Planning is well underway for the 2025 Grainz event, which is set to be held from November 10-11, 2025 in Pomonal in the Grampians district of Victoria.

Event co-organiser Pippa James said everything was going smoothly so far, and a number of the events were in the process of being locked in.

“This year the theme will be resilience,” she said.

“It will be really nice to be in Pomonal this year. The region has been completely battered by drought and fire for several years now, but, there’s a strong community and a good local food community.”

Grain growing is well established within the area, which Pippa said made it an ideal place for Grainz to be held.

This year the two-day event will include a tour of Burrum Biodynamics and a schedule of events to be held at local micro-bakery Blue Wren Bakery.

Grainz 2025 will kick off with a morning panel that will cover topics like financial and emotional resilience. The panel will include Nick Shelley from Blue Wren Bakery, Rob Pekin from Food Connect, Chris Moore from Sailors Grave Brewing.

Then, in the afternoon, there will be three sessions that will run three times each – ruling out the need for attendees to choose between them – that will all be workshop-based.

Pippa said one of these would see Blue Wren Bakery’s Nick return to the stage with his partner Jackie Lazarus and would cover introducing new grains and whole grains into baking.

“These growers are sourcing heritage grains or growing new population wheat – but how so we actually incorporate these into our bakes?” she said.

Another session will be run by Postdoctoral fellow at University of Missouri and former rye-searcher at WSU Bread Lab Laura Valli alongside baker and farmer Emily Sakeld, and will cover the use of rye for non-bread bakes, like cakes and scones.

“Laura does a lot of work around biodiversity and grain, so she will be a big drawcard,” Pippa said.

“After that we’ll have Delphine Sicard. She presented at the Red Beard GrAiNZ in 2019, and she’s coming out again to talk about Reviving Bread: The ecological, nutritional and cultural power of sourdough.

“She’s done some really interesting research on where the bacteria in sourdough cultures comes from. Her research is so interesting and she’s a great presenter.”

Wrapping up the workshops will be a presentation from 2023 John Reid Fellowship recipient Shingiari Nyabonda from Food Next Door Co-op.

The first day will finish off with a large dinner at the Pomonal Community Hall catered by the team at Bar Merenda in Daylesford. The second day will include a tour of Burrum Biodynamics, who Blue Wren Bakery works closely with.

“That will be a wheat walk and talk about their practices. Steve (Walter, owner) is just passionately dedicated to biodynamic farming and they have done so much good work in the grain space,” Pippa said.

Registrations for the event are now open, with program updates still to be announced. Pippa said anyone interested in attending Grainz 2025 could stay in the loop by signing up for the mailing list via their website.

“That’s the first place that information will go out,” she said.