Nourishing Newcastle

The main goal of this project is to promote and enable the production and distribution of locally grown and preferably chemical-free food.

The project is in its very early stages; there have been a couple of meetings and it has been decided that the first goal will be to set-up a stall at the Farmers Market at Broadmeadow where anyone with locally grown food can sell it. We envisage food coming from backyards, community gardens, schools and other "urban farmers". We have mostly settled on how the stall will operate, but are finalising it before we approach potential food producers.

Future projects might include:

• A fruit/nut tree register. People can register so that they can join up with potential harvesters, with an agreed idea as to how the harvest can be shared.
• A database of people with large yards and no time to garden and people with no space but time for gardening, so they can link up and produce local food.
• Providing information materials about growing food without chemicals.
• Networking local food producers and distributors.
• A website with lots of info!

Update 23 July 2012

Nourishing Newcastle has 3 new projects and a number of ways that you can be a part of the action. We are a community enterprise using volunteer labour to help establish projects with the aim to pay workers a fair wage once projects are established. We would love to use your skills (and yes, you do have skills) or if you just have enthusiasm for food or social change, we want to harness your energy. The 3 projects are as follows:

Nourishing Newcastle Urban Tucker Stall (NNUTS)

NNUTS is a stall which operates at the Newcastle Farmers' Markets and functions as a site where people can sell their backyard produce. NNUTS also acts as a public interface for Nourishing Newcastle and other groups such as Permaculture Hunter Region and Transition Newcastle. The scope for NNUTS is broad and it has the potential to host regular workshops on sustainability and food related matters, as well as a market place to enable people to live the dream of becoming a backyard urban farmer.

We are looking for people who would like to be a part of driving this stall. Roles may include, contacting & coordinating growers, developing simple accounting methods and databases, and occasionally being at our stall. We would also love to hear your ideas and suggestions.

Neighbourhood Supported Agriculture (NSA)

The NSA is a type of community supported agriculture veggie box system operating at the neighbourhood level. We have been allocated 3 blocks of urban land and will be experimenting with a pilot project this coming spring and summer. People will invest in the project by paying for 10 weeks of veggie boxes at the start of the season. We will then use this capital to cultivate the land and produce the veggie boxes for the investors. Produce that is surplus to the veggie boxes will be sold at the NNUTS stall and the funds generated will be reinvested into Nourishing Newcastle projects. We are looking for workers and investors and you can choose to be both.

Workers: The roles will include propagationist, accountant, farm hand, and communicator. We envisage that workers will have the opportunity to participate in any or all or of the roles in a manner that encourages people share skills with each other.

Investors: People will invest $200, which equals 10 weeks of $20 veggie boxes at the start of the season. Veggie boxes will be received weekly from the 21st of October through until Christmas.

Social Media Team

We need your creative skills to communicate our incredible projects to people. Help us deliver our message and get people involved. Be one of our facebook administrators, bloggers, web designers, poster developers & YouTube clippers.

Contact Jamie (on 0413 909 394 or jamie.pomfrett@gmail.com) if you are interested in being involved or have any questions.