Fremantle Farmer's Market at FERN.

Locally produced and organic goods from 7.30 am to 12.30 pm on Sunday mornings. Lots of farm fresh goodies.

Corner of High Street and Montreal Street, Fremantle.
We went there at about 11 and there were still lots of people. Loads of good food, some decent coffee, organic fruit, veg and lamb. It was cool to see the place so busy.

My first visit to the FERN site.

In it's previous incarnation, the rectangle of land at the corner of Montreal and High Streets, Fremantle was an organically based garden centre. We sold manures, plants, open-pollinated seeds and seedlings, along with a few other odds and sods.
It closed down suddenly and dramatically a few years ago; the locals were aghast.
Deep in debt, there was a sale of anything on site.
That scene, of people tearing the place apart, digging plants up, basically ransacking the place made me cry at the time, seeing all these strangers (I didn't recognise one of the 'seagulls' as prior customers) tearing the place apart.
It had been such a beautiful concept for a shop and place to live my ideals of sharing my knowledge of permaculture and organics.

FERN have been doing lots of good work there. Still I hadn't been to check out what they did with the place..
Last night, I finally visited. It was sparse, no pots anywhere, the ponds and their reeds were all gone, most of the fruit trees were gone, but I could see the hard work that has gone into the place.
We went out the back to the shadehouse area. That's where I felt the most sadness. I'd grown lots of things in there. Some things grew themselves-like the 3 metre tall powton that came up from a root cutting that escaped from its pot.
Some of the good folk from Rocky Bay had been employed potting up plants for sale on site. We had grown some useful plants out there.
Now it stands completely empty. I'd like to get in there and grow lots of plants; all the things I don't have room for at home!

There was a talk about Ecological Engineering, including the use of algal photobioreactors, which can be part of a cycle that cleans water used by industry.
It was a very exciting and inspiring talk, and if I can get my head around the maths and chemistry at uni, I'd be interested in checking it out further.
I knew it would have t be something pretty special to get me back to that site, and the talk was excellent.
So was the vegan nosh-up afterwards!

Fantastic FERN

It's brilliant to see that FERN are organised and advertising themselves and their upcoming workshops in the local paper; no doubt the most useful information ever in said local paper!

What/who is FERN?, you may ask.
Fremantle Environmental Resource Network a group of passionate and dedicated folk who have spent many hours of voluntary time to create an organisation, which aims to educate others on all kinds of topics related to sustainability.
These topics will generally be based on what urban-living people can do to reduce their impact on the environment and global-warming.
Permaculture, organic and biodynamic gardening, becoming more water-wise and other environmental education is what it's all about.

I admit, I haven't been to any of the meetings. My connection is that I used to work at the site that they're using. It was an organically-based permaculture garden centre.
A great place to work - there were fruit trees planted around the place and some ponds with fish and frogs. We sold a lot of edible plants and many interesting 'permaculture' type plants - rare or lesser known useful plants.

The site has changed a lot now, I'm sure. I will go there one day, I want to see what they've done with the place.

Anyone is welcome to join in.
Tuesday night's at 6.30 pm there is the 'magic beanstalk soup night' - share some food for a donation to the cause.

Who knows, I might see you there!

By the way, there's a link to the right to the FERN website if you want a closer look at what these good people are doing.