Northey Street City Farm

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Winter Solstice Festival Kids Kingdom

 

 

We have a jam-packed program of Nature-based Arts and fun activities in their own Kid’s Kingdom for the kids. The day starts with a chance to make some music with Beats Bus Productions Upcycled Drumming. Then there is a slower pace as the kids get their hands dirty while they Garden with Krystelle, where they will plant their own seed to take home. Circus Connections will then be leading the kids in some fun circus skills and play.

Throughout the day, Rachel from Nature Arts will be hosting a quiet space for the kids to paint with mud, play with clay and work with bits from nature to express their inner world. Then in the afternoon, the kids can make and decorate their own lantern for the Lantern Parade. Beeswax tea light candles will be available for sale for $1, generously supplied by Happy Flame Candles. Be sure to check out their stall at the Festival.

Another addition this year is our free creche service in the kid’s area for children aged 3-11. Your kids will be cared for and engaged in activities while you attend the adult workshops. Sign them in for up to 2 hours. (Conditions apply for the safety and comfort of your child.) Disclaimer: We will absolutely be held accountable for the flowers painted on their faces, dirt under their nails and the smiles on their faces when you return. 😊

KIDS KINGDOM program

All day Nature Art with Rachel French

12.00 Upcycled Drumming. Beats Bus Productions
2.00  Gardening for kids. Krystelle Ellaby
3.00  Circus Skills & Play. Circus Connect
4.00  Lantern Making. Rachel French

Check out our full festival program.

Buy Tickets.

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New Winter Solstice Festival Teens Program

This year we’re introducing a youth space, full of activities and workshops specifically for teens and young adults.  Have a go at bushcrafts, drumming, circus skills or slam poetry and find your hidden talents.

Andy Currey from Sun and Stars Bushcraft will be hosting the space and will be available all afternoon to share his bushcraft skills with those wanting to learn how to make your own rope or carve your own tools. He will have all the gear and has loads of experience working with teens on bush survival courses.

 

At midday the youth program will kick off with a bang (literally!), with Talkin’ the Drum running an African Drumming Workshop. Elliott will be bringing 30 Djembes so don’t let not owning a drum stop you from joining in on this session. This guy is a master drummer and a great teacher. You will be keeping and creating the beat in no time.

 

For a bit of fun and play in the afternoon, we have Circus Connection running a circus skills workshop. Got some skills already? Come and have a play and get some tips from a professional, seasoned performer. Keen to learn something new? Suzi knows her stuff and can help you master seemingly difficult tricks. All toys will be supplied.

We have also teamed up with Ruckus Brisbane to bring you a 2 hour Slam Poetry Workshop and U/21’s Open Mic Slam. What’s a slam you ask? It’s an open mic competition where you get three minutes on the mic. You can do a poem, rap, story, song lyrics, as long as it’s original, it’s all gravy. So you can either rock up at 5pm just to sign up for open mic or you can come at 2pm for workshop, where you will learn how to write slam poems and be a bad-ass on stage.

No registration is needed for any of the workshops or the Open Mic Slam. Just rock up. However, places are limited to space and time, so turn up early to secure your spot. Check out more info on the Ruckus Facebook event page here.

Teens Area Program

Hosted by Sun and Stars Bushcraft (Andy Currey)

12.00   African drumming. Talkin’the drum  (Elliott Orr)

2.00    Slam Poetry workshop (2hr). Ruckus Slam

4.00    Circus Skills & play. Circus Connect

5.00 – 6.30    Under 21’s Slam Poetry Open Mic

hosted by Ruckus Slam in the Open Mic Tent

Check out our full program.

Buy Tickets.

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Winter Solstice Festival Sustainable Living Workshop Programme

At the Farm, our vision is for all to Live Sustainably. As we are a farm, many people think this only entails the gardening and land care aspects of sustainability. However, Permaculture considers the broader aspects of living on this earth and with each other. When designing this year’s education program for adults at our Winter Solstice Festival, we decided to explore the three Permaculture ethics. Hence, our program for this year will run across three tents: Earth Care, People Care and Fair Share. Throughout the afternoon, each tent will be hosting 4 hours worth of talks and workshops relevant to the Permaculture ethic the tent is named after.

In our Earth Care tent, we will be starting with a talk on Keeping Native Bees hosted by our own Mel Marx. Then you will be in for a treat with local gardening celebrity of ABC fame, Jerry Coleby-Williams, doing a talk on Growing in the Subtropics, followed by a full hour of Q&A. So bring in all those gardening questions you want answers too and hopefully Jerry can help you out with some ideas. The final talk in this tent, actually links Earth Care and People Care, as one of our more experienced and popular gardening educators, Adrian Holbeck teams up with Dr Sarah Lantz to talk on the link between soil health and gut health and the importance of both. Sarah may even have time to give a basic demonstration on how to make your own fermented foods with the leftover vegies in your fridge, before they reach the “toss them in the compost” stage.

People Care is important in Permaculture, because how can we live sustainably if we have poor relationships with ourselves and each other. This tent will host talks on a range of topics that will help us to develop our connection to self and others. Sustainable Relating by Tony Rowe and Anne Miller will offer tips on connecting and communicating our needs and vulnerabilities with each other. Then Andy Roy from Powerhouse Programs will explore the importance of Rites of Passage for Teens and how to support our teenage boys across this challenging transition into adulthood. Bill Lee-Emery from Evolve Australia will then be sharing strategies for using our multiple innate intelligences of our Head, Heart and Gut and how when they collaborate, we tend to make better decisions more aligned with our values. At the end of the day, Brisbane Independent School Principal Jen Haynes will be presenting a talk on how to develop a healthy relationship with your child that will support them on their path to becoming independent, confident learners at school.

The Fair Share principle is about taking what we need and redistributing what we don’t and sharing resources to minimise our impact. Developing a sustainable economy is all about fair share. This tent’s talks will be about ensuring that the decisions made around commerce and community governance are sustainable. The presenters will be exploring concepts of sustainable accountability in business and governance, through a talk by Nick and Thomas from the Accountability Institute in Victoria and in Erin Young’s Sociocracy workshop. There will also be a talk by Lara and Andrew from The Tiny House Company sharing what they’ve learned in developing houses with a smaller footprint. And another by UQ PhD student, Jason Hilder, who will be discussing the idea of Co-housing, and options for living in community that reduce our footprint on the Earth and save money and people’s sanity. I’m sure these talks will stimulate much conversation and solution focused thinking.

The only hard thing about the Winter Solstice Sustainable Living program is going to be deciding which talk to attend in each time slot. So come and celebrate Nature’s Abundance and enjoy our abundant education program.

Check out our full program here. And get in early to secure your tickets via Eventbrite.

Between the education program, our great live music acts featuring Mr Darren Percival and Wild Marmalade, dancing around the bonfire to the African drum beats of Spankinhide, and our kids and teens activitiy programs and workshops, we are going to have a packed house. Don’t miss out!

 

 

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Winter Solstice Festival Program Unveiled…

We’re excited to reveal the wonderful program we have in store for you at this year’s Winter Solstice Festival on 17 June from 11.30 am to 9.30 pm.

Our Sustainable Living education program has a smorgasbord of presenters with talks and workshops happening in three tents right through the afternoon. Our three tents will cover a broad range of topics under the three ethics of Permaculture: Earth Care, People Care and Fair Share. Learn about Tiny Housing and Co-housing, get some tips on how to create sustainable relationships, and hear from local gardening guru Jerry Coleby-Williams, who will be sharing his knowledge of growing in the subtropics with us for a full 2 hours, including a Q & A so you can get your questions answered.

 

For the kids, we have a jam-packed program of Earth Arts, drumming and circus play and this year we also have a full program of activities specifically for teens and young adults, from carving your own tool to expressing yourself in a Slam Poetry workshop. Another addition this year is our creche service in the kid’s area for children aged 3-11, where your kids will be cared for and engaged in activities while you attend your talks. Everyone loves a good parade, so dress up in something bright and come to the kid’s lantern making workshop ready for the parade (or BYO if you’ve been creative at home).

 

 

Our main stage will be hosting our Welcome to Country and ceremonies, along with live music all day. Things will ramp up as the education program draws to a close around dusk, when the stage will light up with the energy and smile of the enigmatic Mr Darren Percival. Audiences have been falling in love with this guy for years at Woodford Folk Festival and on The Voice in 2012. He will be sharing his vocal magic with us and inspiring us to find our voice and sing along. Do not miss this guy, he is awesome!

 

At sunset we will take time to come together for the Solstice ceremony, with local drumming group Spankinhide leading the way for our lantern parade to the lighting of our bonfire. Nothing says Winter Solstice quite like dancing around a fire to the beat of the drums in celebration of the season. Get ready to sweat!

 

 

For those who want to stay and dance the night away, we will have Wild Marmalade gracing our stage for some funky beats to fill your soul and get your feet groovin’. If you have not seen these guys perform, you are in for a blessing, with their unique combo of didge, drums and guitar. Having performed all over the world, including at Woodford and Splendour in the Grass in Oz, we are pumped that we get to host them here at Northey Street City Farm.

 

There really will be something for everybody at this great local event. So don’t miss out. Due to site constraints, we will have limited tickets, so jump on over to Eventbrite and book your ticket now. We look forward to seeing you here on the 17th June for an abundant day of education and celebration.

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2017 Winter Solstice Festival Update

Winter Solstice Festival

17 June 2017

Winter Solstice bonfire
Winter Solstice

With the Autumn Equinox upon us, we are now in full swing getting the Winter Solstice Festival organised. In less than three months, we will be celebrating the shortest day of the year with an abundant education program, loads of great activities for the kids, a new program just for teens and a great ceremony and music program to connect and entertain you. We know we have a diverse community, that’s what makes the farm special, so we’re pulling together an abundant and varied program to cater to you all, and to perhaps give you an opportunity to expose yourself to some new ideas

Program

Our education program this year will see talks and workshops happening in three different tents throughout the afternoon, covering topics relevant to the three ethics of Permaculture, which are Earth Care, People Care and Fair Share. We feel it is important to explore the bigger picture of what true sustainability entails. Earth care is obviously essential, however without people care and nurturing healthy, sustainable relating, the task of coming together and working as a community can be greatly hindered. Finally, if attention and conscious intention isn’t given to the economic sustainability of communities, and the distribution of resources isn’t managed in a self-sustaining model, then a community may struggle to be truly sustainable in the long term. Our program will focus on these three aspects of sustainable living, bringing together first-class educators and presenters in their fields of expertise to share their knowledge with you.

Our kids program is always really popular, so we are pulling together a mix of old favourites and newcomers to inspire, educate and entertain your children. We are also exploring the idea of offering a Creche service in the kids’ area, so that parents can attend the adult program and pay attention, whilst knowing that their children are safe and happy enjoying their own kids program. Plus, this year for the first time, we will have a teens program with activities specifically targeted to their specific interests and learning styles. We want to provide something for everyone in the family this year, so you can all come along and enjoy the winter solstice together.

Finally, our music program is coming together nicely, with a great line-up of artists, including several popular acts who performed at Woodford Folk Festival recently. The afternoon’s music program will help you chill and relax out on the green, before we have you coming together in song and ceremony, and then dancing around the bonfire to the beat of the drum. After the ceremony and bonfire, you can choose to get your groove on and dance the night away with a great band on the mainstage. Or join a more intimate affair, where the entertainment on the chalkboard stage will be provided by you and your fellow community members who wish to get up and share your musical talents with an encouraging audience. Whichever you choose, I’m sure it will be a night to remember.

Getting Involved in the Winter Solstice Festival

Please follow us on Facebook, so you can keep up-to-date with our full program as we release it in the lead up to the Winter Solstice festival.

Also, if you would like to be involved in the lead up and set up of the festival, or on the day, you can get in touch with me about becoming a volunteer. And if you can commit just 3 hours of your time, we will give you free entry to the event in exchange, making this great event accessible to everyone. I’m happy to chat with you about what you can contribute. Please email me via events@nscf.org.au with “Volunteering” as your subject line. Make sure you tell me a little about yourself, what experience, skills and passions you have and what role/s you feel you could be involved with. Possibilities include helping with marketing, putting up fencing and marquees prior to the event, stage management, security, child care (blue card required), or parking attendant on the day. We need a wide range of people and skills, so get in touch and become a part of this great event.

I look forward to hearing from you and to co-creating this wonderful event for our community with you.

To everyone else, see you at the Solstice Festival on June 17th !

Georgia

March 2017

 

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Introduction to Permaculture Weekend Course

Saturday 25 March and Sunday 26 March, 2017
With Morag Gamble

Introduction to Permaculture is a wonderful weekend immersion in permaculture. Explore the basics of permaculture principles, design and action. Gather great ideas for designing your permaculture oasis. Learn simple and useful skills that will really help you to create an abundant permaculture garden at home, in your street, at school or in your community.  Come and get your hands in the earth and learn by doing.

The topics covered in the Introduction to Permaculture weekend are:

  • What is Permaculture
  • Permaculture Ethics and Design Principles
  • Permaculture for Urban and Suburban areas
  • Garden planning with Permaculture Zones and Sectors
  • Designing your permaculture system
  • Permaculture in the home
  • Building the soil fertility naturally
  • Creating a no-dig garden
  • Establishing a low-maintenance permaculture garden
  • How to create abundance in your edible garden
  • Propagating herbs, perennials and subtropical plants
  • Introduction to seed saving
  • Creating an urban food forest
  • Permaculture in the community

Cost: $200 / $170 (Healthcare Card holder) + Booking Fee.

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Earth Kids Easter holiday program

Monday 3 April to Friday 7 April 2017, 9am to 3pm each day

Join us for a week of fun and outdoor discovery in the Northey Street City Farm Earth Kids school holiday program. Kids between 7 and 11 years  old will learn about the animals and plants at the Farm , explore Indigenous knowledge, experiment with Earth Arts and bushcraft skills, and put permaculture into practice.

Earth Kids will support kids to become ‘nature smart’- to have the knowledge, understandings and skills to engage in creating a more sustainable world – in a fun and interactive way.

“This generation will require leaders and citizens who can think ecologically, understand the interconnectedness of human and natural systems, and have the will, ability, and courage to act.”
– Michael K. Stone

Price: $295 – $395 – Sliding scale according to parental income. For every second and third child there is a $50 discount. Two scholarship places are available at $100 per child for parents with Health Care Cards.

For more information and to book: School Holiday Programs

For enquiries email: education@nscf.org.au or call 3857 8775

 

“The future belongs to the nature smart” – Richard Louve, author of ‘Last Child in the Woods’

 

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Seasonal vegetable growing in the humid subtropics

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South East Queensland and Northern New South Wales have a humid subtropical climate. Vegetables grow best when the temperature (including frost), day length, rainfall and humidity suit their needs. The number and type of pests and diseases also varies with the time of year.

The humid subtropics have three seasons, which are similar to the summers of other climates: a cool-temperate summer, a Mediterranean summer and a tropical summer. The exact timing of these seasons varies from year to year, depending on whether we are in drought or other climatic factors.

Cool temperate summer is in our late autumn and winter, from late March to early August.  This season has cool mornings, warm days, and is humid and wet initially, then becoming dry.

Mediterranean summer is in our spring from mid-August to late November. This season has cool mornings initially, then becoming warm, warm to hot days with low humidity and low rainfall.

Tropical summer is in our summer and early autumn, from late November to late March. This season has warm to very hot nights and days with high humidity. Rainfall can be heavy, but there are also dry periods.

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Planting guide for the 3 subtropical seasons
Plant group Cool Temperate Mediterranean Tropical
Asteraceae Lettuce, chicory, endive, Jerusalem Artichoke Lettuce (non-hearting), sunflower –
Alliums Leeks, bunching onions, spring onion, garlic, onion Bunching onion, spring onion,

garlic chives

 –
Brassicas Cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, Asian greens, kohl rabi, kale, turnip, radish, rocket, mizuna Bok choy

Tatsoi

rocket

radish

 –
Chenopods Beetroot, silverbeet, spinach Beetroot,

silverbeet

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Cucurbits – Pumpkin, zucchini, squash, cucumber, rockmelon, water melon, choko. Pumpkin, rockmelon, water melon, bitter melon, gourd, luffa
Grasses – – Maize, sweet corn
Legumes French beans, snow peas, peas, broad beans Climbing beans, French beans Snake bean, hyacinth bean,

mung bean,

cow pea, soy bean, peanut, pigeon pea
Malvaceae – Rosella, hibiscus spinach Okra, rosella, hibiscus spinach
Solanaceae Potatoes tomatoes capsicum Tomatoes, eggplant, capsicum Cherry tomatoes, eggplant, capsicum
Umbelliferae Carrots, celery coriander, parsnip, parsley, fennel – –
Various (tubers) – Sweet potato, yacon Cassava, taro, yam, jicama,

sweet potato
Various (greens) – – Amaranth,

kang kong.

Brazil spinach, Ceylon Spinach, Egyptian spinach, Surinam spinach, Okinawa spinach,
Various (herbs) Borage, winter tarragon Basil, oregano, sage, thyme, mint, parsley, rosemary Chilli, Vietnamese mint, ginger, turmeric, galangal

 

Propagation

Growth of seeds into seedlings can take from 2 to 6 weeks, depending on the time of year and the time that the seeds take to germinate. So seeds need to be sown about a month, on average, before the seedlings are planted in the garden.

Propagation for the three summers can begin from:

  • Cool Temperate – mid February
  • Mediterranean – mid July (with greenhouse or heating)
  • Tropical – early November

NSCF Supporters

Northey Street City Farm is proudly supported by Brisbane City Council through the Environment Grants program.

get in touch

Farm & Education
(07) 3857 8775
info@nscf.org.au

Nursery
(07) 3857 8774
nursery@nscf.org.au

Markets
0491 191 434
markets@nscf.org.au

Connect with us

VISIT US

Location: 16 Victoria Street, Windsor QLD 4030
Office Hours: Tuesday - Thursday 9am-4pm
Market Hours: Sunday 6am-11am
Nursery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 8:30am-12:30pm, Sunday 7:30am-12pm. Closed Mondays and Public Holidays.
The Northey Street City Farm community acknowledges the Yuggera and Turrbal people as the traditional owners of the land the Farm is on, and we acknowledge their elders of the past and present. Northey Street City Farm is committed to working collectively with First Nations people (especially Yuggera and Turrbal people) towards reparative and empowering action. Learn more about this work.
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