You may not believe us but a whole lot of visioning, planning, thinking, talking, meeting  and (responsible) beer drinking goes on behind the scenes at Future Feeders. As if it's not enough to get a working farm off the ground and running, we're simultaneously attempting to grow a movement that champions young growers. We're not quite sure exactly how that will look yet. 

While it's sometimes difficult to justify the off-farm time, we spent 3 and half hours on Tuesday morning discussing our personal visions for FF as well as where we hoped to see our enterprise further down the track. Suffice to say, we probably could have continued all day.

We're throwing around a lot of ideas and finding inspiration in various projects happening here and across the seas. We're excited to see the development of one of the first farm incubator projects here in Australia - Farmer Incubator - and we will be following their journey with interest.

In the meantime, we crack on with our little patch of dirt. And speaking of dirt, we made a whole row of it disappear on Sunday with a little help from our friends who showed up for our very first working bee. When my brother and his partner offered to come down for a "visit" we seized the opportunity to put them and the rest of the crew to work (Surpriiiiiiiise working bee!)! 

We were incredibly grateful to have some willing and able humans actually show up on a Sunday morning to join us in the gardens. To show our appreciation our resident chef (thanks, Chef Cal) offered up a truly locally-sourced feast for lunch. We'll be putting these on monthly and we'd love to have you. We promise its not all hard work... 

Oops, we missed a weekly wrap in there but you'll have to forgive us because last Tuesday we made our first harvest for sales! Not only that but all the sales we made were to businesses within a 1km radius. Take that, food miles! 

We'd especially like to thank our friends at Santos Organics for not hesitating to jump on board. These guys are well-known in the Northern Rivers for their ongoing support of local, organic farmers.

Sense of achievement doesn't begin to describe that first harvest feeling! And although we're not talking massive amounts - and can't even think about adding up the true cost of those herbs including  all the hours worked over the last 7 months since we first broke ground - it is amazing to think that something we grew actually turned into cash. 

There's a meme that gets around a bit on facebook (perhaps only if like me your feed is full of fellow farmers and foodies) that's accompanied by a Ron Finlay quote:  
"Growing your own food is like printing your own money."

I never quite got that one. "Really?," I thought, "Growing your own food is really just like... well, growing your own food. Which is great. But it's definitely not like printing your own money" I've changed my mind since Tuesday. 

Our timing has been spot on really, considering that Fair Food Week kicked off on the 10th October and will run until the 19th. If you haven't yet been turned on to this amazing initiative click on the link and explore. There are almost 100 events going on across the country in celebration of "fresh, local, community-driven food enterprises, farmers, community gardeners and eating." What's not to love?!

After our scheduled community gardens event was cancelled at the last minute, Future Feeders decided to carry on hosting an intimate tour with a small but engaged group that showed up on Saturday the 11th. Kudos goes to Joel for being committed to getting on with the job despite all odds (true to form). In his words, "you can't postpone fair food week - it's a national event!"

At Future Feeders - like many other small-scale farmers farming sustainably - its fair food week every week but this particular week is a fantastic opportunity to spread the word about ethically-produced food far and wide. Get on board.