Inner North Urban Farm

12/07/2021

Wow, it’s been a big season for us. Since starting the planning for Inner North Urban Farm one year ago we’ve had 25 weeks of veg boxes for around 28 households! It has been a joy and dream come true in so many ways… working with the plants and the soil every day in the sunshine or rain, plus getting to see all our members each week at the pickup stall are strong highlights. Thank you to everyone for being a part of this project to grow food in our urban environment.

In starting INUF together, we’ve had a heap of fun and had many forms of support within the community to get cracking. We’ve now decided that the most sustainable direction we see is to bring Canberra two urban CSA farms. We’ve realised that to keep strengthening food security in our neighbourhoods as well as pursue our business goals, we need to create several “hubs” like INUF. The result is our own enterprises that continue the mission of INUF as well as offering slightly different services and products.
To find out more check us out: Karina at https://www.facebook.com/patchworkurbanfarm and Lil at https://www.instagram.com/manyways.urbanfarm/ and https://manywaysurbanfarm.wordpress.com/many-ways-urban-farm/
The support that you have poured into INUF leaves a huge legacy that will drive these two enterprises forward. Thank you again for supporting locally grown food and participating in Canberra’s urban farming movement as it morphs and strengthens, season by season in our community.

24/06/2021

First harvest and stall since May last night! Winter boxes have began. What a high! Saturated from head to toe, amidst rows of vibrant green, white and purple in gusty winds. Seeing our awesome members for the first time in weeks. A particular treat to see their fast growing kids.

29/04/2021

It’s getting dark pretty early these days, so we unexpectedly became a night market pickup stall... how good is electricity especially when you know Canberra’s usage amount is covered by renewables? Sure there is still a way to go... and vegetables to eat as sustenance to get there!
Box 22 features many things including bay leaves from a dear friend’s backyard, also tomatoes (still!) and Jerusalem artichokes... yum!

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26/04/2021

Finally I start to grow some decent seedlings...oh man there have been some absolute shocking results. I ought to get better at sharing those.

21/04/2021

Cleaning and sterilizing reused jars for tomorrow’s treat featuring the humble Feijoa. Commonly found on hedges and bushes around Canberra at this time of yeah. Feijoa is well loved by New Zealanders and native to South America.

20/04/2021

Did you know that 2 degrees Celsius is actually classified a frost by meteorologists? I learnt this from a fellow urban ag enthusiast aka Fiona’s beau. With a string of cold nights coming up, I hastily harvested the remainder of our eggplants and baby capsicums yesterday evening at the Downer plot. Now to sow the green manures in their absence 🌱🌱🌱

15/04/2021

Box 20! There have been so many points throughout this season that people have helped us and this week is no exception. Whether it’s people sharing time, knowledge, skills, their yard space or their excess lemons... so much gratitude to the community who have helped this urban farm get on its feet.
This week we have gifts of quince paste (quinces from the wonderful Jonathan at Pialligo Apples), lemons from neighbours in Ainslie, and foraged saffron milkcap mushrooms from the pine forest near the zoo!
Can’t wait for dinner!

15/04/2021

Yesterday saying goodbye to the last of the tomatoes. The strings that bore their weight since October, drifting about in the evening light. Already nostalgic for mid summer but glad to welcome these cooler months too!

09/04/2021

Yes you’re hearing from us again! 3 times in 24hrs. I’m telling you, the transition of the seasons puts the wind in the sails! I think I’ve cracked the code for those who can’t make it to box pick up. It’s easy as a front door pick up in cold boxes. Life isn’t always smooth. You get stuck in traffic, you get held up at work. You pull over on the way to an appointment to talk to a loved one who needs you. Your young ones keep you up until late and you sleep in a little pushing your whole day out of wack by an hour. We really really appreciate it when people make it to box pick up but sometimes it doesn’t happen. And that’s okay! F #*&n good on you for choosing community supported agriculture and two women in ag!

08/04/2021

We’ve made it to our 19th box!! I hastily took this snap at dusk and it doesn’t capture all the items in the box. So this week we had pumpkin, spring onions, radishes, tomatoes, beans, parsley, coriander, Vietnamese mint, green beans, zucchini eggplant and kale. I’m so glad we bit the bullet and decided to do this work. I love this work and everyday is new and challenging. I can feel my “challenge muscle” strengthening. In the beginning of the season if something went wrong I felt heavy and overwhelmed and which made moving forward sometimes slow. But now, I expect the challenges and know that every single grower has them. I can power through them and use the mind and my physical strength to carry on. Perception is a powerful thing. I attribute a lot of my growing resilience to the garden and soil. It is therapy. Before this and a stint at the Department of Agriculture, I studied environmental psychology in Sweden. We learnt about the impact of green spaces and nature on cognitive function and stress. Honestly we shouldn’t need a literature review to trust in the healing quality of a healthy ecosystem. But hey, anything we can do to reconnect our communities to soil and plants is great!!

25/03/2021

Box #17. Tomatoes, cucumber, zucchini, Vietnamese mint, parsley, carrots, beet greens, eggplant, radishes and green beans! Yummy! We’ve already got crops in the ground ready for the November harvest. It’s an inspiring time!

19/03/2021

We’ve got an new toy here at the Watson plot this morning. Thanks to for lending it to us to have a go. Oh my gosh, it makes direct seeding that much easier and faster! Cant wait for next season already! Sowing our final succession of baby salad for the season. Mizuna, baby red Russian kale and baby spinach! So fortunate to be apart of a tapestry of local organizations working hard to revolutionize the way we eat and grow our food and in turn, improve ecosystem and human health...shout out to . All of these organizations have offered their resources, knowledge or time to help us get on our feet this year :)

17/03/2021

Thursday, harvest day. Relishing in the colour and texture of our bunches of mixed greens for our CSA members this week. Rainbow chard, and three varieties of kale from three parts of Europe. We’ve got the Russian Kale, Scottish curly kale and the much loved Tuscan kale. Looking forward to passing over the goodness to our members later today.

15/03/2021

Beef steak for peats sake! Enough is enough. This Ukrainian heirloom beauty is huge. Huge like the like the solidarity for no violence against women we gathered for today. Huge like the palpable anger and trauma of many women and their allies today at the rally here in Canberra.

11/03/2021

Box #15, you have shaped up well! Carrots, mesclun lettuce mix, zucchini, heirloom tomatoes, kale, baby capsicum green beans as well as a selection of herbs! Now come on rain and water in those autumn greens! 🍀🌲🐞

22/02/2021

Afternoon haul at one of our plots. The summer veg like beans, peas, peppers and tomatoes need to be picked every few days to save them from pests and so they don’t pass their best. The more picking, the more fruiting too! It’s been a challenging season in many ways from dodgy, expensive compost to an onslaught of pests from the wet weather. We just keep on keeping on and look forward to carrying lessons from this year into next season with us.

23/01/2021

Friday evening working bee yesterday. A small crew of us removed grass in the beds and replaced with wood chips on the paths and a mix of various soil and insect benefiting seeds (see pictured). Amazing helpers, thank you!

20/01/2021

Here at INUF we are always trying to reduce waste and make use of what we have.... recently that’s involved picking from street plum trees and making jam to put in our veg boxes!
If you have a fruit tree with more fruit than you let what to do with, then we would love to be your tree carers! We’re happy to prune and net your tree for following seasons, plus share with you any of what we make from the fruit!
Get in touch here or via [email protected] :)

15/01/2021

This week’s CSA box marked week no.8 for the season! In the box you’d find carrots, potatoes, squash, beetroot, kale silver beet, basil and parsley! It’s the best seeing the INUF farm members each week and pass on their share of this farm. Looking forward to the abundance of late summer and autumn just around the corner.

08/01/2021

Harvest day. One of our favorite times of the week! Yesterday brought abundance of produce and special moments with our landholders and top helper, Val, that we’ll savor forever. We also had the sweetest of visitors during the morning pick. You’ll see them pictured in checking out the chicken coop. Harvest day is a day of intense focused work alongside idle time to drink tea and the latest home baked treats. Sure is a pleasure weaving this business into something that is strong yet malleable and adaptable!

30/12/2020

Dear everyone, it may have been a while between posts - but not only are we alive and well, we are producing veg boxes!!! So far we are in week 6 of box production, which means we’ve grown veg for over 150 boxes! Hard work and an abundance of community support is showing it’s benefits with all our veg grown within 5km, no chemicals and distributed to our CSA members on a sliding scale payment.
We’ve also incorporated some summer foraging into this week’s box. La Niña has been treating us, and the Ainslie street plums very well. We can’t wait to keep living the urban farming dream in 2021!

16/11/2020

Meet Eamonn and Maki, both of whose backyards we farm in. Today they are being incredibly helpful by doing the big job of setting up irrigation at two of our plots!!! We love them!

15/11/2020

**8\DO YOU WANT TO SIGN UP FOR ONE OF OUR WEEKLY VEG BOXES??***

Happy Sunday evening all, its back to Monday tomorrow. We will be bringing on board our very first INUF members! If you and/or your people are interested in a weekly veggie box produced in our very own urban wonderland, check out our application form! There you will learn about the CSA model and answer a bunch of questions so that we can get our produce to everyone who wants to be involved, at a reasonable price. tiny.cc/inufCSA

Hello! We are excited that you are interested in becoming an "eater" at Inner North Urban Farm, INUF! We are a Community Supported Agriculture Farm using a Sliding Scale Payment system. To set the scene: We are farming on 5 residential plots across the inner North in Ainslie, Downer, O'Connor, Turne...

05/11/2020

First veggie box! Reserved for our donators who claimed our first veggie box as a perk. Red Russian Kale, carrots, radishes, rhubarb, coriander, garlic scape, mesclun salad mix, stir fry mix, clutch of perennial herbs (sage,thyme,oregano) and INUF Rocket Pesto. If you would like to subscribe to our new CSA Farm, fill out the application form, link in insta bio. PM if needed.

04/11/2020

Hello! We have so many greens! Salad, Pakchoi, Rocket, baby kale, baby beets, baby everthing! This was strategic, so we could test out the soil and get some crops moving through before we start doing our boxes.

So we've got salad galore on offer. Up to 300g for a large portion. At $33 p/kg. So thats $6 for 180g. Good value and fresh as fresh for a commercial product.

PM if interested or email [email protected] :)

Can arrange pick ups from tomorrow onwards from our Turner plot! Cheers :)

04/11/2020

We are now taking applications for membership with our little, very new CSA Farm. Please find the link to the form in our bio! We are both a CSA and Sliding Scale operation. To find out more, check out our application form. Exciting times!!!

02/11/2020

FORM IS UP! Ready to roll people! Yay :). To apply for the INUF CSA, 2020/2021 please fill out the following form.

http://tiny.cc/inufCSA

Hello! We are excited that you are interested in becoming an "eater" at Inner North Urban Farm, INUF! We are a Community Supported Agriculture Farm using a Sliding Scale Payment system. To set the scene: We are farming on 5 residential plots across the inner North in Ainslie, Downer, O'Connor, Turne...