Event – Growing Our Future Festival
The Growing Our Future Festival is a celebration of the first ever harvest from the market garden at Bellarine Secondary College, built by Farm My School, a non-for-profit organisation, in partnership with Bellarine Community Health and Bellarine Secondary College.
This event marks the official launch of Farm My School Inc, a young organisation with big ideas, who have achieved an incredible amount in just 12 months.
The event will provide the community with an opportunity to support Farm My School and be inspired through an evening of live music, garden tours and food trucks selling beautiful local food. Attendees will also get to buy and take-home fresh produce straight from the garden.
The market garden at Bellarine Secondary College has grown fast! Flash back 12 months ago, the market garden was still an old soccer field. In October, the ‘Build a Farm in a Day’ event bought hundreds of community volunteers to the site to create over two kilometres of no-dig farm beds in just 24 hours. These beds were only planted four months ago, just before Christmas last year. The first harvesting began in January this year and now the market garden is producing over 250 kgs per week. This is a huge achievement and big reason to celebrate.
“It was a bit of an experiment, so the fact that it is producing food so quickly is humbling, said Farm My School Co-Founder and Director James McLennan. “It’s pretty spectacular when you see it.”
Farm My School, with Bellarine Secondary College and Bellarine Community Health, are working collaboratively on this pilot project to transform unused land within Bellarine Secondary College’s grounds into a market garden for the local community, to encourage healthy eating, ecological stewardship and to create a more connected community. Collectively, these three organisations want to redesign how the current food system is operating locally.
“We hope that this work also inspires more people to grow their own food or get involved in gardening. We’d love to see more local food produced on a small scale in more backyards,” said James McLennan
The evening will include presentations from special guests; Farm My School ambassador Costa Georgiadis (Gardening Australia), Chef Matt Germanchis (Totti’s Lorne) and Jo Barrett (Little Picket). The event will also feature live music from Formidable Vegetable, an energetic fun band who sing about permaculture.
The event will take place from 4pm to 9pm at Bellarine Secondary College on Thursday 6 April.
Tickets are available online at https://events.humanitix.com/farm-my-school-official-launch/tickets with all proceeds going towards Farm My School.
The event is free for Bellarine Secondary College families; however, they are still required to register through humanitix.
“We’re reaching out to the school community and beyond. Everyone is welcome to come and to celebrate what we’ve achieved.”
This event will be a smoking/vaping free, alcohol free and zero-waste event. All visitors are asked to bring a water bottle, picnic blanket and/or chairs, and wear appropriate clothing ready for all weather.
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