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.
