Culmination

It’s the peak of the growing season when a year or sometimes more of a farmer’s work comes to fruition. Almost like a flood the produce comes through the Fair Food warehouse doors and we gratefully receive Noelene Glavish’s blue and blackberries, Hazeldene Farm’s blood plums and akane apples, Joe Valente’s tommy toes, Farmraiser’s sweet basil, Peter Kamavissis’ grapes, Sunny Creek’s Raspberries, Farmer Nick’s figs, and sweet corn, pears, quince, rockmelon, honey dew, watermelon and on and on it comes.

Harvest time is a moment of truth; the end of the yearly cycle when a farmer’s hopes are either realised or quietly reassigned to next season.

And inside this moment a farmer chooses to recommit; to the land, their profession, to the people they feed.

Yesterday at CERES we held our Harvest Festival.

Around every corner we celebrated the season in an abundance of activity – siblings built scarecrows while parents learned about bees and fruit trees, visitors tentatively fed chooks by shaky hand, bread and pastries couldn’t come fast enough from the CERES Bakery, Subik shared his cooking secrets in the Indonesian village, the community gardener’s held their bake sale, kids ate homemade ice cream and chased the bubble fairy, musicians sang and farmers shared stories about their work and passion for the land.

Harvest is also a moment of truth for CERES; a time when we look back on our hopes for the year past and recommit ourselves once more to the Earth, this place and our people.

Have a great week

Chris