GARDEN TO TABLE

We started a worm farm

Awhile back, Lieneke Dennis started a conversation about community gardens in the Lockdown Recipe Storytelling Book (LRSB) Facebook group. I searched the topic in the group and saw that there’s a desire to support food gardens without encroaching on the work of existing organisations in this fi eld. Lieneke’s questions inspired me to come up with an idea, which I ran past her: to start a worm farm and seedling bank to help community food gardens to become sustainable.

The worm farm idea was inspired by the success Cavendish Square shopping centre had with their worm farm and the support they could give community food gardens in poorer areas in the form of compost and worm tea. It’s one of my favourite sustainability stories in Cape Town as it addresses many sustainability issues, such as zero waste, food waste reduction and food security, and is an example of a symbiotic relationship between affluent and poorer communities.

Thanks to my fellow Food Fairies in the LRSB group who volunteered their labour and made donations, we’ve managed to do quite a bit so far. We found a space for the wormery thanks to Rod Solomons who kindly allocated an area at his Yes We Can Sport & Jazz Foundation at Oude Molen Village. We have a drive-through drop-off point for food waste, garden cuttings and, I hope, seedlings from kitchen gardens.

We were able to fi nish the infrastructure for the wormery at the end of May thanks to generous sponsorships by Food Fairies, both in South Africa and abroad. A big thank you to Rod and his staff for helping us to reach this goal. It was a huge labour of love. Much gratitude to the Food Fairies for bringing the wormery to life.

I am a sustainability and social impact marketing consultant, and this is a labour of love after I saw the pressing need for sustainable interventions that can support our community food gardens. I also have ideas for adding skills training and leadership capacity building, since Rod offered the hall and garden for training and workshops.

I am an advocate for co-creation and collaborative community-driven initiatives with a rotational leadership succession plan. But I also know that life happens and people who have signed up for volunteer initiatives sometimes are unable to keep up with the commitments they had signed up for. Therefore it will be good to have more than one person in the know and ready to take over to ensure continuity.

THE BIGGER VISION

The intent with this initiative is to serve and impact as widely as possible. We want to fill the gaps other