Adamama’s new home brings extra possibilities
'We found probably the perfect place and the perfect partnership for what we're trying to achieve," manager Mitch Burnie says
Adamama Urban Farm’s new digs will bring possibilities to expand its programs and engage more with the wider community, says manager Mitch Burnie.
The Shalom initiative has signed a memorandum of understanding with Randwick Council to operate from the Randwick Sustainability Hub.
“It’s super exciting and just a bit of relief as well,” said Burnie.
“I really think we found the perfect place and the perfect partnership for what we’re trying to achieve at the moment.
“It’s a great existing space with so much potential for so many great things that we just weren’t able to achieve in our previous space.
“It comes with the existing community and we get to bring our community and work with some great people … hopefully it brings a lot of great cross-communal collaborations.”
After leaving White City to make way for construction of the new Hakoah, Burnie said Adamama will begin with a “soft launch” in the first week of February, with Adamama Junior playgroups, a working bee and a workshop.
He is excited about the new possibilities that the site presents.
“This place has an existing food forest … there’s fig trees, pomegranate trees, olive trees and grape vines. There’s a native habitat garden, there’s a veggie patch and a food forest, and there’s going to be aquaponics at some point,” he said.
“So when groups come, there’s a lot more points that we can work on with people based on their interests.”
Being a partnership with Randwick Council, he added collaborating with other groups from the wider community “allows us so much more potential to show what we’re doing and through Jewish values, inspire and work looking outwards to the community”.
This year, he said Adamama was also looking forward to piloting the first Jewish food festival on the site and starting up an microgreens farm, selling the produce to kosher restaurants and others in the community, with the profits feeding back into their education programs.
Inviting the community to check out the new space, Burnie said, “There’s so many different touch points, we hope to grab everyone’s attention to either learn new skills or make new friends, from basically newborns to retirees. We’ve got something for everyone.”
Burnie paid tribute to Hakoah for allowing the farm to build and develop rent-free.
“Without them there’s no way we would have been able to get to where we are now, to form this new partnership with Randwick,” he said.
“A huge thank you to their board and we’ve excited about having a conversation with them for a return to the new site, when it gets built, in some capacity.”
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