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.

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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

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.

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. 

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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:

 

2020 Annual Terra Nullius breakfast

The 2019 breakfast

Captain Arthur Phillip, commander of the First Fleet of eleven convict ships from Great Britain, and the first Governor of New South Wales, arrived at Sydney Cove on 26 January 1770 and raised the Union Jack to signal the birth of the colony. The legal basis for this invasion of Aboriginal lands was called terra nullius which translates from the Latin as 'empty land' or 'no man's land'.

Stone and timber villages, swidden agriculture, elaborate aquacultures and diverse bioregional culture-making was trammelled and disappeared so as this imperialist legal term could be employed back in England. The use of the term was so obviously an opportunistic fabrication by the British state and yet the day, January 26, is still used as a day of national celebration in Australia. To redress this colossal deception, the annual Terra Nullius Breakfast was started in Daylesford in 2017, and was a first of its kind in Australia, joining the ever growing Change the Date and Invasion Day movements.

While the breakfast is an acknowledgement of the great lie of terra nullius, which this nation state is founded on, it is also a standing with our Aboriginal brothers and sisters who have more than survived the invasion and who are rebuilding their lives and their cultures after generations of oppression by the various Australian states. This is not a protest, it is an overdue acknowledgement of our history, a 'fessing up to what the state of Australia stands upon.

Please join us for the fourth annual Daylesford Terra Nullius breakfast:

Sunday, 26 January

9am - 11am

Outside the Daylesford Town Hall

Please bring a dish to share for breakfast, a thermos of tea or coffee, crockery and cutlery, and a sun hat. This is a waste free event so no single-use plastic please.

If you'd like to RSVP on the FB event you can do so here.

Introducing Apis: natural beekeeping group

Introducing Apis, the newest member of the HRN family - a free informal community group whose aim is to encourage people to learn more about European honey bees and how to care for them.

Natural beekeeping is a bee-first approach that prioritises the health of bees, allowing them to build natural honey comb. The result is happy, immune-robust bees and delicious raw honey that is harvested only when sufficient honey is available.

Rather than focussing on taking from the bees, natural beekeeping is equally about giving back, where bees are given the freedom to:

• construct natural comb,
• determine their own cell size, population mix, colony size, 
• rear their own queens and drones, and
• swarm

Are you as excited about this as we are?! To kick things off Apis is hosting a potluck dinner and short film night where we will decide where and how often we will meet, and what natural beekeeping methods we'd like to focus on.

The details of the dinner are:

Friday February 7

6.30pm – 9pm

6 Tierneys Lane, Daylesford

No need to RSVP, just come along

BYO dish to share for dinner (with as many local ingredients as possible) plus a plate & cutlery. Please note this is a waste free event so no single use plastic please.

You do not need to have any prior bee-keeping experience or knowledge. If you are thinking about keeping bees, or are simply fascinated by these magical, mythical creatures please come along.

Hope you can bee there!

2019 repurposed

Please join us as we see out 2019 and welcome in a new decade.

HRN will be joining the Daylesford Community Food Gardeners and Daylesford Repair Café in the Daylesford NYE parade. 

In Hepburn Shire Council's proposed new Local Law No. 2, 2019 it is written:

4.7 Scavenging A person must not, without a permit search through or remove any articles of rubbish, recyclables or items from a Transfer Station or left for collection in a public place.

Council has also stated that no permits will be given, effectively enclosing a local tradition of salvaging that extends well beyond the environmental sector of the shire.

HRN explicitly rejects this proposal, and many of the other proposed paternalistic laws, and with all the other local sustainability groups is calling for Council to review this draft law and update it to be in line with local culture and the times we are living in: climate chaos, ecological breakdown, excess mass consumption, unprecedented waste and normalised pollution ideology.

The theme for our float was going to be Repair Café but in response to council's short-sightedness has been broadened to include the themes of upcycling, recycling, creative frugality, repairing, repurposing and SAVE THE DAYLESFORD TIP FROM BUREAUCRACY AND OH&S MADNESS. 

See this video for more context:

If you'd like to join us in the parade, please join us on Tuesday December 31 at 6pm outside the MS op shop on Duke Street.

Think work overalls, hammers, screwdrivers, frankenbikes, sewing machines, LED lights, bike trailers, spare parts and tool boxes.

Can we fix it? YES WE CAN!

Urgent community meeting

Can you imagine a world where you can't forage for blackberries or pine mushrooms on public land? Where you are not allowed to scrounge at the tip for materials to repurpose? Can you imagine having to ask council for permission when you want to throw a birthday party at the pub? Or plant a tree on your nature strip?

After ten years, Hepburn Shire Council is making changes to some of its local laws about what can and can't be done on public land and in public places. While the laws are not too dissimilar to the ones made ten years ago, the new laws are more controlling and more suburban in flavour, and are completely at odds with the recent Climate Emergency declaration and the acceptance of the award winning Z-Net Plan, a 10-year masterplan for the Hepburn Shire to reach 100% renewable electricity supply, zero-net energy and zero-net emissions by 2029.

Representatives from the shire's sustainability groups: SHARE, Hepburn Relocalisation Network, Hepburn Z-NET, Daylesford Community Food Gardeners, Daylesford Repair Café, Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance, Localising Leanganook, Yandoit, Clydesdale and Franklinford Community Planning Group, Goathand Cooperative, and Hepburn Wind are hereby calling a community meeting.

The intention of this meeting is to make sure community members are informed about the proposed changes and how they will impact our lives. The purpose of this meeting is to talk constructively about a way forward in collaboration with council. The aim of the meeting is not to abuse or insult council as an institution of any of its employees.

If you are on FB, you can RSVP here.

Please have a read of the new proposed laws. If, like so many of us, you are feeling outraged by the proposed laws, you have until 5pm on Friday December 13 to send a submission to Hepburn Shire Council to let them know.

Submissions clearly marked ‘Local Law Submission’ should be addressed to:
Evan King CEO, PO Box 21, Daylesford 3460 or by email to shire@hepburn.vic.gov.au.