On Monday, the intrepid team of Helen Thomas, Kathryn Andrews, Kim  Hall, Sarah Johnston and myself (Brian) spent the day volunteering at Smith Street Urban Farm.

We started our experience weeding a couple of rows of carrots. The community farm space is HUGE, tucked away behind a council building. It was kinda nice to  sit about having a yarn and plucking weeds from the dirt, and there’s a senes of satisfaction in looking at your work after it’s done.

After a quick break (some library rituals must be maintained! Shout out to Caroline for gluten free cupcakes and Sarah for spicy Christmas tree gingerbread) we moved to the pleasing tactile experience of harvesting beans from a big row. The real joy in this experience (for my tiny lizard brain at least) was that you got to break up the stalks afterwards, which were partly hollow and cracked and crunched as we completed our task.

After lunch, we moved on to the titanic job of weeding out a garden that clearly hadn’t seen any love in a while. We got it fairly well cleared out , making an immense pile of detritus in the middle of the garden, as instructed. By the time we were done, I think most of us were tired but happy- you could really see the difference we’d made.

Thanks to everyone who came along, and to Georgina Staley, the facility’s manager, who kept us right and taught us heaps about how the farm supports the local community as we went.

Have you done your day of volunteering yet? Let us know how it went!