Picture this: it’s just after 9am on a Monday morning, and the Baptist Church is thrumming with over 130 gardeners from our local area. Tables laden with flowering plants, sub-committees, and sign-up sheets line the walls. A tea and biscuit service is prepared with military precision. Every member is bedecked with an engraved name tag, smiling and radiating the sort…
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Want to start a mushroom growing business, but worried that you need a crazy amount of infrastructure, time and money? Don’t worry. You can be up and growing with a simple, cost-effective system and a bit of ingenuity. Here’s how. 1. Get skilled up. First up, you need to skill up. Milkwood Permaculture’s Gourmet Mushroom…
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It was basically a weeklong special United Nations meeting on biodiversity. Every (packed) forum and conference talk was live translated into multiple languages straight into your headset. Simply listen and marvel as Italian, German, Japanese and more are rendered accessible to you. All to discuss sustainable food futures. It still blows my mind (even the…
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This is an entirely fictional short story exploring food sustainability in Australia. I’m not a market gardener in Moruya but I’ve used it as the setting for this story because it’s an incredible example of how a sustainable, local food economy could function. Also, the Agrarian ‘Deep Winter’ unconference takes place in – yes, you…
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A book I read as a child has stuck with me. Gorgeously illustrated, it showed how families lived all around the world – what they ate, where they slept, what they wore, even their unique festivals. In only a turn of the page, it was possible to jump from a boy drinking yak milk on…
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If you were passing through Gerringong this time last month, you might have caught a glimpse of what, on first glance, looked like a cult descending on the quiet seaside township. Laden with home-cured meats, freshly harvested vegetables, just-baked bread and local raw milk, 200 people converged on the Gerringong Town Hall with uncontestable chipperness.…
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Ice-cold ginger lemon kefir in hand, there was plenty to see and do at the South Coast Field Days. Resurrected after a ten-year hiatus in 2013, the Field Days event is all about bringing the growers and makers of the south coast together. A smorgasbord of demonstrations, workshops and panel discussions were crammed into a…
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Last weekend, as the blue moon rose, 150 small farmers gathered in the Victorian central highlands to discuss small-scale food production and sustainability. Costa Georgiadis called it the “Woodstock of Australian agriculture” and he wasn’t wrong. The air of revolution was palpable. In the picturesque Dean town hall, rugged up passionate men and women took advantage…
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People live in inspiring ways, all around us. Ways that are simple, rich with meaning, and that defy the cultural assumption of project home bliss and its accompanying mortgage shackles. A friend’s family have a secret hideaway of a home down south, in a glade by a river. It’s been home to their family for over…
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Stop everything. Run out into your garden. Survey that overgrown, weedy patch, and see it in a new light. It’s now a wild greens garden. ALL FOR YOU. That’s right, there’s a salad bar on your doorstep. Free, fresh salad greens. For successful Australian foraging, I heartily recommend The Weed Forager’s Handbook: A Guide to Edible…
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