June 23rd, 2022Ciao!

I’m Mara Ripani and I love being with community, talking and discussing all that is important to us. Problem solving and diving deep into conversations about everything and anything, no matter how difficult, no matter how light.

I started a cooking and permaculture school called Village Dreaming because I love kitchens and people in kitchens! Kitchens are hubs of incredible comfort to me. A kitchen full of fragrant cooking, pots and steam, women and men at chopping boards, slicing, grating, tasting, talking, always talking. Sometimes silence. In the kitchen music from all over the world is playing, compelling us to break out into dance. We place knives down and use the bench tops to lift our legs in the air in splendid kitchen dancing. Swirling around chairs and tables pretending for a moment to be performing cabaret…until the saucepan lid falls off with a clang and our kitchen dancing spell is broken.
At Village Dreaming we run classes on food preserving using the hot water bath method, we teach fermenting skills and make krauts, kimchis, yogurt and berry ferments. Home-made pasta classes using edible flowers such as rose petals and calendula. Naturally leavened bread baking, cheese making, sausage and salami making gatherings, wild fungi foraging walks. We invite artists to share their skills in weaving, natural plant dyeing and felting.
I am eager to learn and eager to share life’s incredible platter of rich experiences. I am hungry for seasonal patterns and for sharing the seasons with others. It is feijoa season now, it was chestnut season just a few months ago and on my table a bowl of persimmons from Maggie!
In July we are making sausages and walking through paddocks to see pigs on pasture, to talk about regenerative farming and to feast in the warmth of a freshly made sausage. Join me if you can. Arrivederci cari amici.
Learn to Make Sausages with Beautiful Free Range Pork on Sunday, July 17 from 9.30am-2pm at Village Dreaming, Blampied. For tickets and details please visit villagedreaming.com.au (Advertorial)