SUNNINGDALE FARM

Anne and Philip Duguid are biodynamic farmers from Mt Compass.
What are they growing? Philip's answer - SOIL! Good healthy soil, slowly and patiently.
The veggies and everything else come after the soil.

Yesterday more than 10 members of our Seedsavers group amongst others gathered at Fern Ave community garden to hear them speak about the benefits of organic food.
It was a wonderful forum where all sorts of other issues about health and gardening were discussed.

Anne spoke about the health benefits of gardening and left us with 4 words to remember when gardening.

REST - WAIT - WATCH - LISTEN.

Have a chair in the garden and just sit and rest for awhile, plant those seeds and wait for them to grow, watch your garden for pests or just to see the beauty of plants, listen to the birds and bees attracted by flowering plants.
Feel yourself becoming fit and healthy as you work in your garden and then eat all it gives you.

Our culture is focused on busyness, quick meals, fast food.
We all know this can result in all sorts of diseases.
Processed and non organic foods contain hundreds of chemicals. Non organically grown vegetables contain traces of all pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, etc used in gardening and these are all poisons (yes poisons, yes look at the labels in the gardening shop, they all say POISON!).

It takes a little time to grow veggies and prepare meals but as we all know, the benefits are good health and much pleasure.

Sunningdale Farm will have an open day on October 26th from 10 am to 4pm.

Kate visited Sunningdale Farm open day in 2007, here is what she wrote -

Tuesday, 15 May 2007
SUNNINGDALE FARM
Anne Duguid is a gardener after my own heart. Plants are allowed to come up and grow where they like and vegs and flowers co-exist happily together, making a carpet of intricate detail and fascination at every turn. The house is on a rise and is surrounded by a ring of garden so that every door of the house opens onto vegetables, herbs and flowers. They include such companion plants as parsley, yarrow, tansy, coreopsis, fever few, cosmos, leeks and buddleias which attract ladybirds, lacewings, hoverflies, beetles, wasps, bees etc.
Beyond the house are 190 rolling acres of organic / biodynamic vealer calves. Beyond this you can see the Murray and the lakes. Picturesque is inadequate to describe the property. The drive in is through scrub in which they have identified 45 varieties of birds. There is a trail mown through the bush for walking and, after the recent rains, everything is lush and green . Anne is a lovely person and very welcoming. Together with her husband Phil they run the property. If they have another open day I would suggest you go and soak it up.
The drive to Mt Compass via Hahndorf is beautiful after the rain and there are great venison hamburgers to be had at a cafe in Mt Compass ! A lovely mothers' day.

chaiselongue from the blog Olives & Artichokes has a good post today 'Why do we garden?'. Check it out.