New raised beds at the health service

Last week two garden beds have been built in the front garden of the Daylesford Campus of Hepburn Health Service (Corner of Jamieson and Hospital Street Daylesford). The Thursday gardening group run by the Shire will be maintaining the garden every Thursday along with staff and clients of the Hepburn Health Service, all the materials were donated by Daylesford Gardening Supplies and Home Hardware, labour to build the bed was volunteered by a local builder called PJ, Sam Tucker (DFCG) also volunteered his time to design and locate the beds. Hepburn Health Service staff will be using the space to grow different varieties of food that can be then given to welfare clients, welfare/social workers are able to use the space to take clients to talk and garden at the same time, this is then a pathway to encourage people to engage in the community garden next to the library, encouraging isolated people towards social interaction and physical exercise - a positive way to access free food. There is one accessible bed for people with mobility issues and one ground level bed. The Hepburn Health Service would like to kindly thank all of the people involved.

September working bee

A quieter working bee this month with just twelve of us getting out in the cold spring weather and the photographer going home before proceedings really got under way.

We planted out beetroot, cos lettuce, broccoli, peas and some more strawberries.

The edging we laid last working bee has settled in and we added mature compost to these beds.

Looking forward to a warmer October working bee and our numbers back to usual force. We will be calling a meeting soon about all the various roles being filled when Meg and Patrick and their family take off for their year long adventure. If you want to get involved in more of the organisational aspects of DCFG please contact us or leave a comment here.

August working bee – leaves, edges, simple pleasures...

The winter's rain finally stopped for the working bee today and a small group of us met to do some jobs at the Albert Street garden under a more than happy sun.

The communicative aspect of community gardening cannot be underestimated in terms of 'social warming' in an age of global warming.

While some of us nattered away, others worked and children learned by watching and assisting the elders.

One of the tasks we wanted to complete today was dismantling what was left of a giant pallet that we had used for making the new compost bays, using the excess timber as edging around two beds so as to build up the soil-humus in them.

While some helped with the building work others turned the compost heaps – a fantastic way of exercising and keeping warm in winter while also helping to generate more heat in the pile.

We finished the edging and broke some bags of leaf mulch over the beds. The broad beans in the first bed are really starting to move as we edge towards spring. Go go broad beans!

We have been collecting donated bags of deciduous leaves for some months, slowly accruing a large pile.

Our fourth community garden at the skate park, originally instigated by the Daylesford homeschooling network, has just started. So we took dozens of bags to that food garden for the second working bee there coming up this Thursday, 15 August from 11am. The first stage of planting has been done and the leaf mulch will add to the sheet mulching planned for Thursday. All welcome! 

The Signs of Our Lives

Thanks Peter O'Mara for making our great new compost signs.

Pruning maintenance plan for Rea Lands park

Local pruning maestro, Gael Shannon, has been working on an orchard maintenance plan for Rea Lands Park over the past few years and today Patrick met Gael to go over the plan and ask her questions about how best to look after the many various fruiting trees including peaches, quince, almonds, figs, cherries, apricots, feijoa, plums, hazelnuts, citrus, berries and nectarines. Stay tuned for the maintenance plan drawing, which we'll publish here shortly.

Gael Shannon and Patrick Jones discuss fruit tree maintenance at Rea Lands Park today.

It is because of the generous contributions of local folk like Gael that our community food network can grow and prosper. We have much local knowledge in our area and many generous folk to pass this knowledge on. Tap into this knowledge, learn, give and get involved with one of the community gardens. If you want to be kept up to date with our regular working bees, workshops and other food related business, email us and ask to go on the mail out list, otherwise check in with our facebook page or keep an eye out for the chalk board at the Albert St garden (beside the library).

Our work recognised further afield...

Melbourne's wonderful resource organisation, Cultivating Community, has written a comprehensive report on our growing community food network. This is how they begin:

Anyone who has been involved with community gardens or urban public growing spaces will know the patience and compromise necessary to get a new project started. Without wishing to widen the city-country divide we’ve always suspected that things are “different out there”. We decided to head out to rural Victoria to investigate some unusually forward community garden and food projects. 

First off we headed to Daylesford where we had heard murmurs that a group of rural Victorians – frustrated at sluggish responses to environmental and health crises – had been taking matters into their own hands to rapidly expand their network of communal growing spaces. As soon as we stepped off the bus we were greeted by Meg Ulman and Patrick Jones, who have been instrumental in establishing the thriving and diverse network of Daylesford Community Food Gardeners (DCFGs). As well as being lovely hosts, they were kind enough to answer some questions and fill us in on the history of the project.

Read on here.

June Bee (community compost capers)

A frosty morning brought us out slowly today for our monthly working bee.

But when the sun seeped into the Albert Street garden, so did our smiles.

We admired the winter's fruit and our own climate zone which allows for some form of fruit year round.

While we worked away in the garden Tom played up our spirits with the sun.

During the lead up to the working bee we collected pallets, leaves, straw and horse manure for our bonza winter compost workshop. We demonstrated how to build a four-bay compost area and how to set a compost for some serious heat decomposition.

We recycled, reclaimed and reloved everything, including ourselves. About thirty of us turned up to lend a hand, hand-cut the grass, prune and take out the dead organic matter to add to our composts.

It was all very Portlandia, which we relocalised as Daylesfordia.

But unlike Portlandia we actually had something to show for ourselves other than just jokes, although we had those too.

Soil fertility! There's nothing more important than compost in a post-fossil fuel future.