Stories of Urban Food

Waaaaay back now on the 27th of May, Marlon and I went along to the Stories of Urban Food event held by the SA Urban Food Network at The Joinery in Adelaide. Driving into the City at night was a bit of a freakout but we did it and even navigated the expressway right into the city. Not bad for a couple of country folk! I think we travelled the furthest of the attendees.

We were presenting a little spiel about Ligaya Garden as part of a programme packed with local growers, organisations and businesses linked with food in and around Adelaide. An emotional and moving Kaurna welcome was given to us from Quahli Newchurch who had some folks in tears. The evening was presented by Christy Spier who knows everything and everyone about food in Adelaide but remains amazingly slim (if I was that active in the food scene, I’d be huge!) and catered for by Mel Rayner who is the life behind the Foodprint Experience cafe which is located at the joinery.

It seemed that all the local luminaries in the local food resilience movement were there and I got to meet folks with whom I had been communicating with in Instagram. This included Josh Salisnew (aka withwormboy), Kim from Port Adelaide Food Gardening, Isobel Hume (researcher), Jacqui from the Adelaide Edible Garden Trail, Mel from The Foodprint Experience, and folks from the Food Embassy (I think that was Linda?), Seacliff Community Food Swap and the Semaphore Compost Network ,whose names were lost in the blur of the few days since then. Sorry to those folks but my memories like a sieve even on the best of days

I did get to meet Alex Miller in person finally. We’ve been communicating through email for ages now but this was our first face to face. Monica too from the Garden Trail crew made a brief connection but I was called away for the group pic.

Anyway, that’s enough naming of names. The key thing is that the night provided a peek into the workings of local food resilience initiatives and a chance to have everyone in one place for a meet and a feed. I found it encouraging that the issue of local food is being looked at, dealt with and improved at so many levels. There’s much more happening out there than one garden in Gawler and that is absolutely fantastic.