Your Cart is Empty
July in the garden is time for observation, organising and planning for the season ahead.
The SAGE committee and its various sub committees and working groups have been actively growing SAGE for 16 years. Many SAGE members have stepped up and contributed over the years and with the AGM due on 20 September, you might like to consider if it’s time for you to ‘take a turn’. Read on to find out more about volunteering on a SAGE committee.
Nicole Mensinga, SAGE member and Acupuncturist at Healing Hands Moruya offers some warming tips to support your body, mind, and garden this winter season.
It’s a crisp, sunny Wednesday morning, and a small group of volunteers are happily greeting each other at the SAGE Garden in Moruya. Over the next few hours, these volunteers will plant, weed and harvest the fresh produce, and deliver it free to local organisations that help people in need.
This month in May, it's all about harvesting and storing the last of the summer produce and enjoying the change of season with the new flavours that accompany this.
We are definitely experiencing an Indian summer which means the Autumn flush of growth is spectacular and many summer crops are continuing to crop prolifically.
Backyard grower Alison Walsh shares what's she's doing in her backyard in March.
SAGE member Lindsay Gates - coordinator of the SAGE food shares, pens her thoughts and journey to food shares with a beautiful open letter to the community, and an invitation to get to excited about food by attending, Read Lindsay's letter.
It’s been a fabulous growing season!
After a very dry spring, January started with rain, and it has continued to be a pretty perfect summer for veggies.
Concern is mounting that new food safety regulations could put local vegetable growers out of business and bring about the end of the iconic SAGE Farmers Market in Moruya.
The NSW Food Authority recently released a draft of its new food regulations which will impact all vegetable growers, dairies, and egg, meat and seafood producers from February 2025.
SAGE Education and Events Coordinator Sandra Makdessi uses beetroot whenever it’s available locally and has kindly shared her favorite sweet and savory recipes.
‘Just picked’ local beetroot is readily available at the SAGE Farmers Market now so we’re giving this fabulous vegetable a hero story! We took a deep dive into its health benefits, history, and some well-loved dishes from around the world.
Shani Keane, a local grower from Left Field Farm and Stepping Stone Farm, and a regular seller at the SAGE Farmers Market, attended this year’s Deep Winter Agrarian Gathering.
Shani kindly provided an interesting report for SAGE readers, including the Deep Winter Statement which was developed following consultation with the gathering.
President’s report from Cath Reilly
Treasurer’s report from Jan Maitland
Stepping Stone Farm report from Mark Barraclough
Farmers Market report from Peter Heyward
Farmers representative report from Eliza Cannon
Education and Events report from Sandra Makdessi
Community food report from Alda Rudzis
Food share report from Alda Rudzis
SAGE Garden report from Stuart Whitelaw (on behalf of Adrian Cram and Wendy Jones)
SAGE's partnership project with Fusion Training Solutions has been a great success, seeing a big increase in the number of new wicking beds now located within the SAGE home garden.
Growing Eurobodalla’s local food supply is on track with the announcement of a new program delivered in partnership between SAGE’s Stepping Stone Farm and EcoCrews, a Campbell Page social enterprise.
A warm hello to members and the SAGE community, and welcome back to regular updates in this newsletter. The committee has continued to meet regularly through lockdown via Zoom, and we’ve been joined by Peter Heyward and Dallas Tanner who were voted in at the AGM in August. We are now working to implement the strategic plan we developed earlier this year, including improving our communication and engagement to grow the sense of SAGE as a community, and enhancing membership.
The SAGE garden is moving into hibernatory mode. At least, much of the greenery of the last few weeks has served its time, the produce has been harvested and sold. Yet it has more time to serve for it will now help with restoring the soil for the next intern. The corn that two weeks ago stood tall and proud (with an Apple of Peru towering above it) has been razed to the ground. It lies there waiting to be ploughed in thereby helping to rejuvenate the soil. ...
Sitting down in the garden to write my little piece on being the 5th intern while overlooking the growing green manure. Thankfully, this year Trevor Moore wrote a fortnightly blog on what I had done in the 17/18 growing season…
I have remarked in previous blogs about Leanne how happy she always seems to be and today was no exception. I found her weeding … and happy in spite of this Sisyphean endeavour. She had taken her eyes off the ball last week and, given the recent rain, she was now paying the price. In fact, she was finding it hard to tell the weeds apart from the plants. She pointed at the corn she planted a couple of weeks ago: “look at that,” she said, “I can’t tell what’s corn and what’s weed.” Kyle Levier, he of Fulcrum Farm, is Leanne’s mentor and he’s getting her to keep a weed catalogue.
I look forward to visiting Leanne at the SAGE garden every couple of weeks because I always receive such a cheery welcome. She says that she never knows what she’s going to talk about and yet for twenty minutes or half an hour I say nothing (which is a rare thing indeed) and she talks me through what she’s thinking and what’s going on in the garden.
You may have noticed some works going on at the SAGE Garden and wondered: what is going on and what is that thing?
SAGE has been run on a shoestring budget since we started in 2009. The initial infrastructure at the SAGE Garden was cobbled together mostly from found materials by generous volunteers and it has suited us well enough. However, one limitation to the site development has been the lack of an accessible toilet. The money required to build this critical piece of infrastructure has always been hard to find and hence has taken many years of figuring out how to afford the materials and find the volunteers with enough time to take on the task. The garden has also needed other works to the site, such as more paving, to improve the safety and accessibility for our workshops and events
While we at Old Mill Road BioFarm may have a reputation as market gardeners primarily, growing vegetables is just the beginning when it comes to our farm plan. As well as having livestock components to our whole farm enterprise, for some time I have been wanting to integrate some type of forestry.
A social media post from a person I respect and admire, forester Rowan Reid really pricked up my eyes.
We aim to strengthen connections within the community through growing and sharing food and knowledge… and have fun while we do it.
