershocks and gave out the vibe that everything was going to be all right. This sense of community is deeply felt here in Lyttelton.

For more about SPIN Farming.

A video example of a beautiful CSA in the USA.

Written By: Christy Martin