Grow the Future Bega

Term 2 is well and truly in full swing, with a big crew of Bega High School students joining our HANDS-ON program to hook in along side our regular farm crew, and we had a real day of it! Together we: 🥦Planted our first cool season crop of brassicas - getting a jump on autumn 🥬Pulled off our biggest ever (and by a long way) harvest, including veggies for our Eden veg boxes, and our 2 new commercial customers: Stony-creek organics and Pambula Fresh Food Markets 🍳Cooked up a shared BBQ lunch, with a stack of farm fresh veg as part of it 🌿Gave some love to our native, nature strip shelter-belt, which is really starting to take off! 🐙Cooked an octopus (no, we’re not going to provide any further context on this) 💦Weeded, fertilised and irrigated some of our maturing crops 🐝Dodged a small flying army of wasps we’d disturbed 🌾Slashed and mowed to try to get on top of the growth that’s come after the rain and get ready for some chicken moves. Best place to spend a Monday!

♻️It was great to show Roland Jones-Whittem Olivia Hughes and Blake Bonser from Bega Group around the farm last week! 🔧As part of their ASPIRE program, these guys organised a ‘tool drive’ to source a bunch of second hand and donated gardening tools for us from Bega Group staff! A perfect alignment with their vision to transition the Bega Valley towards a circular economy. We’ve been collaborating with Bega Group, and the Bega Circular Valley Co-operative over the past couple of years around Circularity conversation, and we’ve got a VERY big collaboration in the pipeline, so watch this space! 🙏Thanks for the tools team! With term two in full swing, they’re getting put to good use already!

We are super excited to have been selected to pitch at this event. Really looking forward to it!

It can be easy to forget that our little farm is connected to the amazing, and extremely important ecosystem of the Bega River Wetlands.

🌱In just under 2 years of operating, GTF has had a pretty incredible import for young people in our regional people. Over the last six months, we’ve been putting a in ALLOT of work in the background, to ensure that GTF can continue to thrive into the future. One of these pieces of work has been establishing GTF as its own, independent Not for Profit entity. Have a read of what we’ve been up to, and where we’re heading!

So awesome to see this funding going to regional communities to support climate solutions!🌱

🌱We had a great time last week hosting a bunch of young people for our Summer Holiday Youth Workshop series. 🎲We kicked off the week with GAME THE FUTURE which we ran in partnership with Robin from Pobblebonk Games, who took the young crew through all things board game development. Our motivation for running this one was twofold. Firstly, we recognised that there are allot of young people who are interested in project based learning, but not keen on digging in the dirt or being in the tools, so we wanted another vehicle for them. Secondly, we’ve got a wild idea to create a GTF card game, and we’re hoping this can be a first step. 🐝We followed this us with our HONEY BEE workshop, where Heath and Zoe from the Natural Buzz took the group deep into the world of honey bees, how the behave and how to keep them. 🥕We finished the series by Cal delivering the GROW YOUR LUNCH workshop. This workshop was focused on building food literacy from the seed to plant. From learning the fundamentals of growing food and building soil, we harvested veggies and collected eggs from the farm to prepare a big shared lunch together in our new outdoor kitchen. We’re really enjoying running these holiday series to capture the energy of young people who aren’t necessarily involved in other GTF programs, but may be interested in the future. We’re working on a couple of ideas for the autumn holidays so stay tuned

Summer Newsletter is about to drop! Sign up now to hear what we’ve been up to, and what we’re got planned for the season ahead! ———————————— ‘Summer is a hectic time for any farm. The heat, and in the case of this season, the rain puts growth into overdrive, and no matter how prepared you feel, managing things through this time of the year can take allot of effort even at the best of times. If you’re more than just a farm and happen to operate for the purpose of creating space for young people, then this time of the year gets a whole lot more complex. This season, we haven’t done the best job of simplifying our lives, as on top all this business, we have thrown into the mix a wholesale transition of our organisational structure into the mix (reach ahead for details). While things are busy, even more so than usual, we’ve still been kicking goals on multiple fronts, and we’re looking ahead to the future with allot of excitement and optimism. We hope that through this newsletter, we can loop you in on what’s been happening, and what’s ahead of us here at Grow the Future.’ —————————————- Want to stay connected! Sign up via link below: https://lnkd.in/gstYsFB3

Let’s agree already - project based learning is where it’s at. 🔨Our Monday crew built this multi-purpose outdoor bench from scratch, all the way from design to finish. They made their own mud bricks, established the foundations, laid the bricks, and constructed the top out of recycled timber. 🧱It’s a bit rough around the edges, but there’s always opportunity to go over our work and tighten it up. Mud building fits perfectly with the GTF philosophy in that it’s very forgiving - if you screw up, or don’t do things perfectly the first time, there’s always a chance to have another crack. This bench was put together as part of our ‘Vibrant Spaces’ project that was funded by the Mumbulla Community Foundation. As well as being our farm gate market counter, it’s also our outdoor kitchen bench and table.🌱

We are really excited to be offering this range of school holiday programs for young people in the Bega Valley!