Small Property & Harvest Festival

Post Festival Washdown

The inaugural Small Property & Harvest Festival, held 14^th-20^th May at the Centre for Sustainable Living provided a smorgasbord of education activities on how best to manage our properties both small and large.  The Festival met its aim of celebrating small landholders, fresh local food and the growers that produce it.  Experts from the Great Southern jumped on board to offer their skills and experience, to teach the general public how to establish and sustainably manage pastures, vegetable patches, wildlife, native vegetation, soils, worm farms and more!

We learnt a lot from running this inaugural event and there are things we will do differently next time.  We appreciate your feedback so we can improve the next Festival and cater for your needs so please keep them coming in.

The workshops, held over the entire week, were very well attended and feedback has been fabulous.  The workshops included:

*  Building a Garden Bed Greenhouse Tunnel

*  Managing Animals on small Properties

*  Permaculture 101

*  Garden to Plate: Preserve Your Harvest

*  Your Chainsaw: Sharpening & Maintenance

*  Composting & Worm Farms

*  Transformational Farming

*  Vegie Seed Saving & Propogation

*  Garden to Plate: Sourdough Bread & Pizzas

*  Garden to Plate: Cheese Making

*  Caring For Bush & Wetlands

*  The Vegie Patch: Setting Up

*  Feathers Fur & Scales

*  Slow Food Movie Night & Shared Meal

*  Backyard Beekeeping

*  Horse & Pasture Management

*  Land for Wildlife Property Tour

*  Managing Alpacas on Your Property

*  Netting Orchards

*  Minang Bush Tucker & Medicine Walk

*  Fencing

A total of 300 people attended the workshops.  A summary of feedback received is below.

How did you find the presentation and delivery of the workshop facilitator?

Many suggestions were made about what workshops they would like to see offered next.  These suggestions included pruning fruit trees, small property planning and setup, animal welfare, pasta making, herb preserving, keeping chickens, making shampoos and creams, making cleaning products, genetically modified crops – the facts, water quality testing and homeopathy.

The following are just a few of the many comments given by participants.

“Love being at Centre and learning.”

“Hands on participation is excellent.”

“Easy to understand, informative and entertaining." 

“A wonderful workshop.  Lots of laughter.”

The Festival culminated in the Sunday 20^th Expo promoting and celebrating local products and producers as well as providing information to landholders on home and property management.  There was a lot of competition in Denmark on Expo day with the opening of the Munda Biddi track and also the RSPCA Paws Walk.  Despite this, we had a great turnout of 300 people coming through the door.  It was a lovely day, the weather was perfect and we have received great feedback from those who attended. 

We had a great variety of stalls and were treated to local music, providing a very relaxed and enjoyable atmosphere.  A big thank you goes to Terry MacKintosh and Jack Kelly for the coordination of the music program. 

The children did not miss out with a fun-packed program provided by Kristi McMullan.  As always, Kristi provided a fun, thought-provoking and hands-on play experience for the little visitors to the Expo.  The feedback received from children and their parents has been excellent.  Thank you Kristi!

We would like to thank all of our 25 stallholders for being part of our first Small Property & Harvest Festival Expo.  We hope to see you again next year!

Our Small Property & Harvest Festival wouldn’t be possible without our wonderful volunteers.  Thank you to all of the following people who contributed to make this a great event:

★ Geoff and Kay for the time spent on the Small Property & Harvest website

★ Vibodha Clark Uplift Design for the CSL website

★ Kathy and Peter Burgess

★ Christine Romeyn

★ Anne Stasiuk

★ Candy Matthews

★ Karin Kirby

★ Jessie McIver

★ Pam Rumble

★ Beverley Woods

★ Nicole Hodgson

A special mention must go to our wwoofers staying at the Centre for Sustainable Living for doing such a beautiful job of Centre set up and running the kitchen on the day of the Expo.  A big thank you to Johannes, Rasmus, Ricarda, Viola and Natalie.

From the Green Skills team: Craig Carter, Indy Ashbolt-Horth, Louise Duxbury, Mirjana Basic, Stan Vermeeren and Gerda Vogt.