2018 'Thank You' Bee

Thank you to the broad beans that fed our bellies and enriched our soils with nitrogen.

Thank you trees that so generously shared their gifts.

Thank you friends from near and far who volunteered their time and intentions.

Thank you to the flowers and countless pollinators.

Thank you to the people who donated seedlings for prosperity and sovereignty.

Thank you to those who came and cheered us from the sidelines.

Thank you sharp minds, sharp tools.

Thank you for your energy and enthusiasm.

Thank you for sharing your cabbage stems.

Thank you to our bodies that laboured our love.

Thank you to our love that laboured our bodies.

Thank you Mother Earth for receiving, enabling and sharing. We honour your food and seasonality and literally owe our lives to your gifts. We love you.

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Happy solstice season one and all!

The community gardeners are once again going to participate in this year's Daylesford NYE parade. If you'd like to join us, please stay tuned for more deets.

Here's us at last year's event:

Edible Forest Gardens talk with Dave Jacke

Edible forest gardener and permaculturalist, Dave Jacke, came to Daylesford during the week for a brief talk while touring the country giving workshops on temperate climate food forestry. Excerpts from Dave's talk follows...

Dave Jacke talks edible forest gardens

Come hear Dave speak at the Town Hall this Wednesday...

A forest garden

After several months of planning, with many enthusiastic people giving their time and skills, we today signed an agreement with Daylesford Secondary College (DSC) to begin work on a 5-acre food forest at the school in 2013. This will be the fifth community garden in Daylesford established within 2 years, and a significant contributer to the growing community food system we are developing locally. Part community garden, part educative resource, the DSC Food Forest will be a first of its kind in Australia. It will have an emphasis on growing ethical, local food in an ecologically restorative way and will teach students and the wider community how to climate change proof our food supply while attend to greenhouse gases by growing locally, perennially and organically.

Drawing by Patrick Jones (click for bigger)

The design group included DSC student Ruby Scott, DSC parent Alison Wilken, local permaculturalists Luke Pither, Patrick Jones, Paul Dempsey and Chris Wood, and consultation by permaculture co-originator David Holmgren and relocalisation activist Su Dennett. The generous and inspired school representatives have been teachers Liz Woodroofe, Karen Ruff, Eirinn Taylor and principal Tiffany Holt. Many others have given their time, support and knowledges to this project thus far, including the school's council, the Daylesford Neighbourhood Centre, numerous community gardeners and those who first sowed this seed.

All of us involved have thought it important to continue the great work the local primary schools have been doing to educate our kids in sustainable and ethical food production and really expand this knowledge at the secondary schooling level, where teenagers are often prey to corporate food predators.

We'll start looking for broader community support, volunteers and funding opportunities for the project in the new year. In the meantime our community can celebrate knowing that this project will begin to become a biophysical reality in 2013.

Community food expanded...

permapoesis.blogspot.com

A five acre food forest?

Yes, we're still in the middle of planning a fourth community food garden, but in the meantime we are also talking to Daylesford Secondary College about the possibility of a fifth garden at the school. The edible, ecological and educational possibilities of this site are potentially huge.

L-R Dave Stephens, Robert Hewat, Veronica Pellet and Alexis Pitsopoulos. Photo: Patrick Jones

Last Friday a first meeting was arranged by Dave Stephens (local forest activist and future parent of the school) who invited Alexis Pitsopoulos (local forager, herbalist, locavore cook and edible weedsman), Robert Hewat (local botanist, parent), Patrick Jones (community food system activist, designer and poet) and Veronica Pellet (French WWOOFer) to look over the site. We look forward to working with the school.

The Good Life

As part of The Good Life Festival DCFG hosted a productive gardens walk yesterday. Jo, Tony, Meg and Patrick chaperoned about twenty walkers through the town to visit three backyard gardens, showing diverse approaches to ecological food generation. All three gardens belong to DCFG participants who are not only committed to family sufficiency but to community sufficiency.

We started at the Albert Street garden where Patrick gave a brief account of how the garden got established before moving on to Jasmin and Adrian's lovely sun-trapping garden, which is beautifully set out with much space for children to play due to the space saving designs using espalier fruit trees along some boundary fencing and in front of north-facing shed walls.

We then walked on to Scotty and Alison's lovely wild backyard garden, one of the most productive in the town and one that is very easy to maintain. It is a great example of a carefree food garden with established fruit trees that produce mountains of fruit each year. 

We finished our walk at Meg and Patrick's which, like the previous two gardens, was well endowed with poultry, compost systems and perennial and annual food crops.

Thanks to everyone who came along to share experiences and knowledges about growing food. Don't forget the working bee next Saturday 9th June at 10am at the Albert St garden.