This week we had a donation of apples 🍏 picked straight from the tree delivered to us.

We’ll be using them to make some preserves and to do some community cooking and we also ate some at Morning Tea in the Garden on Friday … and sent some home with those that came along - everyone was very appreciative!

And … any spares will be sent over the the ASRC.

Thanks so much Bella for thinking of us and dropping them in!

If you ever have excess fruit and veggies 🥦 🥕 in your home garden (or on your rural property like Bella) we’re always very pleased to find a use for them - whether that be here - we use them for preserves, weekly morning tea or food relief, or at the ASRC - the donations we send their way go into their fresh food program.

Just give us a call or drop in when we are open!

Betty recently contacted us to enquire about a stall at one of our makers markets. She is looking to spread the word and sell some copies of her new cook book, My Vegan Cookbook.

Leanne will be working on ideas for our programming for the remainder of the year very soon. And we do hope Betty will book a stall with us when we have our next makers market in our calendar.

In the meantime we can help Betty by sharing her website with you. If you are interested in vegan cooking then take a look at Betty’s site here.

This weekend Manu will be sharing her skills in the kitchen in a hands on workshop called Indian breads 101.

We think we are very lucky to have people like Manu in our community who are willing to share their skills and also very lucky to have the wonderful Melbourne Farmers Market just down the road - who are so generous in sharing their facilities and have such a strong commitment to the community. Their kitchen is an amazing space and will be the perfect location to learn how to make four types of Indian breads - roti, layered paratha, stuffed paratha and poori.

This sold out workshop runs this Saturday 14th May from 11am-1pm in the community kitchen at the Melbourne Farmers Market, located just a hop, skip and a jump from us at 2 Wingrove Street, Alphington.

If you missed out on being part of this workshop and are keen, I am sure Manu will run similar workshops in the future. Keep an eye on our second semester brochure ... And if you want to find out more about our local farmers market which runs every Sunday morning you can click here. Thanks once again Miranda and co. for your support. It is really appreciated.

Hi Leanne here. A few years ago my old uni housemate encouraged me to strip my olive 🫒 tree of fruit and add them to the harvest from his house in Brunswick. And he kindly took all our fruit off to magically become olive oil.

When I got the oil back it was such a joy to think it came from my tree!

This year you can do the same thing … just register and then drop off your olives at CERES Fair Food at 20 Water Rd Preston (not the East Brunswick site) and it will be magically returned in the form of oil.

Thanks to Darebin, Yarra and Moreland Councils, CERES and 3000Acres for organising this great community activity.

And … if you’ve never done it before a good tip is to lay a big sheet under your tree and invest in a couple of plastic kids beach/sandpit rakes. Then you can rake along the branches. The rakes will pull the olives off without pulling the leaves off … and the olives will drop down onto the sheet … and you can then gather that up and tip your harvest into your collection container. It makes the process so much quicker than hand picking …

Here’s the official advertising blurb for the event. Thanks Nat from Darebin for sending it through! I am sure there will be people in our community super keen to join in.

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The Olives to Oil Harvest Festival is coming to Darebin, in partnership with CERES 3000acres.

Come together over the weekend of 27-29 May to harvest olives from streets, parks and productive gardens. The olives will be pressed communally into delicious, local olive oil and distributed back to the people who help with the harvest. 

Drop off your freshly picked olives at CERES Fair Food (Preston) on Sunday 29 May 12-2pm. Collect your oil from Reservoir Library two weeks later.

For more information email olivestooil@ceres.org.au or register here: https://www.3000acres.org/olives-to-oil

What goes around comes around.

In the last month or so many in our community have embarked on their traditional annual epic tomato sauce/passata making ritual.

And because we mentioned in our newsletter that we had a glut of jars kindly donated by the community … some savvy readers asked if we could share the love. So of course we did.

In March many of our excess jars went back out into the Alphington/Fairfield universe to support local passata efforts.

And the results? Lena kindly shared a bottle or two of her delicious tomato sauce with us as thanks for sharing the jars. How great is neighbourhoodliness.