Our Women in the Shed program is one of the local activities you can vote for down at Grilld Fairfield for the month of June. If we win we get $300 to buy some more tools!

Look out for us if you are in there and get the chance to vote (I’m not sure how it works in lockdown?!).

Kalimna, Jenny and I went along to the NHVic lunch on Tuesday and came back with the Fiona Richardson Gender Equity Award for 2021, for Women in the Shed.

It has been a collective effort to get this program up and running, and we thank all the women in the community who suggested that we needed a dedicated women’s shed program and then joined in, and also Jen Dentoom who taught the program in its infancy. Her relaxed kindness and inclusive can-do attitude really set the tone.

We’re super pleased that it has been so popular in our community, and it is lovely to be recognised by our industry peak body.

We’re just a little neighbourhood house in the scheme of things and it’s great that we can get interesting programs like this off the ground and also get the story out.

We’ll be looking forward to welcoming more women to the program in terms 3 and 4. We now run it three days a week, with two tutors (Jen and Maylei).

Hi Leanne here. This week I got to escape the paperwork and spend a day in the Community Shed with the Thursday Women in the Shed group. How fun!

It was just their second class and they were finishing off their first project, a gorgeous cherrywood chopping board. To make these they’ve used a variety of handsaws along with jigsaws for cutting, and planers, rasps and files for shaping. Then they’ve practised hand sanding, explored the orbital sander and the mouse sander, and also checked out all the grades of sandpaper.

This week in the morning we looked at finishes - beeswax was our go-to as a food safe option, but we also talked about estapol and danish/other oil, and had a practical intro to shellac and French polishing.

In the afternoon we briefly used the drop saw and looked at screws and nails, practised countersinking both, had a crack with the electric drill and all the bits … and started to think about putty for filling etc.

The women also started to think about and plan for the next project they will be self-selecting.

ACC is pretty pleased to let you know that this program that has been so popular has just been announced as a State finalist for the Fiona Richardson Gender Equity Award 2021, by our peak body NHVic. We’re proud to have pioneered it. Lots of other houses are running similar programs now - and we’re sharing our model and hoping that heaps of women can build skills and confidence - and local friendships - from participating in the locally adapted versions of this course that are popping up in metro and rural areas all across Victoria!

Nails and screws … and why you’d take the time to countersink

Shellac … and the bits and bobs

Find out more about all the amazing and cool things that have recently been incubated in neighbourhood houses here!

We’ve had 18 people in our Women in the Shed program over 3 days in Term 1 and have been delighted to see proud faces and confidence beaming from the women as the finishing touches were applied to their projects. This term we saw some gorgeous mosaics produced along with wonderful woodwork projects including tool boxes, chopping boards and planter stands.

The Women in the Shed program has been a great success. It is fully booked again for Term 2, but we will open bookings for Term 3 and 4 in June. If you are keen to join in you can join our waiting list here.

Above is a picture of our Thursday group who paused in their final session to enjoy morning tea together.

And some snaps from the class and final shed projects below.

We’ve had an exciting week in our front garden this week with Mark and Mark from Pacific Australis Landscapes here finishing off all the big things that were in the pipeline before COVID put a halt to plans.

They’ve rearranged the rocks in our front garden to create some small seating areas, and have made room for a third raised garden bed (round this time). These garden beds will form the centre of what we hope will be an even more productive community garden. They are connected up to the water tank that was kindly donated and installed by Yarra Valley Water and we’re anticipating that they become a fabulous community resource, both in terms of creating opportunities for people to come along and get to know each other as they garden together, but also in terms of generating some food that can be used for local cooking and eating (for classes, for catering for morning tea etc. ).

If you pass by you might also notice that Jenny built a potting bench … and we’re looking forward to putting in a small greenhouse next to it so that we can germinate some seeds and have seedlings available in our street seed library into the future. So many fun new things …

Mark and Mark also finished off the landscaping out the front of the community shed, putting in some beautiful slabs of stone to create a dedicated seating area. Our community shed space is so well used and it is wonderful to think that it is 95% complete. Next week we’ll plant some native violets and white thyme in the gaps between the stone pavers and plant out the rest of that corner garden under the lemon tree and we’ll be done. Hooray!