This is part 3 of our 5 part  Urban Agriculture podcast series celebrating Urban Agriculture Month (Nov 2022)

Fawkner Food Bowls is a community market garden which grows herbs, vegetables, and seedlings for their very local area. They work with volunteers and community members providing culturally relevant food in a thriving growing space where community can learn about urban food growing through sustainable and regenerative growing practices. They strive to address local food security through growing and distributing food, support social cohesion within their diverse community, and build community resilience in the face of climate change.

Fawkner Food Bowls started with two local residents who wanted to grow food on a larger scale than their front yards AND find a family-friendly place to relax, enjoy and meet other locals. Their ideas was supported first by the Fawkner Bowling Club and also by The Neighbourhood Project, an urban placemaking initiative of CoDesign Studio – and it has grown from strength to strength – particularly meeting local food and community needs during the long lock-downs in Melbourne.

Click here to listen to the episode or watch it on the Sense-Making in a Changing World youtube.

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Urban Agriculture Month
This special Urban Agriculture series on Sense-Making in a Changing World is brought to you by the Permaculture Education Institute in collaboration with Sustain Australia – celebrating growing food in cities and towns for Urban Agriculture Month.

Full transcript below.

Morag Gamble:

Hello, and welcome everyone to the Sense making in a changing world show. My name is Morag Gamble. And this is our special Urban Agriculture Series. Each each week during the month of November, collaborating with Sustain Australia with Urban Agriculture Month, we’re speaking to someone who’s deeply involved in an amazing urban agriculture project. And today, I’m speaking with Hilary Hoggard who’s based in Melbourne and more specifically, the area of Fawkner, with her project called Fawkner Food Bowls. And she describes it as a hyperlocal Food Project, and it’s a delight to welcome you here today. Thank you for being here, Hilary.

Hilary Hoggett:

No worries, thanks for having me.

Morag Gamble:

So I’ve always talked about the importance of local food, can maybe we just start right there – hyperlocal? What does that mean? And how did you come to really describing your project in that way?

Hilary Hoggett:

Well, really, it came about as something that we wanted to do as a community project that was for locals by locals. And that was really looking at just trying to take care of our own community basically. And ideally, that kind of thing, there’s one in every suburb. And everybody helps everybody else to learn and share and that sort of thing. In Fawkner, we’ve had quite a lot of problems with things like food  and security, I think at one point during down the lockdown, so something like 1 in 4 households were food insecure. Which meant that they ran out of money to buy food and couldn’t buy more. It also suffers from being a bit of a food desert as well. So it was particularly important for us to try and address that. Sally Beattie and Kelly Gillespie got together in I think it was 2017 along with help from Moreland Council, and bought off this old Bowling Green. Kelly’s got a horticulture background and Sally’s got a community development background. It was the perfect match basically to sort of get something started in the community. So Bowling Green hadn’t been used in something like 20 years. When they got together, they spoke to council, they spoke to the Bowls Club, everybody was all on board with the idea that this could be used as some form of community garden, but we weren’t really sure how it would work or anything like that. I got involved when I think they had their first sort of community call out to see who might be interested in getting involved. So I got involved very early on, and met myself and one other person, the four of us then started the committee. And yeah, then we officially launched halfway through 2018. So there was a whole lot of just even just things like mowing, because there was an entire Bowling Green that was basically just overgrown grass.

Morag Gamble:

So what got you involved, like you’ve studied your landscape architect? What drew you to be involved in an urban agriculture hyperlocal community garden project on a bowling green light? What drew you?

Hilary Hoggett:

Well, when I moved to Fawkner just before that I was keen to see what community was around that I could sort of get involved with. At that point, that was before I decided to study landscape architecture. I was actually still working at a bank as an audio visual technician, which is something entirely different. But yeah, I  saw the spark, I got very excited. And I saw  the potential of this place, I guess. And yeah, I’ve been involved ever since.

Morag Gamble:

So now it’s set up and it kind of happened all throughout COVID, as you were saying, and addressing food security. How did that how did that come about? How did you actually get this food system up and running in the middle of COVID and get that food distributed out to the people that were needing it? How did that work?

Hilary Hoggett:

Well, so during COVID there was actually a project that was run in conjunction with Fair Share Fare that Jen Rae and that was when Sally Beattie was president. And basically we started a project called Fawkner Commons, which was all selling and distribution of food and growing quite intensively during the lockdown. So it was specifically a lockdown response. And we had a number of grants. I can’t tell you off the top of my head who those grants were from, but there was some from VIC health and some from Moreland Council and possibly other entities as well. There was a huge amount of activity actually, during lock downs, particularly because we were considered a primary producer. And so we were able to operate during those lockdowns and grow intensively. 

Morag Gamble:

You were considered as a primary food producer as an urban agriculture farmr, who designated you that title of being a primary producer?

Hilary Hoggett:

I’m not sure to be honest. But we got an exemption so..

Morag Gamble:

Wow. So you were able to have people come out and be farming outside? And how would you distribute the food back to the people that need like, who who gets the food that’s grown on the farm? And is it a paid thing? Or do people get boxes as part of a community service program? 

Hilary Hoggett:

At that time, the Faulkner Commons project had basically like a food with dignity program. And so there was some food at the time which we would grow, which would actually go to community pantries, there’s a crazy amount of community pantries. I think six, like that gives you a bit of an idea of the need, because they all get completely hammered. And then there was some things that we grew that were distributed through the Fawkner Commons online shop, which was run through the Open Food Network. And so that was being sold, but it was being sold as cheaply as we possibly could. And we were able to pay a couple of farmers to be there to do that farming intensively during the during the lockdown. So that was that was pretty valuable, because that’s very rare.

Morag Gamble:

But how many farmers do you employ to look after that? And is that enough to maintain the farm? Or do you also need volunteer help to keep it going.

Hilary Hoggett:

So at times are 100% volunteer run, and our committee is all volunteer and everything else. But occasionally, we have grants that will pay for someone to do various aspects. So at the moment, we have a couple of grants through Moreland Council through their Food Hub Initiative. One of which is with Merri Food Hub, where we’re basically throwing culturally relevant food that can be distributed through the Merri Food Hub which is also operates through the Open Food Network and also through a inperson market stall near our senior senior citizens centre in the middle of Fawkner. And another one working with growing farmers, which is another initiative that Sally Beattie also helped co-found, which was looking at integrating the various different backyard farms that growing farmers runs. I think three quarters of them are at least are backyards in Fawkner. So that does a whole lot of project, which I won’t go into. But we’re basically there’s a grant to look at how the those sort of the primary producers within our hyperlocal food system can work together to you know, share assets and that sort of thing. So we’ve got a bit of money to pay people for things like propagation, as well as harvesting and a little bit of farm maintenance. But generally speaking, the farm is maintained by volunteers. So we do get a little bit of money here and there. That’sa bonus.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. So can you tell us a bit more about the Open Food Network? You’ve mentioned that a few times that you participate with that? So is that a Melbourne wide network? Can you tell us anything about that?

Hilary Hoggett:

That’s an online shop sort of. I don’t have a lot to say about the Open Food Network because I’m not very involved in that side of things. But basically it’s a way for us smaller farms and things like that to be able to sell.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah excellent. You mentioned that this backyard farming project, maybe we just like bring that in a little bit as well. What do you know about that? So there’s a network of people who are growing food in their backyards that are collaborating, or someone is a farmer and goes and farms, people’s backyards. How does, what is, what does that do to..

Hilary Hoggett:

So the backyard farmers project. So the organization is growing farmers, and you should look them up, because there are many. And there are another hyperlocal farming initiative. And basically, they operate where they have farms, they’re basically linking a farmer that wants to learn how to farm who doesn’t have land with someone that has land that is not being used, like a backyard or whatever it might be, that they would like to see be productive. And so they link that up, and they actually run, I think it’s a year long series of sessions to provide mentorship, essentially, to the farmers. And they go on tours, they went to Harcourt at one point, and you know, all over the place, just different aspects of farming, but people that just want to sort of like, put a toe in and see if it suits them kind of thing. I think it’s been running for a couple of seasons now. Actually one of our volunteers is also one of the growing farmers’ farmers, so they’re growing on someone else’s land. And yeah, it’s a lovely use of the land, you know that it’s otherwise unused or unruly, be used for something really valuable. And then basic idea of farms that were that produce can then be sold in various different ways  however they can they can decide how they deal with the produce.

Morag Gamble:

So as a landscape architect, and I know this is not a very easy question to answer, but as a landscape architect, what is your interface with urban agriculture and urban food growing? And what do you see is the possibilities that could emerge? Where would you like to see landscape architecture and urban agriculture intersect?

Hilary Hoggett:

Whoa, tricky question. I think building on that the previous idea that we were just talking about, about using unused land to be productive, I think is could be really valuable. Particularly, you know, there’s some plots that you see around where there’s no, it’s been fenced off, but no one’s using it. And no one’s going to build on it for possibly 10 years. So how could those spaces be used in an intermediate kind of way just to help support locals, whether they be sort of like a, even in a temporary way? So perhaps they’re a temporary orchard? Or whatever it might be? But yeah, I’m not really sure. I feel like, there’s certainly around here, there’s a really rich, older generation of people, and actually quite a lot of newer migrants as well, that have a passion for gardening and for food growing, and for really wanting to  get involved and share their culture and share their food from their culture and things like that. So I think like that’s part of the wonderful thing about the Fawkner food bowls actually, is that  it provides kind of a hub space where people can come and you know, we have people that will have something growing, that we didn’t even realize that you could eat a certain portion of it, but it’s eaten in a certain culture and someone will come in and say, did you realize that you could eat the shoots and stems of this plant, and then they’ll go away, and then they’ll come back next week, have cooked up a dish with those things, and are so eager for us to try it.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah, it’s amazing, isn’t it? And you know, when you start to look at that, you realize that you can actually grow probably 10 times as much as you thought possible in a small space just by simply seeing differently what is food and identifying different parts of the plant. It’s so much that’s there that we overlook most of the time, I think and that cultural aspect is so important. So is that really, is that why there’s so much food insecurity in the back part  because it’s a lot of recent migrants are like why is Fawkner so food insecure as a community?

Hilary Hoggett:

Yeah, look, it’s got a really low socio-economic population or demographic I should say. And it’s only been more recently like it was it was a sort of a cheaper place to live unti you know and there’s quite a large Islamic population as well, there’s a couple of really good Islamic schools. And so there’s quite a lot of people from non-English speaking backgrounds that live in the area as well. So it’s such a vibrant place to live. But yeah, there are there are a lot of issues just because it’s generally a poor place to live, I guess.

Morag Gamble:

So you have the market garden and people are sharing food? How else does the does the Fawkner food bowls become a hub for community a place where people meet and share? Like, do you have celebrations or events or learning spaces where people can really engage in that way.

Hilary Hoggett:

So a lot of what we do is we’re there every Sunday, and we all kind of learn off each other. So a lot of the people that have come in might have known a tiny bit about food gardening when they came. Then a couple of years down the track are now teaching new people that come into the garden how to grow certain things. And I think growing because we grow in a market garden style. So we don’t have private plots, ovals, we all  worked on communal roads. And so I think that this sharing is inherent, therefore. Which I think makes the space very valuable. And it also helps sort of increase, I guess, a sort of spatial agency with people having some collective ownership of the space as well, rather than sort of a private little one by one plot. That is the bit that you look after sort of thing. bits. So we also do run events. Most likely if we do run anything big, it has to be grant funded. So it’s a little bit sporadic, depending on where we can get money from where, but we did run an amazing Garden Festival,  about April May this year. And it was just gorgeous, like we had, we made harvest monsters. And we had all kinds of gardening workshops, we had some local artists that had a sort of maze exhibition that they’d made out of scrap material and things that were sort of in the middle of a space. We had music, we had a beautiful mural by a local artist here at Salman, who has a Pakistani background. And she was inspired by the Karachi Truck Art. And she painted a mural on one of the walls that is in a Karachi Truck Art style, but with vegetables from the garden. It’s just gorgeous. So yeah, we do run quite a lot of workshops as well on various aspects of food growing. Particularly the food growing ones tend to be run by Kelly, because she’s the certified horticulturalist, and she’s our farm manager as well. But yeah, lots of people get involved, we’ve been trying to include more and more the cooking and eating aspects as well, like we’ve run a number of zero waste workshops and stuff where we’ll have people pick things from the garden, cook it in the garden, and then we eat it in the garden. It’s just beautiful to be able to do those three elements at once and just to be able to share that with everyone. I think that’s really special.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah, yeah, that’s wonderful. It’s such a beautiful thing to be in that environment and know exactly where the food’s coming from. I wonder what happens on the other days? You’re there just on a Sunday, what happens for the rest of the week? Is it just locked up and looking after itself or people coming through and taking care of the gardens in between time.

Hilary Hoggett:

So we have have a watering roster. So there’s someone that comes in each day to make sure that the babies get fed basically. We have people that come in to do more intensive farming for the grants that I mentioned earlier. So for propagation and for a little bit of farm management, that kind of thing and harvesting. Other than that, I think it’s generally just Sunday so it’s sort of open to the public. The rest of the time I think there’s some people that really know what they’re doing and they will occasionally sort of pop in during the week to do a specific task. But, yeah, in terms of public access, we’re just once a week because we rely on volunteer hours. 

Morag Gamble:

So is it fenced off like you didn’t need a key to get in or is it open for people to wander through? Or?

Hilary Hoggett:

Yeah, it is. It is fenced off. It’s council owned land, but it’s connected to the adjoining Bowls Club.

Morag Gamble:

So do you get access to the bowls club facilities for education? Or do is you just got the field?

Hilary Hoggett:

We do have a sort of memorandum of understanding of the Bowls Club, and we have a good working relationship with them. So we do use the clubhouse for events every now and again. And there’s a great little space to actually have someone who does meals every Friday or every second Friday using, I think, pretty local produce as well.

Morag Gamble:

So it’s still active bowling greens there as well, like, how did it come in at this particular Bowling Green is not being used? I mean,  is there many like that around that people can access and..

Hilary Hoggett:

I think the Fawkner bowling club was struggling with membership for a little while. And so they were they couldn’t afford to upkeep of all the greens. It hadn’t been used in something like, I think it was 15 years.

Morag Gamble:

Gosh, that’s a lot of time.

Hilary Hoggett:

It was a long time. Yeah.

Morag Gamble:

So your arrangement then is with the club or with the council? I’m just asking this because if people were seeing space in the urban area and then wanting to approach like, who would you approach first? Would you go to the council?

Hilary Hoggett:

It’s Council land, but the lease is with the Bowls Club. Yeah. But in terms of people coming in? They would contact us directly in terms of getting access to the space.

Morag Gamble:

I was thinking like if someone else wanted, saw a Bowls Club, or a piece of vacant land somewhere in their city, and wanted to get started, you were there as part of that starting process? What were some of the things that you think made your application or your project success to get it over the ground? I’m asking this too, because I know a lot of groups have spent a lot of years trying to actually just access land, and it’s taken them a lot of energy, even just to get to that first step of stepping on to the place they’re going to begin. So what was your process like and made it successful? Do you think?

Hilary Hoggett:

I’m not sure. I think that there was definitely a lot of encouragement from council. The balls club weren’t using that space anyway. So I guess having an active space for them was probably safer than having a you know, overgrown nightmare. And so particularly the Secretary, Vicky Kennedy has been integral to to the Fawkner food bowls being able to function. I think there was just a want for it, or for a place like that, from so many different angles that it has worked very well. That’s not to say that it hasn’t been difficult in terms of particularly some like infrastructure stuff. When you’re relying entirely on grants, that can be tricky. But I think quite early on. So we sort of got kicked off through a neighborhood project, which was run through a group called COdesign. And so we got an initial $10,000 to sort of launch something. I think at the time, we launched like a small children’s garden within the space, but the rest of it was all just for us at that point. And so that really allowed us and that that COdesign project was all about that I think there was six or eight difference community groups that were matched with their local councils and the it was all about trying to, you know, cut through red tape and how could Council make life easier for communities and vice versa to actually get things done?

Morag Gamble:

So this COdesign – is that an independent group that was facilitating this.

Hilary Hoggett:

I’m trying to remember how they started up I don’t even know if they’re still operating but um I think they had a very large grant through the Lord Mayor’s charitable foundation to run this neighborhood project. This was back in I think it was 2017. I did go to some of the sessions, but I wasn’t involved in the the initial sort of setup of it. So I can’t give you that much background.

Morag Gamble:

I’m just asking, because I think it’s really interesting looking at this idea of how how we can facilitate the startup of these projects so that each individual group doesn’t get stuck in the same thing of trying to go from the very beginning. And it sounds like this COdesign process is really very interesting. So I wonder to in what way are you connected with a broader network of local, urban agriculture projects that are [inaudible] I mean, it’s a hyperlocal project. But do you also have a sense of facing outwards towards other connecting with other local projects? Or is it just a local project? And that’s it, and you just go and garden and share food? And how’s it feel? As a.. Do you have a sense of there being a broader urban agriculture movement? Do you feel part of that? Or is it just we need food locally, that’s just getting to do this.

Hilary Hoggett:

I mean, our our sort of core goals are to address the hyperlocal issues. But we do have relationships with other organizations mind you, but quite a lot of the ones that we have strong relationships with are also Fawkner based. So we have really strong working relationships with the Merri food hub [inaudible] distribution and also growing farmers who do the backyard farms, which is all Fawkner based. So we have strong working relationships really, really locally. But then we do speak to some of the other community gardens around as well as having links to some businesses where we get things like, there’s a chocolate roastery, where we take their cocoa husks, for example, and they’re in Brunswick.

Morag Gamble:

The coco husks do they smell nice?

Hilary Hoggett:

Delicious?  So good. We tried as part of kind of regenerative farming techniques, we try to you know, use as much material from the local community as we can in terms of you know, composting, and mulch and various other things. So we really try to sort of link in as much as we can.

Morag Gamble:

So what are you using for mulch is that the cocoa husks?

Hilary Hoggett:

So the coco husk we use for the pathways. And that breaks down beautifully, by the way. Also, the snails don’t like to crawl over it. So it’s really good between rows as well. We actually don’t use a lot of mulch on our actual raised garden rows, because we are really windy there. And there’s not a lot of windbreak. And so if we put anything down, it just flows away. But we do have large mulched areas that we get from sometimes council will will give us big deliveries of mulch when they’ve just done a big tree pruning or something like that. Yeah, that’s about it at the moment.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. Sounds amazing. I love that idea that what you said right at the start that, that we do focus on the hyperlocal. And the idea of having something like this in every neighborhood that we can walk to. Wouldn’t that be amazing to actually have people who are really looking at it and then that whole circular economy of the waste, I mean, it addresses so many different issues, from social justice issues to climate issues, too. Well, everything really. I also noticed, just as a one kind of last sort of question that I wanted to find out about your seeds. Do you have a seed exchange or a seed bank or a seed network of some sort? Like where do you get your seeds or your plants from your local seeds. Is that hyperlocal too?

Hilary Hoggett:

So we do save seed. So a lot of our crops are open pollinated, and we save what we can. We still need to buy some stuff. And in terms of seed library, we don’t quite have anything like that set up yet. But it’s certainly on the cards.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah, even some of the libraries up around where we are we go in there and they have community gardens around the libraries. And you can go in and get your books, you get some plants like herbs to take home and some seeds that have come out of the community garden. It’s such a lovely thing just to have that beautifully local plants that are locally adapted to that particular environment. And, of course, being a global reason to. How did you go with the floods? Are you flooded out where you are? 

Hilary Hoggett:

Our local Merri Creek has been quite bloated. But the garden actually hasn’t been too bad because it’s a Bowling Green, it’s actually sitting on a foot of sand  but the rest of Fawkner has a clay soil problem. And our garden is a sandy soil. So it’s quite odd.

Morag Gamble:

Well, that’s lucky, because I was a bit worried about all of the gardens, all the way around, you know, the edges of all these rivers and things with everything that’s been going on lately. So that’s good news to hear that you’re all good. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. Where can people find out more about this project Fawkner food bowls? What would be the website or resources they can go and check out what you’re doing and and see photos of it as well? 

Hilary Hoggett:

Yeah there’s our website which is fawknerfoodbowls.com and also we have a Facebook page. If you just look up Fawkner Food Bowls that’s probably our most up to date place to check us out. 

Morag Gamble:

Well, thank you so much for joining me and I hope people who have been listening feel inspired to see how to find a space in their own local environment. It just takes a few people really doesn’t it who have a shared vision and conversation with the local council, local organization. I mean, walking around with an urban agriculture lens on finding those spaces that can be transformed. And maybe it’s a collective backyard, maybe it’s a commons space like that, or even in a school, there’s places as well. I know, there’s lots of different possibilities. So thank you so much for joining me, and thank you for all the work that you’re doing in amplifying this possibilities in urban agriculture. It’s an absolutely essential, essential thing that I think we all need to be focusing on. So yeah, thank you.

The post Hyper-local Farming at Fawkner Food Bowls with Hilary Hoggett appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

My first guest is Jacqui Besgrove of Pocket City Farms in central Sydney. Back in 2015, they began the transformation of a disused bowling green into a wonderfully thriving community food hub, and they want to contribute to urban farming becoming a normal part of our society and urban fabric.

Local sustainable food production close to where the bulk of our population live – and can connect with and learn from – is integral in securing a healthy future for our communities and our planet. Pocket City Farm is about growing local and organic produce, providing education about food and farming, and creating community connection through being a welcoming place full of fabulous programs.

Click here to listen to the episode or watch it on the Sense-Making in a Changing World youtube.

Make sure to subscribe to the show, share it widely and add a review – it really does help the bots find our show and make it more visible.

Jacqui Besgrove is COO at Pocket City Farms and has over 10 years of experience working as a permaculture designer as ¼ of Permablitz the Gong!, through her own private consulting practice Earthrise Permaculture and has experience applying permaculture design principles to social enterprise settings with her work at Green Connect. She leads Restorative Ecologies: Permaculture Principles and Practice as part of the UNSW Master of Environmental Management program. She is passionate about urban solutions and promoting permaculture principles and practice within our cities and suburbs to increase resilience and show how much fun radical downshifting can be.

Links:

• https://www.pocketcityfarms.com.au/
• https://www.pocketcityfarms.com.au/events
• https://www.facebook.com/pocketcityfarms
• https://www.instagram.com/pocketcityfarms/
• https://www.linkedin.com/company/pocket-city-farms

Full transcript below.

Morag Gamble:

Well, welcome to the Sense-making in a Changing World show Jaq, it’s an absolute delight to have you. This is a special series as part of Urban Agriculture Month hosted by Sustain Australia. And really the whole point of this is to celebrate urban agriculture in Australia, in all its many forms. And I know from the conversations that we’ve just been having about that your you’ve got your fingers in total, lots of different aspects of urban permaculture. So thank you for coming along and being part of the conversation today.

Jacqui Besgrove:

Morag, thank you, I would never turn down the opportunity to talk about urban agriculture.

Morag Gamble:

It’s pretty much in my heart, too. When I first finished doing a permaculture design certificate way back in the 90s. The first thing I did was to start a city farm – Northey Street City Farm. So the whole kind of focus around bringing urban permaculture, urban community permaculture, looking at how to ripple out these ideas as far and wide so that these places become also educational spaces. So I know that all the different projects that you’ve been involved in, are also educational as well from the sounds of it. So maybe let’s just begin, how did you find yourself becoming an Urban, permaculture, urban agriculture, advocate, activist.

Jacqui Besgrove:

Probably the easiest place to start is I did a degree back in 2006 in Environmental Management. I was pretty worried about the state of the world, I’d been working in international development and seen some really unsustainable development practices. And so I guess, came to that environmental management lens from that perspective, it was a great course, but very, very university focused and really teaching people how to be functioning in a dysfunctional system, a lot of corporate social responsibility. I got to the end of that, and I had all the fear and no idea. I had no practical skills or experience. But I had a real, you know, understanding of the climate crisis and what we were facing the next, I guess, 20 years and a really clear timeframe, you know, for missions goals that we had to hit. And so, pretty much straight after that I started getting really interested in permaculture, did an intro to permaculture with John Champagne, and then went down and did a two week course down at [inaudible] and absolutely changed my life as it does for most people who do a PDC. And from there, couldn’t get a job in sustainability, doing what I was doing in international development, but a group of us four friends in Wollongong started Permablitz. And I think for me, it was just completely life changing, particularly because of how much sharing was involved, you know, for Permablitz to have written those amazing guides, those how to guides for the host for the you know, event organizers, the facilitators, we didn’t have to reinvent the wheel up here, we could just grab that and run with it. And we sort of had three properties between us. And when our if no one comes, we’ll have three parties at our house and go from there. And the support from the community in the Illawarra, who was overwhelming. I think by the third Blitz, we had 60 people turning up. And it’s you know, sort of involves..

Morag Gamble: 

For those people who don’t know what Permablitz is, who might be listening from another part of the world. Can you just give us an overview of what Permablitz is and how it works?

Jacqui Besgrove:

Yeah, so it’s really a day where the community can come together and makeover someone’s property. You know, based on permaculture principles, there’s a whole lot of fun, didn’t no one on the day would say, where designers work with someone or family to work out, you know, the priorities for their property and goals. And then you know, give them best practice, does permaculture design and then get the community together in one day to do that. And if you come along to three, you’re allowed to put your hand up and say I want to come to my place. So it’s an amazing way to build your community. So, you know, just to connect with the committee, we get people turning up who never want to host one but they just love coming.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah, that’s fantastic. I think what we should do is make sure we keep a list of all the different resources that you’re mentioning And drop the links down down the bottom in the show notes. So we will make those Permablitz links available to people.

Jacqui Besgrove:

Yeah, for anyone who’s interested in starting out as a designer as well, it’s a really great way to cut your teeth as well, because you’re not paid for the design. There’s no money involved in Permablitz  at all. And so it is a great way to start practising. We learned so much through that process.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah, and you’re absolutely right. I mean, when you do a Permaculture Design Certificate course, a lot of doors opened. But as then it’s the practice of permaculture, it’s the ongoing learning, it’s the implementation, it’s the sharing, it’s the conversations that happen, deepening into your local community and local environment and local climate and local experience. That is really what fleshes out that kind of framework that you’re handed in a permaculture course.

Jacqui Besgrove:

I think it’s an amazing way for people to find, you know, their special superpower as well, you know, for we had a designer whon her passion was drawing and you know, actually creating the designs, but we had another one who was just the green thumb, she could grow anything. We had me who was like, I don’t know, if I can bring anything to permaculture, you know, I’m a project manager, I’m really good at admin. Is that a skill that was needed, and it really was as a facilitator, then we had someone else who was amazing at the social media, the marketing, the email list and things like that. So it was also really about recognising that not everyone has to go and follow the same path in permaculture.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. So you create this sort of ecology of an organisation where you’re all sort of..

Jacqui Besgrove:

A beautiful network that’s way stronger for you know, the sum of all of its parts.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. So where did the Permablitz take you once you started doing that? What did that unfold into next for you?

Jacqui Besgrove:

For me, I mean, for us, as a community, it unfolded into just this amazing community. For me personally, it meant that I could get my first job in sustainability when I was [inaudible]  you know, I coordinated and facilitated Permablitz isn’t that like, Oh, she sounds great. And so that was a real surprise to me that volunteering could be the thing that unlocked the door, not my fancy degree or my, you know, 12 years of work experience.

Morag Gamble:

That is such an important point that you just made, I experienced the same thing as well, you know, I went through my environmental planning and design course, landscape architecture course. And the same thing in terms of getting work, or creating work that came through that experience in volunteering.

Jacqui Besgrove:

Absolutely, and that’s what I say to everyone. You know, I know, for a lot of people, volunteering is not always possible. But even if you can just give a little bit of time, it’s such a good way to get skills and experience. And likewise, now, as someone who coordinates a lot of volunteers, I love working with volunteers and finding out why you’re here, you know, what can we do as an organisation to support you to take the next step you need as well?

Morag Gamble:

Yeah, yeah, it used to be my role, too, when we were getting started down the Northey Street City Farm. I’d be the person who’d always been kind of like, we didn’t have any water or power or anything down the city farm, when we started, I just have to get down to the the tap down to the river and carry buckets of water and boil up the little campfire in the middle. And I was there welcoming people like I was the kind of the welcome committee and people come in and find out what they’re interested in, and then buddy them up with people so that we started to, you know, build those skills and strengthen the networks that were there already. And people would quite quickly find their place in their community.

Jacqui Besgrove:

Also volunteers come to us with this wealth of experience, too. So it’s finding out you know, what they bring because we get volunteers who are so highly skilled in certain areas?

Morag Gamble:

It’s absolutely I know, it’s amazing. So you’ve mentioned too, that you worked with a project called Green Connect.

Jacqui Besgrove:

Yeah, so unfortunately, the role at the university lasted about six months, and then we [inaudible] into government. And we were literally sat down and said, the head of environment sacked, you’ll just have to wait out this election cycle till the environment’s back in fashion and back on the agenda. And I wasn’t prepared to sit on my hands for three years. And so I took a chance. And I think it took an $80,000 pay cut and took on a two-day-a-week job with Green Connect. And it was, I think, a three-month contract, something like that. And at the time, we were working as volunteers to save the farm site that had already been established, but the funding had run out on and that’s a 12-acre permaculture farm here in the Illawarra in Warrawong. And then my role also very quickly became working in zero waste. So managing waste at big music festivals and events, and working in an employment creation process to support former refugees for their first employment experience in Australia, which, when you’re sorting out, huge bins of you know, all manner of stuff. It’s really easy to teach someone how to do that with zero English. So yeah, a really interesting project and one that’s that’s going strong today.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. So can you tell us a bit more about Green Connect and its involvement in in and working with refugees and young farmers as well?

Jacqui Besgrove:

Yeah, I think when when I came to the project, it was sort of a fairly new idea and what was a fairly small project. And there was a team of us who came together, one to save the farm site. And that was partly because all of the former refugees who were being supported at that point were surveyed, and over 50% came from farming backgrounds. And you know, we’re way more highly skilled than than any of the organisers in terms of farming. So to create a space where people could use those skills. It was also based at a local high school on Department of Education land, and an amazing school Warrawong High school because every Primary School has a permaculture garden, as part of the living classroom program that Aaron Sorensen and Dan Deighton have been working on tirelessly down here for over 20 years. Then they’ve got the permaculture garden at the high school, and then the farm side. And the idea of the farm site was that kids who weren’t thriving in the classroom, would be able to get some paid work experience out on the farm. And it’s certainly grown and changed over the years. But a couple of the young students I worked with, up to sort of seven, eight years ago, are still in employment at the farm, you know, in the last in the last year or so.

Morag Gamble:

And so where does the food go to? Like, who uses the farm? How does it work?

Jacqui Besgrove:

Predominantly, it’s a CSA system. So I, when I left, I think we were feeding around about 200 households a week, with drop off points and deliveryquite a big enterprise and watching during COVID, in particular, the explosion, I think we went from 100 customers to 200, almost overnight. People suddenly realized, oh, we need food security, and we need this in our urban areas, we can’t have this far away. We saw that with the fires and the floods those supply chains along, and they’re not particularly effective  in a crisis situation. So it was interesting to see the, you know, the uptake. And people, I think having that aha! moment that urban agriculture, and growing food where we live is really important.

Morag Gamble:

So you have this farm, and you’ve got all the school programs, and you’ve got Permablitz programs, there’s obviously a big focus on this in your area. I wonder what the local government or other agencies in your area are doing to support that or what more they could be doing to support that kind of program?

Jacqui Besgrove:

Yeah, I’m interested in that as well. And I’m interested to hear from anyone who knows more, because I’m not particularly connected in the local government area. But I think it is something that we’re starting to really hear more and more that local governments are realising urban agriculture needs to be a priority. I was in a presentation recently with someone from Hong Kong, and he was talking about how Singapore have suddenly said, we want to source – I can’t remember the stat, but I think it was, you know, up to 60% of all their food from Singapore, locally within Singapore. And you know, how Singapore is, I think Canberra have recently come out with a local government strategy, saying they want to achieve food security, and setting targets for how much food we can produce. And you know, it’s not necessarily going to be wheat crops or you know, maybe even our rice or our lentils, but certainly lots of those things that are lovely to have fresh, you know, that you want to be able to grab, like your green, your leafy greens, or your salad veggies should be able to be grown, you know, within a really close local area.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah, that’s right. And I mean, then it saves all the transportation and all the refrigeration and all the loss of product as it’s going between places. It makes so much more sense.

Jacqui Besgrove:

And then as we’ve seen more recently on areas hit by a disaster, which we know we’re going to be increasing in the years  to come, it doesn’t knock that out for everyone else. So hopefully, we can build more resilience in that way. And then how we can then wrap that into regeneration, so that we’re moving beyond resilience, and actually improving the amenity and improving the urban greening the biodiversity and all of the things that we need to rapidly do in urban areas.

Morag Gamble:

As you’re talking, I’m thinking about when you said, you finished university, you’d learn about all the things that were going wrong, but you felt like that, that sense of feeling well, what can I do about it? How have you found that shifted in you? Like, we still know that all of that is there but how has being involved in permaculture shifted that and have you been able to also be a communicator of these ideas differently because of your experience with urban agriculture and permaculture?

Jacqui Besgrove:

I think what I’ve loved and certainly don’t get me wrong, I have many dark days. When you see certain news reports come out, or when you maybe make the mistake of reading in detail those 1000 page IPCC reports, but we’ve got this huge opportunity, the problem is the solution right? So we absolutely need to use this energy that everyone’s got and trying to turn that fear and that anxiety into positive action and showing people that  you can start at your back doorstep you can do something and I think for me, it was a bit of a roundabout journey I was maybe that that wastewater for a while that was shaming people for using one straw or a plastic cup or something like that. I think it’s also about doing that with the community all these individual actions mean nothing unless we do them together. So I’m really interested in how we build a community around that and build projects in our communities that support people to feel like they’re acting together, not just sitting at home trying to use plastic straw in a mason jar or something like that.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah, and it’s absolutely essential, isn’t it. Because that whole idea of making people feel bad, or like, or just feeling like you’re alone in this and just a little bit this a little bit that. Together with all of us, and then speaking up, we’re able to get the kind of systems change that needs to happen. And I think it really is an approach that we need to focus on.

Jacqui Besgrove:

It is, and I’m in a position at the moment where I’m asked occasionally to give lectures at uni. And one of them, they asked me to be a guest lecturer in an environmental activism course. And I was like, God I guess what I’m doing is activism. But I don’t see it as you know, out there on the frontlines of activism. But it is, it’s that, you know, those daily changes. But I was asked to speak ast utopian project. Absolutely devastating. Because if growing food locally is seen as utopian, well we have some serious work to do. How do we move it from utopia to something that’s just our everyday?

Morag Gamble:

Yeah, yeah, I take a leaf out of the permayouth’s book, because they talk a lot about PRACTIVISM. So it’s this idea of everyday, practical, positive activism. And that is permaculture. And they deeply see themselves as climate activists, but through the lens of permaculture, and I just absolutely love that. And so I use that a lot in terms of thinking about being an activist and stepping up and speaking up about the things that are going on in the world. I think to this idea of taking it into the universities, is becoming more – I just spoke to University of Tokyo the other day. Getting invited too, to speak into different, like masters programs, bachelors programs, even speaking, various summits and conferences that are being organised by universities, there’s something about what’s been happening in the permaculture movement and urban agriculture movement that I feel is kind of in a bit of a missing link, in terms of what you know, and it because it’s kind of community generated, because it’s very grounded, very practical, very accessible, but also deeply reflective of systems thinking and all the latest science that we have, it’s, it’s the visible edge of that.

Jacqui Besgrove:

Absolutely. And for me I’ve always been really interested and really picked up and run with permaculture, because there’s nothing else that gives you that holistic systems view. And universities traditionally have had lots of little silos or working on amazing things. But yeah, I think everyone’s realizing that we’ve got to stop compartmentalising and building silos, we’ve actually got to start looking at the bigger picture. Because that’s sort of the thinking that’s got us into this situation. It’s definitely probably best to have a look at it from a more holistic view. And I think it’s great that universities seem to be embracing the generalists a little bit more as well. Certainly, the Environmental Management course,  it’s not about becoming a specialist in a certain area, but the course that I teach in, it is about embracing generalists.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah, so, we haven’t really talked about that yet. But you actually teach permaculture, in a university, you teach people to become permaculture designers in a university, that’s not common.

Jacqui Besgrove:

I’m realising that as I go along, I’m maybe a little bit nuts to take it on. But I was offered the opportunity. The old master’s program that I did, as I said, was really focused on corporate social responsibility. And an amazing new associate professor took over that program. I did a couple of guest lectures as an alumni. In each lecture, I basically told the same story I’ve told you, you know, did the course came out of it with all the fear no idea had to go study permaculture. And she said, I’ve heard you say this in a few lectures now, would you come and teach permaculture? And I thought, no, but I can find you someone who would do that, you know, and then went home to my partner. And she was like, say, Yes, you know, you’ve got 10 years experience doing this. We don’t have time for people to wait to have 40 years experience to be able to step up into these roles. You’ve done that master’s program, you know what’s involved? What’s missing for you? So put those two things together. But I was also really aware a PDC is quite a big commitment. And a lot of students would want to be able to do that. They’re paying 1000s of dollars in fees anyway. And so yeah, I said, Look, I’ll do it, as long as I can run it as a PDC. And it was only 30 hours face-to-face, I think. But there’s a lot of take home activities, as you know, a couple of hours of work to make up that 72-hour course. And we do a field trip, which last year with COVID We weren’t able to do which was the first one I’d run out that was really difficult. But this year did a field trip to some amazing sites in Sydney and down in the Illawarra. And you know, It was just mind blowing to have students in their reflection saying, oh, watched the video and I read about digging as well. But now I’m digging as well with my friends, that was that, to me is the life changing stuff that you often don’t get at universities, it’s that hands on practical, really going, living it, seeing it, that I’m really keen to bring to that as well.

Morag Gamble:

So the feedback from the university has been positive? Because this needs to be shared [inaudible] every university. Is it as an elective? Or is it a course subject? Or how does it work?

Jacqui Besgrove:

It’s as an elective alongside a bunch of other amazing electives, including one, which is on indigenous knowledge and caring for country course, which I kind of almost force the students like, you must do that one as well. You know, this is something that we really need to explore more in permaculture. But yeah, it’s not a core course. But there’s a lot of students like we are able to fill the course each year. And it’s been it’s been really popular. So feedback so far is great. I’m not sure if I can say it on video, but I think you know, I’m bringing the [inaudble] academia and the non-formal education somehow combining that I think with the education and keen each year how I can do more and more of that, less lectures more amazing.. I just came off a permaculture teacher training course with Rosemary Morrow and Brenna Quinlan. So I’m heads exploding with ideas on how I’m going to..

Morag Gamble:

Oh, fantastic. That’s great. I actually did a interview with Ro, you must have been on the other side of the doors, she was outside sitting. It was great. Yeah. And I think this idea of bringing in a different perspective into university course, I used to teach at Griffith University in a food politics course. And it wasn’t a PDC. But I wove in as much as I possibly could, in every single lesson and took in huge amounts of plants. And all of those students ended up having gardens at the end of it. And one of the projects we were looking at food waste, and they could choose whatever they want to do for their project. And some of them actually went out dumpster diving, and then came back and organised a great big feast for the whole class out of the dumpster.

Jacqui Besgrove:

Well, I do have that as one of the bonus activities, and no one’s ever..

Morag Gamble:

Oh, wow.

Jacqui Besgrove:

I’ll make that compulsory for next year!

Morag Gamble:

It’s just mind blowing.

Jacqui Besgrove:

[inaudible] foraging, right. So I’m really passionate as well about how we can say to people  zone 5 is the national park over there. It’s that degraded waterway that’s near your house that you can have an impact in regenerating. Make a map out all five zones of permaculture on their map, and some of them, they might be quite far away. But that’s to me where whereas zone 3 is there are city farms, aren’t they? They’re urban farms. They’re the sort of areas that we need to start embracing. What role might you play in that? And for some people, it’s like, I’ll just be a customer. And that’s great. That’s all we need. Other people are like, oh, I want to go and be a community organiser or volunteer or, you know, there’s so many different ways to do all this.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah, I think it’s so important to really look at those roles, because often people go oh, I can’t garden or I’m not going to get into that. But it’s not just about the growing of the vegetables.

Jacqui Besgrove:

Absolutely!

Morag Gamble:

Put a permaculture lens on what you do then all of a sudden, the world looks different.

Jacqui Besgrove:

Yeah, my role at Green Connect now is to buy a box of veggies every week and then not have to worry about growing half that stuff. I can focus on leafy greens and herbs that grow well in my shady yard.

Morag Gamble:

And help to organise and educate and mycelium and a whole lot of other action, which is maybe we could start talking a little bit about Pocket City Farms now because that’s somewhere where you’re spending a fair bit of your energy these days. So can you tell us a little bit about Pocket City Farms because I know that it’s it’s quite close to the centre of Sydney and I know it’s been going for some time now. And it’s a huge hub for people.

Jacqui Besgrove:

Absolutely. So yeah, our founder is Emma and Zag in I think back – can’t remember the first year they started talking about it, but by 2015 they wanted to showcase urban agriculture in Sydney and Melbourne seemed further ahead, you know, Brisbane. Sydney seemed a bit a bit lacking in that area. And they were really inspired by Brooklyn Grange and the rooftop farming over in New York, and assumed they’d end up on a rooftop somewhere, and to their delight found that the old Camperdown Bowls Club had been abandoned and it has to be accessible to the local community. So they partnered up with of all people that camp around Hurlstone Park RSL. They put up the money to redevelop the site and redevelop the Bowls Club into a restaurant with the idea of having a farm to table restaurant. And in terms of getting the farm side of things started, there was a crowdfunding campaign. So again, there’s the community helping to build the change. And in 2016, the farm opened up for the first time and has been going strong ever since. I was made redundant from my role in I think 2020, it was COVID? And that’s when I started working with Pocket City Farms. And when I walked in, the entire site had been, we had people regularly contacting us saying, is the farm been abandoned, and what’s going on, there was a huge staff change. But my colleague Rob and I came in at the time and then quickly recruited another amazing Farm Manager Rich who had been working down on his own CSA system in Wee Jasper supplying to the Canberra market. And so I guess we were sort of the new team that took it forward from there. And really saw that it’s a pretty small site, it’s 1200 meters squared, it’s two bowling greens, we only got two of the four bowling greens that’s as big as my backyard in Wollongong. So it’s really a demonstration site. It’s a real hub, as you said. We run team retreat programs for corporate groups looking to do corporate volunteering, I had a team that walked from the city the other day, because they were trying to get their steps up. We will do a really lovely sort of zoom out on Google Maps and you can see just how close it is to the city. But it has, it’s really become a place where the community can connect, we run a lot of education programs for students as well. And for a lot of students, they’ve never seen a vegetable growing. This is the first time they’ll have experience getting their hands in the soil. Seeing how Market Garden operates. We’ve got a little demonstration garden to show what’s possible in a tiny Sydney terrace-sized backyard. And really, I guess I’ve worked in the last two years to try and wrap that market garden in a whole Permaculture system and really look at how we can use every inch of space. We’ve got a community food forest on the verge out the front, which is going from strength to strength and about 180 metres squared of food to share with the community. There’s an honest distal, there’s a street pantry where people can drop off dried goods. And we run lots of volunteering programs as well so people can come and farm volunteer, we do a community volunteering session during daylight savings on the third Thursday of every month, and we do a big community meal. It’s sponsored by Young Henry’s which is lovely over there. And we’ve got compost carers who are busy, you know, making sure that none of the weed seed goes back onto the farm and that it’s all pasteurised, and we had chickens, the chickens have left but they’re just about to come back. So we’ll have a chicken carers program as well. 

Morag Gamble:

Tell me more about the community meal because that was something that I found was really key to inviting people in and keeping people coming in.

Jacqui Besgrove:

Absolutely. So the volunteering session that we hold on the 3rd Thursday of every month, during daylight savings, people come and work for about two hours off, and we’ve got up to sort of 50 people on site. And then we’ve got this just amazing team of community chefs. We had a fundraiser dinner the other night, and the same team of community chefs came and cooked dinner for 80 people predominantly out of produce on the farm. And you know, just trying to showcase all parts of the plant. So Yukako, who’s our sort of lead community chef is a chef herself and passionate about not wasting any part of the plant, when the farm was under green manures she was still buying mulberry leaves to make tea and buying wheat salads and all sorts of things. So yeah, it’s really I think food, food’s a great connector, everyone eats. And for a lot of people, like you said they might not necessarily want to be out there growing the food, but their passion is cooking it and preparing it for other people. So yeah, we’d love to have those community meals just to reconnect everyone. All walks of life are welcome. And I think I sort of had this little misconception, oh, it’s in the middle of the city. It’ll be sort of all a bunch of young, white hipsters, and I couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s such a diverse community. Really interesting who you meet and the skills that they bring. Yeah, it’s absolutely wonderful. And I think, having been through the experience and helping set up Green Connect, and then now coming to Pocket City Farms, my passions really turned. We’ve done this for sort of 5 to 7 years now. We’ve done all the dumb things, trust me. We’ve made all the mistakes, how do we document that and get a sort of farm starter kit or something, you know, so that we can actually start having these kind of projects everywhere and move from that Utopia to our reality is that we do grow food in our cities. ‘One way we’ve done that is with the Find a young farmer incubator’ program. So we have this year trained two young farmers, knowing that our farm manager was leaving, so one of them will take on the farm. And then they’ll basically train the trainer so they’ll train the next lot. And this continual program where we are actually training the farmers of the future, and hopefully with our school kids coming through inspiring them that you know, being a farmer in the city is a career prospect and something that you could think of doing in the future.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah, fantastic. That’s so important, isn’t it? I’ve actually noticed a bit of a change over the time because we bring students into our Ecovillage here. Also we used to do it in the city when I when I was living there. And I used to ask people all the time who’s thinking about becoming a farmer or wanting to do this and no one! They would sit on their hands, I think no, no. And so in terms of actually creating viable, urban agriculture futures and livelihoods, how would you describe that? Because it’s not just growing the carrots and the lettuces, because that might not just be enough, just growing the vegetables, there’s other dimensions to it. So for you, how would you describe a viable urban agriculture livelihood? And what are you trying to share with people when you’re doing these incubator programs?

Jacqui Besgrove:

I think from my perspective, what I’ve really seen is that we often expect our urban farmers, whether they’re young, or whether mid career changes to do everything. So they’re expected to grow the carrots and the lettuces and everything, but they’re also expected to be social media and marketing gurus, they’re meant to be able to find customers and keep those customers. They’re meant to run voluntary sessions, they’re probably at farmer’s markets, you know, farm gate stores. So they’re actually required to do so much. And to me having been through this startup process with Green Connect, and then seeing the startup that the guys at Pocket city farms went through it’s this perfect recipe for burnout. So, if we’re able to, I think, take some of that pressure off with our young farmers that we’re training instead of them, right, we’ve got a site for you. Because let me tell you, there is no shortage of land in urban areas, once you start running something like pockets, advance people offer us land all the time, but don’t necessarily have the farmers to go along with it. So for me, it’s about saying to them, Go, Go grow the veggies, we’ll find the market for you, we’ll prepare all your work, health and safety systems we’ll do your invoicing, we’ll do all the boring stuff. We’ve done a lot of work. My colleague Rob is an absolute wizard at all the tech side. So we have this thing with QR codes now and getting those systems so that all that data is recorded, you know, trying to take all those difficult steps out of it and be able to say to people who are new to farming or young farmers just go and get good at growing?

Morag Gamble:

You see, that’s not just going out and doing it yourself. That’s being part of a bigger ecology of organisations in a way.

Jacqui Besgrove:

And that’s what I’m trying to do with Pocket City Farms at the moment is go, where do we take that next? What does it look like? Is it you know, a whole bunch of farming cooperatives that, you know, has PCF as the support? We’re trying to work out what that looks like at the moment. And we’re really interested to hear from people who would like that support as to what would benefit them as well. So, I’m not saying we have the answers at the moment. But..

Morag Gamble:

This is fascinating, because this idea that you’re actually being offered land and you don’t have farmers, there right there’s this huge opportunity. And if you have this community network and the market, and all of that set up, all of a sudden, possibilities just start to kind of open where they were not before.

Jacqui Besgrove:

Absolutely. The only other missing piece, I would say is there is a little bit of startup capital involved in a new site. And we don’t have that either. So we’re looking at how we find that startup capital, but it’s not huge. And we’ve floated the idea. Rich came to us with a walk behind tractor – game changer, even on a small market garden, but we don’t use it every day of the year. So if we had that on a trailer, and it could go around 10,12 different farms, suddenly, you’ve got this really efficient sharing economy of use of that equipment rather than sitting idle for 90% of the time.

Morag Gamble:

That’s great. I would imagine too that if you start to get a new site, and someone’s donated that site or invited you to come and use it, and you put together some kind of crowdfunding, that’s linked with this whole sort of bigger picture that quite quickly, you’d be able to generate that funds through a crowd funder as well, I would imagine because there’s already that support there. It’s not spending right from the very get go again,

Jacqui Besgrove:

Although I think coming back to what you touched on earlier, I think that’s.. wouldn’t that be amazing? If that was where local governments were starting to put that priority and say, You know what, we will come up with the startup capital if you can get it up and running.

Morag Gamble:

So urban agriculture grants, and remember, we now have community garden grants in Brisbane. So it’s just the next logical step really, isn’t it? But it does require them to have some kind of policy in place, which was why it was important we worked with local government in Brisbane to create this sort of urban community garden policy.

Jacqui Besgrove:

In Illawarra as well, a lot of work was done by some amazing people at council to get those community garden policies to be able to say, yes, we’ll enable that instead of us always having to work outside the system.

Morag Gamble:

There’s a shift that needs to happen because the community gardens is, it’s a community project. And it’s not about selling the produce. It’s about sharing and working together, as soon as it starts to become something where people are buying produce from a place. There’s something that shiftsin the local government perspective on what it is. And so I think that’s a really important part and I also really liked the idea too of really contemplating the possibilities of urban agriculture land trusts because there’s a lot of land in and around urban areas against put for bush land trusts, like, you know, rewilding areas, we could just as well identify where that best agricultural land is and if the local government or the state government could help to purchase that land, and that’d be available for urban agriculture, seeing that bigger picture of the of the resilience and robustness of our urban communities.

Jacqui Besgrove:

Absolutely and I think there’s a fairly big piece of work to be done in mapping that out, because, Sydney Water have got land, you know, sometimes universities have got land. There’s Department of Education, there’s lots of land, like. What I’ve loved about permaculture is once you start walking around with a permaculture lens, you’re like, Oh, look at all that lawn. Doing amazing stuff Farm it Forward, where people are literally saying, I’ve got a backyard I’m not using, farm it. So I think it’s not a one size fits all model. But there’s certainly work to be done in mapping that out, and you’re getting it really on the agenda as a government priority.

Morag Gamble:

Just going back to your utopias, I interviewed Rupert Read, who was part of the movement a while back, he sort of stepped aside from that. Now he was talking about Thrutopias. He said, you know, we have this notion that we’ve got this dystopian future, we’ve stepped back and thought, Oh, we want to create a utopian future. What we need to focus on now are the thrutopias, what are the stories? What are the skills, what are the possibilities to help us get through these difficult times, because it’s constantly changing, we can’t really see what’s going to happen in five years time. But if we have the robustness and the resilience and the skills we need to work through this. So that’s like, Permaculture is a thrutopia.

Jacqui Besgrove:

I learned new words today Morag. I love practivism and thrutopias, they’ll be in my back pocket from now.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah, look, I think they’re fantastic words, I use them all the time. And as well as myceliate. We myceliate as community organisations. That’s where a lot of the power of these urban agriculture movements is. It’s not this visible force of an organisation, applying something, it is this network of people being inspired and connected. And it’s everywhere you look, you just need to scratch the surface and they see those mycelial threads connecting and supporting and feeding one another.

Jacqui Besgrove:

I’ve always said to come right back to the start to Permablitz, if we have to start on urban farm somewhere tomorrow, you know, all the trucks have stopped. I’ve got a group of swell diggers who are already trained up. I’ve got a group who can no dig like no tomorrow with any materials on hand. So, yeah, we’ve got those people, it’s just about making those connections. And I do I love that idea. We ran a permaculture design course at Pocket City Farms this year,as well, which I lead and most people come to you going, I want to know how to grow food one, you have to set set that expectation pretty early, we’re not going to be learning that much about growing food, we’re going to learn how to change the world instead. And then also people really focused on when I get five acres, when I can sustainably you know, properly can be self sufficient. And so, what I hope by the end of an urban agriculture focused PDC is that people like oh, well, we can do this right here, right now and get on with it. And I don’t need that five acres that I thought what I did,

Morag Gamble:

Yeah, that’s right. And it’s such a shift isn’t it? Also putting a limitation on like, well, I can’t do it now. I’ll get to it maybe when I retire or I’ll I’ll get to it later on because I can’t afford to move out yet or I can’t I just don’t have that possibility of doing that. But particularly with this focus on working together and bring whatever skills and wherever we are, the change is totally possible. I focus on doing this in our urban areas where most of Australia lives it’s absolutely essential.

Jacqui Besgrove:

I get people turning up they don’t own a car because they live you know, they’re probably living more sustainably in some ways and that person on five acres because they’re walking, they’ve got access to public transport.I think the the work needs to be done in our cities. And we’ve got people who actually love living in cities as there’s so many benefits of being able to connect with so many people with employment, all that sort of stuff. So I think it’s yeah, it’s a really interesting shift, isn’t it? Yeah. You know, how do we eat those cities?

Morag Gamble:

Well, thank you so much for joining me and conversation today about urban agriculture and the multiple different ways in which you’ve been involved in creating it and spreading it and sharing it and experimenting. And I think this is the thing too, isn’t it? Like, it’s not a fixed and done thing with a whole set of experts as well, people are just really playing with this idea of trying to find out what it means how it works, talking to other people. Cherry picking different ideas, putting it all in the soup, where you are and seeing what happens.

Jacqui Besgrove:

And if there’s anything that those of us who just have that little bit more experience can do to help. I always say to the students at the end of a PDC, which I need to fast track this. You don’t have time like me to sit back and for 10 years go, Oh, should I be a teacher? Or not.

Morag Gamble:

Step up and speak up and do what you can. And then if you feel confident one way but not in somewhere else, find someone else who could do that bit. And as a team, you can do it. Absolutely. Yeah.

Jacqui Besgrove:

Yeah. Well, thank you so much. It’s lovely to talk all things Urban Ag. We’ve got a few events at Pocket City Farms that hopefully I’ll get up on the website very soon.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. So is that all for part of urban agriculture month?

Jacqui Besgrove:

Yeah. And we’ll certainly be having our regular volunteering and working listed as urban agriculture month. And I think we’re hopefully going to have an in conversation session with Rosemary Morrow and her amazing new book.

Morag Gamble:

Oh, brilliant. Yeah. I have it right here next to me.

Jacqui Besgrove:

isn’t that a gift that book?

Morag Gamble:

Absolutely wonderful. Well, for everyone who’s listening, I’ll drop all the links that we talked about down below and further information about how you can find Jacqui and Pocket City Farms and all the different projects and thank you so so very much. It’s been an absolute delight chatting with you today.

Jacqui Besgrove:

Absolute pleasure. I’m going to go off and look at some more thrutopias.

Morag Gamble:

Take care. Thank you.

The post Urban Agriculture Podcast Series: City Farming with Jacqui Besgrove appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

The inspiration…

My son, Hugh, was inspired to find a simpler and better way to extract worms from a worm farm. He was selling worm tower kits at the local market and was getting tired of the long process of separating the worms from the castings. He knew there had to be a better way …

Hugh’s method of collecting worms had us harvesting an abundance of worms so rapidly.

The typical method – too slow for Hugh

We had taught Hugh the typical method of separating worms, but he found it was fiddly and took too long. The standard method is up-ending a worm farm on a table or other smooth surface and mounding it up like a volcano. The worms move away from the heat and light towards the centre. Bit by bit you gently scrape away the castings, wait, scrape some more etc… and you are eventually left with a bundle of worms in the middle.

The typical method of separating castings from worms. Mound it up, scrape it off …. repeat a few times…

This method is still good for collecting the castings for your garden since you are rescuing most of the worms to put back into the farm. If however you are particularly wanting to extract bundles of worms for whatever reason – to feed to chickens, for fishing bait, for a micro-enterprise as Hugh was doing – I’ve not come across a simpler way.

Hugh’s ingenious idea…

You’re not going to believe how remarkably simple this method is, and just how effective it is. I love that Hugh brought his creative thinking to a challenge he was facing and found a solution. This method he has developed is a standout – it revolutionises the process, making it so easy and convenient. Essentially, he decided it would be much easier to entice the worms to come to him. Check it out how he does this in our short 3 minute youtube clip (link above).

Please share….

Please share our little video and spread Hugh’s positive idea. Don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/moraggambleourpermaculturelife to get notice of each new movie I make. You can also subscribe to this blog so you get notice of each article and film.

The post Ingeniously Simple Idea to Harvest Compost Worms By 8 Year Old Boy: Film #14 with Morag Gamble appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

These soil blocks are made with a commercially-made soil-blocker but you can form them with your hand too, or your own DIY set up. Image source: sgaonline.org.au

A dried soil block awaiting use at the school – simply sit this in a tray of water and allow to soak it up the moisture, it will be activated and be ready for seeding.

Why grow from seed?

Basic Soil Block Ingredients:

• 4 parts compost
• 1 part worm castings (optional) for extra nutrients
• 1 part soaked coir peat (coconut fibre) for moisture and for binding the block together
• water

The post Simple & Affordable Way to Start Seedlings for Your Kitchen Garden – DIY Soil Blocking appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

It’s so easy to make self-watering pots from used milk bottles. They are free and make propagating seeds a breeze. 

Not only do they keep your little seedlings hydrated much longer, by cultivating your own seedlings, you can choose from a much wider selection of food varieties and contribute to the protection of seed diversity.

This is how to do it. (For more details, watch the film.)

All you need is a milk bottle, scissors, sand, compost/potting mix, seeds and water.

Cut in half the bottle and put in an overflow hole in the base to prevent plants from flooding.

Put a few centimetres of sand in the bottom of the base. Turn the top upside down and press into the base.

Fill with compost or good potting mix.

Make impressions in the soil for the seeds. Cover the seeds with soil.

Gently water the seeds in until the water comes out of the overflow.

Make sure to label the seeds.

Film #8: How to Make Self-Watering Pots by Morag Gamble

Learn with Morag in her garden:

If you enjoyed this film and like a hands-on approach to learning, I invite you to join me in my garden at the Permaculture Life Workshop over the next couple of months.

Click here for information and registration for October 29: The Simple and Abundant Garden

The post How To Make Your Own Self-Watering Pot: Film #8 appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

I filmed my talk about Incredible Edibles at the Kitchen Garden Stage of the incredibly popular Queensland Garden Expo on July 10. In this talk, I share my passion for and knowledge about some of my favourite plants and strategies. The plants I talk about here are also very helpful for verge gardeners, small-space gardeners, and community gardeners.

Congratulations and thank you to all the volunteers who set up the WONDERFUL edible demonstration gardens at the Expo with the verge garden theme – a huge effort!! It was great to ramble through it with Costa Georgiadis, Jerry Coleby-Williams and chat with old and new friends.

This recording is 42 mins.

FILMING NOTE: This is the first time I have tried to film my own talk (I usually have a helper) and of course, I forgot about the camera. At one stage I moved too close – oops – half a head.  A few minutes later I realise and move back again – please excuse this!

Take a look at my other short films:

In my award-winning garden, Crystal Waters Permaculture Village.

Film #2: Our Permaculture Life: Community Permaculture Garden (9 mins 30 secs)


At the Yandina Community Gardens – I’ll be teaching a Permaculture course there each Friday from 23 September.

In my award-winning garden, Crystal Waters Permaculture Village

The post Film #4: Incredible Edibles Talk with Morag Gamble at the QLD Garden Expo appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

“Biochar may represent the single most important initiative for humanity’s environmental future. The biochar approach provides a uniquely powerful solution, for it allows us to address food security, the fuel crisis, and the climate problem, and all in an immensely practical manner. ”  

Prof. Tim Flannery, Australian of the Year

Biochar is a type of charcoal, a carbon-rich material produced by burning biomass in the absence of oxygen – slow pyrolysis.  (Image: Hans Erken)

Simple home-made biochar maker – the flame cap kiln. Design and Photo: Hans Erken

Boichar made in the the flame cap kiln. Design and Photo: Hans Erken

THE BENEFITS OF BIOCHAR

THE USES OF BIOCHAR

How to activate your Biochar  (Image: The Biochar Project)

LEARN TO MAKE & USE BIOCHAR

BIOCHAR WORKSHOP
Teacher: Hans Erken, Earthcare Enterprises
When: August 20, from 10am – 4pm
Where:The workshop will be at Maleny in the morning to see Han’s innovative technologies and learn how to use and cook with biochar, and we’ll move to Crystal Waters in the afternoon to learn how to make biochar.
Who: Anyone interested in biochar for growing and cooking
Cost: $85, includes a lovely lunch
Bookings: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/permaculture-life-series-biochar-how-to-make-and-use-tickets-26626576808

About the workshop:
I have been fascinated for some time with biochar and have wanted to learn how to make it. I’ve invited Hans Erken, a local biochar enthusiast innovator to lead a workshop with the Ethos Foundation to share with us what it’s all about. He will explore:

• what is biochar
• the benefits of biochar
• ways to use biochar in the garden
• how can you use the energy created during biochar production
• how do you make biochar while cooking
• how do you make biochar on a small and medium scale

Making biochar in the flame cap kiln: Image and design: Hans Erken

Here are some photos from the workshop he ran in 2012. Biochar Workshop Images

Meet Hans Erken and see a little bit of what you will learn in this 2 minute clip:

MORE INFORMATION ABOUT BIOCHAR

Biochar – DPI NSW
What is Biochar? – Biochar International Initiative
Biochar Basics – ANZ Biochar Researchers Network
Soil and Water Benefits of Biochar – US Biochar Initiative
Biochar Project – Australia 
55 Uses of Biochar

The post Improve Your Garden Soil and Food Quality with Home-made Biochar & cook with it too! appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

I have comfrey growing in various places throughout the garden – under fruit trees, near the compost, on the edge of the kitchen garden – an a couple in the midst of things like this one.

How to Make Comfrey Tea in under 5 minutes

Step 1: Collect comfrey leaves
Step 2: Tear up leaves into lidded bin
Step 3: Cover with water
Step 4: Wait for 6 weeks
Step 5: Dilute 1:10 with water.

I regularly harvest leaves and turn them into comfrey tea – a simple method using just comfrey and water in a lidded bin.

Comfrey leaves ripped up with water are covered with water then let steep for about 6 weeks – giving them a stir every now and then.

For more information:

If you enjoyed that, take a look at my other short films:

Film #1: Our Permaculture Life: My Permaculture Garden (33 mins)

The post Film #3: How to Make Comfrey Tea with Morag Gamble (4:52mins) appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

The wonderful Costa Georgiadis of ABC’s Gardening Australia led a huge group of people through the verge garden with his fabulous commentary of why verge gardens are the bees knees – it’s got me thinking about what more I can do along the street at my place. Always wonderful to see him and get a big beardy cuddle.

Costa espousing the benefits of having a salad garden on the verge.

Gardening extraordinaire, Barbara Wickes, president of the cottage garden group The Perennial Poppies, coordinates the extraordinary effort it takes to get the Giant Kitchen Garden displays ready for the expo each year.

After Costa’s ramble through this amazing demonstration garden, he sent the crowd across to the Kitchen Garden Stage where I talked about my favourite incredible edibles. I had a table full of cuttings from my garden that provide an abundance and resilience in subtropical gardens – a diversity of perennial and self-seeding plants and a selection of common but overlooked edible leaves.  (The video of this will be ready soon.)

Me launching into the Incredible Edibles talk.

The Giant Kitchen Garden is like a meeting of old friends – I caught up with Roman Spur of Spurtopia, the Yandina Community Gardens, Northey Street City Farm, Robin Clayfield, Brisbane Organic Growers and many more… Jerry Coleby Williams also led a great wander through the verge garden.

ABC Gardening Australia’s Jerry Coleby-Williams talking about verge gardens.

Here are some of the people I met along the way and some garden features on display…

I was delighted to hear the latest news from Roman Spur of Spurtopia – new baby girl and new house (bought from savings – no debt).

I caught up with Cath Manuel of Soil to Supper, then saw part of her no-dig garden presentation.

Beautiful kales.

The display garden demonstrated how you could set up a street side stall to share verge garden produce in the community.

These are great to help increase homes from microbats in urban gardens.

Showing the potential for a verge garden – from children’s play spaces, herb, vegetables, flowers, fruits, upcycled pots, interpretive signage, habitat logs …

An interesting pot of strawberries….

Looking down the main street of the verge garden displays.

The bug hotel in the centre of the verge garden roundabout.

The boot flower garden.

The stiletto palette garden!

The post Verge Gardens and Incredible Edibles: catching up with ABC’s Costa and friends. appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

The kids and I found a treasure trove of hidden pumpkins the other day – we thought we’d finished our crop for the season.

I love self-seeding vegetables. They add so much to my garden – food for free!  I think for the past decade I have not planted pumpkin, tomato or mustard spinach – they seem to keep getting stronger each season. The pumpkins are getting sweeter and the cherry tomatoes bigger.

Monty (when he was younger), helping Costa with his pumpkin during a presentation at the World Environment Day Festival, University of the Sunshine Coast (opening the Moving Feast Community Garden).

The post Food for free: the joyful abundance of self-seeding vegetables appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.