See change
There are some things that once you experience them you never see the world the same way again.
It could be:
– hearing or seeing that band for the first time… (insert yours here)
– reading the right book… (insert yours here)
– travelling to a new place… (insert yours here)
– meeting a particular person… (insert yours here)
– eating a life-changing meal… (insert yours here)
Sometimes the change comes from a course.
Signing up to a two week residential permaculture design course on a farm in South Gippsland with seventeen other people rewired my brain so thoroughly I couldn’t walk into landscape, a garden or a house and not see everything in a dozen different new ways.
And it wasn’t just the information that changed me and my brain, it was the people I went through with, many who are still connected to me years after.
CERES runs transformational courses that can provide the structure, the information and the people to help change the way you see the world.
There’s the 12 day Women’s Trip to Mäpuru in remote East Arnhem Land, foraging for pandans and natural dyes with Indigenous leaders.
In the small homeland community of Mäpuru, who we’ve shared a 15-year partnership with, we learn what it means to live in deep relationship with the land — how to weave pandanus baskets, how water carries the story of life through its fibres, and how to see country in a totally different way.
This year’s course sold out in a week – we’ve put on a second course, but hurry there are only four places left!
Then there’s NBLT aka Nature Based Leadership Training.
Over ten months, including two immersive retreats, you’ll learn to use your natural intelligence through bird language, tracking, fire-making, weaving and more.
My Year Without Matches author Claire Dunn and CERES Director Sieta Whitehead help you get out of your head to tap into your natural wisdom and work out why you’re here and what you need to do to be of service to the Earth.
And finally, if you feel the call to know thyself through compost, chickens, vegetables and bees then the 12 week Complete Urban Farmer is definitely for you.
Inspired by the legendary Apprenticeship in Ecological Horticulture at University of California Santa Cruz, the Complete Urban Farmer is the perfect pathway for permaculture design certificate graduates to turn the ideas they’d learnt in the classroom into practical skills like saving seeds, growing your own fruit and vegetables and keeping chooks, worms and bees.
Led by teacher and author Justin Calverly, the Complete Urban Farmer has grown so popular it’s become a series of books.
You can find all these courses and lots more long and short workshops here.
Weekend Fire Update
This weekend’s bushfires have been hard on farms and rural communities. We were particulalry sad to hear about the heartbreaking loss of the Harcourt Cooperative Cool Stores – a cool store for locally grown apples, pears, seed potatoes as well as wine, craft beer and beehives-
The Cool Stores is also a meeting place for farmers, growers and makers – that’s it above (picture by Jason South).
At Fair Food we haven’t had any reports of farmers who supply us being physically impacted yet.
We do know the two mid-forty degree days we had last week will have affected some fruit and vegetables crops.
We’ll keep you updated on any news as well as any fundraising efforts.
Have a good week
Chris
