The SAGE (Sustainable Agriculture and Gardening Eurobodulla shire) project in Moruya was awe-inspiring.
They run a demonstration garden that was created to provide a working model of how someone could grow their own food on a small block of land and now it’s evolved into the demonstration site plus plots that locals can rent and they also have market gardens where They run an intern program, training new market gardeners while providing them with a small wage until they get themselves established. Once established they sell their produce at the SAGE farmers market that happens every Tuesday which is full of farmers, makers and growers that produce within 160 km of Moruya. The profits that the market makes off of the stallholders fee goes into funding the internship program at the garden so there’s this beautiful cycle that insures that more and more people in the community are being trained to grow food and in turn the community is growing food resilience and the people that live here are really reaping the benefits in both health and lifestyle. I think this model is so fantastic and can’t wait to take it back to my own community!
We happened to be in town while the SAGE garden was having their monthly working bee so we went along and got involved and had the pleasure of meeting the many beautiful people involved in the place. Everyone was so cheerful and welcoming and super switched on. There was so much food happening in the garden! The ladies there harvest regularly and take the produce that they have grown to the women’s and youth refuge in town to provide meals for people in need. The garden was also an amazing place to go weed foraging. I’ve never seen purslane so big! We picked as much as we could and didn’t even make a dent in the purslane patch. Mmm.. dinner tonight: Potato, Leek and Purslane Soup. Recipe here:
The gardeners loaded us up with Zucchinis, cucumbers, onions and pumpkins. We were also able to fill our water drums up with precious pure rainwater, Hooray!
We also loved the Rustic Pantry wholefoods store which was a dream come true for filling up our bulk goods. It is an amazing place full of everything you ever wanted and the layout is just done so well. Very professional and organised and pleasant to be in and they had a box of toys in the centre of the store so you can actually SHOP and walk out with FOOD in your bag instead of walking out feeling traumatised with hardly anything to eat and a very grumpy toddler. The store is owned by Bronwyn, who was so lovely and she actually got the idea for the store after visiting Mullumbimby! She doubles as a radiologist and was seeing so much disease and illness that was so obviously linked to poor food and lifestyle and that’s what really inspired her to provide good organic food to her community. Shes has the place for eight years and now her kids have all grown up and left the nest she is ready to leave the nest too, so this wonderful business is actually for sale! Bronwyn’s offering full mentorship to whoever buys it, as she really wants it to go into the right hands so that It can keep serving the community the way it is now. Bronwyn was astonishingly lovely and trusting and actually when we went to pay my card for some reason wouldn’t work and she didn’t even blink an eye “oh no worries you can pay me later!” and let us walk out the door with $100 worth of food in our bag and just trusting that we would come back and pay! In her words what goes around comes around and if that’s the case she certainly has some good things coming her way!
The area is so beautiful with its gorgeous beaches, bike trails, crystal blue river and funky cafes.
We had such a nice time kicking back here for a few days while we waited for the Tuesday farmers market, and wow was this market impressive! Firstly they have e-market option that is absolutely genius! All of the markets stallholders put their produce up online and it’s like an online store, where you go in and choose all of the things that you want from your favourite stalls, you pay at the online checkout and then on Tuesday someone goes around those market stalls before the market opens and collects all of your groceries, puts them together in a box and you just walk up to the SAGE stall and collect your box! You don’t have to wait in queues or run around like a headless chicken trying to get all your groceries for the week, instead you can just have a coffee (or a home made blueberry ice cream) have a chat and soak up the atmosphere of a RELAXED and JOYFUL farmers market.
NThe producers were also of such good quality, everyone behind the stall was the person who’d grown or made that food from scratch. We met Eli and Ebony from Dewsburys Free-range Pork who breed rare and specialty breeds of pigs and produce high quality, ethically raised pork on a rotational grazing system which leaves a positive impact on the land. So pretty much the exact opposite of how conventional meet is raised, these guys are setting the standard for a new way of farming meat. Eli actually used to have a firewood business when oneday a customer offered to trade him a load of wood for 4 pigs, and he’s never looked back!
The other thing that really impressed me about the SAGE farmers market was the consciousness around packaging, (and actually that rings true for the whole of Moruya who have a pretty strong advocacy on banning single use plastic bags) the market boasts a reusable bag library where if you didn’t bring one yourself you can borrow a shopping bag and bring it back next time. They also print a seasonal cookbook of which we bought a copy and it is full of such fabulous recipes. In the end we left Moruya with a full heart and way, way too much food. If you are on the south coast and you need a feed hit us up!!
Food Oasis 