A Tui Ora taonga and a passionate gardener have passed into local legend for their ability to produce beautiful kūmara – on a startling scale!
The Golden Kūmara was once the prize for the annual Tui Ora Christmas Tree competition (a hotly fought contest!) but was retired last year when a member of the Taranaki Stop Smoking Service (TSSS) created and donated a beautiful artwork to be won instead.
The Golden Kūmara, that was once the prize for the Tui Ora Christmas Tree competition, but is now the gift that keeps on giving, providing tipu for future kūmara to grow.
The kūmara was given a new home in the TSSS office, which seemed to suit it as it began to produce lots of tipu (runner sprouts similar to the one you see on potatoes which have spent too long in the cupboard!). These were collected by the team and popped into glasses of water to root.
But they needed to find soil so they could grow into beautiful, tasty and nutritious kūmara tubers – and as it turned out, Christopher Herbert from Whaitara had the perfect dirt for the job.
“Christopher had come to us in November wanting to give up smoking and one of the things we talked about at his check-in sessions was how much work he needed to do to revive his garden,” recalls Carlene Duff, TSS Quit Coach.
“We are able to give out vouchers to help incentivise whānau who want to take their smoke-free journey with us, and Christopher was very pleased to be able to spend his first one on fertiliser.”
Working in his garden clearing weeds and repairing the raised beds and compost bins helped take Christopher’s mind off the smokes.
“Midnight on 29 November was my last cigarette, and I have been smoke-free since then,” he said. “I wanted to give up because of the money – I would often go without a smoke over the weekend because I didn’t have the money to buy any, suffer all the withdrawals, and then buy some on Tuesday when my money came in.
“It just seemed crazy to go through all that all the time, so I wanted to kick it for good. Carlene was brilliant at supporting me through it – seeing her each week gave me something to aim for.”
Christopher found more and more motivation to get his garden growing – and another voucher incentive for blowing green (whānau blow into a machine which measures the amount of carbon monoxide in their breath – a low green result shows they have stayed off the cigs!) meant he could get more fertiliser.
“Christopher always shared pictures of his garden with me at our check-ins and I offered him some of the tipu from the Golden Kūmara and bought him a few plants. Then it was coming up to Christmas and we had another ten shoots in the office that really needed to be planted, so I gave those to him too – I knew they were going to a good home!” says Carlene.
A few months later she got a surprise when Christopher came to see her for his last check-in carrying several huge kūmara.
Christopher’s latest kūmara haul grown from the tipu gifted to him by his quit coach, Carlene.
“He gave them to me and said that the shoots I’d given him had produced heaps – so he was giving some back to me to share with the team.”
Christopher said: “It was great to be able to give something back to Carlene – she supported me so much to give up with the nicotine lozenges, which really helped, and all the advice.”
Then a few weeks later, at a World Stop Smoking Day event at the Whaitara Health Clinic, Christopher came to say hello and bought another big bag of kūmara koha, along with a few pumpkins.
“I’m so glad he is finding so much pleasure in his garden now, and staying smokefree,” says Carlene. “It just goes to show how everything starts from a tiny shoot, even your own hauora journey.”