We’re delighted to welcome Katrina Forstner to the team to help us make the most of our outdoor spaces in terms 3 and 4.

She’ll be with us on Friday mornings assisting the community gardeners to develop a forward plan for our gardens and 🌱 explore propagating, planting and composting etc. in more detail.

And at 10.30am each week she’ll have arty gardening activities available in the community shed and/or garden suitable for young families and people of all ages and abilities to join in. Just $5 for some arty crafty fun … and then stay on for morning tea at 11.30am.

Interested? Here’s what’s coming up:

• 16 July - Collect/sort seeds and make and decorate seed packets to take home as a gift or for community distribution via our Seed Library

• 23 July - Smudge sticks with herbs and flowers from the garden

• 30 July - Chase the rainbows away and make a cute cloud wall hanging

• 6 August - Indoor plant propagation and upcycle a can with colour.

It should be a great morning of low key creative fun for grandparents and grandchildren, parents and kinder kids, creative adults and anyone who enjoys spending time doing creative garden based (slightly messy sometimes) activities (with the reward of morning tea afterwards).

Just pop past any Friday morning during school term to check it out and join in. We’ll look forward to seeing you soon.

The latest Grow Local Cook Local workshop was called ‘Chive Talking’ and was all about using winter herbs that are easy to grow at home … and cooking dumplings.

Shu Yun came along to teach us. She is a dumpling expert. In fact she told us that for a couple of years she worked in a dumpling factory in Melbourne where she made 2100 dumplings a day - amazing!

Anyway, here’s a little video we made about what we did in the workshop and what we learnt. If you want to make dumplings yourself you can follow along.

Ingredients

• gyoza wraps

• minced pork

• ginger (pickled or fresh)

• spring onions

• baby spinach leaves

• cabbage

• Chinese rice wine

• sesame oil

• salt and pepper

• sugar

• vegetable oil

Thanks Melbourne Farmers Market for organising this workshop - it was terrific. Thanks City of Yarra for funding this fabulous series.

Book in to upcoming workshops, find recipes and see more photos here.

Our first Grow Local Cook Local workshop was lots of fun this week! Benedict from The Practical Beekeeper took us through how honey is made and all the intricacies of a bee hive. Then we headed into the kitchen to cook with honey with Rachael from Melbourne Farmers Markets … and at the end sat down to share our cooking. We’ve got more of these workshops coming up in the second week of the school holidays. Suitable for all ages. Book in here. Thanks Kalimna for taking these lovely pics!

We are taking a much needed break over the holidays and our office will be closed … but never fear, things are on here!

1. Grow Local, Cook Local - book in to these workshops in week 2 of the holidays down at the Alphington Community Farmgate Kitchen. A great activity for grandparents and primary school aged kids, parents and their children, all adults who’d like to make more of their home garden (and cook what they grow) … and teenagers! These workshops really will be suitable for all ages. Book here.

2. Lego Workshops - join Cat for Lego adventures. Drop your primary school aged children off for a couple of hours of creative fun on Thursday 1 July or Tuesday 6 July. Book here.

We’ll see you in the other side. Note that our programs will restart on Monday 12 July.

On Friday we were :

Admiring our new paving - thanks Mark and Mark from Pacific Australis Landscapes and Simon from Simon Ellis Landscape Architects for helping us make the most of our front garden space. It is well on the way to being transformed … and when the cubby and sandpit arrive, and the pergola is built it will be amazing!

Checking out the raised garden beds (our leafy 🥬 greens are flourishing). Next term we’ll have the expertise of Katrina from Buzz and Dig in our garden for three hours on a Friday morning. She’ll be here directing the traffic, running garden-based community activities and building up expertise in our Gardening Group (if you are keen to help out and learn about seasonal gardening come along).

Restocking our street book library. It’s packed to the rafters!

Painting. Barb loves painting orange phones! Krystal uses colour beautifully. Our Friday Community Art and Craft sessions are open for anyone to come along and follow their creative interests in a friendly environment.

Cooking. Those medlars that had been bletting for a month were finally turned into medlar jelly this week! And Preserves Group also embarked on a new multi-week project making indian lime pickles …

Medlar jelly - what a beautiful colour!

Restocking our free masks. We had some leftover from the lockdown last year (made by the lovely CWA ladies and others) and we’ve had them available through the last lockdown - for anyone in the community who needs one. There are lots of gorgeous fabrics to choose from!