T & G Global—30 November 2018

T&G Global is New Zealand’s largest and oldest fresh produce grower, distributor, marketer and exporter.  A significant amount of their community outreach work relates to healthy eating and diet, but they also provide their employees with a service day for community work.  Today ten people from the marketing group joined us for some spring maintenance work.

The group included Belinda, Ben, Brenda, Caleb, Cecilia, Janay, Jo, Louise, Michelle and Sandi.

Also joining us for the day was our friend Alan.

Over morning tea, Mahrukh gave a welcome and orientation to CUE Haven. She explained the history of the project and our plans for the future.

Thomas then gave a description of the work planned for the day and a safety briefing.

The plan for the day was to continue work on a boardwalk we have been building in the wetlands.  The job today was to work at both ends of the new section, joining up the new parts to the existing boardwalk sections.

We broke the group into two teams to work simultaneously on each section.  A few people helped out doing some potting up in the nursery and some weeding.

Alan worked with one of the teams and they tackled finishing off the last section of the walk.  It was a challenge because it involved building a sharp curve to join the sections.

The team took the time to study the situation and devise a solution.

After a lot of measuring, the first task was to cut and assemble the framework.

Once the framework was in place, it was time for the challenging task of measuring and cutting the top boards.

Once the boards were cut, they were nailed into place.

The team should be very proud of the end result! Here are the before and after pictures —

In the meantime, the second team worked with Thomas to improve a section of the boardwalk that had settled and shifted out of alignment.  It was challenging work because they had to evaluate the situation and come up with a lasting solution.

Once they came up with a preliminary strategy, the next task was to dismantle the section of the walk that had moved out of position.

They could then correct the underlying issue and reconstruct the boardwalk.

The result is a much safer and easier—and futureproof—boardwalk section.  The team should be proud of their efforts which required a lot of mental and physical challenges!

While the boardwalk teams worked away, a couple of staff assisted with some nursery work and repotted some seedlings into bigger pots.

And they also assisted with some much needed weeding around the cottage and really spruced up the place.

The enthusiastic teams insisted on working past the originally planned lunch time in order to finish off their work.  After a relaxing lunch and we took a tour of the property driving up to the top of the property and then having a leisurely walk back via the walking track.

We really enjoyed working with this team—they were enthusiastic and fun and we’d like to thank Ben for suggesting CUE Haven as a charity to support and for Michelle for organizing the volunteer day.  We hope you are the first of many T&G teams visiting us.

Our many thanks to Alan for coming along and helping out.  Your assistance and advice were most helpful.

A HUGE thank you to everyone for their effort and hard work today.  We really enjoyed meeting you and getting to know you better.  You have all made a great contribution to CUE Haven. It was wonderful to see the way you developed creative solutions to the track issues–everyone had good ideas and showed a lot of dedication and the results are amazing.  The repotted seedling will grow better, the weeding has spruced up the area and the track improvements will enable visitors to explore and enjoy the growing native forest safely and comfortably.

THANK YOU!!

We hope to see all of you back at CUE Haven both for another fun and productive day and also for a relaxing visit with your friends and families to explore CUE Haven – your community native forest reserve.