Tethering
For thousands of years the two bends in the Merri Creek that frame Joe’s Market Garden have slowed the regular floodwaters forcing fertile sediments to settle on the flats where rows of vegetables now grow.
All around the world wherever there are deep alluvial soils like these, people are drawn.
Down at the Festival of Fava on Saturday hundreds come to explore Joe’s Garden; they’ve come to pick the enormous, sweet fava beans that Joe first started growing here in 1945.
People gather around the farm in knots to learn how to grow their own fava, to learn fava recipes from Lebanese, Italian and Ethiopian cooks and of course to eat the bean that has brought us together.
I’m here to MC and share some stories but I keep glimpsing familiar old faces that I haven’t seen in a long time.
I hug Jean Garita, Joe’s wife, who has come down to the garden with daughters Claire and Maria and two teenage grandchildren to check out the action.
The warm smile of farm volunteer Silke, who first apprenticed at Joe’s as a horticulturist, is a welcome sight.
Neighbour Jill, who must have lived in Edna Grove for at least 40 years and has been one of the garden’s biggest supporters, drops in to say hello.
Over at the lean-to Melissa Lawson, my colleague of two decades directs traffic, her team, Rachel, Merrin and Emma have turned out the farm at its best and are working hard sharing another unique CERES ritual.
Vince, Joe’s cousin, comments on how this place has always drawn people. He reckons Joe would be very happy to see what’s happening here today.
Next year it’s 80 years since Joe took the lease on this little farm and ten years since he died, Vince says we’ll need a special celebration.
A mountain of fava beans are picked, peeled, cooked and eaten. Songs are sung, stories told and gardening lessons given.
Picking Joe’s fava together is like laying down our own sediments; we’re marking time, making memories and tethering ourselves to this plant, this place and these people.
See you back next year.
Chris
