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Good Growers

Phone: +61 403 834 149

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25.01.2022 Jo and I famously have the worst memories on the planet but all summer have been reminiscing about what we recalled to be infinitely superior winter carrots and here they are once more! The sweetest, juiciest, and crunchiest orange legends. I’m stoked both that they’re delicious AND our recollection was accurate for once Bring on the cooler months and may the sweet roots continue!

24.01.2022 It’s your weekly okra appreciation post - look at these pearlescent beauties?! Amazing. Woah. Truely obsessed. Online store is a go - just Lorn pickups this week, you equally pearlescent beauties. We’ve got @shepherdsgroundnsw garlic on there plus a few new bulk wholefoods and all manner of deliciousness! Link to our shop: https://goodgrowers.square.site/

22.01.2022 We pulled out some huge beets today for veggie boxes! See you soon

20.01.2022 My little flower garden along the windbreak is starting to fill in

19.01.2022 It’s almost there (now to get it off the ground)!

19.01.2022 It’s the magical birch confetti time of year

19.01.2022 I hadn’t been in the tomatoes for a week and, uh, they’ve gotten away from me! It’s a massive pruning job but heaps of fun uncovering sooooo many ripening tomatoes! We’ll definitely have the first trays for sale this Sunday at @maitlandgrowersmarkets Veggie boxes are also online now, for both Lorn and Newcastle pick-ups this week! You can look at the contents of both the large and small box and purchase through our store, https://goodgrowers.square.site/

19.01.2022 A common sad statement I hear from our customers is I tried to grow _ but it got eaten by something! Growing organically is HARD I’m here to tell you our plants get eaten too, but the key to growing vegetables successfully is paying close attention and acting immediately. I actually don’t know what these little guys are but they moved in on our zucchini and squash in the last day and this afternoon I carefully draped those beds with netting, removing beetles as I went. The... main way we keep our plants intact is by using physical barriers like this Vege Net, at least until the plants are large enough that a little nibbling won’t kill them. It won’t keep everything out (slugs and snails and slaters!) but keeps out some of the most aggressive pests including cabbage moth, aphids, beetles, and ducks! Instead of spraying pesticides we focus on protecting young plants and supplementing them with nutritional foliar sprays to help them get big and strong as quickly as possible so they are no longer vulnerable. It’s also important to remember that growing plants like this is wholly unnatural, in nature there’s hundreds of different plants coexisting together which creates an environment for pests and predators to balance each other. For example there’s been an influx of aphids with all the tender growth of spring and soon after the predatory ladybugs moved in! It’s very cool to see. At the moment we’re working on creating more environments for these kinds of predatory bugs - hello all the flowers! ‘Pest’ is a subjective human term, these bugs are just out here tryna have a snack. We can coexist

18.01.2022 Big ol’ veggie boxes going on this week! All this good stuff plus our legendary baby carrots, purple broccoli, and maybe some bonus sugar snap peas if I can find enough of them Get it in ya belly here: https://openfoodnetwork.org.au/goodgrowers/shop We’re doing both Newcastle & Lorn pick ups this week!

17.01.2022 Hello first teeny tiny eggo. Pastured, happy-chook eggs coming to our online store so soon!

17.01.2022 All set up at @maitlandgrowersmarkets! We’ve got our mate’s @shepherdsgroundnsw beautiful garlic and flowers plus all our stunning veg Can’t wait to see you on this beautiful morning!

16.01.2022 Tehehehehehehe veggies are hilarious! These boxes are going out this afternoon We save all the best produce for our box customers - you guys are our most special favourite humans, thank you!

16.01.2022 The garden is starting to change shape as we pull out overgrown flowering brassicas and build all the trellising ready to cradle all those delicious fruiting summer crops!

15.01.2022 Who gave okra permission to be the best, most beautiful duet of colours?! These stunning babes are in large pre-set veg boxes this week - we’ve still got a few left plus many other veggie joys!

15.01.2022 Bees and blur-dog! We try to take afternoon strolls around the boundary to teach this silly dog the bounds of where she lives, and it’s a nice opportunity to find out where we need to mow and notice the seasonal change. The poplars are fully leafed up, the cherry guava are ripe, and the bottom of my crocs are speared full of caltrops!

15.01.2022 Gosh cabbages are beautiful! These vibrant versatile crunchy goddesses are in boxes this week, hit up our store for the goods: https://goodgrowers.square.site/ It’s just Lorn pick-ups this week, and we’ll also be at the Earth Market slinging whatever’s leftover!

14.01.2022 Paddock snacks coming soon!

13.01.2022 Our beautiful friends a little ways up the coast have a lovely little story published about the collaboration of small scale farms in this issue of Focus! Legends!

13.01.2022 Why grow one type of kale when you can grow three? Lush bunches of a kale medley went in boxes today and we’ve got a stunning scarlet variety on the way too! What’s your fave? I’m a cavolo nero gal for the waxy texture and very practical stem-stripping reasons

13.01.2022 Tomatoes are IN and we’ve got some extra seedlings! They’re big and healthy and ready to go straight into your garden. We’ve got a few types of cherries in red (graf and tommy toe), yellow, black & green zebra and they’re $4 each or 3 for $10! They’re all indeterminate varieties meaning they’ll climb forever and produce until they’re killed be a frost. Flick us a message if you’d like some and we can set a time for you to collect OR you could grab them at the same time a...s your veggie box! Speaking of which, veggie boxes are online It’s Newcastle delivery week as well as Lorn pickups! This week’s will have the last of our meagre Brussels sprout harvest plus all your faves like baby carrots and peas and the broccoli that will not quit! See the full list of what’s in it and order though our online store here: https://goodgrowers.square.site/ We’ve got heaps this week so tell your friends! We love you.

12.01.2022 Huge shoutout to @joshvolk and his @farmhandcarts design for making hauling larger loads around the farm much easier and solar powered! (It’s actually human-powered, but we eat these veggies and they get their energy from the sun, so I’m claiming it!) Thank you for sharing your ideas so freely! Legend! It might get a coat of paint yet, I haven’t decided. Second photo is the first cart I built which was an improvement on carrying individual crates to the cool room 100m away.

12.01.2022 Our store is up for this weeks orders, for both Lorn & Islington pickups Small pre-set boxes get the last of the first crop of broccoli, while large ones get the almost-over zuccs! (Find it all through our link in bio ) It’s getting to the end of zucchini season but this crop is holding on with the help of our buzzy legends! Fruiting crops like this, with seperate male and female flowers, rely on insect friends to pollinate them and we have been very very grateful to @humblehivecollective for supplying and looking after the three beehives that live on our farm. It’s magical to get the dedicated farmhands that are bees without having to learn a single thing about them! Thanks Ben & Julia, and thank you bees

11.01.2022 Farming can be a little isolating and we like people so we started the Hunter Valley chapter of @youngfarmersconnect and were stoked to host the inaugural field day today It was so nice to talk about our favourite thing (at the average party people just don’t wanna talk about cows) and show you all our little farm of which we are so proud. I forgot to take any photos except for when we got stuck into @sillybillyfarm goat cheese and may I say: Yum. I love that this niche sector of our industry is so bloody friendly and collaborative - being united by an ecological and nutritional mission does that Hell YEAH to all the small growers and producers that are taking on industrial ag and having a really nice time while we do it. It’s a very good life.

11.01.2022 Despite our best efforts, sometimes you get a taste of the supermarket experience with our veg! We source our compost from Lake Macquarie council’s green bins! It’s composted in a wiz bang mechanised facility by Remondis and we buy it by the truckload. It’s 100% food and organics waste, unlike loads of compost products that landscape yards sell which contain random useless fillers like sand. Unfortunately, whatever goes in green bins ends up in our garden, even though it’s ...sifted to 5mm at the facility - so sometimes it’s fruit stickers and sometimes it’s glass, retro Holden badges, buttons, or decorative pencil ends. I end up with a pocket full of bits and bobs some days! It’s not a perfect thing but we try not to let perfection get in the way of progress (or business viability) so we readjusted our expectations and are stoked to get a 80% perfect product that’s super local and comes with a lab analysis. To help it along, we order in advance and let it sit in the paddock for 6 months before we use it - this gives it time to finish composting. We did a large initial application on top of our beds at about 10 wheelbarrows per 25 meter bed, and now only add 3 or so wheelbarrows if it needs it. Aside from weed suppression, worms love it! They have such a party on the surface and we expect help break it down further and feed microbial activity and therefore our happy little veggie plants. It’s a win-win. In our business we are constantly talking about diversity and bang on about how we are the most resilient when we are varied in crop types, market streams, and personnel. And our compost is no different. Made up from I-don’t-know-how-many different sources of decomposing material and thus microbes, it’s diverse as heck!

11.01.2022 Jo finished his prototype farm cart! There’s room for improvement but it did the job ferrying the first bunch of tomatoes from the greenhouse to the ground We’ve got 8 varieties going in (so many colours!) including a whole row of roma’s that we’ll be bottling up for tomato sauce that we hope will go on pizzas for community pizza parties! I’ve been carefully tending these cuties for 9 weeks and have big dreams for them. Now grow babies, grow!

09.01.2022 We had a nice lil morning at the Earth Market with a few bits and pieces! I don’t know how to bring enough carrots to satisfy you all, y’all are carrot fiends! See ya this afternoon veggie box crew

09.01.2022 Shout out to my talented sister for painting our brand spanking new sign - didn’t she nail our logo?! I have a newfound respect for signwriters, and Prue specifically. THANK YOU This guy is also a blackboard so we’ll be keeping the Glenarvon Rd passers-by updated with farm news and vegetable puns

09.01.2022 Come on down to the @maitlandgrowersmarkets this morning and get some deliciousness!

09.01.2022 Me proudly showing Peps all the veg We’ve got boxes for Maitland folks this week on Thursday afternoon! We’ve got a few cauliflower boxes available and loads of sugar snap peas - so sweet and crunchy on a hot day! Order via our NEW store (open food network was giving us grief): https://goodgrowers.square.site/

07.01.2022 Behold! Soon it will be bruschetta 24/7 and I couldn’t be more okay with that.

06.01.2022 Officially the most wholesome way to get your veggies We love our Friday evening pickup party outside 118 and @_mayashepherd Thank you everyone for loving our produce and supporting our little farm - see you in a fortnight Newcastle!

05.01.2022 Love a chocka farm cart! We did a wicked fast little harvest this morning for online orders before the rain set in How cool is it that this one small load will feed 21 households, all grown on a tiny 1/4 of an acre? It blows our minds every dang day!

04.01.2022 So many gorgeous colours in this weeks veggie box! And the return of baby carrots

03.01.2022 A glorious harvest day where we continue to marvel at how much food such a small amount of land can produce! Having never grown any vegetables before this year, I can now say it’s heaps worth it folks - even if you only have space for a few pots on your verandah. Grow things that produce continually like kale or berries, don’t bother with things that take up lots of space and take forever like cauliflower or Brussels, but above all: grow what you love to eat!

03.01.2022 Trees down all over the place but our garden is still in one piece! We got home last night to find emergency crews on our driveway because a tree had fallen on our power line. Fortunately, we had picked up dinner and settled in for a candlelit screening of this punchy little film @kissthegroundmovie. If you’ve been wondering what the heck we’re talking about when we call ourselves no-till then this is a really succinct overview of why leaving our soil alone is so hecking imp...ortant and I recommend a watch! I love agriculture because it is the most important job on this planet - it’s the only way we can create both healthy bodies and a once again healthy planet. Farmers are on the battleground every day and many are sadly the engines of climate change. It’s easy to point blame but the reality is economic and political forces make it really difficult to change and that’s where consumers come in: by choosing organic, regenerative, pasture-raised food you are paying what it costs to grow food that’s good for the planet. And it will usually cost more because it SHOULD cost more. Remember that if we don’t pay with our wallets, our land and soils pay the price - and that price is imminent environmental catastrophe. In the wake of increasingly frequent, more intense weather events like the one yesterday we realise that on our 1/4 acre farm the difference we make is minuscule - but we’re working on that. So, until we have a food and fibre empire you can interrogate the farmers you buy from by asking one simple and complex question: how do you take care of your soil?

03.01.2022 Killer autumn sunsets and successions of green! It’s been so nice to put on a fluffy jacket and walk the farm in the dusk, making mental lists of weedy patches and odd jobs. We’re SO happy with the health of all our plants this Autumn and are starting to see the effects of our soil health focus and actions of the last year. We’re already seeing so much less disease and better yields which we hope is the result of stronger plants growing in diverse, organic matter rich, no-dig soil and will continue through Winter This time last year we were growing all of these crops for the very first time and I’ve gotta say: it’s soooo much easier once you know the basics of how each plant becomes a veggie! Here’s to the miracle of vegetables and heaps more very obvious revelations to come

02.01.2022 Started the day finding a strawberry plant massacre (birds?), and ended with a belly full. Gotta net these bad boys so we can get some fruit to you! Hopefully we’ll be able to bring a few punnets to next @earthmarketmaitland

01.01.2022 A little sack of green goodness that is now plastic free These @biobag_au bags are fully compostable, even at home! So pop them in your compost bin or in ours, they’ll break down perfectly. At this stage we recommend you empty the contents into a sealed container when you get home so it lasts as long as possible.... We’re excited to have found a fairly robust, economical option, so let us know what you think!