Keen to join in? Drop off your entries by 5pm on Friday 24 March.

Thanks!

Thanks to a range of long time and new cooking enthusiast friends, who joined in our preserving workshops, we have some delicious jams and chutneys for sale at the Alphington Show coming up on Saturday 25 March from 11am-2pm.

There will be two different tomato chutneys, a plum jam and a strawberry jam for sale, along with vinegars flavoured with herbs from our garden.

A big thank you to Elaine, Manu, Monica, Zoe, Jazmin and Helen for all their efforts.

We hope to see you here!

Lovely to have Yarra Mayor Claudia Nguyen here for morning tea today. And Clare sent her home with some coriander seeds to plant.

We’ve got a new friend on the the corner - a giant dog! Lee made our new little furry friend on Wednesday to brighten up our lives … and remind everyone that the Alphington Dog Show is coming up next weekend, Saturday 25 March at 1 pm.

If you have a fur baby bring it along and join in our funny and friendly dog show! $10 to enter. There is a prize for everyone.

Bring the kids along from 11am for pony rides and crown making etc. Enjoy a CWA devonshire tea! We look forward to seeing you here next weekend for the Alphington Show (and Dog Show!).

We hope you can make it. Find out more here.

On Wednesday we were just sitting down to lunch when we had an unexpected visitor. Professor Kyall Zenger from James Cook University popped in and asked if he could look in our compost bins in his search for black soldier fly larvae. We said yes, and then went about interrogating him about all the things!

So …he is currently going around Australia collecting samples to map the variety of black soldier flies that have made there way to various parts of the country … and doing genetic testing on them. Why we asked? He is looking into using insects for sustainable agriculture and aquaculture food production - and black soldier flies have both a short lifespan and are very high in protein. So he is testing to find the best flies (I assume this means the ones that are both the biggest and highest in protein, in the shortest lifecycle).

He was telling us that they have already started mass production of the black soldier fly for aquaculture food. And explained that insects are a much more sustainable food/protein source for fish than other fish (what with overfishing etc.). How interesting right?

We’ll look forward to following the outcome of his research … and perhaps, just perhaps our compost bins could be the source of THE BEST BLACK SOLDIER FLY IN AUSTRALIA … and ACC could become FAMOUS in this new endeavour.