How to make soil and compost with no work

When it comes down to it, I am either lazy or clever….. probably lazy! As well as that, unlike many people, I don’t like buying things much, especially if they are in plastic bags and come from far away or if I have to get in my car to go and get them. I like staying at home and using what is around me which means I also like to sit on my verandah with a coffee and think about how not to have to go out, but still have things I need!

I like sowing seeds I have saved and I often need to have plants in pots for a while until there is room in the garden and I like compost; I just LOVE the feel and smell of beautiful compost. All this means I need something to put into my seed trays, something to put in my pots and something to dig into the garden….. and here is how it gets done at my place.

My chooks live in a kind of man made forest….. well, some of it is man made intentionally, some of it is a consequence of people living here. Some years ago someone planted two oak trees and a few fruit trees, all very much too close to one another, if you ask me, but they were there so I left them there when I moved here. Someone crazily planted 2 buddleias, which are now massive, one of which the chooks have chosen to roost in at night, instead of in the funny little tin and apple crate structure which they now lay eggs in, mostly. Then, unintentionally some mallow “tree” seeds probably blew in and a few wild plum trees grew on the neighbour’s side of the fence and some other weeds and plants got a hold and now it is quite a lovely forest for chooks. Add to this a lazy woman who throws most of the weeds from the vegetable garden and elsewhere, into the chook yard for them to deal with.

Next, the oak trees lose their leaves in winter and half the chook yard becomes literally 30cms or more deep in oak leaves. I keep tossing weeds on top, the mallow sheds its leaves too as do the  fruit trees, the other plants come and go and for months and months the chooks turn it all over, pecking at insects and edible bits and pieces, which they turn into eggs for me. Sometimes I can hardly open the gate because the chooks ALWAYS kick and scratch everything towards the gate! Oh lalalala, maybe the gate faces Mecca or something but I tell you what they NEVER kick it away from the gate!

So, one day when I was again in there with my spade trying to reclaim my desire to easily enter the chook yard through said gate I noticed how fabulous was this mound, how good it smelt and, kneeling down, how beautiful it felt running through my fingers…. I had discovered gold; a free, easy, continuous supply of beautiful, rich soil, hand made by a flock of assorted chooks of all ages who had been throwing it towards me for years and for which I had cursed them up until this moment.

All set to sift some gold for seed sowing	Now I have raked the area and the chooks are back to see what I have revealed for them!
4 buckets filled. The back right is sifted.	Here are the buckets, now by my potting bench which is next to the chook yard. All very convenient.

Now I can easily gather up a wheelbarrow of soil, which I sift well if I am going to sow seeds into it. If I want it as compost for the garden, I dig it in, acorns, little sticks and all (but I do curse those innocent acorns when they turn into oak trees faster than a speeding bullet!). If I want potting mix, I take the middle ground (like Goldilocks) and use the stuff that is not too fine and not too coarse and sometimes I mix it with some cheap potting mix from some of those wretched plastic bags I hate!

It does take some management because you have to get at it before the next lot of leaves fall and not just after you have dumped a load of the world’s worst weeds on top! Sure, a few grass seeds etc germinate but chooks have very beady eyes and do not let many seeds go uneaten!

All in all it is a brilliant system and allows me more time to sit on my verandah and contemplate other ways to avoid going out and buying stuff.

The Chicken Feed Dilemma

I have been recently thinking about animal feed; for chooks in particular but all farm animals, in the bigger picture. Let’s think about my situation where I have 6 chooks, for eggs. Every morning I give them 2 cups of mixed grain, Australian grown, then in the afternoon I give them more grain, this time organic, Australian feed wheat (ie complete with some chaff and unwinnowed). This make about 3 cups of grain / day and keeps me in eggs all year round, plus I have plenty to give away to son Hugh and even a friend or two, at times.

Using our agricultural land to grow food for animals is worth thinking about carefully, when there are people without enough food, land cleared means native habitat destroyed and then there are the fertilisers, machinery and fossil fuels used to grow, harvest, package and transport it all.

I am feeding grain to 6 chooks and getting eggs, so I think that is a good use for 3 cups of grain / day. However, what about when my chooks get older and are no longer laying? Is it right, on all levels, to keep feeding them? Multiply that by the number of people who have chooks just in Tasmania and we can see that tonnes of grain would be going to old chooks (never mind to old horses and donkeys and alpacas and goats and so on).

Most people stop at the edge of thinking and say “Oh I don’t kill anything and my chooks can live for as long as they like (and therefore I am humane and a nice person).” However, just think about this in relation to native animal and plant survival, CO2 production, fossil fuel usage and a myriad of other, deeper concerns.

Is it ok for you to be “kind” but at the same time be killing wildlife somewhere else, where your chook grain comes from? Is it ok to be “humane” but at the same time be adding to climate change, peak oil, mining and transport problems?

I don’t think we can continue to stop thinking at our property boundary. I think that is precisely how we got into this climate change and earth destruction dilemma in the first place; putting our personal desires before the good of the whole. It may sound harsh to some, but it is far more humane, nice and kind to put old chooks into the stock pot or even into the compost heap.

What has happened to our expectations to grow food?

Every day at the moment governments are making announcements about budgets, taxes, welfare, childcare, big and small business incentives, superannuation, mental health, hospital spending etc etc but never, ever do they broach the subject of self-sufficiency or self-reliance as goals for Australians. It is politically incorrect to expect people to get out and grow their food, join a community garden and become skilled in relying on themselves. However, the simple act of doing this would, to a large extent, overcome many of our national woes.

I enjoy learning about the ancient and more recent history of civilisations and their foods. Up until almost the 21st century, almost every person on earth either grew some food or had relatives that did. Stop and think about that for a moment….. your parents and / or grandparents no doubt fitted this statement and had vegetable gardens and fruit trees in the back yard. In only one or 2 generations people have started to rely on others, unknown and as far away as the other side of the world, to provide nourishment for their families. At the same time, there has been a huge increase in obesity, depression, stress-related, chemical-residue related  and diet-related illnesses.

Interestingly, growing food has become a middle-class activity, seen as something you do in your spare time, after you have bought all the accoutrements that modern-day food gardeners seem to “need” such as raised garden beds and soil (as though the soil in the ground is not good enough these days!).

I am reading a wonderful book, given to me by my fabulous neighbour, Jilly, who recently blew in, in full wet weather gear, in the midst of the coldest and wettest day this year. We sat by the fire and talked for 2 hours, sharing interesting snippets about books, gardening and life. We seem to get together only about once a year but Jilly’s amazing knowledge of plants, history and everything in between keep me inspired until our next coffee. I now look at the old lino pattern on my kitchen floor as steeped in history, instead of annoying!

The book is called “The Nature of Gardens” and is a collection of essays brought together by Peter Timms. It sounds dry and just another intellectual, middle class look at garden design etc but I assure you it is not. I recommend it to anyone who has read this far through this blog piece!!

The first essay and my mother’s stories of life during The Depression have brought me to my laptop to write about the recent past’s expectation that you grew as much as you could and the poorer you were, the more you grew. If your job was not well paid or not permanent, you at least knew your family was going to eat well. This essay points out the interesting fact that when workers in the mines and in the coal and steel industries went on strike in Newcastle, NSW it was prolonged affair and they would not relent. This was possible because these same men all had food gardens so, even with no income, their families ate well. In fact, the free time afforded them because of the strikes meant that jobs in the garden and around the house could be done, and vegetable gardens better tended than usual. This is called resilience and is sorely lacking today.

If I had one day to rule this country, I would insist that welfare would include assistance for you to learn to grow food and even an insistence that you join a community garden where you would gain not just hands-on know how but broaden your social circle and gain a sense of community and self resilience. I know from experience how beneficial food gardening with others is to every single person who joins a community garden. But I also know that insisting people do something is not the best way to get them to do it! People who are transient and those who have short or long term rental are given a place to base themselves by belonging to a community garden. Once you get into a community garden then, even if you move, you take with you the confidence to find another, wherever you go. It is like having an extended family; always there and ready to nourish your body and soul.

At the Cygnet Community Garden we donate fresh vegetables weekly to the Uniting Care Food Aid in the same street as the community garden but I want to offer to walk with the recipients, one at a time, to the community garden and invite them, quietly and without preaching to them, to come along. This is my new goal….. if you have any helpful ideas of how to make this small gesture work please feel free to share them with me.

Greater desires = more work

Masanobu Fukuoka’s book The One Straw Revolution, written back in the 1970’s, is even more relevant today than it was then. A scientist himself, while researching various areas of agriculture, came to the conclusion that chemical agriculture was leading the consumer and the land on the path to illness, and that there had to be a better way. So began his journey into natural farming, using observation and patience to guide him. Eventually he developed simple ways to grow rice and a cereal crop in rotation, without chemicals or hard work. The book is a delightful and insightful look at life and agriculture through the eyes of a Japanese scientist turned farmer.

In one chapter he is discussing the supermarket’s desire to offer the same vegetables all year round and all the same size, with fresh (unnatural) colours and how this puts incredible pressures on the farmers to move towards out-of-season production, with huge losses if the products are different in size as well as the problems of expensive cold storage and chemical coatings to every piece of fruit and vegetable to ensure artificial long keeping.

Then he puts this back onto the consumer by saying….

…..To say that what one eats is merely a matter of preference is deceiving because an unnatural diet creates a hardship for the farmer and the fisherman as well. It seems to me that the greater one’s desires, the more one has to work to satisfy them….

That is the nub of so many of society’s present day ills; desire for more than is natural to have or be or do.

When I read books and articles I always refer back to my life and the lives of the world I see about me as a kind of reference point for making an opinion about what I am reading. My life here is funded by the tiniest income, so tiny I don’t even pay tax. I can do this for several reasons and one is because I was fortunate enough to have the money to set myself up when I came here with a house, a car and modest household goods. It is only from that point on that I needed to make enough money to live on.

Many people who have chosen to live here in southern Tasmania have arrived with the same ability to set themselves up as me. But then they return to a hectic life of working far from home and lots of driving and shopping and expenses that I don’t have. I assume, thanks to that paragraph in the book, this is because their desires are greater than mine.

It is natural to eat by the seasons and I have no problem at all with preparing delicious meals almost entirely from organic, seasonal food.  I cannot think of much that I eat that is not seasonal except spices and grains (which of course ARE seasonal but because they are dried seeds, are usually available all year round). My food bill is very low indeed, especially compared to the trolleys full of packaged food that I see people wheeling to their cars. I have no desire to even know what all that stuff is.

I don’t feel that my life is lacking; in fact I feel it is very rich and wonderful. I love what I do in my Garden Shed and Pantry home and market shop. I love Cygnet and have no desire to shop elsewhere. It is with great regret that I shop online for certain books and technology and I could not live anywhere without the internet! I love the community garden and all rowing and all the simple pleasures of outdoor, rural Tasmania. 

I have learned to say no to taking on more roles and doing more things because after a certain point, more is not better; more is less do-able. Everyone has a natural state that may not be the same as your friends’ or neighbours’. Trying to do or be more than is right for you is self-destructive. I sometimes feel overwhelmed by what I must achieve this week or tomorrow, even though I know people who can do twice as much as me without any (visible) problem.

It seems to me that the greater one’s desires, the more one has to work to satisfy them… Thank you Masanobu for your words of wisdom relevant to the field and the soul.

Imagine a Tasmania….

Imagine living in a place where 100% of the power generated was from renewable energy and owned by the state plus having spare to sell and send across an existing undersea cable to the mainland; where medicinal crops (including poppies and hemp) were billion dollar industries and outstripped the old income from forestry a thousand times over; where wind farm construction was on the cusp of employing the entire workforce (and more) from collapsed mining; where bio mass energy heated schools and pools and buildings all over the state; where dairy farms and vegetable farms were feeding the people near and far…..

Imagine eco-tourism, organic farms, in fact every industry, business and household being able to claim that 100% of their electricity came from sustainable sources…. imagine the tourist potential….. imagine the income from selling such technology and insight all over the world….. imagine the future….

Imagine governments being so ignorant that the mere mention of hemp had them closing doors to businesses ready to start planting; imagine governments taking away renewable energy targets and making the construction of all future wind farms, ready to start building in the next few weeks, impossible to finance…. imagine them not standing tall and claiming credit for tossing aside the woes of a crumbling Tasmania and grasping these chances that have fallen like mana from the heavens….

Imagine how sick we feel and how angry we are to see unsustainable fish farming practices and other ridiculous developments taking precedent. Imagine if they privatise Hydro Tasmania and, like the gas fields of South Australia, investors suck the state dry.

It is hard to write these words. It is incomprehensible that such opportunities are not being grasped. Tasmania has a chance to leapfrog much of the rest of the world but those in the hot seats of power seem incapable of understanding. Imagine how they will be remembered in history. Imagine how it could be…..

The most uncivilised time in human history is now….

 

This man from Thailand has found an easy way to live, after spending 7 years living the hard way. It is so simple, so much how I feel, I want to hug him!

I don’t seem to live in the same world as most people I see. All those cars zooming through Cygnet, going this way and that, while I walk to the shops to get what I need, children being rushed off here and there in the school holidays, people going shopping in bigger towns for clothes that follow a fashion, people going to get some chemical food from a big supermarket, buying stuff, doing stuff, working harder so they can have more stuff and go more places…..and not have time to be happy.

No need for me to say more as he says it all, even about saving seeds!!! I feel like I know this man.

Integration brings integrity; making it work for Tasmania

Tasmania is a magnet for rural tourism. Why? Is it because of the scenery? It certainly isn’t because of the facilities or large resorts. Is it because of the non-existent raging, city night life or sprawling shopping malls?

I rent out a room in my house on Airbnb and I meet the tourists who read my profile on the website and choose to come and stay in my old cottage on an organic, rural 1 acre in the town of Cygnet. I hear what they say when asked why they come to Tasmania. I see the streets of Cygnet literally full of tourist vehicles all year round and I have a stall at the Cygnet Market which provides most of my income because, even for a town of 1,000 locals, this market is what people want to experience.

Everyone with excess produce in their gardens offers it to the girls at The Lotus Eaters cafe who cook the most amazing stuff, using food grown within a very small circle of the cafe. It is always full of people, all year round. In winter you see people in their coats and scarves at the outdoor tables, hands around hot cups of coffee and their famous chai, because this is what they come here for, not to sit in the air conditioned environment of a shopping centre or resort. There is no view from this main street cafe, but there is more atmosphere and warmth and genuine soul than any view can give.

Then on the other side, I listen to the radio and hear how “experts” say that Tasmania needs to catch up with the mainland of Australia and provide more facilities and exciting things for tourists to do and it makes me want to scream! They say we need to build more roads, big hotels and a cable car to the top of Mt. Wellington. This is segregation; dividing tourism off from the everyday life of ordinary people and is expensive and unsustainable in a tiny, cash-strapped state.

I hear about Tasmanian agriculture and how so many fruit orchards have been ripped out or fruit left to rot because of cheap imports. I see that the major supermarkets sell apples from China, when not that long ago, Tasmania was called the Apple Isle and exported all over the world. And yet, local fruit growers have set up roadside stalls and they are patronised by locals and tourists in huge numbers as are all farmgate operations. Every road around here has properties with small groves of  mixed orchards, wood lots, a few animals and a vegetable garden. Many are new or have new owners who can see the wood and the trees! And this week has been Agfest, a rural show of mammoth proportions, visited by anyone and everyone who can get to it, from all over Australia.

The experts are segregating, not integrating. They look at figures for tourist spending in other places and think that this is relevant to Tasmania. They don’t spend a couple of weeks as a tourist in Tasmania and actually see for themselves. Tasmania is unlike most of the rest of Australia in that it is decentralised and people live in nooks and crannies all over it. The “cities” are small; the capital and biggest, Hobart, is only 250,000. It is more like south west France, with very rural villages every few kilometres. And, like rural France, that is exactly what people come to see; rural, everyday life supplying excellent quality, local goods and services in rustic villages and markets.

Everyone wants to go France; where every facet if life is integrated; ancient buildings are not museums, they are loved and lived in. Markets abound with local food and the French people themselves would not buy food grown elsewhere if it was grown locally. Rooms on farms and in rural homes are on every visitor’s list of accommodation. Every tourist to France goes to the markets and villages to see the real French way of life; and so it could be in Tasmania.

Integration means business is life; farmland has tourism in its agenda; farmers integrate ideas with neighbours, instead of competing, to provide diversification; people live and work in their own town, using the shops and services; cafes cook and shops sell what is grown locally; artists use local materials; nothing is dependent on one big industry. Using very little from outside means a low earth footprint which, in itself, is worth advertising for tourism and makes for a sustainable future. I think this is how Cygnet is developing, almost accidentally, and I look forward to the blinkered government and local authorities staying right out of it’s fabulous future!

Sydney is buying and shipping thousands of tons of sand per month from northern Tasmania for making concrete for developments. Is this how Tasmania should be making money?

Integrate not segregate is permaculture principle 8

                   Many hands make light work

Day 2: A new way of thinking about community gardens

Community gardening is changing. Young, creative, energetic people from all walks of life are taking the bull by the horns and bringing outside the square thinking to the whole idea of what a community garden is and whose it is.

In Australia, people have seen grants from all kinds of government, local, state and/or federal, as the way to get a community garden going and keep it funded. The recently elected Liberal Government  has closed this option and many at the Food 4 Thought conference are now without any funding.

Our Cygnet community garden does not work this way, although someone in its history did get a grant to build a green house and 2 rain water tanks for which we are very grateful. We rely on our own initiative, fund raising in small amounts such as selling to the local grocer when we have excess, having a pancake stall at the Folk Festival and selling plants at the Cygnet Market from time to time. We use water for some of the garden from an adjoining house for a small fee (water is cheap in Tasmania!). The local hardware shop gives us a 10% discount when we shop there, which we often do as it is just across the road. Although this is working well for us, we have not gone any further, unlike a small group in Darwin.

The Darwin Garden Education Network has evolved under the outstanding and creative leadership of Lachlan McKenzie and Emily Gray, both of whom look to be in their 20’s. In essence what they have done is simply link all interested parties. So, local businesses, chefs, schools, councils, health departments and commercial kitchens have been linked with community gardens, sharing events and facilities to promote one another.

For example, in order to teach people how to use a particular seasonal vegetable growing in the community garden, they invited a local chef to run an after school workshop for anyone interested. The chef promoted his restaurant, the community garden provided the vegetables and promoted their garden and the school made use of their facility and encouraged students and parents to join in.

At their annual fair, community gardeners from all over Darwin collaborated in running a pop-up cafe, with all food cooked beforehand by the gardeners, tables and chairs provided by a local business, straw bales by a garden supplier, all of whom could have their own stalls. The profits were shared by all participating community gardens. Schools were given the job of decorating a combined zone with anything they chose to promote their schools in exchange for each running a 1/2 hour workshop on something garden related. Businesses were encouraged to have a stall, the payment being simply a gift voucher which was then given as payment to anyone who ran a workshop, thus reducing the need for book keeping on the day.

On Friday afternoons, a local seedling nursery gives all its leftover punnets of seedlings to any group that shows up at the gate and also offers work experience to local schools. People talking and connecting really make things happen.

By being in touch with local health authorities and councils who are keen to promote such self-motivated and healthy events, compliance fees and rentals could be waived. And so the linkages have extended until now there are about a dozen community gardens, some in very close proximity to each other, where only a couple of years ago there was only one. Working together to achieve common aims is far easier than everyone re-inventing the wheel and competing for limited funding.

These are real community gardens, linking every level of the community with every other under the umbrella of encouraging local, organic, affordable, home grown food with associated education and workshops; using common land to connect people of all cultures, ages and abilities with nature, each other and their food, in a full circle.

Interestingly they don’t have a website!

I am REALLY excited to say that Emily was voted in as the new president of the Australian City Farms and Community Gardens Network, the body that gave us this fabulous Food 4 Thought conference. I can’t wait to see what she and Lachlan come up with!!

Gardening Australia gets to the core and soars to the stars….

"Meet Joost Bakker - artist, florist, inventor, architect, builder, landscape designer, restaurateur and eco-entrepreneur. He's a big ideas man."

 

I have been getting a little tired of Gardening Australia but this week hit the spot for me, with some amazing innovations that really are world firsts. Honestly, each segment was not just interesting but so inspiring and creative that I wanted to jump up out of my chair and go and join in. If you can, watch it on iview.

 

It started with this wonderful man…. Joost Bakker…. who has ideas and just gets them done…. "I just believe that we don't need to generate any waste in any of the things that we do in everyday life," says Joost. "We can live in a world that is sustainable and doesn't need to have an impact and we don't need to put anything in landfill. Everything endlessly reusable and recyclable - that's my philosophy."

Sure we’ve heard that all before but Joost is a BIG ideas man…..he designs recyclable houses, he recycles buildings, he turns 100% of his cafe waste into compost on site. He is just simply wonderful!!

"In this cafe, we don't have any rubbish bins," says Joost. "We don't accept anything in cardboard, we don't accept anything in glass - so our milk comes in stainless steel vats, our whiskey comes in wooden barrels, all the produce comes in black returnable plastic crates.

And there’s so much more!

"Well, if you look at Sweden, they've decided that by 2020 they're going to be totally self-sufficient in fertiliser. So every new house that gets built there has a urine-harvesting toilet with a tank and the government comes and empties the tank once a year. Urine is sterile*, so you can store it for a long time and they have equipment that injects it into the soil," says Joost. "So, rather than using chemical-based fertilisers they want to use natural fertilisers."

And I bet he gets this one done….

"I'd love to put a farm on top of an office tower in Melbourne. That's my goal. I actually want to show how much food we can grow with the waste that the restaurant generates. I want to have a restaurant, a farm, a composter and use things like olive pips to generate energy and have a completely enclosed loop of a supermarket at the base, where people can buy the produce that we've grown. Anyway, I'm working on it. It's a big dream. It'll happen. I'll make it happen!"

Suddenly the rest of the world seems so small.

Seed Freedom Fortnight is coming

Go to Vandana Shiva’s Seed Freedom website and facebook to see how you can join forces with your neighbours…..

Humans are 90% bacteria…. but which bacteria are you?

It is so obvious really, but sometimes breakthroughs and discoveries are like that. We all know that probiotics are helpful bacteria that live in our digestive system and many people buy certain yoghurts and supplements that contain a very particular range of probiotics.

It is also well known that an acidic diet, one high in sugary foods for example, is not friendly to these bacteria….. hence people try adding them to their diet (instead of removing the sugar!).

But, take this one step further and ask another question “What other bacteria live in our bodies and what are they doing?” Well, it seems that the answers are quite amazing and many diseases and conditions are being linked to the absence or presence of certain bacteria. Moreover, it is the food we eat that feeds these bacteria, so if we eat a good diet, our range of bacteria stays in harmony and we stay well. If we have a poor, highly processed diet then this feeds a different range of bacteria which upsets the balance, our immunity is compromised and our health suffers.

You can listen to a brief explanation here. Another study looked at fasting or calorie restriction and found that this promotes beneficial bacteria. Read more here.

So, get out there and grow mountains of delicious greens!!

‘Daily Good’– providing solutions to the ‘news’

Local, Australian news services have become the lowest of the low, in terms of providing factual, real news. There is rarely anything worth mentioning as it is all cheap and easy daily details on rape, murder and political unrest, at home and overseas. Where has intelligent journalism gone?

I know there are terrible things happening in the world but seeing children covered in blood in Syria or a man being taken to court for rape or one politician slinging off at another is not telling me anything NEW and doesn’t NEWS mean something new? For every bad piece of news, they should show one of the millions of people who are trying to do something about it, thereby adding hope and education to the very poor presentations.

I get my news elsewhere. One place is Daily Good which inspires me to get out and do more to change the way things are and puts me in touch with so much NEWS that is really happening, in every corner of the world where people are endeavouring to overcome the horror of what our local news keeps telling us is there.

Like with Jamie Oliver and his passion for school lunches and children knowing and growing food so they can be healthy, there is a link between how children play and how children behave. Creating green spaces for the poorest and most disadvantaged children, often living in big, grey cities, has the chance to stop some of those horrific American shootings we are told about. The excerpt below is from “Daily Good: news that inspires”

….Charlotte, 4, has two 20-minute recess breaks each day. Her teachers wish they could spend more time outside with their young charges, but they have to rotate usage with other teachers, and the playground is also small and somewhat unwelcoming. It's surrounded by eight-foot chain link fencing and features standard-issue swings and monkey bars on blacktop. When she doesn't feel like chasing her friends, Charlotte sits with her back against her school's brick façade and watches cars pass on an adjacent freeway….

 

 

….Ivy's preschool recently added an outdoor classroom. Fencing created from natural materials conceals a hidden wonderland divided into intentional learning and play areas. In one part of the classroom, Ivy and her friends can get their hands dirty with "messy materials." Across a mosaic stone path, they can snip samples of organic greens grown in their own raised beds. There are weatherproof marimbas for the musically inclined—and really, aren't all preschoolers musically inclined?—and "tree cookies," rough wooden building blocks, for use in elaborate building projects…..

Creative, hands-on outdoor experiences like those Ivy is exposed to are an essential piece of the child development puzzle. Research reveals that contact with nature may be as important for children as good nutrition and sleep…..Most children have more options for solitary play provided by electronics and child-targeting technologies. This lack of time outdoors contributes to childhood obesity and increased reliance on behaviour-regulating medicines. While many educators recognize these connections, they may not possess the tools or resources they need to actualize nature-based learning in their schools.

“Nature Explore” can help bridge this gap. In outdoor classrooms, children develop a sense of wonder and respect for the natural world. They solve problems, experiment, engage, and explore. Globally, there are already 170 certified Nature Explore Classrooms, with many more underway. Based on field-tested guiding principles, these spaces have been developed for schools, early childhood centers, domestic violence shelters, military bases, parks and museums. While each design is unique, the underlying philosophy remains the same: Connect kids with nature and amazing things happen.

Want to introduce the kids—or educators—in your life to a Nature Explore classroom? Visit www.natureexplore.org for virtual tours of certified classrooms, details on upcoming workshops, an overview of the design consultation process, and other resources that can help you launch a Nature Explore space in your community.

A Fast History of the Earth’s Climate

You want facts? Well here they are; presented extremely well, without being dry.

What did it do for me? Made me more aware than ever that humans won’t be here forever; nothing ever has been, but we are adding fuel to the fire of our extinction…. not that smart for the cleverest animal currently on earth!

One creature to another….

I don’t believe in gods. I don’t believe in life having meaning. I don’t understand why people need meaning. Isn’t it enough to be a human, in a world full of beauty, filled with plants and animals, amazing geological structures and incredible events like sunsets and rainbows?

I feel incredibly lucky to be alive. Doesn’t every body? I feel free to be entirely who I want and I take full responsibility for how I am. I rarely even think about this but I have been watching Richard Hawkins’ programme called Sex, Death and the Meaning of Life in which he explores various ways people seek meaning.

It seems to me that a lot of people are bogged down trying to find a meaning or a purpose, when there is none. Humans are not special and they do not have meaning any more than an ant or a cabbage. To me that is entirely liberating. When I am totally responsible for my life it empowers me to take charge of it because if I don’t then my life is a waste of time, time spent waiting for someone or some god or some fate to guide me.

I really think that humans have become entirely self-centred; rarely thinking of the wondrousness of life at all; rarely taking time to watch the light falling on a frosty leaf or listen to the croak of a frog on a pot plant and certainly almost never feeling connected to these things, one creature to another, as I do.

So obsessed are people with meaning and believing in things that if you are not like them, then you are not often allowed to say so…. although I do make a point of saying so, at times. I said so recently, to a dear, Christian friend of mine. I think she felt sorry for me; me not knowing God as she does. We talked about the soul. She said I had a good soul. Evidently God gives us our soul. Well, I said I made my own; I am the accumulation of 54 years of being who I choose to be with life’s ups and downs moulding me along the way.

We were sitting by the window at the shack. Being there, right by the sea, for a great part of my life; seeing and smelling and feeling all that such an opportunity has given me, has definitely influenced my love of and connection to everything around me. That is where my soul comes from, not from a god.

Get rid of the gods and we would get rid of most of the fighting in the world. How can you fight with someone when you are standing under a beautiful tree or cooling your feet as you walk in the sea or watching an insect crawl on your hand or smelling the delicious aroma of a mango?

Food was the problem, now it is the solution

A very concise, well spoken and clear explanation for how food is changing the world for the better.

When you realise that transporting food all over the world produces as much as 30% of the green house gases and simply by growing it closer to home we can do huge good, for the hungry and the obese, the earth and the seas, the future of all of us…. it really makes you sigh with relief, roll up your sleeves and want to join in.

The day when chips aint chips

Peak oil means more expensive food for those who can least afford it. The family farms of rural India, Africa, South America and even Tasmania are being taken over by multinational agri-businesses, in the name of providing food for the world. However, the International Year of the Family Farm 2014 has ideas on how to retain food production in every local community, doing away with expensive methods of agriculture and the cancer of food miles.

Imagine a food system which exposes energy usage at every stage of production, taxing or raising costs depending on energy used to produce the food.

So, growing your own food, lets say potatoes, in your own community, using local resources, would become the cheapest food. In your own home and local take-aways and restaurants this potato may be turned into chips for very little extra cost.

Processed, packaged food would incur extra costs for every potato grown in oil and chemical laden agricultural systems, every food mile travelled from producer of the raw potato to processing factory, every energy unit used to process the potato into, for example, a bag of frozen chips, including the production of the plastic bag and its own transport and energy costs and every energy unit used to then transport, store and display it in the supermarket.

Suddenly the true cost of chips is revealed.

I can imagine a system in Australia which stamps every item with an energy rating, such as that currently used for washing machines, fridges and cars etc. Affluent Australian supermarket shoppers often want to do something positive for the earth and the farmers but do not have the information or are not prepared to put in the time to explore all the issues. This energy rating system would be a clear and uniform way to compare foods.

The insidious creep of huge, energy-guzzling agri-business into the farthest corners of the globe’s farming areas is tearing the earth and communities apart and removing the ability of people to provide good, clean, traditional foods for themselves.

A Farm for the Future

Another beautiful BBC production which, in 5 parts, takes us through the experiences and thoughts of a young, female farmer in the UK and her quest to build on her father’s observation and life-time’s work on their farm, whilst taking in ideas from others.
It is good to reconnect with people like her who, in a gentle way, put heart into what is often a very harsh, scientific debate. After all, the world would be just fine if humanity became extinct; its only the humans who need to find a way of farming for THEIR future. No other creature, animal or plant, needs farming. So, it should be all about getting along and sharing and less about fighting for our rights to pollute, mine oil, destroy forests etc

The Great Disruption

This book by ex CEO of Green Peace, Paul Gilding, pulls together research, interviews and history as well as Paul’s own business perspective to create a masterpiece of understanding of where we are, how we got here and where we must go.

I will need to re-read some parts to be able to talk intelligently about the facts, but I am much more of a gist person. Interestingly, many of us already understand the gist of our current predicament, simply by taking a by-stander’s eye view. Those of us in our 50’s and beyond see so many facets of our world turning sour. A world previously understood is becoming chaotic, from chemical residues in the depths of the sea to mega-melting of polar ice caps, from alarming increases in climate related catastrophes to huge political upheavals related to economic collapse, from foreign ownership of our Australian farmlands to coal seam gas ripping our food bowls apart, from epidemics of depression and anxiety to a world full to overflowing with plastic consumables. We all know something is not right.

That this ‘something’ is about to explode in our faces, this century and in the life times of most of us reading this, can make us bury our heads further in the sand and soldier on. Many people have not grasped the fact that we, the human race, chose our path of economic growth not long ago. It has worked well but it is past its ‘best before’ date and we must make a new model for the future. If we wander along this same path, not looking where we are going, we will fall over a cliff and tear civilisation apart. If we stop a moment and take stock now, facing up to the fact that we have choices and now is the time to make them, we will have time, brief and intense it may be, to lay down the foundations of a new path.

Many such thinkers and movers have come to live in and around Cygnet, including Paul Gilding himself! We are a loosely connected band of people seeking something beyond consumerism and a huge mortgage. Many do not know why it feels right here but right it does feel and eventually I hope we will be able to pull together to reassemble community, sharing and a less introspective lifestyle.

I am only just past half way in my reading of The Great Disruption but I have now come to the ‘roll up your sleeves and get started’ section of the book. I can’t wait to read about and put into action, as an individual at least, the construction of a new, firm path for our future and I am sure it will include saving our own seeds!

I am reading it on Kindle…. I feel it is better to buy a product like an ebook reader, once, than it is to keep cutting down trees to make paper for every book I read.

Excited by something green

I knew I was a bit more passionate about growing vegetables than some, or even most, people but I did not realise that the reason may well be that a lot of people just are not very excited about vegetables, full stop.

I spent the morning gardening in a lush and productive vegetable garden belonging to one of our Wednesday gardening group. One of the jobs was to remove an enormous, but evidently not very good, artichoke. Chatting to one of the others, we thought that this might have been a cardoon, so long and thick were its leaf stalks and this would account for its earlier crop of small but plentiful “artichokes”.

After a good time digging all the way to China to get to the bottom of its root system, we divided it up and I removed most of the lush growth, so that the offshoots could be given away, if anyone wanted them. I stood there on that hillside, looking down at the patchwork of farms in the picturesque valley below, my thoughts constantly interrupted by a cow insisting on attention on the other side of the veg garden fence. The wind was cold but I was in the lea of a wall and the sun was warm. Life sometimes is amazingly good.

I stripped off the celery-like strings of one of the “artichoke” leaf stalks and bit into it to see if it was edible. Wow, I thought, this is crisp, incredibly juicy and very edible; a great celery substitute for winter. I called over Frances for a bite and she agreed, very edible and nice. So I gathered some of the juiciest looking leaf stalks for everyone to take home and eat and prepared one for them all to try while we had morning tea a bit later.

When the coffee gong sounded I took our discovery and sliced it up like celery, put it all into a bowl and offered it around….. silence…. “it tastes like nothing”…..”not very interesting is it”….and then..… “oh greens…. yeah I must try to get to like them.”

What!? I am still so stunned I cannot think what to write. Here was a discovery for adding a juicy crunch to winter salads the length and breadth of the Huon Valley and only Sandra was at all interested. Greens…. well, what do you eat if you don’t eat greens? There’s a limit to the number of potatoes and carrots I can eat…. my meals are full of greens from my garden of every sort, from Asia to America and European cultures. My life would be empty without greens and arms full of herbs, in soups, salads, casseroles and served with or for every meal.

The penny dropped…. is this why people are not passionate about growing food like I am? Is this why only Frances and I wanted to work in the vegetable garden while everyone else chose other jobs? Do I need to change my approach and, instead of offering to show people how to grow vegetables, I first need to show them how to eat them?

It has been in my mind for a year or so….a new workshop in my kitchen….

”Cook with me from My Garden”

Every week (summer) or maybe month (winter, when things grow so slowly) a small group of people would come and gather food from my garden and together we would make it into a deliciously simple but tasty and healthy meal in my kitchen, and then eat together. I would help people shop from their gardens; seeing their gardens (or even the new local, seasonal greengrocer “The Cygnet Garden Larder”) as their primary source of food. I would show them my cookbooks, arranged by season or alphabetically by ingredient and how invaluable it is to be able to get ideas for cooking with whatever is available.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Below left…. preparing Belgian Endive clusters for over-wintering in the dark.

 

Below right….winter salad from my garden…irresistible, I think!

 

 

 

 

I have to be prepared for resistance….. I have to encourage and educate sweetly (oh dear)….

I am determined to offer wellness, vitality and an uplifted spirit…

Of all the things I do with gusto and success, this is the one I have the most passion for and the one I am most nervous about, at the same time.

Life is good….. but a whole lot better with home grown greens and herbs everyday.

Simple Lives.....com.au

Interesting, isn't it, how we have so easily assimilated technology into even the simplest of lives. And so it was that Sophie and Greg arrived at my door, on their bicycles, one evening recently, having contacted me via the world of bloggers. A delightful pair they are, riding around parts of Australia and then the world, gathering notes on living simply, for a future book. Visit them at simplelives.com.au

Cygnet is a magnet for just the people they needed to speak to so I had arranged for a get together over dinner at my place, that evening.

We ate from the garden, talked from the heart, told our stories and aired our thoughts about the why, how and who of trying to live simpler lives.

 

Greg took copious notes and asked everyone as many questions as he could think of, ending up with enough information already to write a book!

So, what are simple lives? The answer is actually very simple too; living a simple life requires you to be connected to a community so that you can share tools, seeds, "stuff" and food. It means re-humanising yourself. It means caring.... about your neighbours, your friends, your environment and your impact on all of these. It is not about being a hermit, surviving alone.

How does one begin? Most people start slowly and unintentionally..... growing a few vegetables, reading labels in the supermarket, catching a bus to work or joining a community garden, buying a magazine on sustainable home improvements or organic gardening etc etc. Very slowly the meaning of life questions you thought were going to be answered by frantically driving your children to their next activity, working late to get more money and buying new furniture or gadgets, still rear their heads and remain unanswered.

One evening, about 6 years ago, I went to a talk. I have now forgotten the topic because what happened was that, in the interval, I met people. Some of these people made me think very differently; opened my eyes to the bloody obvious..... and that was that there is a whole lot of people out there, in my city of Adelaide, who thought just like me. I realised I was no longer a hermit, growing my vegetables, NOT enrolling my children in structured activities, refusing to use chemicals in my home etc etc; I had found community.

Simple lives are just that.... plural. The hardest part of the journey is finding them. The internet is a good place to start. Make a blog. Read blogs listed in other people's side bars. Leave comments. Get connected to the online community and you will find that your neighbour may well be there too!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good luck Sophie and Greg. Have fun. Take in the vibes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Life is good; get there fast and then take it slow.