Wild Fennel this Sunday 10am - 12pm

In the spirit of emergence and group magic, Zoe and Catie from Wild Fennel, invite you to Melliodora for a non-facilitated, open space gathering where all is welcome and anything could sprout.

Sunday October 8

10am - 12pm

Grandmother Pear Tree at Melliodora

16 Fourteenth Street

Hepburn

🌿 Show off your favourite herb books

🌿 Share recommendations + resources

🌿 Tell a herb story 

🌿 Impart medicinal smarts

🌿 Swap herb growing, harvesting + preparation advice

🌿 Ask questions

🌿 Draw or journal

🌿 Chat gently about a health challenge, triumph or learning

🌿 Catch + release herbal recipes

It’s all about what’s alive and exciting for you in the world of herbs right now.

🚲 Getting here

👣 Please park cars at the Hepburn Primary School

👣 Walk down Fourteenth Street and take the first left onto a gravel laneway

👣 There will be signs!

👣 Keep walking along the laneway till it becomes a grassy path

👣 Follow that for 30 meters or so...

by then you'll see us to your right gathered around a big old pear tree. 

Hope to see you Sunday!

For more info, please visit the Wild Fennel FB group.

🌿 Wild Fennel this weekend 🌿

Last month's mystery herb tasting was such a good time that we're doing it again!

Please join us this coming Sunday morn for a sensory exploration of a local herb, using your eyes, nose, tastebuds, ears, intuition and spidey senses to attune to the medicine in your teacup.

Sunday September 3rd

10am - 12pm

Radius Art Space

76 Main Road Hepburn

BYO mug, notepad, pen + optional soft thing to sit on.

There's limited parking on site so best to grab a spot on Main Road or Sixth or Seventh Street. 

Photo: Catie Payne

Visit the Wild Fennel FB group.

Wild Fennel - going to seed

Hi everybody,

Just a quick post to let you know that Wild Fennel will be taking a break in May, back for goodly wintry things on Saturday June 24 - details to come.

Now is the time to harvest your wild fennel seeds, so when you're out and about, do make sure to take a bag or jar to harvest from your favourite plant, while being careful no to pick the deadly look alike hemlock seeds.

Wild fennel seeds

If you're not sure of the difference between wild fennel and hemlock, best do your research before harvesting. 

Wishing you all a wild month! Look forward to seeing you all in June.

April Wild Fennel 🌿

Wild Fennel is a free monthly gathering that’s all about herbs.

Held by two local herbalists, Catie Payne and Zoe Kay, Wild Fennel offers simple, seasonal wisdom for making plant medicine part of your everyday.

Our next circle will be held on:

Saturday April 29

Radius Gallery, 76 Main Road, Hepburn

10am to 12 noon

(Please note: this is a disruption to our regular schedule of Wild Fennel being held on the fourth Saturday of every month.)

Big shout out to Kim and Morgan at Radius for generously hosting us! 🙏

Join us for a celebration of humble, powerful & plentiful Dandelion, including identification tips and delicious medicinal recipes.

BYO teacup + plant stories.

Wild Fennel is free to attend and is open to everyone.

🌿 Visit Wild Fennel on FB:
www.facebook.com/groups/wildfennel

March Wild Fennel

 

Please join us for a special autumn equinox edition of Wild Fennel: 

Saturday March 25

10am - 12pm

6 Tierneys Lane Daylesford, beautiful Djaara Country

During the session, Zōe and Catie will discuss Seasonal Herbalism and the Cool Weather Medicine Calendar, sharing their favourite locally-forageable autumn and winter remedies with a heart wisdom spin. 

What to bring: a notepad and pen, a mug and your curliest herbal questions. 

Zōe and Catie

We look forward to gathering with you on Saturday March 25.

This is a free event and everyone is welcome to attend.

* * * 

Where else you can find Wild Fennel: 

We have a FB group, where we meet online to share links, remedies and herbally insights.

We also have a newsletter. It's an unobtrusive thing that'll let you know about upcoming circles with a healthy dose of herbal whimsy. Here's the sign up link 👉 http://eepurl.com/il-qoE

Wild Fennel: Hepburn Herbal Circle

And we are back! And super excited to be offering free herbal medicine sessions to those looking to deepen their connection to our plant kin.

Please join us for our first session of the year of Wild Fennel: Hepburn Herbal Circle.

Saturday February 25, 2023

10am - 12pm

6 Tierneys Lane Daylesford
Djaara Country

Wild Fennel will be held on the fourth Saturday of each month.

Our session facilitators are:

Catie writes, draws, grows and goats at Melliodora. She is a former naturopath and herbalist with a perennial interest in weeds.

Zõe is a herbalist with a deep reverence for the earth's wisdom. Zõe is often found wandering in the forest, and wild crafting in honour of the seasons, to create plant remedies, as well as tending to a garden of food as medicine. Zõe is Passionate about sharing the empowerment that comes with having a relationship to plants that heal, as well as an attunement to one's body and a stronger sense of belonging to the earth.

Wild Fennel is free to attend and open to everyone. There is no need to RSVP, just rock up.

2023 Terra Nullius Breakfast

Dear friends of Djaara Mother Country,

The annual Terra Nullius Breakfast is on again this year, January 26 outside the Daylesford Town Hall, at 76 Vincent St, Daylesford from 9am-11am.

Please join together to listen to Country and to First People, acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander sovereignty, stand with the grief that still stems from the legal fiction terra nullius, and celebrate Indigenous survival, connection to Country, First People lifeways and cultural renewal.

Please bring a plate, cutlery, mug, thermos and a breakfast dish to share on the communal table. If you don’t have the capacity to bring anything to share please come and share what can be brought.

You are most welcome to bring friends, family and neighbours, and if hot please join us for a swim and picnic at the L-shaped jetty at Lake Daylesford afterwards.

Here is the video from last year’s gathering featuring Djaara woman Bec Phillips:

Community citrus grove planting day

 

Greetings friends,

Please join us on Saturday September 3 at the community garden beside the library for a morning of citrus tree planting. 

Please feel free to bring a citrus tree to plant on the day, or if you can't join the working bee but would like to donate a tree, please feel free to donate to the Daylesford Community Food Gardeners account at Wombat Hill Nursery (28 Raglan St, Daylesford, ph: 5348 1439). Or if you have sourced a tree yourself and would like to drop it off before September 3, please drop it off to Meg and Patrick's at 6 Tierneys Lane, Daylesford.

If you are going to join us - yay! Please also bring if you can, a shovel, a bag of matured compost or horse poo, weed-free mulch, a thermos of tea, snacks to share.

A big shout out to Fe Porter for instigating the project.

Sending big juicy health-giving, Vitamin C laden love,

The Daylesford Community Food Gardeners 🧡🧡🧡

Beekeeping Naturally with Adrian Iodice

Hi everyone,

Please join us this coming Tuesday April 19 for our first Apis event of the year. Apis is our local natural beekeeping group, established to encourage backyard beekeeping in the Hepburn Shire.

Please join us for a delicious organic dinner and a talk with Adrian Iodice from Beekeeping Naturally. Adrian believes that beekeeping is primarily about the health of the bees. And that changing the culture of beekeeping is about shifting people's mindsets from honey production towards a more holistic and harmonious approach that works with the bees for the health of the entire ecosystem.

Adrian lives on a farm in the southern NSW Bega valley with his wife and three children, where they are creating a bee sanctuary and education centre as a living model of natural beekeeping. He will be visiting Hepburn for a few days only, and we are so rapt he has agreed to come and give a talk while he's here in Djaara Country:

Tuesday April 19

6pm - 7.30pm

Melliodora, 16 Fourteenth Street Hepburn 

(Please park at the Hepburn Primary School and walk down) 

Entry is $5 for dinner and talk

No need to RSVP, just rock up.

Futuresteading event: new times

Due to the popularity of this event, Jade has kindly offered to do two sittings so we can accommodate more people, but still not have a crowded room in compliance with covid restrictions. Thanks Jade!

The first sitting is Thursday August 19 from 6pm - 7.30pm.

The second sitting is Thursday August 19 from 7.30pm to 9pm.

Tickets are free. Everyone is welcome. Bookings essential here.

Futuresteading

Jade Miles, best known as co-host of the inspiring Futuresteading podcast, is stopping by Djaara Country to promote her new book “Futuresteading: Live Like Tomorrow Matters”. Her book is full of practical skills, recipes and rituals for a simpler life, with gorgeous photos from her family's property Black Barn farm. 

HRN and Hepburn Wholefoods Collective invite you to join in conversation with Jade, who has been working on community initiatives in her hometown of Beechworth, and beyond, for decades. 

Thursday 19th August

6pm - 7:30pm

Hepburn Wholefoods Collective (Daylesford Lawn Tennis Club), 11 Perrins St, Daylesford

Free event

On the night, we'll be chatting with Jade about local food landscapes, how to build resilience with a community food co-operative and the challenges that tourist-destination regional towns face.

 

This is Covid-safe event. Numbers are limited. No bookings are being taken so be sure to be on time to secure a seat. See ya there!

April Apis: Backyard Beekeeping Group Meet-Up

Hi bee lovers and honey suckles.

Do you have a garden and now you're ready to keep bees to ensure pollination?

Do you love the idea of harvesting your own honey?

Have you heard about colony collapse and want to play your part to ensure the biodiversity and strength of European honey bees?

Please join us for a backyard beekeeping workshop with Ange Enbom and her daughter Millie:

This coming Sunday April 25 (ANZAC day) 

3pm - 5pm

6 Tierneys Lane Daylesford

$5 entry

Angela Enbom and Millie Enbom-Goad keep bees on their sixth-generation family farm. Photos: Edwina Williams

This is a community event and all are welcome to attend.

April Wild Fennel: Let's Make Syrup

Hi everybody,

Please join us on Saturday April 3 for a herbal syrup making session. 10am - 12pm at 6 Tierneys Lane in Daylesford.

Please bring along: 

• a jar of your favourite honey 
• one or more of the following: thyme, horehound, elderberries, mullein (dried), mallow leaves, plantain, violet leaf, rose hips, fresh ginger, peppermint, cinnamon
• a couple of clean jars or bottles to take your syrups home 
• if you have, a couple of pieces of muslin/cheese cloth that we can use for straining (which you don't mind if they get stained).

This is a free workshop and everybody is welcome to attend.

This will be our final session with facilitator Rosie Cooper as she is moving out of the Hepburn Shire. We are going to miss you so much, Rosie! Thank you for all the gifts you have shared with our community. Please bring a dish to share for a farewell lunch following the workshop, and a plate and cutlery etc.

Land Makes Life - this coming Saturday

A huge thank you to everyone who donated to the crowd funding campaign. Because of your generosity, Land Makes Life is going ahead this Saturday night at the Daylesford Town Hall:

This is a free event and everybody is welcome to attend. 

Please bring a plate to share for supper - finger food only and no single-use plastic, please.

Please note: numbers will be restricted and social distancing is required according to covid-19 regulations. 

* * *

Local Food and Farming Networking Evening

Do you want to be a part of the localised farming and food production future in Central Victoria?

Central Victoria is a region brimming with passionate people looking to get started in farming. It's also a region with an abundance of resources available to make that happen: potential land opportunities, keen investors, fantastic existing enterprises, bustling farmers markets, skilled individuals, tradespeople, mentors- all the pieces of the puzzle are right here, we just need to fit them together!

This is an event for anyone in Central Victoria (or interested in moving to the region) who wants to work towards a resilient, localised food future and who holds a piece of the puzzle to get there. Got a farming dream? A few (or a few hundred) acres you'd like to see managed and improved? Some business expertise? A nest egg you've been looking to invest? Come along and see where your piece might fit in the puzzle, or potentially find someone who holds the piece you've been looking for.

Date: Friday, March 26th

Where: The Belvedere at Jonai Farm and Meatsmiths, 129 Morgantis Road Eganstown

Time: 6pm

Cost: Free

RSVP essential.

All attendees will be given the opportunity to share their answers the following questions:

1. What is your local farming or food production interest, idea or dream?

2. What puzzle pieces do you have to offer and potentially share? This might be a business plan, land, capital, labour, skills, connections...anything you can think of.

3. What puzzle pieces are you currently missing to make your idea or dream a reality?

In the first half of the evening we'll share our answers to these questions with the group and build a valuable resource detailing what's on offer in the community. In the second half of the evening we'll share food together and have the opportunity to make connections and plans with others who might hold our missing piece.

Please bring some food or drink to share and your prepared answers to the three questions above.

The purpose of the event is to discover where our ideas might fit together and where we might be able to help each other out along the way. The direction we head from here is up to all of us. Looking forward to connecting!

*Please note this event will be held in an outdoor area. Numbers will be restricted and social distancing will be enforced according to COVID-19 regulations. Please RSVP.

Land Makes Life

Four years ago we hosted an incredible event in our local Town Hall, Indigenous storyteller and historian Bruce Pascoe in conversation with David Holmgren, permaculture co-originator. A few years later we held another special event, a conversation between Dja Dja Wurrung storyteller Bec Phillips, David Holmgren and US food systems critic and scholar Eric Holt Giménez. 

On March 20th we are hosting the third event in the series – a conversation between Tyson Yunkaporta, an academic, cultural critic, and author who belongs to the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland and Anitra Nelson, an interdisciplinary researcher in the social sciences, with specific interests in community-based sustainability, environmental justice, housing studies, and non-monetary futures. 

As with the majority of events we organise, we are inviting people to attend this event free of charge. So we can still pay our speakers and the person performing the Welcome to Country, we are setting up a crowd funding campaign to raise some modest funds. (Please note: the below media may not show up if reading this in your inbox.)

We aim to produce this conversation as a free-to-air video and a podcast. Whether you can get to the talk in person or watch it online later, please consider paying it forward by supporting the campaign. Thank you to everyone who has donated thus far!

We hope to see you on March 20th at 7pm. Please join us for a shared autumn equinox supper following the event. (Finger food only please.)

Pickling day wrap-up

Wow, what a day!! After a year of not having events, we were all busting at the seams to gather and ferment collectively. Thank you to all those who came along, to Edward from Adsum Farmhouse for growing the most beautiful gherkins around - they really were the stars of the show, to the gherkins themselves, and to the effervescent Mara Ripani for taking these photos for us to share: