Last week Melbourne Farmers Market was awarded the national ‘Outstanding Farmers Market Community Initiative’ for work tackling food security in Melbourne.

This initiative is a credit to the Moving Feast partnership.

In lockdown when farmers were struggling to sell produce in the downturn of hospitality and, at the same time so many vulnerable Victorians were without fresh food, MFM connected the dots.

Since then they have sourced almost 50 tonnes of local, seasonal, high-quality food to share with partners DIVRS (Darebin Information Volunteer Resource Service), Cultivating Community and STREAT who work directly with people in need in the City of Darebin, Yarra and Melbourne.

They also set about growing more food at Alphington Community Food Hub to share with vulnerable communities into the future - the boxes along the Yarana Road perimeter are managed by DIVRS and STREAT as part of a ‘grow it forward’ project - where the community grows and shares with others.

Super hey? Aren’t we lucky to have such great community initiatives incubated in our neighbourhood!

Over the last year the Darebin Neighbourhood House Network (us, Bridge Darebin, Jika, PRACE, Reservoir and SPAN) has been working together on a climate action and resilience plan.

It has been a super process to go through and we’ve all learnt a lot.

The hard copy documents are available here for your reading pleasure and there’s also a little animation Lee made explaining all about it. It is pretty gorgeous.

DHNHN Climate Action and Resilience Plan

We hosted another great workshop with Gordon Carr on the weekend.

Our Sewing Machine Maintenance workshop was fully booked and our largest room was filled with sewing machines and their owners - wanting to learn how to avoid costly repairs and how best to maintain their own machines.

Gordon’s long history in this field of work makes him a gem of a teacher.

He has props that explain all the parts of a machine - like the clear-cased sewing machine pictured above! He is very honest about the common things that users often do wrong and he shares simple tips that can help you avoid making the same mistakes with your own machine.

There is a second workshop coming up - this time for overlockers - on Saturday 10th of September from 10am-12:30pm here at the Alphington Community Centre. The cost is $45 and there are still a few spots left if you are interested. You can book in here.

With climate action in the forefront of peoples minds, reduce, reuse and recycle are steps we can each take to make a difference.

This is especially true for our clothes and the fast fashion industry that seems so disposable.

Learning how to repair those loved items rather than buy new and replace is a great start - and very satisfying.

The art of visible mending and slow stitching have become increasingly fashionable skills that also help extend the life of our clothes - keeping them from landfill.

And … these skills also create moments of mindfulness to enjoy and help us slow down!

Serene Paul is a talented local artists who does beautiful eco-dyeing and hand stitching to create art and repair clothing … and we are fortunate to have her returning to the Alphington Community Centre to share her talents.

She has been a maker all her life with sewing a childhood obsession, followed by studying fashion design and working in the fashion industry for a number of years. She is slowly building her own handmade and thrifted wardrobe and likes to make each piece unique by using hand stitching techniques along with patching, natural dyeing and appliqué.

Serene will be running a one-off Slow Stitching workshop on Saturday 20th of August from 10am-2pm. She will show you the stitches and you can practice them yourself with a kit that is provided. The cost is $50 and you can enrol here.

She will also run a monthly Visible Mending session. Bring your project and sew and chat and share skills. Join Serene from 10-11:30am on the first Saturday of each month by enrolling here.

Please keep in mind that each workshop and each group requires a minimum number of people to attend for it to run. So if you are keen and know other friends that share your interest then please enrol and encourage your friends to join in too!

We’ve got our beans (perhaps a little late because of the tomatoes that had a second run …) and our leafy green pak choy and some marigolds grown from seed in the garden and they’re doing their thing slowly … and on Friday Theresa worked on potting up some cuttings from Clare’s garden … salvias and other flowers 🌺 to bring some pops of colour to our fenceline and garden.

And then after morning tea Corrado and Max kindly stuck around and we started up the (previously checked and safe) donated chainsaw (what a generous neighbourhood we live in) for a heavy duty (and hard work) pruning process - the fruit trees 🌳 on the eastern fence … (we all needed to head home for a nap afterwards!). They’ve now had part one of their two part planned haircut … we’ve tackled the width, next time we’ll lop off the top … to make sure we can reach the fruit 🍎 they produce. It’s just amazing how much they grow each year!

Also … did you see our compost on Instagram last week? It’s teeming with life. Thanks neighbours who contribute scraps … it really is looking amazing!

If you are interested in gardening and chatting to nice people and contributing to our neighbourhood come along from 10am on Fridays. We’re back after the school holidays!