The awesome CERES are having their Autumn Harvest Festival on Sat 31 Mar and it’s all FREE!!!!
Head on down and show them some love and support for the tremendously fantastic work they do, especially in face of the recent Age story debacle.
There’ll be a couple of us throughout the day at the Permaculture Melbourne stall, representing the west so pop on by and say hello.
On the day:
“Across our ten acre site will be a range of activities and events that celebrate our community, our environment, our sustainable food systems and CERES’s 30th birthday.
Workshops, Talks and Activities
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Bottling and preserving the harvest
with Kate from Rapunzel’s Wild Garden
9am – 3pm | FREE Demonstrations in the Market Area
Come and say hello to Kate from Rapunzel’s wild garden as she turns seasonal fruit into jams and preserves at Harvest festival. Kate will have her trusty fowlers unit on the go and will be set up at the market doing bottling and preserving demos throughout the day. Kate’s also bringing along a selection of her favorite home made preserves and pickles and will share her top tips and recipes. Learn how to make the most of your garden bounty.
Growing Herbs and perennials from cuttings
with Matt Danielle from CERES
9:30am | FREE in Honey Lane
In this hands-on workshop you can learn how to use simple techniques to propagate your own herbs and perennials at home. Growing from cuttings is an easy way to reproduce favorite plants and requires very little equipment. Participants will get the chance to do some cuttings of their own and learn the tricks of the trade from Matt, a CERES propagator and organic gardening guru.
Welcome to Harvest
with celebrity guest Matthew Evans (SBS Gourmet Farmer)
10:00am | FREE in the Market Circle
Matthew Evans official opens the 2012 Autumn Harvest Festival
www.matthewevans.net.au
CERES chook tours
with Louise (CERES chook queen)
10am, 11am, 1pm | FREE at the CERES Market Area
CERES Farm is home to over 260 gregarious Isa brown laying hens, all called Hazel, who are cared for by Louise our Animal co-ordinator and all-round chook queen. Louise has been caring for our flock of free-range hens for many years now and is a mine of information about caring for backyard poultry.
Food and Fibre garden workshop
with the Merri Creek Management Committee
10:00am – 12:00pm | FREE BUT PLEASE REGISTER. At the Food and Fibre Garden
To register please email Ben from the Merri Creek Management Committee at ben@mcmc.org.au or call 9380 8199
Merri Creek Management Committee will be running a free hands-on workshop as part of Harvest festival in the indigenous food and fibre gardens located near the Merri Creek just outside the boundary of CERES Environment Park. These gardens are herbicide-free and are being maintained with hand weeding only. Come along and learn a bit about our local food and fibre plants and how to tell them apart from the weeds. Illustrated handouts will be provided to participants.
Cake-baking competition
with the Country Womens Association
11:00am | FREE to watch, $5.00 to enter. In the Market Circle
Put your baking skills to the test at the Autumn Harvest Festival Cake-baking Competition. The theme for this year’s competition is CERES’s 30th birthday, so make us a birthday cake we won’t forget. The ladies of the Country Women’s Association will judge your creations
www.ceres.org.au/Cake-baking
Urban Permaculture Design workshop
with Lucas from Libertas Gardens
11:00am – 12:30pm | FREE BUT BOOKING ESSENTIAL. In the Honey Lane classroom
Email your name and a little bit about what you want to learn/do/achieve with the workshop to:libertasgardens@hotmail.com
Permaculture is not only about integrating productive elements into our living environment, it is all about integrating them in a synergistic way so that each element enhances the effect of as many other elements as possible. Join Lucas for a 100% hands-on workshop where participants will use recycled materials to build and design a miniature version of their existing (or dream) urban property.
www.libertasgardens.com
Perennial vegetables
with Raf and Megan from Merristem
12:00pm | FREE in Honey Lane
Merristem is a community greenhouse project run by volunteers in Brunswick East. Their mission is to increase the availability of genetically diverse Permaculture plants that are appropriate to this region, and to faciliate a greater understanding of such plants. In this session Raf will introduce participants to an array of unusual perennial food plants that will thrive in Melbourne gardens and will give some tips on growing, harvesting and eating them!
www. merristem .blogspot.com
Building with salvaged timber
with the Urban Bush Carpenters
12pm – 2pm | FREE Demonstrations in Honey Lane
The Urban Bush Carpenters will be joining us on site during our Harvest Festival to do some practical demonstrations on how to use salvaged timber and pallets to create your very own propagation table to grow seedlings and herbs at home. The UBCs will be set up during the day working with volunteers to create a table – they also run free workshops each month at CERES making all kinds of wondrous creations from recycled materials.
www.urbanbushcarpenters.org
Harvest Lunch
with celebrity guest Matthew Evans (SBS Gourmet Farmer)
12:30pm – 2:30pm | BOOKINGS ESSENTIAL: $85 full or $75 CERES members
At the Merri Table and Bar
Call CERES reception on 9389 0100 to reserve your place.
Matthew will be talking about his experiences starting a small farm in Tasmania and his passion for ‘real food — where the provenance is known and the producer is valued’. Matthew is a former chef and food critic and knows good food. Share a delicious organic lunch in our Merri Restaurant and taste some of Matthews homemade, free-range salami.
www.matthewevans.net.au
Landshare: How to become a farmer if you don’t own a farm
with Rob Fenton from the National Environment Centre
12:30pm | FREE in the Market Circle
In this presentation Rob will talk about small scale retail farming and how our organic farming courses prepare you for this, and also how landshare models are connecting city folk to land for farming.
Heirloom Vegetables and seedsaving
with Graeme Goerge from Earthcare Permaculture
1:00pm | FREE in Honey Lane
Graeme has been saving seeds and helping to preserve heirloom vegetable varieties for decades on his permaculture property in the Yarra Valley. In this talk and demonstration Graeme will discuss the importance of heirloom veggies and how to save the seeds of different vegetables and companion plants. Come along to see how you can save seeds and propagate your very own heirloom vegetables at home.
Raw food demonstration
with Kemi’s Raw Kitchen
1:00pm | FREE in the Market Circle
We all know that fruits and vegetables are a huge part of health and well being, but sometimes it just seems too hard to bring this way of eating into our busy and hectic lives. We all have the best intentions but when that packet of biscuits winks at us it just seems easier to grab them and feel less than optimal afterwards, than to plan and make a nourishing and flavourful meal that will leave us bursting with energy and feeling great about ourselves. At Harvest festival Kemi will demonstrate some easy (and delicious) ways to incorporate raw food into our daily routine.
www.kemisrawkitchen.com.au
Getting dirty with Dr Compost
with Cultivating Community
2:00pm | FREE in Honey Lane
The Cultivating Community team will get to the nitty gritty of all things composty in this short workshop. Learn about the benefits of home composting and the practical steps needed to get it just right. Dr Compost will be in the house with a composting Q and A session and then comes the finale – an official compost race complete with prizes! Fun for the whole family!
www.cultivatingcommunity.org.au
Edible Weeds and green smoothie tastings
with Annie Raser Rowland from CERES nursery
2:00pm | FREE in the Market Circle
In this free talk Annie will show us how to identify and use common weeds as a free, nutritious source of food. Annie is an experienced horticulturalist and dedicated forager who will explain how to find, identify and prepare the many different edible weed species that are found around the Melbourne area. Rekindle humankind’s forgotten love affair with the hardy, exceptionally nutritious plants we call weeds! This talk will finish with tastings of Annie’s delicious bright-green weed smoothies.
Harnessing the power of chooks
with Adam Grubb from Very Edible Gardens
3:00pm | FREE in the Nursery
Using chickens in edible garden design.
Community+Food+Forests
with Angelo from Deep Green Permaculture
3:00pm | FREE in Honey Lane
Permaculture food forests are one of the most highly productive and sustainable food production systems. Learn how community food forests in urban areas can revolutionise food production and supply in the cities, and the benefits they can deliver to local communities and the environment. Hear about the recent successes of newly created local community forests and exciting upcoming community food forest projects in the local area.
www.deepgreenpermaculture.com
Alpacas
Australian Alpaca Association
9:00am – 3:00pm | FREE in Honey Lane
The Alpaca Association of Australia are bringing along some very special friends to our Harvest festival this year. Come along to their stall to meet some Alpacas and baby Alpacas, and also to learn about this great natural fibre. Kids can take away some fleece and there will be information and touch boards to learn about the different types of Alpacas in Australia. www.alpaca.asn.au
Permaculture play
with Michelle Labrin
9:30am – 10:30am | FREE in the Kids Tent
What could happen if the Sun decides to sleep for ever? What will happen to the plants and animals? A lizard and a woodpecker might have the answers! Children! Listen to the ancient tale from the Aztecs ‘The Lizard and the Sun’, and then get ready to dance wearing a magnificent headpiece and playing an instrument.
Meet the farm animals
Parklands Mobile Farm
10:00am – 2pm | $2 entry, in Honey Lane
Parklands farm foster orphaned baby farm animals and rear them by hand. Children can meet the animals up close, pat and hold them and will learn about the different animals and how they need to be looked after to make sure that they grow up healthy and strong. Animals include calves, goat kids, piglets, chickens, ducks and rabbits.
www.parklandsmobilefarm.com.au
Face painting
10:00am – 1:00pm | FREE in the Kids Tent
Kids kooky composting
with Cultivating Community
11:00am – 11:30am | FREE in the Kids Tent
In this hands-on workshop kids will learn how to compost kitchen food scraps and why it is so important for our health, the health of the garden and the health of our environment. Children will help to make some compost and will meet some wriggly earthworms in a working worm farm, there’s even a compost song to sing!
Make a pot, plant a seed
with Seila from South Melbourne Commons
11:30am – 12:30pm | FREE in the Kids Tent
Children can make their own little seedling pots from newspaper and then plant out some seeds to grow at home. For kids of all ages.
Cheeky Chocks
1:00pm – 3:00pm | FREE in the Kids Tent
Cheek Chooks craft activities
www.ceres.org.au/cheeky-chooks