There might be some increased interest from Down Under (but see McArthur’s Universal Corrective Map of the World ) following a minor flood of interest following a podcast I did a few months ago.
Following the idea of European members I thought it might be wise to preface Australian related posts with “AU” and or tag with the au_australia tag.
For those interested we have 5 new adaptive breeding circles based in Flora Hill (Bendigo), Hepburn, Macedon, Kyneton, Castlemaine and Gundaroo (outside Canberra) and a chance we might also have a group starting in the Dandenong Ranges just east of Melbourne.
We have a different model to the broadcast model which I initially used and which I see used elsewhere. Running out of enthusiasm, and a bit tired of distributing packets of seeds into the ether for very little return, I chatted with fellow conspirators Shane Simonsen and Joel Fitzpatrick, and came up with a model that owes some of its design to pyramid selling and Tupperware.
The basic idea is to get an enthusiastic ring leader to arrange a seed distribution to 4-5 local gardeners, who would remain in fairly close contact throughout the growing season, offering mutual support and hopefully keeping the enthusiasm up. Finding the ring leaders fell into my lap - after the podcast interview I started to receive unsolicited emails wishing to participate. Bingo!
My hope is that these local growing circles communicate with each other at least on a seasonal basis, to arrange seed exchanges, and crop reports.
Following a suggestion from the first group in flora hill, we are using WhatsApp groups for each growing circle, with these groups contained within a WhatsApp community. We can post general announcements to the community, or specific comments to individual groups.
I don’t know who the individual members are - that’s not particularly important.
Finding the sweet spot for announcement frequency, balancing support and contact with flooding communications that no one will read will be the challenge.
I will try to post updates on our progress.