News

Part of the CERES Fair Food newlsetter series, words by Chris Ennis. On Friday, sustainable architect and CERES Fair Wood patron, Paul Haar, was profiled in a wonderful piece on Gardening Australia. A theme throughout Paul’s career has been the creative and thoughtful use of timber in his buildings coupled with an equally creative and thoughtful approach to sourcing wood. One of the creative and thoughtful timber sources Paul’s introduced to Fair Wood has been milling trees that have fallen across roads or are endangering houses. The storm that tore through Victoria a week and a half ago brought down so many mature trees that Hayden Cronin, Fair Wood’s manager, has been inundated by emails asking for help – including one from a landholder in Newbury who had lost more than 100 trees. Offers of fallen trees to mill were already coming in after the story we did on urban sawmiller Paul McKay but since last week’s storm we are now thinking about how we can do more to save these trees from becoming firewood and mulch. With so many trees on the ground and time against him, Hayden mused this week that if Fair Wood had a space to keep the logs he could progressively mill them through the year.

    Down at CERES Propagation, farm manager, Meg and her team are beginning to bring their 20+ varieties of heirloom tomatoes out of the poly tunnels to harden off ready for planting. As Meg’s rouge de marmande and yellow cherry pear seedlings reach skyward to the spring sun a corresponding urge to garden rises among the good people of Melbourne. In gardens across the city weeds are pulled, compost piles turned and drills buzz as raised veggie beds made of the ubiquitous macrocarpa sleepers are screwed together. If you’ve ever travelled through the rolling dairy country of South Gippsland you might have seen rows of pine-tree like macrocarpas running down fence lines filled with families of magpies.  Macrocarpa or Monterey Cypress originally came from California.  Farmers wanting to protect calves and lambs from southerly gales found the fast growing tree with its thick dark green foliage made for a sturdy windbreak. Macrocarpa can grow for well over 100 years but as they age they often fall victim to cypress canker – the old trees lose branches and their canopies open up letting through the cold winds .   The only cure is removal.  These days more and more macrocarpa windbreaks are being replaced by native plantings. Back in the day a tired macrocarpa would be bulldozed into a pile and burned, but with the advent of portable chainsaw mills a cottage industry has grown up salvaging macrocarpa logs. Macrocarpa timber is reasonably durable, easy to work with, doesn’t require drying and has a lovely golden colour that silvers off nicely. It’s also good value and hence is very popular with builders and landscapers. Its favourite use has to be building raised garden beds – it’s a healthy substitute for toxic treated pine and a sustainable choice over unsustainably harvested redgum.    We have recently teamed up with Very Edible Gardens (aka VEG) to supply a pre-drilled raised wicking bed kit based on VEG’s popular designs – all you need is a drill to put it together. They can also help build and also suplpy wicking bed conversion kits. They are offering a 5% to all CERES Fair Wood customers. Read more about our Veggie Bed Kits here.  

Part of the CERES Fair Food newlsetter series, words by Chris Ennis.   Lately CERES has felt a bit like a ghost town.  But today people are emerging and are enjoying the autumn sunshine along with the chickens scratching for bugs. In Honey Lane passing walkers stare up at the new tram-sized mechanical millipede that now dominates the hill. Rearing up with steam punk robotic arms it feels like it could crash through the casuarinas and devour the old train carriage below. I’ve come down with my eldest son to see how the new Terra Wonder playspace is going and also to have a sneaky play.  Spinning an auger attached to the millipede’s antenna my boy disappears up through yawning jaws, runs the length of the body and slides out the mighty beast’s recycled tyre anus with an, “Oooooooh, that feels disgusting!” This awesome insect vision has been conjured into life by artist, Steve Mushin, creative director, Nick Curmi, and a team of CERES builders and welders. Work-shopped with a group of local kids the space is a learning in itself. Set amongst a 500x magnified soil-food-web, Terra Wonder is a world where almost everything has been salvaged or recycled. Resident industrial sculptor, Nick Curmi loves scrounging.  For months he’s been trawling scrap-yards around the state for old machinery to manifest Steve Mushin’s drawings. The solid steel millipede head weighing a couple of tons was once a 150 year old steam-jacketed chocolate tempering pan from a Cadburys’ factory. Its mechanical antennae are retired robot arms that built cars on an automotive production line. The legs are made from massive ropes that were used to moor the Spirit of Tasmania. Even the new macrocarpa body slats, sourced by CERES Fair Wood, are salvaged from old farm windbreaks destined for a bonfire. During the week I get an email from Nick Curmi looking for a truck to pick up a huge excavator arm that will be used to create an arched entrance-way. The arm is sitting in a scrap yard in Warrnambool that’s rumoured to be full of retired industrial machinery – a veritable scavenger’s El Dorado. I imagine Curmi at his desk trembling like a prospector ridden with gold fever.  The mechanical millipede will be the first of Terra Wonder’s elements to be completed.   Still to come are giant fungal walkways, cocoon tree-houses, worm tunnels (made from enormous recycled steel pipes) and a rescued crane that nods to CERES’ quarry past. Like so many of CERES’ projects before it Terra Wonder will be completed with a mixture of grants, passion and gifts from our community. On our first weekend out of isolation it feels odd that we’re building a place designed to bring hundreds of children and parents together. But Terra Wonder is an act of faith, a gift, for when we get through this and kids can come out and play together again.