Make Our Neighbourhood A Table: A Season of Creation Celebration Guide with a local focus
In July, we gathered the final harvest from Baroona Farm located at St Francis College, Milton. Over the past seven years, this once-disused tennis court produced hundreds of kilograms of fresh food, shared with refugees and people seeking asylum across Brisbane. In doing so, it fulfilled its mission to “grow food and community with and for the nutritionally vulnerable.” In its final year alone, Baroona Farm harvested more than 760 kilograms of culturally important foods.
Yet its harvest cannot be measured in food volume alone. A neglected patch of hard ground became a flourishing green space. People learned how to grow food and care for soil. Strangers became neighbours, knowledge was shared, and new possibilities took root.
The conclusion of Baroona Farm has become not so much an ending as a transition into a more dispersed season for the ‘Grow Together Network’, carrying what we have learned into new places and relationships. Our challenge now is to help others discover their own invitations-in- waiting, in congregations with underutilised land, communities rich with local knowledge, and neighbourhoods where people long to grow, contribute, belong and share.
The title of this guide, ‘Make Our Neighbourhood a Table’, invites us to imagine the local feast expansively. A neighbourhood is nourished by more than food. We are sustained by healthy soil and clean waterways; by trees, insects, birds and the diversity of creation; by places of faith, learning and care; and by the gifts, stories and cultures of local people. A true feast also asks us to notice who is missing from the table, who experiences food insecurity, and whose wisdom or contribution has been overlooked.
These are all gifts of God’s table: creation received with gratitude, cultivated with care and shared so that all may flourish.
Inpired by our Baroona Farm experiences, these resources are offered to help your community celebrate the 2026 Season of Creation by exploring the food environment of the place where you live. They also connect with this year’s ecumenical theme, ‘Living Water’. May they spark your imagination and help you uncover the abundance and need already present in your neighbourhood.
Taste your place. Find its gifts. Listen for its invitations. Pass on what you learn - and widen the table so that others may share the feast.
The Grow Together Network
Anglican Church Southern Queensland