On a small vegetable farm in Tower Hill, a gaggle of excited primary school students wearing gigantic gumboots plod into rich, near-black mud, and file down into a field of overgrown cabbages.
They are here to get their hands dirty while helping hungry people — seeing how harvesting cabbages will end up being delivered free to local residents experiencing food insecurity.
As part of their school’s Hands On Learning program, for today’s lesson a farmer has opted to help coach them in their practical education course run by Save the Children.
The students get out of the classroom each Friday and get stuck into an activity out in the community that uses their hands and teaches practical lessons outside the classroom.
Over decades of operation, the program has been shown to increase school attendance and elevate kids’ confidence.
Out in the cabbage field, happy to be out in the winter weather, 12-year-old Raparti is clearly in his element and no stranger to physical activity.
He has arrived with his own well-fitting work boots and immediately begins organising his classmates into efficient production lines.
Raparti explains the day’s activity in poetically simple terms.
“I’ve been getting the cabbage, eating some, throwing them to my friend Lucas, and putting them in the ute,” he said.
“It’s for the poor people that really are desperate and need it, for their sons, if they have them, to feed them.”
He delivers a final message before racing off to get stuck back into the muddy work.
“To the people in the world, always help each other and help the poor, because that’s what we need to do,” he said.
If you see a problem, fix it
As Australians watch their mortgage repayments rise, struggle to pay increased council rates and energy costs, and find their trips to the supermarket ever more stressful, little relief seems to be in sight.
But there are grassroots initiatives everywhere trying to help.
The Pohlners run the small, 30-acre spray-free vegetable farm on which Raparti and his schoolmates learnt the joy of giving.
Their farm is completely reliant on local customers.
They do not supply big chain supermarkets, and unlike larger scale producers that concentrate on a single line of vegetables the Polnhers grow 30 different lines.
In Ben Pohlner’s mind, that diversity of products means they are well-placed to help out with food shortages.
“If you see a problem, and you know you’ve got an answer, of course you’re going to have a go at resolving whatever it is,” he said.
It all started back when supermarket fridges became barren during the COVID pandemic.
Warrnambool and District Food Share executive officer Amanda Hennessy remembers vividly how this little farm helped them out of a dire food crisis.
“We were having some really serious challenges with accessing fresh food,” she said.
“Predominantly, we would get our fresh product from Melbourne, from Food Bank Victoria.
“They were running very low, and in one particular week I had actually posted on Facebook that we didn’t have any fresh fruit or vegetables and could anybody help us.”
That cry for help caught the eye of 18-year-old Georgia Pohlner, who immediately showed her father, Ben.
Mr Pohlner laughs when he relays how Georgia prodded him into action.
“My daughter said to me ‘we’re a fruit and veggie farm, come on Dad! We’ve gotta be able to do something about this!'”
Initially, the Pohlners provided their surplus cabbages, engaging the community in a campaign where every cabbage bought would be matched as a donated cabbage to Food Share.
But Amanda Hennessy says that the Pohlners’ commitment keeps growing.
“Last year Volcano Produce gave us 2.2 tonnes of beautiful, fresh, spray-free product,” she said.
The Pohlners expanded their donations to include a wide range of vegetables and had plenty more to give, but found a lack of getting it out of the paddock constrained them.
“Because we don’t use chemicals it’s a lot more labour-intensive,” Mr Pohlner said.
“Everything is cut by hand. Everything is packed by hand. All the weeding is done by hand or with a blade of some sort.
“We primarily use local labour and people with disabilities especially, and we’re also trying to be a good community citizen out there, and that’s where a project like this really comes into play,” Mr Pohlner said.
That problem is what led to their another helpful solution — teaming up with the local Hands On Learning program to show primary school students what went into a harvest.
“We normally have plenty of leftovers. We deliberately over-plant so that we’ve got some there for Food Share,” Mr Pohlner said
“But trying to actually get the produce harvested and into Food Share is a big problem.”
Since teaming up with the Hands On Learning program the students have been hands on with the leftover vegetables that need ‘”dressing down” or cleaning up before consumption.
Hands On Learning Manager Leon Carey is hoping that more local schools will jump at the opportunity to learn how food gets to where it’s needed because it has clearly resonated with kids like Jackson, who says he would run home to tell his family about how he helped people in need.
“It’s important to me that I’ve been helping out with Food Share, and helping people that don’t have food, have food,” Jackson said.
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