Kaicycle Urban Farm and Composting

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Kaicycle Urban Farm and Composting

We are a non-profit community farming & composting initiative based in Newtown, guided by food security and climate resilience
linktr.ee/kaicycle

25/06/2026

We've noticed a few mice making a home in our tunnel house recently and we found a grisly half rat on the māra a few weeks ago, so shout out to Good Nature Traps who gifted us a couple of their fancy traps! Here's Charlotte who came down to install them.

We catch very few rats and mice, but staying predator free is an active team effort - thanks to Predator Free Wellington who have a trap here and our awesome Wellington Timebankers Pete and Anna who check our other traps.

23/06/2026

We love volunteering days like this, a whole stack of bikes, a whole lot of people getting their hands in the māra and taking action for the climate in more ways than one.

Keen to join us for a volunteer session? Sign up at kaicycle.org.nz/volunteer (bikes not required but always welcome!) 🚲🚲🚲🚲🚲🚲🚲

21/06/2026

We harvested our yams with some visiting kindy kids last week - like finding little rubies in the soil! Here's Rose with some of our harvest. We have some capacity to host school or kindy groups for free next term, so if you're interested in visiting Kaicycle with a school group, email us on [email protected] - it's important for tamariki to know that food comes from the whenua, not from the supermarket shelves.

17/06/2026

It's National Volunteer Week - Kaicycle would be nothing without our volunteers! You're doing mahi in the māra in all seasons. Whether it's for years or a few hours, you're making a difference - you're growing veggies and feeding people in the community, you're turning compost, being part of diverting foodscraps from landfill and making great soil instead. We laugh, sometimes even cry, have deep talks, have silly chats, work together in peaceful silence, sing waiata together and put the world to rights. Our volunteers build a beautiful mycelium network of community that keeps us connected, resilient and just, like, happier! Yous are legends, for reals.

Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari he toa takitini - my strength is not mine alone, but the strength of many.

🍄 Here's a photo dump of some beautiful recent days in the māra. Wanna join the mycelium?? Sign up to volunteer at kaicycle.org.nz/volunteer 🍄

15/06/2026

❄️ Composting in Winter ❄️

Have you wondered if the cold winter months might slow down your composting? It can, but it doesn’t necessarily have to - it’s all about ensuring nothing gets too out of balance. Excess moisture from rain can be the main culprit, so you might want to ensure your compost can be protected from downpours.

This time last year at Kaicycle, we had a fair bit of trouble with keeping our compost happy, mainly because it was very wet and there was very little wind. Our cyclists had to brave quite a few rainy collection days, so the food scraps (and our mulch carbon supply) got very wet too. This meant the compost started out too moist, and without much wind or warm weather, it couldn’t get enough airflow to heat up and dry out. By contrast, this May has seen very little rain. It hasn’t been particularly windy either, but without that excess moisture the compost has been pumping - we recorded a temperature of 73 degrees just the other day (which is too hot)!!!! This tells us that colder temperatures don’t have to slow down the natural composting process, as long as you’ve got your greens, browns, moisture and air in balance.

Keep a close eye on any heavy downpours in the forecast this winter. If you’re worried about slow and smelly compost, then make sure you have a solid lid or way of covering your heap from the rain. Just don’t leave any heavy waterproof cover (like tarp) on top for too long, or you might suffocate the beneficial microbes!

Short on compost? Buy some of ours at link in bio.

09/06/2026

Shout out to Apostle Hot Sauce who have made a special edition tropical charred sweetcorn salsa, honouring St Isidore, the patron saint of farmers. $1 from every bottle sold goes to local farms - including us!

We can confirm it's DEEELISH and is doing good for the community too, so grab your bottle today. He mihi nui ki Apostle for supporting local farmers, St Isidore would be stoked!

08/06/2026

FREE Inoculant to Supercharge Your Compost

Last month Liam and Alex ran a composting workshop as part of the Pōneke Climate Festival & Compost Awareness Week. We learnt about the benefits and science of composting, and how different methods impact the amount of emissions released/captured. We also built a static aerobic pile and brewed some compost inoculant - of which we have heaps to go around for our community!

Feel free to come to the farm at any time (it's open to the public 24/7, but this will be less messy and easier to do during daylight hours!) and scoop some into a jar to supercharge your home compost pile with beneficial microbes, speed up the process & create higher quality compost for your māra. It smells delicious - like kombucha! It’s completely harmless if it touches your skin but we recommend washing your hands at the sink afterwards, just to be safe. Dilute with water up to 10:1 before applying to your own compost pile at home using a spray bottle - every time you add fresh food scraps and/or when you're giving your pile a thorough mix (every few months). Check out the instructions on how to find the inoculant below.

If you want to buy some of Kaicycle’s premium living compost, you can order some for collection from the māra on our website - link in bio.

04/06/2026

Every year, thousands of tonnes of food waste are still being sent to landfill in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, creating methane emissions and wasting valuable resources that could instead regenerate soil and nourish communities. While Wellington City Council has committed to ambitious waste minimisation and climate goals, recent decisions have effectively paused progress on large-scale organics solutions.

In response, Waste Free Welly, alongside Kaicycle and other community organisations, has called for a different path forward: one that builds on the grassroots systems already working across the city. Kaicycle is proposing a practical, community-powered model that expands local compost hubs, food scrap drop-off points, e-bike collections, and neighbourhood-scale composting infrastructure across Wellington. We can start reducing waste now, strengthen local resilience, support climate action, and keep growing local futures, suburb by suburb.

We know the best ideas often come from the community itself. So, we want to hear your thoughts, ideas, and local knowledge about how Kaicycle could expand our composting network across Pōneke. Whether it’s hosting a drop-off point, identifying local partners, volunteering, or sharing practical ideas for your neighbourhood, we want to hear from you.

Please share your thoughts in this 10 question survey: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdVy4tQXmJ4Pcsfhk17O13vY4e8vksSaIlgJ_3I1Ywbwh2_Vw/viewform

29/05/2026

We are so lucky to have many amazing volunteers at Kaicycle, and we wanted to take a moment to appreciate the amazing Megan who is one of our longest standing farm volunteers. We asked her some questions about why she volunteers at with us:

HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN VOLUNTEERING AT KAICYCLE?
I started volunteering shortly after I signed up for the weekly composting service. As I was researching the food waste drop-off program I noted the weekly volunteering spots and signed up on a whim. That was just over two years ago.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE THING ABOUT VOLUNTEETING AT KAICYCLE?
I was initially drawn in by the desire to work in the garden as we were in a place without much green space. Even though I now have access to my own garden, I continue to volunteer both because I believe in the mission and the message of Kaicycle and because the community of staff and volunteers comprises a wonderful group of people.

IF YOU WERE A VEGETABLE WHAT WOULD IT BE AND WHY?
Maybe Brussels sprouts? Not for everyone and likes to be a little cold.

Address

5 Hospital Road
Wellington
6021

Website

https://kaicycle.org.nz/

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