Who are the Funky Front Yard Farmers?
To their neighbours, their true identities are shrouded in mystery, hidden behind giant zuchinni leaves, and bustling tomato bushes, but to everyone else, we are simply known as... Joe and Jo. We live in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, Australia. We are a young, incredibly attractive and intelligent couple with four kids, living the good life in the burbs on a single income. We are bringing our children up with good values, by doing basic things like throwing away the totally invasive television and teaching them how to grow a carrot. It all started 8 years ago when we started growing our own vegetables and now our entire frontyard is full of fruit trees, vegetable gardens, a greenhouse and flowers. Our blog looks at all that we are learning along the way including gardening, bringing up our children, becoming involved in our local community and lots more.
2011 - Our Funky Front Yard Farmers Challenge
In January of 2011 we put all that we had learnt in the garden to the test and our little family went self sufficient for a week. Other than flour, milk, a tub of honey, olive oil and eggs from our chookens, everything else we ate came from our vegetable garden. This became known as our F.F.F.C (Funky Frontyard Farmers Challenge).
Sure, it was only one week, but we weren't trying to save the world. Its just that life's more fun hanging out in the garden than it is standing in a shopping queue.
2012 - 2014 Our Community Orchard and Local Food Swap
Throughout 2011 and 2012, after the FFFC we realised that we wanted to use what we had learnt and enjoy the experience of growing our fruit and veg amongst our local community. We are fortunate enough to belong to a lovely community here and so we set about starting our little community orchard in 2011, we planted fruit trees with our neighbours on a communal nature strip, a place where in the future we will all be able to stop, chat and pick grapefruits, lemonade fruits, limes, or even a pomegranate together.
Towards the end of 2011 we started a local fruit and veg swap called the Crop and Swap (check out the blog or facebook page) which has gone from strength to strength. The Crop & Swap is now in its 4th year and going stronger than ever. Our monthly community food swap has brought together hundreds of locals all with amazing home-grown and home-made offerings and we have thoroughly enjoyed being a part of it.
So that is who we are, the Funky Frontyard Farmers, feel free to drop us a line or check out other parts of our blog :)
2014 - 2015 Our one tonne Challenge
This year we tested how much food we could grow on our suburban block. In 12 months, we managed to grow a whopping 380kg of food! We are determined to beat our record, and one day achieve the magic one tonne, just to show what can be done with a normal block.
