“It has been a wonderful experience working in Bulman this year. The staff at the school and at local organisations have been extremely supportive of our work.”
- Project Manager, Mainoru (NT)
At Bulman, the garden is continuing to produce fresh fruit and veggies for the community and the students have learned a huge amount about nutrition, cooking and horticulture.
The FaFT and preschool have taken a particular liking to planting seeds! They have managed to grow some beautiful flowers and help keep the garden ticking over by regularly getting seeds in the ground.
Early years (Turtle Class) have learned key basic kitchen skills; they are becoming chopping champions and mixing masters! They have also been very engaged with nutrition lessons, learning the five food groups, what makes up a balanced diet and that ‘bush tucker is good tucker’. The ‘Turtles’ prepared a delicious rosella jam that they ate with fresh damper out on Country with the Mimal Rangers and the Learning on Country team.
The middle years (Buffalo Class) have really upped their horticulture game this year! The mighty ‘Buffalos’ are now leading the way with regular garden weeding, planting seedlings, harvesting produce to add to their meals and then taking it home to their families.
The high school (Crocodile Class) have enjoyed making a range of food for the whole school – preparing potato salad, healthy pizzas, fruit balls, muesli bars and salad to serve at lunch time. The curious ‘Crocodiles’ have learned about heart disease and diabetes and how these illnesses are linked to unhealthy diets. They have recently begun undertaking EON’s training modules in hospitality, successfully completing the first milestone ‘Basic Kitchen Hygiene’.
This year at Bulman we have been doing a lot of work on the garden set up and aiming to increase the garden area substantially in order to produce the most amount of fresh produce for the community to enjoy.
We’ve successfully completed the addition of three new lines to the existing garden, setting up an extra area for raised garden beds around the back of the school, and we’ve planted 12 new fruit trees in the orchard. We’re planning to expand the edible garden further by establishing a bush foods area which will be used as an outside classroom. In addition we have set up two raised beds at the entrance of the school and the beautiful flowers are a welcoming sight for students and visitors to the school.
Roper Gulf Regional Council has been instrumental in helping to supply raw materials for the garden and have generously allowed EON to make use of their facilities at the Sport and Rec Hall and Women’s Centre for after-school cooking and nutrition workshops.
Sunrise Health are also a key partner in Bulman, and have joined with us for gardening classes, cooking workshops and communicating important health messages around disease prevention and healthy eating.
