Journeys in permaculture design…
Source rediscovered
A short story and photo essay to illustrate a food system initiative in southern Tasmania. Comparing photos from 2010 and December 2023, we can see how Source has changed.
2010. Yes, that must have been when it was. We were in Tasmania for a community garden conference and were touring sites around Hobart. That’s when we came to the UTas campus and found Source. We were inspired.
Zap ahead to November this year. We are in Hobart again — we now live in Tasmania, out on the coast — and we are again at UTas. We park the van and walk down to the venue where my 11 and 12 year old granddaughters are about to graduate from Childrens’ University, a UTas and schools program designed to stimulate learning and experience outside of school hours. Down the hill we go and… we stop, and a sense of familiarity comes over us. What’s this? Could it still be here?
Source, my partner says. And, yes, it is still here.
I remembered Source from time to time over the years and for some illogical reason I thought it had gone. But, no. Here it is. The same rusty-coloured, rendered strawbale and timber building. The same terraces stepped down the steep hill to the gully at the bottom.
We stop to look. Source takes the form of a rendered strawbale and timber building on a steep slope housing the food cooperative with a cascade of terraces encrusted with vegetables and fruit trees spilling downslope from it. They, the terraces, are the community garden. The young apple trees planted on the terraces on our first visit have now grown into an apple orchard. The terraces that appeared a little bare on that visit are now a diverse jungle of vegetables.
There, over to the side of the coop building is the brick, wood-fired pizza oven that the community gardeners were just finishing on our first visit. Then, there was a woman in the construction team who had been at the Community Gardens Australia conference, so we said hello. She was also active in the local permaculture scene (in 1978, permaculture had its birth only a few kilometres from here; it is a Tasmanian invention from our island on the far southern edge of modern civilisation). At the conference I had sat in on this young woman’s talk on permaculture and was impressed that she understood it as a design rather than a gardening system. Her name was Hannah Moloney.
We met someone else prominent in the community gardening scene in Hobart on that first visit. He was making compost where the large bins are located at the bottom of the terraces. His name was David Stephen who, over the years and continuing today, has assisted quite a few community gardens to get going and has trained many a gardener in organic growing techniques and compost production.
When it comes to community gardening in Hobart I guess you would call David Stephen a sustainer. He deserved that Community Gardens Australia award last year.
Two people were working in the garden when we arrived. The woman gardener explained that they had recently made biochar from sticks and forest debris they cleaned up in the belt of wild nature that is the gully. They have made biochar before, she said, pointing to a mound of forest floor material she was preparing for the coming burn. She invited people from other community gardens to come and help and learn, saying they could take some biochar away with them, exemplifying the sharing and cooperation that is part of community gardening.
Like Okines Community Garden out on the coast at Dodges Ferry 35km east of Hobart, it is the inclusion of a food coop that marks Source as different to other community gardens. Community gardens are citizen initiatives, community enterprise in action. The inclusion of food coops adds social enterprise to their value (social enterprise adopts a business model to achieve a social goal — like making available organic food at an affordable price — turning operating surplus back into the enterprise rather than turning it into the profit for the benefit of the few).
In design terms Source is an example of thoughtful permaculture design. It demonstrates:
- design adaptation to climate and terrain
- creative terraforming of steep land to turn it to productive use
- nutrient cycling with compost and other soil management techniques
- effective garden productivity using organic growing methodology
- use of a diversity of plants that integrates tree and vegetable crops as demonstrated in the orchard plantings with their combination of fruits trees, vegetables and other plants
- cooperation in organisation and management of the community garden
- social enterprise providing food products in demand by co-op members
- infrastructure for conviviality in the form of the pizza oven.
Emulation, copying and adaptation to local needs and conditions are how we spread good ideas in permaculture and make things happen. We can’t go wrong in replicating and adapting what The Source has done.
Update
Updated 11.12.23.
Guest writer, Jen Calder, was with The Source from its early days. She updates the photo essay with a history of the initiative and invites Hobart people to become involved in the project.
Jen’s update illustrates the dynamics of organisations that are largely reliant on volunteers. The surge and diminution cycles of personal energy that sustains organisations will likely be familiar to those of us with experience of such groups.
Any Hobart people seeking a project or an outlet for their skills and knowledge might consider participating in The Source.
Some personal information was edited out of Jen’s update, which she first published as a facebook comment to a link to this story.
Jen Calder reports…
Thank you for your write up Russ. I am the person holding the plant and small child in the picture in front of the pizza oven. The small, cheeky child (not mine) is now humungous, dry-humoured and almost 18 years old! And I’m no longer an extremely energetic, fresh-faced 27 year old, but 40, a bit grey, and very tired! I’m not sure about the plant.
I was involved as a key volunteer at Source from 2005, when the idea was first conceived at a meeting of the environment club at uni when I was 22 years old, through the epic planning and building phase, to when it opened as a food co-op in 2010. I stayed on throughout the first 6 years of it being open as a food co-op, until 2016, when I had to bow out of doing most things for health reasons.
A short history
Between 2010 and 2020 Source operated as a bulk, organic wholefoods co-operative, later expanding to sell affordable, fairtrade coffee and wholefoods lunches on weekdays, usually made from garden produce.
There were regular community garden working bees, workshops and events. These were all dependent on the hard work of several key volunteers and the paid shop managers who worked a lot of unpaid overtime.
Many volunteers have come and gone over the years, departing for many reasons such as moving away, health issues, having kids or starting full time work or their own businesses (such as Hannah Moloney with Good Life Permaculture).
Many lessons have been learnt, consensus decision making practiced and practiced and practiced again and major and minor conflicts workshopped and worked through—an inevitability of organisations that involve human beings.
Source has provided a sense of home, community, purpose, learning and fun. Life-long friendships have been made. When I became ill it was people I had met through Source that came through the most with help.
Source ceased operating as a food co-op and cafe in 2020 and has been a more subdued place since then, due to a combination of factors. The major one was, of course, the pandemic, but others were:
- fewer students attending university campuses with the availability of online courses these days
- volunteer and shopkeeper burnout
- the death of the expensive coffee machine
- the fact that despite being a not-for-profit co-operative we could never really make our wholefoods more affordable than other nearby businesses due to economies of scale.
A few meagre years have followed. A few attempts have been made to re-open the cafe without much success — it seems it wasn’t going to work without the fancy barista coffee. The volunteer situation became a catch 22. Without the thriving cafe bringing people to our community, how could we attract new volunteers in order to reopen the cafe?
Successes
However, it hasn’t been 100% lifeless. The community garden has continued to flourish with the dedication of some wonderful, key volunteers. In 2023 a small business began renting the space one day a week and making lunches from garden produce, bringing a bit of week-day life back to the space. It is hoped this will expand in 2024.
The last few years have also seen monthly music events in the garden and a variety of workshops sponsored by various grants. Nevertheless, the space is not as well-used and thriving as it was in the days of the co-op and cafe, and only one new person volunteered to take on important behind-the-scenes roles at the latest AGM a few weeks ago. Roles that could be filled include secretary, events organising, garden and indoor space coordination. Although I’m not fully in the loop these days, I can connect anyone interested with those who are.
An opportunity to gain and practice your skills
If you are living in Hobart, and are keen to join the team of people who want to help bring life back to Source, please get in touch. I can’t help much in-person these days but I can put you in touch with those who can.
It really is a beautiful space in a sunny, sheltered, north facing gully. The strawbale building is solar passive and very pleasant to be in, it has a commercial kitchen, a stage, a woodifred pizza oven and it is a wonderful place to build community around shared values.
You don’t have to be a uni student to be involved. In fact, older people who will be around for longer than a few years can be very valuable! You just have to be reliable and dedicated to respectful communication and consensus decision making.
Thanks again for article Russ. Source DOES still exist 13 years after your first visit, but right now it is sorely in need of some new energy and reliable volunteers to keep it going for the next 13 and more. Here’s hoping some Hobart people are reading this post!
NOTE: You can contact Jen about assisting The Source by writing in the comment to the story at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/retrosuburbia/posts/7001876883238820/?comment_id=7002942523132256¬if_id=1702194939416446¬if_t=group_comment
