Kaitaia Crop Swap

Kia ora fellow Time bankers, Nadia here.

As part of my six weeks stepping in at Timebank, I was asked to run an event to connect our community and help get the word out about Timebank and what we do. As an avid gardener and socialite, it only made sense to run a crop swap.

We pulled together to create a space in the Kaitaia town square on Friday 2nd October from 11:30-1:30. It was a reasonably quiet day in town for the school holidays, but we still had many faces come through.

Some who visited were Timebank members and some were not, yet the general consensus is that our community enjoy trading and believe in the concept of Timebanking. People were excited to find out about the Mara Kai on Puckey Ave so close by and wanting to give their time there. So many in this community enjoy giving, and that is why we love being able to give back with time credits.

Throughout our two hours, people brought along their excess of seedling and plants and left them on the tables for others. They then selected whatever seeds or plants they wanted to take back to their home garden. Others who came by were also able to take something home as there was plenty to go around. We had a great range of seedlings from pumpkin to chamomile, green grape and rosemary cuttings and from ginger to tamarillo plants. What a great turnout.

How wonderful it was to connect with other gardeners in the community. It is great to share not only plants, but knowledge and time with one another. There was some truly grateful visitors to the crop swap and it became clear that a simple plant can brighten someone's day. It goes to show what amazing things can happen when we work together as a community.

Of course, our younger generation of community was building at the same time. The tamariki enjoyed some games and hot chips together (someone had dropped us some hot chips and took a plant home!)

Overall the seed, seedling and crop swap was a success. After receiving feedback from local social media groups, we can say people would love to see more of these on offer going forward, so hopefully that is something that we here at Timebank can host.