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Returning to pre-covid momentum has been a challenge for West Brunswick Community Garden, but now and again new faces appear at weekend working bees, eager to connect with nature and community. Last Sunday, volunteers convened beside Dunstan Reserve to improve the 30 individual garden plots utilised by the local community. Old Red Gum sleepers have experienced the winds and rain of Merribek weather and were well due for a replacement. CERES Fair Wood provided garden veggie bed kits, consisting of Cypress Macrocarpa sleepers, to help the team carry out the task. “It’s great that this timber is very durable; we're hoping it will last another ten years,” says Richard, member of the garden’s committee. “Around 2012, the then Brunswick City Council put [the land] out for expressions of interest and a local organisation who had been looking for an opportunity to develop a community garden came along.” Since transforming what was an empty space to a flourishing suburban haven for plant life, including a ‘food forest’ that gives the public access to herbs and fruits, the garden has greater outcomes than horticultural produce. “Obviously the garden’s principal activity is around producing food, but also we see ourselves as an educational resource.  We have a strong commitment to sustainability and organic gardening practices that we try to emphasise as much as possible in our workshops. “We also have a role in creating community. As much as possible, we try to bring people together, some volunteers live by themselves and are looking for social contact. “We try to cater for all interests and I guess it reflects the community here. We have a very diverse group of people both in terms of their background, people from all over the world who have settled locally.”

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.

Part of the CERES Fair Food newlsetter series, words by Chris Ennis.   This summer over 40% of forests set aside for native logging operations have burned. With the end of native logging in Victoria recently announced, the bushfires have just ramped up the fight for what’s left in our forests a whole lot of notches. Up in the Victorian central highlands VicForests’ logging contractors, who were already struggling to fill woodchip and timber quotas before the bushfires, have continued clear-felling forests. Desperate to protect the now much-reduced greater glider, smoky mouse, sooty and powerful owl habit, citizen science group WOTCH successfully sought a supreme court injunction to stop the logging. Meanwhile, The Australian Forest Products Association (AFPA) are lobbying politicians to keep woodchippers and timber mills going by giving them the go ahead to begin salvage logging in State Forests and National Parks. Countering the call Professor David Lindermeyer, a prominent landscape ecologist and conservation biologist, says studies show salvage logging pollutes waterways, kills surviving wildlife and potentially delays forest recovery by more than a hundred years. The AFPA are also talking up “mechanical thinning” as a means of hazard reduction and as a source of woodchips and timber into the future.  Pushing back, conservationists view thinning as a cover to continue and expand native logging. Before Christmas we didn’t have enough forest. Now we have even less. The scale of the fires boggles my mind; 10 million hectares of forest burned so far, one billion animals killed. Sometimes I’m tempted to think that we’ve actually lost this and my thoughts turn to stockpiling lentils and enrolling our kids into crossbow classes. But the other day I saw this email from Philippa Noble, a tree farmer among other things at Brimin Lodge Farm near Yarrawonga. It was written to the President of the Institute of Foresters of Australia, it read… …..In a drier climate with more dry lightning strikes igniting fires, timber plantations near mountainous native forest areas will become more and more risky.  If all farmers were encouraged to plant 10% of their farms to managed plantations of fire tolerant species, not only would it spread the resource, benefit farmers and make the industry more resilient, it would also assist with habitat creation and carbon mitigation. We are being told that we need transformational change to deal with the changing climate – this is an opportunity for transformational change….. It was so sensible, so practical and so doable; a shared, low-tech solution requiring a small but powerful change in the way we grow our food and fibre. It was LandCare for our timber. And who couldn’t get behind that?

    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.

Part of the CERES Fair Food newlsetter series, words by Chris Ennis. A couple of weeks ago the Andrew’s Government announced it was phasing out logging in native forests over the next 10 years. The guts of the decision is; 1.       Old growth logging will cease immediately. 2.       Current regrowth logging will be extended until June 2024. 3.       From July 2024 to June 2030 there will be reduced regrowth logging. 4.       No native logging after June 2030. The news was greeted with relief by environmentalists who have been fighting to save, among other things, the thousand or so remaining Leadbeater’s possums who live in the hollows of very old mountain ash trees.  Paul Haar, award-winning architect, long-time timber industry watcher and friend of Ceres Fair Wood emailed the other day with his own take on the decision…. ….Great news for the Strathbogies but bad news for the old growth forests of NSW where Gladys Berejiklian has recently ‘remapped and rezoned’ public forests to expand old growth logging there. Also bad news for the forests of Brazil, Bolivia and Peru where illegally logged hardwood laundered into the supply chain will flow into Australia at an ever more rapid rate. If you check out all the durable external wood on building sites across Melbourne suburbs you’ll see old growth and regrowth Blackbutt, Spotted Gum, Tallowwood from coastal NSW as well as (in surging quantities) Cumaru from giant ancient trees of Amazonia. So the question is what are our ethical timber alternatives?   Victoria has a growing number of farmers who have either planted trees suitable for timber or are tree-curious.  Establishing a farm forestry industry to replace native forestry is a huge undertaking but as the saying goes, the best time to plant a tree was 15 years ago, the second best time is today. Trees planted on farmland are a win-win-win-win-win (yeah, so many wins). – First farm forestry takes the pressure off standing native forests locking up carbon and protecting habitat – Second, trees on farms hold water in the soil, prevent erosion and protect waterways – Third, farm forestry sequesters carbon in the trees and in the soil – Fourth, farm trees mitigate rising temperatures and reduce evaporation by creating shade and slowing down winds. – Fifth, farm trees provide shelter for farm animals and habitat for native animals. Farm trees are also an extra source of income for farmers but five is enough of a list.  Providing farmers with a market for their timber is Ceres Fair Wood’s reason for being.  The other part of our mission is helping people who are building, renovating or landscaping feel good about the timber they’ve sourced every time they walk into their house or sit out in their garden. You can see what kind of timber we have available on our timber availabilty list.  

We are chuffed to be featured over on Zero Carbon Moreland. "Timber is a key ingredient when renovating or undertaking DIY projects at home, but few of us know how to avoid buying unsustainable timber – especially timber logged from irreplaceable old growth tropical rainforests in SE Asia and the Amazon. Enter CERES Fair Wood. Started by CERES in 2017, Fair Wood social enterprise’s mission is to teach us how to replace timbers like common decking Merbau or Cumaru, with locally-grown, affordable and faster-growing options. “Fair Wood timber is different to what you get in a typical wood supply store,” says Fair Wood General Manager, Hayden Cronin. “Everything we stock has been sourced locally – from trees that need to be cut down for safety reasons to well managed plantations. We source trees from homeowners, councils, arborists, farmers – people keen to make sure that trees that need to be cut down are used for something more valuable than woodchips.” Fair Wood’s huge range of timbers can be used for everything from veggie boxes, decking, fencing and furniture making, to home construction. “We keep our prices competitive through short supply chains and know that by sourcing locally, we’re employing local people,” says Hayden. “People love that every piece of timber in our warehouse has a story. We know where each tree was grown, why it came down and the name of the miller. This knowledge translates into people’s projects and makes them special.” If you’re thinking about using timber for a project “drop into our Preston warehouse and say hi”! You can read it here and see the other great Moreland company we keep.  

Rowan Reid is serious aussie agroforestry academic, who created his amazing Bambra Agroforesty Farm, in the lush Otways. Rowan has written a book about Australian Agroforestry called 'Heartwood'. It is beautifully illustrated and totally inspiring.

Thursday 26th April, 2018 was a big day for CERES' newest social enterprise Fair Wood - our name got called out and now we are extremely grateful recipients of $20,000 in start-up funding from Darebin Council and Melbourne Innovation Centre's Darebin Pitch-It Competition.