Love Compost

International Composting Awareness Week

Better Soil, Better Life, Better Future

Monday 5 – Sunday 11 May 2014

International Composting Awareness Week Australia (ICAW), is a week of activities, events and publicity to improve awareness of the importance of  compost, a valuable organic resource and to promote compost use, knowledge and products. We can compost to help scrap carbon pollution by avoiding landfilling organic materials and helping to build healthier soils.
ICAW Australia is an initiative of the Centre for Organic Research & Education (CORE), an Australian based not-for-profit education and research network for participants including all scales of farming enterprises, organic processors, organic retailers and wholesalers, suppliers of biological inputs and consumers.

Check out the ICAW website and compost!! compost!! compost!!
OR start a worm farm!!
Love compost

Worm farm Workshop

Yesterday, Sunday 4th May, The Hive Community Garden delivered a free worm farm workshop. This workshop provided community members the know how to create and maintain their own worm farm at home and to discover the benefits of reducing kitchen waste and creating free organic fertiliser for the garden.
A big Thankyou to all those who attended and made the morning a great success!
A BIG SHOUT OUT to Dianne from Broadwater for kindly donating the worms and all the lovely worm juice. THANKS DIANNE

First Fire

Since we built our cob oven there has been one storm after another.....not good outdoor oven drying weather!! But after one beautiful weekend of hot sunny summer weather a group of about a dozen community members came together to empty the sand out of the oven and to light the ovens very first fire...................And our oven still stands....YAY :)
the drying process continues and were one step closer to pizza!

Sunny with the first scoop of sand

The light

First Fire

 

Observing

 

She burns.....and works....

the last of the sand.....and she stands

 

The mob with the cob

With the cob oven workshop booked in for Sunday, it wasn't till late Friday afternoon that we found out that we needed a concrete slab (or similar) for the pizza oven to be built on....................after putting what felt like half the town into a panic, Matt (Community Garden water coordinator and garden neighbour) and Corey (from Xylosinuous & also Community Garden member) joined forces and came together with minimal notice, donated their time, energy and resources and on Saturday laid the pizza oven base. Thanks boys for your super community spirit :)

Thanks Matt & Corey

 

So with the base in place, on Sunday a committed, enthusiastic and fun bunch of community members came together to learn the skill of cob building. All morning we mixed, stomped, twisted, turned, moulded and sculptured the clay and straw (adobe) into cobs.

Thankyou to Tony from Rockcote Traditional Arts for delivering and leading a fabulous and fun filled workshop......what a fabulous day and what a brilliant creation....

The first community cob oven in Evans Head!!

Thankyou to everyone that came along and joined in.

What a beautiful skill sharing day.

A bid Thankyou to everyone that brought a plate of food to share...beautiful....next time it might be pizza!!

Stomping & twisting

The making

Feels good

Cob smiles

The building

Our lovely cobs

Sand sculpting

one cob at a time

concentrating on the symmetry

The mob

Team work

making the insulation

The final layer

Our community cob oven

The day ended with a somewhat nervous storm, but was followed by this....a somewhat perfect ending..

 

A Nutty Harvest

A bumpa harvest from a beautiful property in Coraki. Avocados, star fruit, macadamias, pecans and ice cream beans just to name a few. Thankyou to our newest Mid Richmond food Crop Collector resident, Catherine Gregg for sharing and caring........amazing

Star fruit

Ice cream bean

Pecans

The Harvest

Feature Garden

The Hive Community Gardens main feature garden is underway. A big thankyou to Uncle Herb Roberts for the beautiful idea & design. A great day was had by all helping the `turtle come to life`.
Thanks to everyone who came along to help out.....exciting:)

 

 

The gardens first blooms

 

 

Chilli Dan

Dan and his home-grown hot smoking chilies