Free muddy, curious child
Under the black Koo Wee Rup soil on Maurie Cafra’s farm, asparagus crowns commune with their fungal collaborators patiently waiting for the right mix of soil temperature, sunlight, moisture, even a lightning storm before exploding out of the earth so fast that pickers must start the harvest at 2am!
Wurundjeri call this time of year Poorneet or tadpole season, it’s when the weather plays a kind of tug-of-war with itself, when foamy rafts of Growling Grass frog’s eggs hatch and the Murnong flowers, when Currawongs and Magpies are at their loudest and swoopiest.
At CERES heirloom tomato seedlings are being hardened off for planting, natives and fruit trees are in blossom and everything seems renewed.
In the Fair Food warehouse it’s the perfect time to step back and take a look at where we are and why we’re here.
In recent times the grocery delivery landscape has looked a bit like a smoldering battlefield.
In a frenzy to win customer-share Aussie Farmers, Voly, Send, Colab, Foodora, Deliveroo, and DoorMart discounted each other into oblivion.
In just 19 months Milkrun alone burnt through $86 million dollars trying to entice customers before Woolworths salvaged what was left in a fire sale.
Weaving through the wreckage CERES Fair Food is still here, paying our farmers and workers fairly and delivering groceries to thousands of households.
How is this so?
Fair Food has never had venture capital cash to lure in “new users”, instead we’ve always relied on delivering something different.
Each year around 60,000 children come with their schools to our park in Brunswick East. They’re smoked by a sacred fire in Namalata Willem, they wade into the pond and survey tadpoles and mosquito fish, they make sludge out of old paper and turn it into new paper, they pedal bikes to generate electricity, they dig soil, they plant veggies and they learn.
Many thousands more come in strollers to say hi to the chickens, crawl inside the giant millipede, run through food gardens and climb trees in a place that was once a quarry then a rubbish tip and is now a leafy sanctuary in the city.
This is Fair Food’s reason for being – 100% of our profits come here, to this place, to these kids.
Our mission is to help people fall in love with the Earth; to help kids see beyond their screens to discover the universe of life at work inside a handful of compost, to breathe the magic of a smoky eucalypt fire, to plant the seedling that will one day become a tree and to always keep eyes peeled for the blue and white flash of a sacred kingfisher.
And while we may not be able to give you a $200 discount when you join us, we can happily offer you a free muddy, curious child with every box of Fair Food you order.
Fermenting at home
Last week I wrote about Alice Mahar from the Corner Store Network and her preserving project that rescues unwanted fruit and turns it into jams and pickles.
Well, local cook Lauren Mueller also has a passion for saving food – her preserving method of choice is fermentation.
This coming Saturday 21st at CERES Lauren leads a three-hour hands-on workshop teaching the basics of homemade sauerkraut, fermented seasonal vegetables and kombucha.
Lauren provides the jars, the vegetables to ferment, a SCOBY to start brewing kombucha and all you need know to get fermenting and saving food at home.
Find out more here and if it helps get you in use the code FERMENTSEPT$10OFF
Have a great week
Chris
