Category Archives: Bellinger Valley

advocate, Bellinger Valley, Collaborative cultures and networks, Food sovereignty, Permablitzes, Self-sufficiency

Making the suburbs edible – one backyard, one school, at a time

1 April 2013 vivalarevolucion13 6 Comments

Bellingen Primary School Permablitz, 2010

Permablitz – what’s it all about?

Nick Rose

This article was first published in the Coffs Coast Advocate, 20.11.10

First there was ‘guerrilla gardening’. In the dead of night, hard core local food activists would surreptitiously sow brassicas, leafy greens and even the odd citrus tree on urban nature strips.

Now there’s ‘backyard blitzes’ or, more commonly, ‘permablitzes’. So what is it with all these psuedo-military metaphors to describe new variants on the gentle art of gardening for food?

According to the www.permablitz.net, a permablitz is “an informal gathering involving a day on which a group of people come together to achieve the following:

create or add to edible gardens where someone lives
share skills related to permaculture and sustainable living
build community networks
have fun.”

Permablitzes are the inspiration of Melbourne-based permaculture designer Dan Palmer and a South American community group. Since their beginning in 2006, over 100 permablitzes have been held throughout Melbourne, and now the movement is spreading across the rest of Australia.

Permablitzes are typically held in a private household, and indeed half a dozen permablitzes took place in people’s homes in and around Bellingen over the last 12 months.

The Coffs Coast Local Food Alliance however decided to expand the concept by working directly with local schools, using the design and labour-sharing that a permablitz offers to help schools construct a school garden or improve and expand upon an existing one.

And so the first LFA Permablitz was held last month at the Bellingen Public Primary School. Thirty-five enthusiastic volunteers – students, parents, teachers, and the principal, as well as friends and supporters – turned out to transform the bare lawn at the school’s entrance on William Street into a food oasis. The day was a fantastic success, and it was a sheer joy to be there and just experience how much a group of people working together to a shared goal based on an excellent design can achieve.

Boys with barrow, Bello Public Permablitz Oct 2010

Relieving school Principal Elizabeth Mulligan spoke movingly of the ‘huge community spirit’ she witnessed on the day. “It’s just so good to see parents here with their children, also community members, with no attachment really to the school, but who have come to find out about permablitz”, she said. “And then people from organisations who are here to help us to learn about the whole procedure, and how it can be useful and good for us.”

The design was prepared by long-time permaculturalist, land-carer and market gardener Charlie Brennan, together with his son Bede, a former student of the primary school. Charlie celebrates the emergence of permablitz as a new wave of permaculture community activism.

The team - Bello Publc Permablitz, Oct 2010 — The team – Bello Publc Permablitz, Oct 2010

“It’s great that permaculture has come back in again”, said Charlie. “For about 5-10 years I was really involved with permaculture here in town. We had a permaculture group, we had working bees, we had events like this – then it seemed to go quiet for a while – and now it’s back with a vengeance”, he added.

Liz Scott with students at the Bello Public Permablitz, Oct 2010

The next LFA permablitz will be held in Boambee on Saturday 4^th December, at a private property. Anne, the host of this permablitz, also attended the Bellingen Primary event with her partner Tim. “We’re really keen to be involved and get some permaculture happening at our own place, so it was really good to come to the school and participate and learn, and meet other people’, Anne said.

Anne Montgomery's Permablitz, Boambee, before shot — Anne Montgomery’s Permablitz, Boambee, before shot

Anne Montgomery and daughter, enjoying the harvest

A short video of the permablitz at Bellingen Primary, put together by local short-doco maker Mick Parker, can be viewed at the LFA website – http://coffscoastlocalfood.ning.com/.

advocate, Backyard Gardening, Bellinger Valley, Seed saving, Self-sufficiency

Seed saving – the foundation of a democratic food system

30 March 2013 vivalarevolucion13 1 Comment

Preserving the Genetic Base of Tomorrow’s Food – the Bellingen Seed Savers Network

Nick Rose

First published in the Coffs Coast Advocate, 6.11.10

If a system is going to endure long periods of time, i.e. be sustainable, then it has to be able to withstand external and internal shocks, i.e. it must be resilient.

Dealing with the lack of resilience in a globalised food system structured largely around the processed products of corn and soy is one of the biggest challenges we face.

A resilient system is diverse, and that’s why diversity – and diversification – are central to the transformation of the food and agricultural system that is now underway.

One manifestation of this transformation is the recovery of the traditional farmers’ practice of seed-saving. While an estimated 1.7 billion farmers still save their seed, they’re now supported by local and national seed-saving initiatives, such as the Navdanya project in Uttrakhand, Northern India. Founded in 1984 by Dr Vandana Shiva, Navdanya has conserved over 5000 crop varieties and set up 54 community seed banks in 16 Indian states. It’s also trained over half a million farmers in seed and food sovereignty, and sustainable agriculture.

In Australia, the Byron Bay-based Seed Savers Network was founded by Michel and Jude Fanton in 1986. The SSN website lists 76 local seed saver groups around the country, including in Coffs Harbour (CROPO), and the Bellingen Seed Savers Network (BSSN).

Established in 2008, the BSSN is coordinated by Irene Wallin. Irene, herself a relative late comer to food growing, fell into the role of coordinator almost by default, when the first volunteer for the job had to pull out.

Under Irene’s guidance, the group has prospered. It now has a ‘core’ of 30-35 members, and an email list of 150 people who want to stay informed of its activities. The members come from Coffs Harbour, Dorrigo, and Valla Beach, as well as the various valleys around Bellingen.

A key moment was when a number of keen and experienced local growers and gardeners joined the group – like Peter and Beryl Judd, from Dorrigo. They were able to supply a good stock of seed to share with the other members.

The Judds hosted one of the group’s first garden visits. “It was amazing”, says Irene. “[There were] huge, long rows of everything.”

When it comes to sustainable living, the first step is simply to begin. “You’ve got to make a start”, says Irene, “and we have. Here we are, two years later, and when I think about the number of seeds that we had to share with people at the Bellingen Plant Fair this time [September 2010], we’ve made really good progress.”

The group’s main focus is to collect and share seeds. “Our main objective is to get the seeds out and moving among the community”, says Irene. “The seeds we’re focusing on are edibles, and companion plants. It’s all to do with future food security”, she adds.

The loss of diversity in edible food crops is a real concern, and a key motivation for the group.

“You can look at the catalogues of the seed companies over time, and see how the seeds have just disappeared”, says Irene. “It’s the concern about the availability of food for everybody – it’s also about finding the varieties that will grow well here, and growing them, so they will adapt to the conditions.”

The visits to members’ gardens, and the informal sharing of seeds and knowledge that takes place during them, is the cornerstone of the group, and what has made it so popular.

“The host will talk about what’s working for them, and what problems they’re having, and how they’re overcoming them”, says Irene. “We all love being in one anothers’ gardens, it’s so interesting”, says Irene.

advocate, Bellinger Valley, Community gardening, Self-sufficiency

Herbal wisdom in a community garden

27 March 2013 vivalarevolucion13

Recovering the Wisdom of the Herbs in a Community Garden

Nick Rose

This article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate, 23.10.10

When we think of sustainability, we think of the environment. Yet it’s personal sustainability – of our own health and well-being, mental as well as physical – that’s increasingly challenged by the nature and pace of modern life. According to some estimates, the incidence of major depression has increased 10-fold since 1945.

Without in any way denigrating the vital role that primary health care and pharmaceutical drugs play once we are ill, preventative health care is based, above all, on a healthy and balanced diet. Herbs, like parsely, basil, coriander and sage, are an essential part of that diet. These herbs don’t just add flavour to our food; they are full of beneficial nutritional – and medicinal – properties that augment our physical and mental health.

Then there is the huge diversity of the purely medicinal herbs. At the North Bank Road Community Garden in Bellingen, local resident Penny Burrows has been working hard on creating a diverse medicinal herb garden since February 2010. In a space about 6 metres square, she – with various helpers – has planted an astonishing range of medicinal herbs, from lavenders, thymes, echinacea, evening primrose, rosella and parsley to borage, motherwort, valerian, Californian poppy, tansy, mugwort, yarrow, mullein and angelica.

Obtaining many of her seeds from a specialist supplier near Lismore and Eden seeds in Beechmont, Penny has propagated the vast majority of the herbs herself, with the help and generous donation of time and seeds of local permaculture expert Aleasa Williams. “It’s been incredibly satisfying to see [the plants] all the way through, from seeds to harvest, and now be drying the flowers, and making remedies”, says Penny.

The flowers Penny has been drying recently are chamomile and calendula, which is a popular remedy for wounds, rashes and various skin complaints. She is making a calendula salve at home, drying the flowers in a dehydrater and soaking them in almond oil, then mixing the product with beeswax.

“It’s really beautiful, and fantastic for insect bites and stings, and skin rashes for the kids – I’m always using it for that sort of thing”, says Penny. “[Also] as a tincture it’s great to put on cuts, scrapes and sores, [as] it has cleansing/ disinfectant properties.”

Nearly all the herbs are multifunctional. Take borage, for example. Borage, says Penny, “is a good adrenal tonic – the classic saying is, ‘Borage for Courage’ .” It can be taken – like most of the herbs – as an infusion, using either fresh or dried leaves.

Then there’s chamomile, which “is really good for calming and soothing, and one of the reasons for that is because it’s quite high in calcium”, says Penny. She adds, “People [also] take it for cold and flu symptoms, [and] pain relief – it’s [also] great for the digestive system.”

Recently planted in the garden is the common herb sage. This herb has a reputation for enhancing mental acuity. It is an excellent gargle for colds, and is good for breastfeeding mums who want to cut back on their supply of breastmilk. Then there are herbs which stimulate the supply of breastmilk, like thyme, fenugreek, and cumin. And those herbs have other properties: thyme is good for sore throats and coughs; fenugreek helps with respiratory complaints and is also a nitrogren-fixing legume; and cumin is both a digestive tonic and is also a remedy for colds.

A lifelong gardener since her late teens, this is the first opportunity Peny’s had to really dedicate herself to growing herbs. “One of the things I love about this garden is that I have the luxury to grow the herbs because other people grow the food.”

Penny’s motivation, she says, is to create a diverse root stock of medicinal herbs for the area, sharing the knowledge and the benefits.

““[I want to] make sure that all these herbs are growing and available to us in this area. So many of the medicinal herbs used in Australia are imported.”

“The other thing about the herb garden which I really love is just the effect it has on people. Being involved in the gardening process is a therapy of its own”, says Penny. “Even if they’re not involved in the hands-on growing, just being here and hanging out – it’s a beautiful place to be, whether you’re involved in the gardening or not.”

advocate, Bellinger Valley, Collaborative cultures and networks, Community gardening, Food sovereignty, Land sharing, Small-scale farming

Sharing our land

26 March 2013 vivalarevolucion13

Landsharing Australia

Nick Rose

First published in the Coffs Advocate, 9.10.10

The soon-to-be launched Landshare Australia (www.landshareaustralia.com.au) is the work of ABC’s Garden Guru Phil Dudman and a partner, themselves inspired by the rapidly growing landshare movement in the UK.

Launched barely 18 months ago through the popular UK TV series River Cottage, Landshare UK now has over 55,000 growers, sharers (i.e., landowners) and helpers registered on its site, and many thousands more joining each month.

What the Landshare movement aims to do, according to the site, is “bring together people who have a passion for home-grown food, connecting those who have land to share with those who need land for cultivating food.” As Phil says, there’s been a tremendous loss of knowledge around food growing from the time when everyone either had their own veggie patch or knew someone who did. Together with closely-related movements like community gardening, Landshare is about recovering that knowledge and unleashing the spreading passion for food growing.

Landshare Australia is already generating great interest, even though the website will not be live till later in October. “We’re getting emails every day, especially from people with land to share”, said Phil. “That surprised us, because we thought that might be the most difficult part of it.”

The philosophy of Landshare, Phil says, is about sharing, i.e. making land freely available to individuals, families and community groups who want to grow food. In particular, Landshare Australia will be targeting church and other groups, encouraging them to embrace the challenge of making more of Australia’s idle agricultural land productive.

The focus on making land freely available doesn’t of preclude commercial leasing arrangements, although that is not something in which Landshare Australia will become involved. One such local arrangement which has been in place for 18 months is the leasing of five acres of Tom Hackett’s Kiwi Down Under farm at Bonville, by the specialist training and employment provider CHESS for its ‘Innovation Farm’. The five-year lease is a deal that “works very well for both parties”, said Tom.

The website will contain forums, blogs, tips and information about the Landshare movement. Importantly, it will also provide guidance for agreements between growers and landowners, setting out the rights of both sides. For example, says Phil, the guidance states that the grower must be working the land well and caring for it properly. It also recommends the inclusion of exit clauses, if the arrangement is not working out for either party.

There are a number of examples of non-commercial landsharing initiatives already underway in the Coffs region. Perhaps the best known is the North Bank Road Community Garden in Bellingen. Started by a small handful of individuals about two years ago on land owned by John Lavis and Hilary Weston-Webb, this garden now has around thirty regular gardeners and attracts large crowds to its local music and pizza oven evenings.

North Bank Rd Community Garden, Bellingen

Crucial to the garden’s success, according to John and Hilary, has been the strong horticultural knowledge and expertise of the core group. John and Hilary have long wanted to share their land with local people to grow food, and after a number of unsuccessful attempts they appear to have got it right this time. “It’s not hurting us, it’s not hurting the land – they’ve enhanced the land”, said John.

His advice to any landowners thinking of sharing some of their acres or even their backyards to enthusiastic people wanting to grow food? “Just go for it!”, he grins. “It’s good for the young people, and for the little kids – why go to a supermarket and spend dollars, when you can grow things far better, and you know what you’ve done to them? And what you can’t eat, give it away, or sell it”, he adds.

advocate, Bellinger Valley, Fair Food systems, Food sovereignty, Local and regional food economies, New market mechanisms, Small-scale farming

Discovering the secret of being able to live your passion

24 March 2013 vivalarevolucion13

Small-scale farming in Thora, near Bellingen

Nick Rose

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate, 25.9.10

It’s no secret that small farmers are an endangered species. The logic of food production worldwide is ‘get big or get out’. Estimates suggest that Australia alone has lost as many as 50,000 farmers in the past 35 years.

The so-called ‘cost-price squeeze’ bears a lot of the blame. The cost of farm inputs, freight and packaging costs keep rising – particularly when the price of oil shoots up – while the farmgate price has barely moved for many items since 1980.

How do most farmers survive? Through off-farm income.

So it’s both refreshing and remarkable to discover small-scale growers who are now managing to support themselves entirely through the sales of their farm produce. This is Kathy Taylor and Bob Willis, of the Thora Valley, about 20 kms from Bellingen.

Their secret? Biodynamic methodologies, a willingness to experiment, and finding a reliable market in Melbourne through the Demeter Biodynamic Marketing Company.

Kathy and Bob have approximately one acre under intensive cultivation, with another acre used for mulch: the ‘agricultural silver’, as Kathy calls it.

Like many growers in the region, their principal commercial crop is garlic, a mix of Italian and Russian varieties. In the past year they’ve experimented with two other crops, both of which have been very successful.

The first was broccoli, a sprouting variety that produces side shoots after the initial head has been taken off. Kathy and Bob sowed 800 seedlings in March, and began harvesting in May. They sold the big heads locally, and since then have been sending the shoots – the ‘tender tops’ – down to the Demeter wholesalers in Melbourne, at a wholesale price of about $10 a kilo.

Why were the shoots not sold locally? Two main reasons. The first is the absurdities of the freight system, the logic of which is centralisation in the big wholesale markets: it costs Thora growers $8.80 to send one five-kilo box to Coffs Harbour, while they can send up to 11 boxes to Melbourne for a standard charge of $18.50. “It’s quite difficult to go against [the logic of the system] and do something different”, says Kathy.

The second reason is simply that Kathy and Bob’s tendertops would be perceived as competing against standard broccoli heads, whose price was much lower. But as Bob points out, normal broccoli production – whether conventional or organic – is highly energy intensive:

“They use a tractor to cultivate…a tractor to plant, and to weed [and] to mulch-mow…And to help them harvest…And the output of that is a head which is anywhere between 200 gms to 400 gms. And then it all starts again…”

Independently of fuel usage, there’s a lot of waste in such a system, because anywhere from 25-40% of the broccoli sold in retail outlets is the stalk, which most people just throw away. With tendertops, everything is used.

The system is labour-intensive rather than energy-intensive, as Bob explains,

“We cultivate with a tractor, but then we plant by hand, we weed by hand, we harvest by hand, and once the main head’s gone, we can get the secondary side-shoots. And that allows us to have these plants in here [for a whole season] – with one use of the tractor, and not multiple uses, and we get five-six kilos off a single plant.”

Their other main crop this year was tumeric, which they also sent to Melbourne, again at around $10 a kilo. Tumeric is a highly nutritious root that can be eaten fresh and added to almost any savoury dish. Unlike garlic, it can be left in the ground until the grower is ready to sell it.

Ideally, Kathy and Bob would like to sell locally, and they have began experimenting with veggie boxes on a small scale, collaborating with a few other local growers, and with a small buyers’ group. They want to expand this in the coming years.

“I really think that in the future, the local sustainable seasonal veggies has got to be the way to go”, says Bob.

advocate, Backyard Gardening, Bellinger Valley, Self-sufficiency

Self-sufficiency in the Bellinger Valley

24 March 2013 vivalarevolucion13 2 Comments

Living off the bounty of the land in the Bellinger Valley

Nick Rose

First published in the Coffs Coast Advocate, 4.9.10

Fears over food price inflation are back in the news. We haven’t yet reached the convulsions of May-June 2008, when there was rioting in over thirty countries. Though the situation in Pakistan, where nearly 25% of the country’s crops have been destroyed in the ongoing floods, is extremely precarious.

This time, the sharp spike in wheat prices has not been caused by a run-up in oil futures. It’s because Russia, having lived through its hottest summer on record, has imposed a ban on wheat exports until November 2011.

As a result, prices for consumer staples like bread, beer and meat will all rise in the coming months.

These events are leading many people to see the sense in embracing older traditions of at least partial self-sufficiency: the backyard veggie plot, and keeping a few chooks for eggs.

Other reasons for this trend include well-founded concerns about food safety and quality. The recent salmonella outbreak in the US, which has led to thousands of cases of food poisoning and the recall of more than 500 million eggs, is only the latest of numerous food scandals.

Some residents of the Coffs Coast however take the embrace of self-sufficiency much further than a few herbs, lettuces and tomatoes in the summer. Nell Haydon, for instance, supplies most of her food needs, with plenty of surplus to spare for others, from her half-acre garden and citrus orchard on her property, a few minutes drive out of Bellingen.

Nell, who hails originally from the NSW Central Western town of Grenfell, was raised in the traditions of self-sufficiency, family industry and generosity. Her father was a market gardener, who died when Nell and her three siblings were still young. Nell’s mother and the children worked her father’s two acres, feeding themselves and sharing their surplus with their neighbours.

Later, when she worked in public health administration in Papua New Guinea from 1968 to 1982, Nell’s experiences with villagers who largely followed self-sufficient, traditional lifestyles, and yet enjoyed higher standards of health than many ‘richer’ people in the cities, confirmed for her that this was the path she wished to follow.

She returned to Australia with a dream of buying a small piece of land that had decent soil and a good aspect. Connections through friends drew her to Bellingen, and she paid the deposit on what is now her home on the same day that Australia won the America’s Cup in 1983.

When you walk into Nell’s garden, you can really feel the thriving abundance of 25 years’ worth of loving care of the land. Everywhere you turn something is growing, a fair amount of it self-seeded, according to Nell: chillis, butternut lettuces, potatoes, three varieties of sweet potatoes, sugarsnap peas, broccoli, cauliflowers, Pak Choy, papaya, strawberries, Italian garlic, leeks, Russian shallots, yarrow, hibiscus, and the exotic-looking Cape Horn cucumber, amongst much else. The orchard has various varieties of grapefruits, limes, lemons, oranges, mandarins and tangellos.

The marvel is that, apart from an initial tractor run to create the orchard, it was all done by hand. Yet now, Nell spends no more than an hour a day in her garden.

Her garden is also spreading. Since an initial visit organised by the Bellingen Local Food Network two years ago, she’s had numerous visits from the North Bank Road Community Garden and the Bellingen Seed Savers. Cultivars and cuttings from her garden are now growing in various homes throughout Bellingen and beyond.

So Nell, who is now 74, finds herself part of a growing network of Coffs Coast residents keen to embrace the ways of self-sufficiency, and she’s an inspiration for many of them. “People are happy when they come out here”, says Nell. “[That first visit in 2008] has allowed me to meet up with like-minded people. It’s broadened my life.”

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working for food sovereignty in Australia