Emergency help is needed to save our heritage seeds
Hawke's Bay, Wairoa District
We have endured the worst flooding known to the area for many years.
We have lost the ability to dry our seeds, and now we need your help to create a future proofed facility to save our seeds.
Our strategy for off grid seed drying includes building a double skin greenhouse (approx 40m2) containing a heat mass to store and buffer heat and solar fans to create good air movement.
We will build a woodfired water heater which will both radiate heat, and store hot water part of which will be used with thermostats and fans to control drying conditions in the smaller cabinet dryers.
We'll use solar panels for the fans, pumps and the lights we will need.
We have a build team ready to build this and we are ready to go.
Koanga Institute is a Charitable Trust that is well known as New Zealand's primary heritage seed saving organisation. For over 30 years Koanga has saved and made available heritage food plants from around Aotearoa.
The main goal is to create an off the grid seed drying facility that will help keep the seeds we have now harvested and ready to harvest. Without the seed dryer and facility we will not be able to have seed available for you to grow at home.
Updates on the Green house 28 August 2023
We have been on a mission to get off mains power and build low tech systems for seed drying and cleaning, but we have had to give survival priority over development, for the past year and a half. Now that our inaugural Regeneration Summit, is behind us, we will be going back to this development plan. It is critical for us to be off unreliable mains power and build our off grid seed dryers as part of that plan. We did a crowd funder after the first flood and we were gifted $30,000,(thanks to many of you). We are patiently waiting to build our off grid dryers but we have to build the new facility they will be part of first. They will be integrated into a purpose built greenhouse and cleaning shed. It has taken us longer than anticipated to get this project off the ground because of the ongoing effects of the cyclone and the recovery process from that and because the project is bigger than anticipated, but once the cyclone recovery is mostly over with, we will be able to switch focus back to this project. Much love, from Kay and the Koanga team x
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