Building fellowship and community through homesteading

By Josh Low

Building fellowship and community while sharing various homesteading skills has been the focus of the Huon Valley Parish’s yearlong homesteading workshops.

Held on the first Saturday of each month last year, the workshops saw parishioners come together in prayer and to learn from each other.

Parishioner Elke Vidler is the driving force behind the homesteading workshop sessions, and said the idea came about simply from conversations with fellow parishioners.

“We live in an area where a lot of people have wonderful skills for homesteading and self-sufficiency, growing or producing food or things for the home,” she explained.

“Several of us had been talking about things like sourdough bread making, kimchi making and things like that.

“There were people who had specific skills, and others who were interested to learn those skills, so we thought it was a great way to bring the parish community together,” Elke said.

“We’ve been doing them on first Saturdays of the month, beginning with morning Mass here at St Mary of the Cross in Ranelagh, with the idea to also promote and encourage people to come along to the First Saturday Mass and Devotions.

“So far we’ve had 12 workshops, and we’ve tried to keep it seasonal – some of the sessions we’ve done are on soil bocking and seed sowing, beef tallow skincare products, sourdough, boerewors sausage and kimchi making.

“We even had a beeswax session using beeswax from our hives, that we extracted and rendered down. We talked people through that process, melted it down together and made dipped candles, rolled candles, beeswax wraps and firelighters.”

Following the overwhelmingly positive response to the homesteading workshops, Elke added that the plan is to carry on in 2025.

“I was only planning to do it for the whole of last year, but it has actually been quite popular, so we hope to keep going this year,” she said.

Parishioner Cathy Moore said she has really enjoyed the homesteading workshops and hopes they will continue.

“My favourite was the beeswax candle making – I found it very therapeutic.

“It has also been a good way to bring our parish community together. I love spending time with them and it’s a good way to get to know people better. I actually wouldn’t even mind if we did some of the classes again,” she said.

The homesteading workshops are open to all interested. For more information, please contact the Huon Valley Parish at huonvalleyparish@aohtas.org.au.