Kia ora koutou,
We are in the heart of our busiest months with all courses half complete, mountains of assessments to mark as well as classes to prepare for, and already having to plan for 2025.
Our first year students have completed their program (CPIOS) and some have moved on to Level 3. We still have plenty of courses running for CPIOS, meeting employer requests. Warren Hales is now managing this course, so please direct your questions to him.
Level 3 fruit production students are at differing levels of completion – we start crop health this week that sees the overlap/log jam of new students with some who started in August last year and are almost complete. Classroom spaces still remain difficult to access which is why this course has not been split into two. Practical work students could be involved with includes repairing fruit supports, grafting, tree planting, pruning (of course) and irrigation maintenance, that class is coming up soon.
The Level 4 Growing Environment course kicked off the month. The class have been examining adverse weather and the various risks the current climate can pose to the orchard in a normal season and to extreme events. They are looking at weather such as frosts to understand how these conditions can be managed and the potential threat to our production goals.
Last week they visited an orchard that was arranged by Lara and Hannah at Fruitfed. We gave a Visual Soil Assessment practical and discussed soil tests to understand the capabilities of our soil and the management tools available to the grower.
The Level 5 Post-Harvest Diploma has started a new year. Labour Management is the first of four subjects this year. The course will delve into relevant legislation in which to manage our human resource with best intentions. The cost of labour, training and retention are significant; so we consider processes that may help to retain staff to improve the packhouse skill set and efficiency and performance.
The leadership and relationship management course will start on August the 23rd at Hastings. This will focus on what makes a good, (and Bad ) leader, and looks at the different aspects of leadership. By breaking these down we allow students to understand their leadership styles and think about how they can use this learning to improve their leadership skills.
Level 5 fruit production students have visited L.E.Cooke nursery to look at stool beds, grafting, and production of new trees for orchard development. This week the students are being hosted by Plant and Food to look at their variety breeding programs, disease breeding and disease management research programs. A big thankyou to these local organisations for giving the students this experiences.
Noho ora mai
Clare, Chris, Steven and Warren
