How to grow a grower
If you happen to find yourself deep in the backstreets of Bellfield somewhere between Moondog World and the Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital you may come across the unusual sight of a thriving urban market garden.
When Mo, Fair Food’s packing floor supervisor, and I call into visit this week we wander down rows admiring carrots, kohl rabi, yellow capsicums, lettuce, broccoli, the last of the summer tomatoes and a patch of the biggest, shiniest rainbow chard we’ve ever seen.
In 2018 176 supporters helped farmers, Charlotte, Pat and Kirsty (that’s them in the pic), raise $16,008 to turn an acre of unused Education Department land out back of Waratah Special Developmental School into an organic vegetable garden known as Farm Raiser.
The funds bought a walk-behind tractor named Lil Clayton which helped turn a grassy paddock into productive garden beds that have been feeding the surrounding community and supplying Fair Food customers ever since.
Mo and I arrive at the same time as a massive truck load of compost – Charlotte guides it through narrow gates to the well-worn pile at the bottom of the garden.
We chat about the year – the brand new polytunnel for propagating seedlings and a self-service farmgate that’s been going gang busters.
The farm’s even grown enough to employ a couple of new farmers, Caitlin an ex-CERES volunteer and Eve, a horticulture graduate, who are harvesting produce for the week’s 60 veggie boxes that Farm Raiser delivers to homes in the surrounding suburbs.
The veg boxes will be packed by staff and students from the neighbouring Waratah Special Developmental School who have come over each week to help out since the farm began.
The new farmgate, literally a hole cut in the fence with a tiny self-serve stall, has become increasingly popular of late.
A couple of weeks ago the produce sold out completely. Charlotte doubled the harvest for the next week’s stall which sold out again!
Charlotte laughs and remembers thinking the word must well and truly be out on their little hole in the fence operation.
Coming up to winter Farm Raiser’s veg boxes will take a break, this is when CERES Fair Food takes over packing and deliviering to Charlotte’s customers until things start growing again in the Spring.
It’s one part of a lovely partnership – in the summer when there’s an abundance, Fair Food’s buyer Joshua Arzt, sells Farm Raiser’s surplus produce through our webshop.
These relationships are one of the reasons we’re supporting the Growing Farmers project with our Pay-It-Forward scheme this Autumn.
Young urban farmers like Charlotte are the future of our food supply, nurturing their success is nurturing the land and the regeneratively grown fruit and vegetables we’ll be eating in years to come.
Growing Farmers helps young urban farmers find land and get started on their growing journey.
They provide mentorship, funds, tools and seeds to foster our next generation of market gardeners, orchardists and broadscale farmers.
You can find the Pay-It-Forward link here and learn more about Growing Farmers here.
High stakes
We usually get them in for CERES Nursery in Brunswick East, where keen gardeners purchase a few to tie up tomatoes or trellis sweet peas, but we never really thought the current Federal Election would cause a run on CERES Fair Wood’s garden stakes.
As it turns out, a Fair Wood stake makes for the perfect and sustainable election sign picket. Who’d have thought!?
And the hotter the campaign gets the hotter the demand for Fair Wood’s farm-grown garden (and now election signage) stakes gets, so much so that Hayden Cronin, Fair Wood’s manager, has had to put in a special order to stake-maker Dan Bright down in South Gippsland, on Bunurong and Gunaikurnai country.
So if you’re on the sustainable campaign trail or putting in a load climbing vegetables get in touch with CERES Fair Wood for all your stake and timber needs.
Have a great week
Chris
