Community Composting

The secret to our healthy garden plants at All Hallows Community Garden is our community compost full of diversity and life. We have three rotating compost bins in the garden where community members are welcome to add their food scraps. Once decomposed this creates our garden soil (humus - organic matter). The diversity of food scraps adds to the diversity of nutrients that we make available to our garden plants. This morning I emptied one of the compost bins that was full of rich humus created from decomposed food scraps, leaves and other green waste onto our garden. This dark rich, earthy smelling humus was teaming with worms - it was very energising to see that we are supporting and enhancing the life of creatures in our garden through the practice of composting - while minimising waste that goes to landfill.

Happenings in the Garden...

Even though you haven't heard from us on the blog for a while we have been actively engaged in the garden. 

• We are developing and planning the Parish Forest Garden - please refer to page dedicated to this project.
• Our chickens are doing very well - settled and thriving in their home. It's not unusual to hear their happy sounds during Mass - they are always a point of interest afterwards when they receive a visit from children and families before going home.
• We continue to meet in the garden every month for garden activities and social engagement. We have a wonderful time and welcome anyone who would like to join us - no garden experience necessary we share our individual talents to learn from each other  - diversity is the key to a successful community garden. Please refer to upcoming workshops and events for garden dates.
• We have a new garden shed - we are all very happy about this - we now have a space to store our garden tools and resources - plus our new wheelbarrow!
• The next famous Bob's Bistro event is coming up in July - further details will be posted on the blog.  
• Our vegetable garden is thriving - we have had a healthy harvest of leafy greens, eggplant, and various herbs. Our scarecrows are not scary enough to keep the pesky ibis away so we have had to add some netting over the garden beds to stop them eating our seedlings and harvest. We even had a garden bed of rockmelon this summer that grew from our compost.

Bob's Bistro hosts Mini Vinnies' 1st Birthday Party!

Friday 27 April 2012

It was a great honour for the Garden team's Bob's Bistro, to have been asked to host this very special celebration of a milestone of the Mini Vinnies program run by Mrs Carmen Pollifrone and her team of dedicated children and parents from our Parish school. Mini Vinnies supports the St Vincent de Paul Society's Night Patrol.

Incredibly, the Bob's Bistro team fed over 300 adults and children at this event in the Parish Hall.  Everyone enjoyed a plate of pasta with salad and bread, followed by beautiful cakes and slices.  Chestnuts were roasted over open fires and marshmallows were toasted!

Again our Parish home cooks generously gave their time to cook the 15 big pots of pasta sauce and an amazing selection of sweets.  

We really have an amazing community here at All Hallows!

Bob's Bistro - Spring 2011

Spit-Roasted Spring Lamb

Posting of photos of this beautiful Spring evening in the Garden on Saturday, 19 November last year, is long overdue.  Particularly, when we have since held another extremely successful Bob's Bistro since - photos from that night will be posted shortly too.  Thank-you to Tony Penteado for his beautiful photography that captured such beautiful memories from both nights.

Spring Lamb from the Moran Family Farm was spit-roasted and served with a spectacular array of salads prepared by many Parish home cooks.  

Everybody ate at two long communal tables that spread across the entire Parish lawn.

It was great to have Brian (one of our Parishioners) on hand,  who we found out is a retired Butcher.  If it weren't for him, we wouldn't have had the lamb so beautifully carved!

2011 Canada Bay Council Sustainability Awards

We won our first award! 

All Hallows Parish School Community Garden was nominated for a 2011 Sustainability Award by Canada Bay Council.  We are thrilled to announce that we won the category 'Environment Community Organisation Award' at their Awards Night last Monday night.  Michelle Carrick received the award on behalf of the school and was presented by Mayor Angelo Tsirekas, with a beautifully framed certificate and $200 of vouchers for us to spend at Bunnings.  

Well done to everyone involved in the development of the garden so far, and congratulations especially to the Year 5/6 children that have been maintaining the Compost system within the school.  

Awards Night - Rhodes Phoenix Chinese Restaurant

Arrival of Chickens!

One piece of exciting news this week is the arrival of 6 Chinese Silkie hens and their fantastic hen house and run. You will find them up behind the Church near the Peoples' Units.  These were very well-loved and generously donated to our Garden by a parish family, and they are settling in well – one has even laid an egg already!  We do need to organise a system for their care - a meeting will be held outside the Parish Hall this Saturday morning at 9am for those interested in being added to this Roster. 

The first egg!

Bob's Bistro - What A Night!

Saturday 18 June - Parish Hall

Thank-you to everyone that attended the launch of Bob’s Bistro last Saturday night. 

The Parish Hall was transformed into an Italian Eatery for the evening – Father Bob, Father Silvio and 130 parishioners, school parents and children enjoyed the fine fare on offer – bread and olives, pasta and salad, fruit, cakes, gelato and chestnuts which had been roasted over the open-fire.  A great value night out for $15 pp! We are vey grateful to the families and businesses that donated ingredients or time to make the event possible.

Proceeds of the night will go towards the development of the garden, but the main vision for the Bistro is for our community to have the opportunity to come together to enjoy the “fruits” of the garden.  With the garden in its early stages, we weren’t able to serve produce from our garden this time, but the plan is for the Menu of each seasonal event to be developed from what will be harvested at that time of year.

Looking forward to the warmth of Spring, we are about to start planning our spring crops.  Feel free to email us bree@seedharvestspoon.com.au with any Menu ideas (I’m thinking Spring lambs….) for “Prima Vera” at Bob’s Bistro, so that we can plant ingredients.

The Kids' Table and Father Bob of the Bistro

The Pasta Cooks

Plating Up in the Kitchen

Salad Servers?

Good Food, Good Wine & Good Friends

A Few Words

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire

Keeping Warm!

Toasting Marshmallows

Great Gelato - Strawberry, Chocolate, Vanilla, Panna Cotta AND Coffee flavours!

Beautiful Fresh Produce from Sydney Markets but next time from our Garden we hope!

We invite you to post your photos or thoughts of the night.