• About Us
    • What our customers say!
    • About us
    • Our team & our story
    • FAQs
    • Share the harvest
    • COVID-19 update
    • Our buying policy
    • Media
    • Liquor licence
    • Contact us
  • Shop
  • Delivery
  • Recipes
  • News
Free contactless delivery for all orders over $75

Shop Now

  • LOG IN
  • LOG OUT
  • About Us
    • What our customers say!
    • About us
    • Our team & our story
    • FAQs
    • Share the harvest
    • COVID-19 update
    • Our buying policy
    • Media
    • Liquor licence
    • Contact us
  • Shop
  • Delivery
  • Recipes
  • News

Fully Franked

CERES community growers and makers

21st June 2022

Frank Hirst, Blue Gum Cladding
Fully Franked

Winter solstice falls this Tuesday.

The grey and wet days leading up to the longest night of the year are often accompanied by a sort of existential soul fog.

Similar to mould spreading across a damp bathroom ceiling the pre-solstice darkness is the perfect environment for dark introspection and a creeping kind of malaise.

To balance dark comes the light, for bathroom mould there is sugar soap and for my solstice malaise there are tree farmers.

On Wednesday Joel Geoghegan from the Bass Coast LandCare Network brought eighteen South Gippsland tree farmers to visit CERES Fair Wood.

Among this group there are people harvesting mature trees planted decades ago just as there are those whose trees will mature long after they are dead and gone.

The trees they plant will build houses and make furniture but they will also bring back birds not seen for years, they will hold water in drying soils, slow down hot winds, shade bare ground, regrow fungal internets, create rain and lock up carbon we have put up in the sky.

Agroforesty pioneer and art-lover Rohan Reid would also posit that these trees will satisfy our deep need for beauty – that nothing makes our hearts soar higher than broken farmland regenerated with stands of swaying trees we have put back.

Outwardly the visiting tree farmers are not particularly upbeat nor are they in any way dour but there is a solidity about them – perhaps it’s their ability to envision cycles of time that most of us will never be able to see.

Last Thursday I saw this vision literally being franked by Frank Hirst as he sat atop two packs of timber milled from Southern blue gum seedlings he planted on his eroded farm in Ranceby more than thirty years ago. 

You can dispell your solistice malaise and find Frank Hirst’s as well as timber from other tree farming visionaries at CERES Fair Wood.

CERES Farm Renewal 2022
CERES is appealing

For many people when they get the urge to grow a vegie patch, plant a fruit tree, keep bees, spawn mushrooms, propagate seedlings, graft trees, sprout microgreens or build a compost the first place they turn is CERES.

CERES has been stoking imaginations and ambitions of countless school & community gardeners and city farmers – it’s helped pioneer kitchen gardens, urban farms, backyard beekeepers, mushroom growers, aquaponicists, microgreenies and produce swappers right across the country.

More than ever we are waking up and wanting to learn about our food and how to grow it and more than ever we are going to CERES to do it.

Right now CERES is aiming to raise $80,000 to build new outdoor teaching spaces, new classes and new volunteer opportunities for kids and adults of all abilities who want to come and learn on the Farm.

You can find the CERES Farm Renewal appeal here.

Have a great week,

Chris

What do you think Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

*

Categories

  • CERES community
  • Chris' newsletter
  • Fair Food crew
  • food host news
  • growers and makers
  • plastic free / low impact
  • regenerative farming
  • seasonal news
  • social enterprise
  • system change not climate change
  • webstore news

CERES Fair Food acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work, the Wurundjeri Woiwurrung of the Kulin Nation, and recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and culture. We pay our respects to Elders past and present, and acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded.

Licence No. 36165507. WARNING: Under the Liquor Control Reform Act 1998 it is an offence to supply alcohol to a person under the age of 18 years (Penalty exceeds $17,000), or for a person under the age of 18 years to purchase or receive liquor (Penalty exceeds $700).  View our liquor licence details.

  • Contact
  • Ceres Community
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Privacy Policy

We love sharing delicious recipes,
stories and weekly specials each weekend.

We respect your privacy