Hi Leanne here. A few years ago my old uni housemate encouraged me to strip my olive 🫒 tree of fruit and add them to the harvest from his house in Brunswick. And he kindly took all our fruit off to magically become olive oil.

When I got the oil back it was such a joy to think it came from my tree!

This year you can do the same thing … just register and then drop off your olives at CERES Fair Food at 20 Water Rd Preston (not the East Brunswick site) and it will be magically returned in the form of oil.

Thanks to Darebin, Yarra and Moreland Councils, CERES and 3000Acres for organising this great community activity.

And … if you’ve never done it before a good tip is to lay a big sheet under your tree and invest in a couple of plastic kids beach/sandpit rakes. Then you can rake along the branches. The rakes will pull the olives off without pulling the leaves off … and the olives will drop down onto the sheet … and you can then gather that up and tip your harvest into your collection container. It makes the process so much quicker than hand picking …

Here’s the official advertising blurb for the event. Thanks Nat from Darebin for sending it through! I am sure there will be people in our community super keen to join in.

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The Olives to Oil Harvest Festival is coming to Darebin, in partnership with CERES 3000acres.

Come together over the weekend of 27-29 May to harvest olives from streets, parks and productive gardens. The olives will be pressed communally into delicious, local olive oil and distributed back to the people who help with the harvest. 

Drop off your freshly picked olives at CERES Fair Food (Preston) on Sunday 29 May 12-2pm. Collect your oil from Reservoir Library two weeks later.

For more information email olivestooil@ceres.org.au or register here: https://www.3000acres.org/olives-to-oil

What goes around comes around.

In the last month or so many in our community have embarked on their traditional annual epic tomato sauce/passata making ritual.

And because we mentioned in our newsletter that we had a glut of jars kindly donated by the community … some savvy readers asked if we could share the love. So of course we did.

In March many of our excess jars went back out into the Alphington/Fairfield universe to support local passata efforts.

And the results? Lena kindly shared a bottle or two of her delicious tomato sauce with us as thanks for sharing the jars. How great is neighbourhoodliness.

Tickets are now on sale. Click here.

Coming up on the 1 May, at the Alphington Bowls Club. Yum!

Tickets will be on sale from this afternoon. Follow this link or check back on the CWA page on our website.

The inaugural ‘people’s choice’ at the Alphington Show goes to Florence Maslen for her beautiful plaited bread.

Thanks Heather for suggesting this new addition to the show - it was a great way to get the community involved on the day.

For anyone yet to collect their entries, please drop by this week - the last few remaining items are in the foyer.

And congratulations once again to all those who entered. It was really fun to see how talented and creative so many people in our community and beyond are.