Spoke & Spade in Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia | Urban Farm

Spoke & Spade

Locality: Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia

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23.01.2022 Patch 1 of 3 new growing sites. Establishing some serious food production at the kids farm. We are going to document some of it for future urban ag experiments in Aus. What inputs, hours/labour by chore, yields and the so on and as collingwood farm continues to expand market gardening, i would hope in future we trial various methods (no till, minimal till and possibly even a row of heavy till) to educate, record and further showcase regenerative and highly productive small scale farming in urban contexts. One step at a time ( keeping in line with funding for it...). Exciting times but shifting several cubic m3 of compost is hard work if you have previous resources relevant that you'd like to share, I'd love to see or chat :)

23.01.2022 100 of these ~ gonna keep on giving...

22.01.2022 Crops for Moving Feast @ ccf

21.01.2022 As a kid, i sometimes pretended to eat broc make an excuse to go to the toilet - flush it and return victorious to get desert... home grown tastes quite different to the shop stuff cos i love farmer's market broc ... sorry mum

20.01.2022 These crops are several weeks from harvest but with spring quickly approaching seed orders need to be finished asap ! I hope to trial some determinate tomatoes this season ~ what's your favourite varieties and why?

18.01.2022 Spoke & Spade got some media real estate coverage

18.01.2022 Joining CSA (community supported agriculture) has never had a better time. Maybe we could start more small scale CSA farms. Customers pay upfront for a season (sometimes a year!)so the farmer can get on with planting an abundance of food and hopefully regeneratively working to improve soil, drawing down carbon etc. Customers, food eaters, you have power, you dont need to be the farmer to be integral part of starting or sustaining a kick ass local farm community. I love the book, "common ground" by scott chaskey which poetically tells the story of a UK farm CSA starting up in a rural town via a trust of land and how the farm becomes an integral component to the towns food supply, education and joy in all the unquaintified benefits of such an enterprise. Food draws us together ~ even in difficult times.

14.01.2022 I (Sim) have had 2 moments in life when the dots clicked for me as an Australian. In year 5, we spent a full school day (including our lunch break because we were very interested) cubby building, making shelters in the scrub at the school I attended (which was surrounded by a few acres of forest). Our shelter was, for our group of five, something of tremendous pride. Strong, heavy logs making a teepee and small entrance with fake fire pit in the centre. That said, compared t...o the settler journals of real humpies and shelters that Aboriginals created that hosted halls for 40+ and living shelters that directed smoke and kept temperature ambients depending on the context - ours was a terrible reflection... But we were proud 11 year olds. The following day, as we arrived on the bus, my heart sank, my anger flaired and the bus driver told us to sit down and quieten up as we looked over to the bush where the shelters had been flattened, dismantled, destroyed. Vandals had ruined our cubby. A whole day of hard work! I was furious. Our teachers, asked to us journal out our feelings. I chose a red biro, asked damning questions to the vandals in messy distraught. That's when the teachers said, "we did it"... a class exploded in confusion, tears, and pointed questions. They in return, asked us, "So, how do you think the Indigenous people feel after living here for 60,000 years and white settlement?". We'd like you to now take some time to journal about that. It remains my 1st strongest memory of coming to terms with empathy as a child. Somehow 18 years later, i still I struggle to understand my, our, their, the... history and it's importance to my life. But something also clicked when I read Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe. It helped me to reconcile, become angry at injustice /history and also empathise. We farm on land which had an abundance of indigenous farmed and food systems. Traps, ovens, grains, dams, and acres of fields cultivated and harvested that were stolen & covered for european agriculture insensitive to The Land and people. Truer history needs voice and sorry lived out as we try to reconcile current & past wrongs. I am sorry. @resilientyouthau

13.01.2022 Hello georgeous... fresh neatly packed goods into true post consumer recyclable grocery shop bags Service like the old days. "The fresh food people" duopoly has crap food for you, a bad deal for farmer, and the farmer can't treat the land right to farm that way. Its time to change our food system for 3 reasons what are your top 3 reasons ?

09.01.2022 From seed through to harvest...local food, local economy, local legendary actions by everyday eaters support small farms to transition towns as we #drawdown on solutions to climate change for a fairer food future. #spokeandspade

07.01.2022 Do you know someone with experience looking after farm animals, pasture management and or regenerative agriculture? Come work with me (Sim) at my other p/t workplace! P.S. If you're curious why Spoke & Spade sometimes shares posts/pictures of Collingwood Children's farm ... it's because 'a garden is a garden' and as the owner of a micro business, the normal self serving marketing rules can get stuffed

06.01.2022 I (sim) don't eat meat, but when livestock are raised from regenerative management, I get excited about the possibility of our future. Holistic grazing can revitalise and look after landscapes, working to restore soil & greenhouse gases rather than only burping it out! Here are two friends and previous customers of Spoke & Spade who are starting out in their own farming journey. Young farmers need champion customers so they can get on with farming ecologically, rather than dr...iving, marketing or manning a stall. This is the kind of meat that'll be sold out in 3 yrs and new customers will only be invited to squander in the Fear of Missing out (FOMO) party. If you're in Melbourne, and would like to not only source better quality, tastier, healthier, and simultaneously support rural work for Will / Jemma and the type of leadership and land management methods Australia needs in beef production... don't just do a simple survey, get a group of friends / family and buy the goods / cow shares. Make eating and farming a stand out regenerative gig! Food is about bringing good things to the table - not choosing the least worst alternative on the shitty shelves of race to the bottom supermarkets built to exude share price profit at the cost of top-soil and our waters being destroyed. (If Pork is your game instead - check out https://www.pigandearth.com.au/ they're also friends and great too).

05.01.2022 Best tool... hmmm. Opinel pocket knife and a (terrateck double) wheel hoe... does the majority of brute weed work on our urban farm.

04.01.2022 Hiding under netting, winter oat shoots popping up for a cover crop @collingwoodchildrensfarm. We predicted a problem of pesty pigeons eating seed so we're trialling 1/8th acre without netting and some under to compare germination. Cover crops like oats will help build organic matter, soil structure and hopefully improve drainage, remove some weed pressure (thumbs crossed) amongst other qualities as well as provide fodder for our stock or if we had a harvest festival we could show some kids where their breakfast oats originate from. We are so excited to work on not just food but building and talking about the soil that sustains us. That's really where the game of farming and growing is at. And this silty loam on the bank of the Birrarung (yarra) is absolutely gorgeous let's hope we tend to it with enough respect!

02.01.2022 Newest patch for @collingwoodchildrensfarm in stages of preparation b4 rains tomorrow. To minimise seed bank / invasive rhizomes we had sheep and the mower graze it low. Rotary hoe to throw and quickly form a seed bed. Raking ( kikiyu ) with hand tools reminiscent like the nuns from the abbotsford convent when they grew food for 1200 people on these 10acres of silty loam. The team and I then hand sowed winter oats as a cover crop as we hopefully get ready to start a proper low till market garden!