Auckpork Pig

Soup Day was on Friday, so our class trooped off to the school gardens to choose some vegetables to flavour our soups.

We were shocked to discover that a pig had been rooting through the bark paths surrounding our Edible Gardens. A pig at school! We live in Nelson, near State Highway 6…No!

The next morning brought fresh evidence of our porcine visitor.

But pigs in the city? …NO!

“A large hedgehog”, suggested Ricky

“Rats!” said Alex.

It’s nocturnal and a carnivore and as it had rooted under a seat it was small, the children decided.

Time to call in the experts. A quick call to Nelmac and their expert, Dave Newton arrived.

“Yes a pig”, he agreed, after much head scratching and close inspection of the widespread newspaper and bark.

We brainstormed. What next? Matt’s dad goes pig hunting. Regan has a gun and a pack of pig dogs. Louis’s dad catches weka in a ‘catch em alive’ trap for release. Poisoned bait! But pig dogs in the city? Guns in the city? Poison in our playground? We think not.

Perhaps someone out there might have a solution.

So far our night visitor had only ripped up our bark paths, but we had worked hard to build our Edible Gardens this year and been watching and waiting eagerly for our crops to be harvested.

We rang the Nelson Mail, our local newspaper and told them our story.

Martin and Charlie, a photographer and a reporter arrived and interviewed us.

Matt wrote to his dad ,asking him if he could sort our problem. Louis’s dad was contacted regarding the traps. Regan ruled out pig dogs in the city. And we all knew that guns aren’t allowed in town.

Friday Soup Day however, was a great success. We harvested our vegetables and made Beetroot and Cumin soup, Leek and Potato soup and Dinosaur Bone soup (vegetable and pasta). Other classes produced tasty soups for us to sample.

Saturday night’s copy of the newspaper carried a photo and article under the headline “Porcine visitor……”. Louis’s family staked out the school yard with a homemade noose and chicken bones. No luck! Dogs were heard on the bank behind the school on Saturday morning.

Monday morning, we all arrived back at school almost expecting that our vegetables would be totalled.

But nothing…just rows of leeks, carrots, onions, beetroot, cabbages, broccoli and kohi glistening in the frost.

And then it was solved. Martin De Ruyter, the photographer from the Nelson Mail arrived with a photo.

‘Pig Captured’ said the headline.

It was a morning full of visitors, because next came Allan, the pig captor extraodinaire. And he gave us the sequel to the story. It turned out it was Allans 30^th wedding anniversary and he had arranged to meet the SPCA ranger for the pig handover in one of the city malls, where Allan was to pick up his wife. He raced into her shop and announced that the pet she had always wanted was in the truck and he had got it for their anniversary. Upon seeing it, she screamed and gave the little pig such a fright the laundry bag containing the pig jumped out of the container and onto the truck deck.

So pig was handed over and after Allan had made a quick trip to the duty doctor for a tetanus shot and collected anti biotics for his bitten finger, they were able to go and celebrate.

Three children visited the SPCA at lunchtime to see the little pig and photograph it. Summer, a receptionist took us up to the dog enclosure and there in a dog basket almost covered with straw was our pig. It woke up and we were able to see just our tiny she was. No more than 60 centimetres

We named her Auckpork Pig.

We hope she is claimed and has the opportunity to live out her days somewhere peaceful and with plenty of worms.

Several people had rung the school to report seeing the pig before it turned up at school, on traffic islands, running up the footpath and near a main road. We’ve all written stories about how she came to visit our school, but only Auckpork Pig knows the real story and she isn’t talking!

By The St Vincent Room Kids at Auckland Point School

School stilts

Isaac, Matt and me made stilts. We used old seats. We made them for all the kids. Gabel helped us design our stilts. Grace helped us and Gabel paint them. I think they look really good.

By Steven

Interesting masks

Some big people from the Teachers College came to talk about and show us their masks. I really liked this one because it was made of flax. The student told us how he made it and what it was about. Whaitiri

Save Now
Rob the champion fish filleter.

Our adopted ship brought us a big box of frozen fish from their last tow.

When we went down to visit Enterprise our Skipper Lee gave it to us.

When we got back to school we opened it up and inside were frozen fish.

We talked about them. We drew them and we learnt lots about them. The fish were

Ghost shark

Hoki

Hake

Arrow squid

Star grazer

We needed to know how to get the fillets off the bones. We wrote to Rob the champion fish filleter from Guytons. We saw a story about him in the newspaper. By Brearna.

Regula, Teacher from Switzerland

We have been fortunate enough to have had a teacher from Switzerland working with us in St Vincent Room. Regula teaches in Davos in southern Switzerland near the Italian border. She speaks English fluently, having been to NZ many times to work on the skiing fields up north. We hope when the new school year starts in Switzerland, that we will be able to email her class and exchange news. They are to introduce English into their curriculum this year at Regula's class level. We cooked and shared a fondue meal, a first for most children. The cheese and chocolate fondues were a great hit. Apple and bread were used to dip in the cheese fondue. Marshmellows, apple, kiwifruit, banana and pineapple were the treats, we dipped into the chocolate fondue. Regula taught the children how to make a special Swiss Christmas breadman. The children were delighted with their efforts as the photos show.

Founders Park

As a thank you for making the ANZAC Poppies, Debbie Daniel Smith took us to Founders Park to visit The Maritime Museum. On a wet, windy and very cold Friday, we met up with Debbie, Mike Whittle and Gordon Murphy in the Windmill at Founders. Mike and Gordon are both experts on Maritime history of Nelson. Gordon is an old boy of Auckland Point School and his uncle donated the collection of ships in bottles to the Museum. He also told us about life at Auckland Point School during WW2. Apparently there were air raid shelters in the middle of our playground (where the netball court is now). Mike drew the children's attention to a figure head high up on the wall, and told us the amazing story of the Gibbs family. You could have heard a pin drop, as he wove this tale of shipwreck, despair and survival. After a visit to the Museum, we were treated to morning tea, prepared by the restaurant. So we all sat around a roaring gas heater in the Grainary and munched on cheese scones with lashing of jam and whipped cream!

Planting Spinifex at Back Beach

We were invited to take part in planting of grasses at the Back Beach in early June. One of our favourite Nelmac workers was there. We helped Steve plant the magnolias in the Moller Fountain Reserve last year.

A bus collected us at the school gate and with several parents to assist us we arrived on the most perfect sunny Nelson day (after 2 weeks of rain!) Steve and his helper Pete had laid out the grasses and after inspection of the erosion and a talk about the need to reclaim the dunes, the children began their task. There was great excitement at unearthing enormous huhu grubs in the sand. They were found on buried logs. Each one was placed in the basket with our morning tea, for later inspection and sketching!

Harvesting our first crop.

With Soup Day looming we harvested our first vegetables from the School Edible Gardens.

The children chose beetroot, celery, carrots, kohi ( a first for many of the children) leeks and parsley. St Vincent Room made three soups to contribute towards the school wide Soup Day. Beetroot and Cumin, Potato and Leek and Dinosaur Bone Soup (vegetable and chicken) were all prepared on Thursday by the children with help from Grace and Judi.

School Edible Gardens

Lucy,Whaitiri and Skyla took the camera out at lunchtime to photograph our gardens. Whaitiri is a member of the lunchtime Garden Club which meets every Friday with Petra. She needed shots of the gardens to pass her gardening badge at Scouts.

Founders Park Maritime Museum