It was a beautiful sunny Armidale day when over a hundred people gathered at NERAM’s Harvest Café on Sunday for a Mid-Winter Feast. The day was a celebration of local foods and people, showing all the can be achieved when the community pulls together for a good cause.
To keep the winter chills away guests were treated to a whole roast lamb, slow-roasted in NERAM’s forecourt by Rowan and his team at Harvest Café. It was accompanied with stuffed pumpkins, leafy salads and roast potatoes from the Armidale Community Garden and washed down with wines kindly donated by local Mihi Creek and Toppers Mountain wineries. Dessert came in the form of tiered cakes, mountains of tiramasu, seasonal apple pies and mulled wine. Finally, local bands the “Set ’em up Joes” and “Bez Imena” played fantastic jazz all afternoon, creating a perfect lazy Sunday atmosphere.
The feast was arranged to fundraise for a system of providing water to the Armidale Community Garden. Currently, volunteers have to water the plants from Black Gully Creek using watering cans, which is time and labour intensive. A few months ago local plumber Greg Inglis generously offered to solve this problem by plumbing mains water to the Garden. Greg said he would provide the necessary labour, machinery and some of the materials to do this if the Community Garden could pay for the remainder.
Due to the overwhelming support of the Armidale community the Midwinter Feast raised more than enough for this project. Greg hopes to start work within the next few weeks so that the watering system is ready for Spring. Any funds left over will be put towards a drip-irrigation system and children’s play area at the Garden.
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