Harvest is looking for new board members and office-holders.  All existing office-holders will be retiring - if you would like to be part of the leadership team, contact us to request a nomination form.  Only fully financial members may nominate and vote.  More information about board member roles is provided in the next newsletter item.

Contact Ian Knowd to register your interest and receive your Zoom meeting invite.
Email: info@harvesttrailsandmarkets.com.au

Positions available include President/Chair, Deputy Pres/Chair, Secretary, and Treasurer plus the board is looking for 2 to 4 additional committee members to make up a board of 5 to 9 members.  Hawkesbury Harvest Inc. is a registered Not-For-Profit Incorporated Association.

These positions are for a minimum 12 months term.

Harvest Trails and Markets purpose is to assist Australian rural and regional communities in building and maintaining agri-tourism and consumer-direct markets.  Its mission is to support viable and sustainable agriculture in rural regions and the peri-urban zones of cities and towns.  Its principal mechanisms of support are Farm Gate Trails and Farmers’ Markets promoted via web and media platforms.

Harvest is looking for motivated candidates, people who can subscribe to the associations vision because they’re passionate about or deeply interested in the problems we solve, are capable of mustering talent or resources to that via their influence or networks, and have a capacity to give time, energy and effort to their Harvest involvement. 

Harvest Trails and Markets will look favourably on any of the following skills and attributes;

- Have a business in food, farming or agri-tourism-related enterprise, or works for one that compliments Harvest’s activity in the food, farming, agri-tourism space.

- Are an academic or technical specialist with interests in domains where Harvest is active (ag, tourism, regional development)

- Are like-minded community members who want to get involved and contribute to Harvest’s vision/mission

- Have skills in marketing, media and or administration

- Have a passion for food and farming in Australia

AGM 2021, 17th March 2021 (online)

Any questions or to discuss further please contact Dr Ian Knowd | Association Secretary and CEO |  0420 968 867 | knowdi@harvesttrailsandmarkets.com.au

Ian Knowd has been a member of Hawkesbury Harvest since the year 2000.  He joined the steering committee in 2001 when David Mason was still the founding Chair.  In 2003 he took up the chair role, then treasurer from 2005 to the end of 2016.  He then formally became secretary after having picked up the baton left when our dear Alan Eagle died in early 2016.  Having given 20 years of service to the Association, it is now time to step back and hand-over the baton to a new leadership team.

Your board has spent the past year preparing for ‘the new normal’, and also a transition so that Ian can retire from his duties.  The leadership team is seeking new blood to re-invigorate the Association and take it forward.  Members are invited to join the leadership team, and contribute their talents and vision to Harvest’s governance and renewed efforts in support viable and sustainable local agriculture.

During the past year or more, we have continued to provide the supports your membership makes possible.  Indeed, we have also invested in a website upgrade that includes greater capability to host food and trail regions, and added features to member pages including:

• Added ‘Book Now’ and ‘Buy Now’ buttons that send users through to your booking system or e-commerce platform
• The ability to define produce season at the sub-regional or Trail geographic scale.  This means your Produce listing can be tuned to reflect more accurately when your produce is are actually available.
• The option to nominate your ‘Open’ season with a date range.  This means you will not be seen by visitor/customers outside your ‘Open’ period in the searches of the website they do.  They can still choose to ‘See All’, but your page will clearly show your ‘Open’ dates.
• Improved format of your Harvest page URL address so that your member name is shown – it used to show member ID number, but now displays as in this example https://www.harvesttrailsandmarkets.com.au/wyuna-farms-pty-ltd/  It means copied or tagged URLs make sense beyond our Harvest database system.

If you want to see all of the options available for your Harvest page content, log in to the Members’ area (the website ‘back-end’) using your member ID and password.  If you need help to do this, please give us a call or email.

A positive of the COVID experience for Harvest and some members was being seen as part of the food system.  Indeed, some farm gates were inundated with visitors when restrictions were relaxed in June, creating a new set of challenges in managing on-farm visitors.  Many of you have implemented visitor booking systems and/or e-commerce systems to service the skyrocketing demand for COVID-Safe and contactless trading.  Because visiting farms was still allowed, it meant you could continue trading and have visitors/customers when many other retail businesses were shut down.  This included our Castle Hill Farmers’ and Fine Food Market, and so, we like many of you have managed to come through this last year and be okay.  What Harvest did do was use reserves built up over more than a decade from the proceeds of our market ownership to run Farm Gate Trail and Grower Directory operations, and invest in the upgraded website.

We will be issuing renewals soon.  Your association rules state that only financial members may participate in the governance of your Association, so I ask you to pay your membership as soon as you can.  We can also arrange for a payment plan if needed.  Your fees fund the ‘grunt work’ needed to keep the association afloat and maintain your customer-facing presence via the Harvest website.  Please also join us for the AGM to hear more of what we’ve been doing for Harvest members.

Local farmers are invited to submit an expression of interest to learn how to create authentic stories about their farm, their people, their products.
Join the Provenance Storytelling Masterclass to create your own provenance story, to engage your customers and build your business. It is about the place, people and product!
The Masterclass will focus on “story doing”, so all participants will leave with:
- A draft provenance story, highlighting their unique people, product and place, that will connect with their customers.
- An action plan of how you use provenance storytelling platforms (like your website and social media for example) to achieve your business objectives
- A toolbox of resources to help you further develop and share your story and reach the right audience
How to apply
This workshop, valued at $500 per participating enterprise, is being offered at $50 per enterprise. Up to two members from a single enterprise are welcome to participate in the Masterclass.
Complete and submit the online expression of interest (EOI) form by Tuesday 23 February, 2021. You will be informed of the outcome of your EOI no later than 28 February, 2021.
Criteria for participation:
- Small or medium sized commercial food or fibre producer in Greater Sydney
- Commitment to join the full Masterclass (in person) and to participate in an online icebreaker activity prior to the class
- Demonstrated motivation to workshop and gather stories related to your people, history, products and services, environment and process, sustainability efforts, partnerships and communities.

More info with the link to the EOI can be found here: https://www.lls.nsw.gov.au/regions/greater-sydney/events/provenance-storytelling-masterclass

FarmClust is an online, community-focused food marketplace where people can shop varieties of food items directly from producers around their local area and beyond.  The platform makes it possible for people to buy retail or bulk quantities off producers through a simple, cooperative group-buy system. Sellers manage their online shop independently and have a direct transactional relationship with customers.

Listing your produce for sale on FarmClust food marketplace is free and does not involve any periodical charges. Sellers only pay a commission fee when they have successfully sold their listed products.

FarmClust is inviting you to run a 3 months’ free sales trial on the platform and give them your feedback for improvement. If you are happy to adopt it afterwards, they will offer you a 50% discount off the payable commission fees for 9 months after your free trial. 

To set up your free community online store, please visit https://www.farmclust.com.au/supplier-register.

For more information about FarmClust, kindly read the linked document: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JgXXm_YhBceqQnqPD00Ep_QMa7DkDDHa/view?usp=sharing.

We are trying again for this year and Taste will be part of the Hawkesbury Show from the 23-25 April.  It’ll be a great showcase of the district’s farming and food culture, Hawkesbury icons and founding members of Harvest, Kurrajong Kitchen (Karen and Ben Lebsanft) and Wild Hibiscus Flower Co. (Lee Etherington) will be there along with some of the newer entrants in the food scene, for which, the Hawkesbury has become renowned.  In partnership with the Hawkesbury District Agriculture Association, it’s our way of showcasing the food destination we have always sought to build and promote to Sydney-siders.