Autumn plant fair 2020

News

We had had nine days with rain leading up to the plant fair and the day before the plant fair things fined up. We were lucky that the weather was very kind to us on the day of the fair. The clouds gathering on the horizon held off until Sunday and Monday when we again received a good drop off rain. Darker clouds were also brewing, with the Covid 19 virus threatening to shutdown ... Well just about everything.

Leela's report: The autumn Plant Fair was a bit blur for me - a joyful, busy one. Familiar faces and new enthusiastic ones, this is such a positive community to be a part of. People are really valuing the importance of connecting with the earth and being a little more sharing & self reliant. We got super lucky with both the timing & the weather - I'm already looking forward to the next one!

Jeff's report: This was our busiest Plant Fair in 11 years. Good weather and crowds of keen gardeners made the day a success.  Almost our entire stock of Autumn – Winter seeds were sold-out. The most popular seeds were: lettuces, snow peas, pak choi, chillies, carrots, rocket, coriander, spinach & chards, bok choi, tomatoes, marigolds, basils, spring onions, nasturtiums, broccoli, wasabi lettuce, fennel, mizuna, radish and all types of beans. We distributed our entire range of plant material, nearly 70% of our stock of seed packets and a bundle of Seed Savers Handbooks. Our range of herbs, fruits and perennial vegetables were very popular, including: Okinawa & Longevity spinach, Hawaiian sweet potato, cassava, turmeric, sweet pineapple, aloe vera, strawberries, mint, lemon grass and curry leaf. Special thanks to all the seed and plant material suppliers, seed cleaners, seed packers and the plant fair volunteers: Tara, Jeff H, Jeff A, Gillian, Leela, Tim, Don, Phillipa, Nick, Merren, Chris, Rosemary and David.

As always, an event such as this can-not go ahead without a huge amount of work by volunteers. I'm sure I'll miss some people, but Jeff has done a good job of listing everyone except two of the most important people. On behalf of the BSS I would like to thank Jeff for all the work he put in behind the scenes managing our seed collection, printing labels and just keeping stuff organised. Second I would like to extend our thanks to Gillian as our plant fair coordinator and generous host for our seed packing day. If anyone is interested in taking the role of plant fair coordinator for the next plant fair, please send Gillian an email using the address plantfair@bellingenseedsavers.com

A piece of history

Evelyn & Marc, the new owners/custodians of David & Irene’s property at Spicketts Creek, presented this gift of colourful zinnias. The zinnia’s, self-sown around the garden, are a lovely memory of the founders of Bellingen Seed Savers.

Quotes

The future is a little less clear amid the current pandemic, but here are a couple of quotes that I think are pertinent to current times:

“The future depends on what you do today.”
Mahatma Gandhi 

"With our long TODO lists around the home, we should see this as an opportunity!"
Gillian