toward sustainability with three kids......

The Great Kilowatt Challenge

2011-11-24T16:23:00.000+11:00

We are joining Gavin's Great Kilowatt Challenge - should be fun and an interesting follow up to our recently finished Energymark group.

Visit Gavin's blog for more info on reading you meters and recording your consumption data and working out your baseline power consumption.

Our wetland is filling in this week of rain

2011-11-22T15:32:00.001+11:00

In a Permablitz on our front yard in October 2010 we constructed an ephemeral wetland (or dry creek bed) in our front yard native plant section. The photos below shows how it has developed over the last year - I think it should be inspiration enough for anyone to make their own wetland - dry creek bed. We are now waiting for the frogs to find our secret wetland and make it home.

Building the dry creekbed / wetland October 2010

After rain - November 2010

Putting native pine mulch up to the edge of the creek / wetland April 2011

The wetland now after naturally filling with rain - November 2011

Have you ever been inspired to include a wetland in your home garden?

No foil or plastic wrap for two years now

2011-11-04T11:18:00.000+11:00

When we moved to Orange nearly four years ago I stopped buying aluminium foil and plastic cling wrap. It took nearly two years to use up the last of my rolls of each in the kitchen draw - but for about the last two years we have been aluminium foil and cling wrap free. I get asked many questions as to how I do it. So here are my strategies.

We have been using reusable sandwich wraps for packed lunches all this year - I have been very happy that the kids have not lost a single wrap over the year - even if I have to search for them in the school trouser's pocket or at the bottom of the school bag. I find that these reusable wraps are great - I wipe them down with a cloth and tea towel daily and put them all through the washing machine at the end of the week. I have had Mum's from school ask about the warps the kids use - along with work colleagues commenting on Dad's wraps in his work lunchbox.

The kids lunchboxes are designed to be rubbish free as well.... having many little compartments that we can put unwrapped biscuits, cheese and fruit into.

When we have left overs from the evening meal I pack them directly into a lunchbox for Dad to take to work the next day or simply put a plate over the top of the bowl of leftovers before putting it into the fridge.
When we cook cakes for the kids school we use an old cereal box - cut to make a lid.

In the microwave (although we are doing without one at the moment as it is not working) - we use ceramic bowls with a plate on the top instead of using cling wrap.
The other day we cooked a fresh trout on the BBQ - wrapped in silverbeet from the garden instead of foil. The dogs loved the fish infused silverbeet as an add-on to their evening meal.

We have certainly adjusted quickly to not have aluminium foil or plastic cling wrap in the house - and that is now another aisle of the supermarket that we can avoid - which I find empowering.

Using old bath tubs to make wicking beds

2011-10-21T18:09:00.000+11:00

At the Orange community garden working bee a weekend or two ago we constructed some bathtub wicking beds. Over at Child's Play Permaculture there is a good article on wicking beds if you would like more information but here is a few snaps of what we did on the day.

Placing the bathtubs in position... we had to level the sites out a bit and sink the northern tub
in lower than the southern one. The idea being that the northern tub will shade
the side of the southern (back) bathtub and stop it from heating up too much.

Some old downpipe was recycled as the watering for the wicking bed. Pipe ran flat along
the bottom of the bath and had slits cut to allow water to run out into the bottom of the bath.

After adding and wetting the wicking layer of straw we filled the baths
with some good garden soil.

Testing the wicking pipes.

Now for some seedlings - lettuce in the front bathtub.

Taller plants in the back tub (sweet corn at the moment - we might plant some
beans and cucumbers in here at the next working be).

Can't wait to see how they are coming along.... might have to visit for a quick peek on the weekend.

A trip to Sydney by train

2011-10-16T13:23:00.001+11:00

In the last week of the school holidays we had to take our oldest boy down to Sydney to get braces on his teeth - his orthodontist's surgery was right in the heart of Sydney - near the State Library. We took the opportunity to take the trip from Orange to Sydney and return via the train - the Countrylink XPT is a daily service from Dubbo to Sydney and return daily and although not ideal times for commuting it was a great way to plan for a few days exploring Sydney and the kids travelled for $2 return.

Lots of time for colouring... without getting travel sick.

Time for some puzzles... something we would not have been able to do in the car

The freedom that we and the kids experienced with no car for four days and a small backpack of essentials was great. All this on top of the fact that the train takes the same time as a car to get to Sydney and you have no parking hassles in town once you get there and we got to have some quality time with the kids while travelling down because we were not driving. It is certainly a trip that we will be trying again.

Here are some highlights from the trip.

The Powerhouse Museum...

Slime making workshop

A snap shot of some startling statistics from the EcoLogic dipslay at the Powerhouse Museum (the numbers kept changing as we watched)

The Darling Harbour area was also a highlight and a refreshing retreat from the hustle and bustle of the cities streets.

The water playground at Darling Harbour's Tumbalong Park kept the kids occupied for hours

The Chinese Garden of Friendship was a magic garden to visit

Bamboo forest - we would love to have a Bamboo Forest in our yard

The kids enjoyed walking through the Royal Botanic Gardens

Looking at the Pitcher Plants

A Dragon's-blood Tree - just like out the Tashi stories the kids read

In the evening we walked home through Chinatown

Exploring Chinatown by night

All in all we had an intense couple of days in Sydney - but got time to relax on the train-trip back to Orange.

Medicinal herbs in our local park

2011-10-02T23:22:00.001+11:00

Last weekend we had the opportunity to tag along with a tour of our local Cook Park looking at medicinal herbs and their uses. The tour was part of the National Herbalists Association's National Herbal Medicine Week and was lead by local herbalist Angela Duncan.

We all certainly had fun walking along and exploring what was in our local park and learning more about what some of the uses of the herbs were.

Some plants that I would like to get into our home garden include Yarrow and Wormwood. I learnt that the nerve toxin drug absinthe was made from Wormwood (Artemisia absinthum) but also that wormwoods have great anti-inflammatory properties - as well as being useful for repelling pests such as lice and intestinal worms around the chookpen. I feel that I have so much to learn about various uses of herbs - many of which are common in our everyday gardens such as rosemary and willows (the active ingredient of Asprin is based on the active ingredient in Willow Bark). Of course, many of these herbal medicines need to be taken in tablet form under the guidance of qualified herbalists to ensure correct dosage and usages.

The kids also enjoyed some time in the park at Spring time.

The kids made their own solar oven

2011-09-12T14:24:00.000+10:00

In a workshop run as part of the Orange Sustainable Living Week this year we participated in a solar oven making workshop.

What fun we all had making our own solar oven, here are some photos of the whole process.

Our instructions were clearly set out on this display board...

Selecting two boxes to make our oven.
There had to be about a 5cm gap between the boxes.

The gap between the boxes was filled with scrunched up newspaper.

We painted the inside of the smaller box black.

We made a reflector out of on old corflute real estate sign covered in
aluminium foil and added a glass lid.

We did not get to test the oven yesterday as it was cold and overcast all day..
but it was sunny today so we put it to the test in the sun today.

In just over half an hour our cardboard box oven reached 100oC -
so you may even be able to boil your water in it.

My new wallet

2011-09-09T11:54:00.000+10:00

I had been holding out for a while on purchasing a new wallet - my old wallet was falling apart and becoming non-functional. After finally giving in the other day I went in search of a new wallet and this is what I found... produced from rubbish found in Indonesia with the money going back into the community to support environmental projects.

A card and note wallet made primarily from an inner tube

A wallet for coins and more cards made from a up-cycled dog food bag and SIM cards....

The dog food labelling inside the wallet

Sharing the load

2011-09-01T13:42:00.001+10:00

Last Sunday we went out to a working bee at an orchard as part of our Central West Permaculture activities - the first for a while as we come out of another Orange winter.

It was almost too late to do much but this was an orchard in need of some care and pruning - and it's owner had recently lost her husband and was finding it all too overwhelming to look after.

Not sure how many trees we did - but everyone got on with the job. We pruned apricots, plums, cherries, quinces, apple, medlars, persimmons, peaches, nectarines - and probably more types fruit trees that we could not identify. The trees - although possibly not having large crops this year will certainly be bouncing back for the next year or two. We trimmed out crowded branches and tidied up suckers from around the base of the the trees and generally made the trees so that we could reach the fruit when it does grow.

It was a great day and gave us a chance to chat and learn from each other and we are already planning a jam making / preserving day when the crops return.

Finding time in a busy spell

2011-08-29T07:18:00.000+10:00

Work has dominated our time over the last month - so when I got the opportunity for some time with our littlest we went shopping at our local op shops.

Here is what we found - some real treasures.

Some real girly clothes

Some lovely preloved boots

Testing the skirt and boots...

Our littlests "new" clothes and boots have been a great find - the boots have only rarely been taken off since we found them.

Enjoying the flexibility in making our own sourdough bread

2011-08-06T09:08:00.000+10:00

A couple of months ago we started "growing" our own Sourdough starter to make our own bread - we were inspired by posts like this and after some internet and cookbook research we were ready to give sourdough a go. We had never tried sourdough and the experience has been a real journey of discovery. We had made our own bread, but had used cans of dried yeast, often packet bread mixes and a bread machine.

It took about three weeks to "brew" up our first sourdough starter batch - feeding it with a tablespoon of rainwater and unbleached flour each day. At about two weeks we started seeing bubbles in our starter mix - we were now ready to try our first hand made sourdough bread.

The process of turning the starter into a loaf of bread takes up to two days and what we have enjoyed is realizing that the process is flexible. So here is what we do.

We take the sourdough starter and mix in a cup of unbleached flour and a cup of water in a large bowl then leave it in a bowl on the kitchen bench overnight or until it is all frothy and bubbly.

I save about a cup of this mix to be my new starter batch and then to the remaining ingredients in the bowl add:

about 3 cups of unbleached flour
1/2 a cup or so of wholegrain bran
1 teaspoon of salt
1 tablespoon of treacle
and water to make a dough (about 1 cup)

Mix ingredients to make a dough - adding more water if needed. Knead the dough until well mixed and leave for half a day or overnight to rise. After a quick knead we reshape into a loaf and put in a bread tin to rise in a warm place - on the kitchen window sill is working well over winter.

Once risen put the loaf into a cold oven - turn oven on to about 180oC and bake for 30 - 40 minutes or until browned on top and sounds hollow when tapped. The loaf below is one without the bran and treacle - so is a white sourdough.

The kids are really enjoying the whole breadmaking process - and because the bread is heavier than the standard bought bread we find that we all actually eat less bread - and we don't have all that plastic packaging that comes with standard supermarket bread.

National tree day planting missed..

2011-08-03T20:15:00.000+10:00

We got caught up with things on Sunday so came in late for the National Tree Day planting at our local urban wetland - much to the kids disappointment all 1,000 trees were planted before we got there. What a great result - but the kids were geared up for tree planting and therefore very disappointed. So we came home and planted about shrubs and grasses in our front garden - our natural area.

Time away from the computer

2011-07-18T22:56:00.001+10:00

School holidays give us the opportunity to spend some time away from the computers and enjoy some quality family and outdoor time. We have just spent the best part of the last two weeks warming up in northern NSW and southern Queensland - temperatures that will be sadly missed with forcasts of snow here tomorrow morning.

We loved the chance to hang out at the beach....

...to explore some cool rock formations..

.....to find some cool things like this bird nest....

... to enjoy some good unstructured play (we took no toys away with us)...

....explore mystical rainforests...

..climb mountains - our littlest walked over 12km one day! What a personal goal....

... stare up into the canopies of tall trees...

..and generally have time to explore...

I think the kids are looking forward to our next holiday away again already - but I am sure they will love catching up with their friends and sharing holiday stories over the next week or two.

Finding it hard to keep the decluttering momentum going

2011-07-03T09:35:00.001+10:00

It has been a busy time of year with end of year project reporting for work and the finalisation of teaching assessments and marks - so I have not had time to write about what we have been up to on the home sustainability front. To kick off getting back into things I thought that I would start with a few summaries of where we are up to with what we set out to achieve in 2011. Our big goals were to simplify things (declutter), work on our health, find more ways to reduce our energy consumption, reduce our household waste and commit to buying organic, local or free range meat.

I will begin today with what we have achieved with simplifying things or decluttering. To be honest the decluttering bug started off well but has slowed down as winter set in and work increased but we have achieved a lot.

I have been mulching the garden with old university notes and my old undergraduate herbarium (pressed plant collection) - that was three draws of a filing cabinet emptied (the final severing of my research past).

We went through the shopping bag cupboard and shorted out some excess bags - we washed these and donated them to one of the local opportunity shops - so I guess a range of customers now have some reusable shopping bags to add to their collection.

With the kids help we have started the process of shorting through the toys and books and have given many to the local opportunity shops. A selection of our favourite books and toys have found their way to our newest little cousin (nephew). We have another load of toys ready to be given away when the kids meet their new cousin over the school holidays.

The kids clothes and shoes were sorted and again donated to the local charity shops. Inspired by Tricia at Little Eco Footprints I have been reduced my wardrobe one section at a time. So far I have been through my underwear and sock draws, my shirts and jeans - and I haven't missed anything that I have found a new home for.

We even went through the kitchen cupboards and reduced what we had here - that has made a huge difference to our ability to fit things in the cupboard and of course our ability to find things in the cupboard.

We are hoping the next half of the year is less busy and maybe we can sort through the shed, the games cupboard or even Dad's shoe collection.

What are your secrets to decluttering and simplifying your life?

Making small, simple energy saving steps

2011-06-12T15:55:00.000+10:00

We are hosting our groups Energymark meeting this weekend.... with winter well and truly upon us and one very cold week just gone (I don't think we got above 4oC or so for about 5 days) it was timely that we starting making some more small energy saving steps.

We checked the windows and doors for draughts the other day - using an incense stick on a windy day.

We had sealed doors last year bit I just wanted to check the windows and recheck the door seals. I did not find any big draught spots that need sealing - which was good.

We have been contemplating double glazing some of our south facing windows - to reduce both heat loss from our south facing bedrooms and to stop the condensation that builds up on the windows and creates a damp mouldy inside of the window. But have not found the time to chase quotes etc at the moment and to be honest we are a bit nervous about the potential costs.

So we decided to keep finding some small, simple energy saving steps to do around the house. Yesterday we made simple pelmets for all the living room windows. This is the view of the top of our curtains before our simple pelmet installation - note the close to 10cm wide gap between the curtain and the window frame. Air can circulate through this gap down past the window, resulting in the air being cooled by the cold air outside the window. As you can imagine - this could develop into quite a cooling current or draught in the room.

To stop the air circulation down past the window we simply put a piece of timber over the top of the curtain - resting it on the curtain track supports. You can see in the image below how the air can no longer travel down behind the curtain.

I think it cost about ten dollars for each window - and comparing the before and after of this simple solution there does seem to be a noticeable reduce in the draft or flow of air down past the window since putting on our pelmets.

You could not get much simpler or cheaper than that. What is more you can barely see the pelmet we installed as it sits directly on top of the curtain track.

What simple energy saving things have you done around your house? Have they made a difference?

Increasing perennial vegetables in our garden

2011-06-01T21:33:00.000+10:00

Since studying Permaculture last year we have been trying to increase the number of perennial plants in our vegetable garden. Over summer this year we trialled a new perennial root crop - Yacon.

Yacon or the Peruvian Ground apple is a close relative of the Jerusalem Artichoke - it is a member of the Asteraceae or the daisy family.

Jerusalem artichoke

Yacon

Yacon produces two types of tubers - the purple - red bumpy tubers that are close to the surface - these are the tubers that we will be storing in a cool dark place in coir peat until spring planting time to produce more Yacon tubers to harvest next year.

Under the purple - red tubers are bigger more smooth tubers - these are the ones that you eat. We planted only a single tuber this year and harvested all these edible tubers.


Our Yacon harvest - from a single tuber.

Tasting our first Yacons

Yacon passes the first taste test

...but not the second!

I must admit the taste is unusual - an apple flavoured potato - is one of the best descriptions I have heard. Truly unique when eaten fresh but as a roasted vegetable it is great.

Roasted vegetable - potatoes, carrots, pumpkin and Yacon.

Looking for less toxic alternatives - orange oil

2011-05-17T21:57:00.002+10:00

We took the chance to re-oil our outdoor table. Instead of using a paint type product that needs to be cleaned up with mineral turpentine we used orange oil.

You can see the how the outside table responds to some orange oil (the back half is oiled - the front is yet to be oiled).

We also use the orange oil inside on the wooden furniture and it works really well to hide the scatches on our polished timber floor and floating floorbords. The orange oil also has a lovely refreshing fragrance in the room.

Our first taste of winter

2011-05-14T21:55:00.000+10:00

With the start of the winter soccer season our weekends have been taken up with soccer - 4 games on Saturday and 2 out of town games on Sunday.

Just as soccer has started so too has the cold weather - including our first good frosts....

And even got our first dusting of snow.....

One thing that is apparent with our first cold snap is that the plants we have along our northern brick wall are showing no signs of frosting .... the photo below was taken on the same day as the one of the nasturtiums and brussel sprouts were covered in ice in the photos above. I am keen to monitor this micro-habitat into the full depth of winter.

Trying to finish our underfloor insulation

2011-05-02T07:12:00.001+10:00

Although we live in the cool climate of Orange, at just over 900m altitude - with snow on the ground for a couple of days most years - we have a house of floorboards because we have a couple of asthmatics. Carpets and asthmatics are just not compatible - but having floorboards at Orange makes for a cold floor in the middle of winter. The solution - to put in under floor insulation.

Last year we installed insulation under the floor boards in the lounge room - at the moment we are desperately trying to finish the underfloor insulation under the bedrooms and the rest of the house before winter arrives.

We are using underfloor insulation that is a polystyrene board with an outer layer of reflective foil on both sides. The boards work in two ways;

The boards are a polystyrene layer with reflective foil on both sides - so the boards themselves reflect the heat back up into the house and the polystyrene layer reduces heat lost.
By screwing the boards in under the joists between the bearers under the house, then sealing the gaps and joins you have an still insulating layer of air between the floorboards and the insulation boards.

This is Dad at the short end of the house putting the insulation boards under the floor - we tech screw them directly under the joists between the bearers. I get the job of cutting the boards up on the back deck.

The kids act as messengers bringing out the measurements for me and taking in the cut boards back into Dad - they think it's great crawling (well walking most the time) in and out under the house.

So is it all worth it? Not sure how to measure the temperature change or efficiency of having put the insulation boards under the floor... but the rooms that have been done feel less draughty when you walk on the floor boards in bare feet. The real test is the difference over winter.

For comparison - when we insulated under the floor at our Forbes house and installed a reversible (winter / summer) ceiling fan it brought the winter room temperature up by about 5oC - which meant we did not have to run the heater as hot.

To complete the underfloor insulation is one of our Energymark group household goals on our action plan - to help reduce our carbon emissions through more efficient heating of the house.

What did you do for National Permaculture Day?

2011-05-01T14:02:00.000+10:00

We spent time at home.... prepapring our gardens for the coming winter months.

Winter's just around the corner

2011-04-29T07:05:00.003+10:00

I think this photo really signals that winter is just around the corner.

Easter bunny found ethical eggs this Easter..

2011-04-26T15:24:00.000+10:00

This year Easter bunny found a Fair Trade Easter egg for everyone (even Mum and Dad).

Easter was kept simple this year - one Fair Trade egg per kid and then onto decorating some real hard boiled eggs.

First to draw on the eggs with crayons....

Then to dip them in the food colouring, hot water and vinegar mixture...

Then to let them dry... before polishing them with a little olive oil...

Now they are all ready for the smashing.

We had fun making and smashing hand our decorated Easter eggs like we did last year - again it was great to sit down as a family decorating eggs to get ready for the great smashing contest.

We might have to find some good hard boiled egg recipes though before next Easter. This year we had eggs in a salad and then egg and lettuce sandwiches - I think we need to be a little more creative with the leftover hard boiled eggs.

Grammas, pies and much more

2011-04-24T18:07:00.000+10:00

We spent some of our days in the holidays working on our food forest patch in the front yard. Cleaning up, weeding and pulling out the old pumkin vines - and we found all these.

Our Gramma pumpkin harvest. These Grammas have a thin wall and will not store well so we have to begin using them before they go off. The biggest gramma in the forground split when we picked it - so we have to eat it now.

So a first for the season was a Gramma pie - made with a mix of recipes to match a favourite the description of Dad Grandmas pie. The verdict being that it was maybe even better than Grandma's.

Our Gramma Pie recipe for those that have started their pumpkin or Gramma harvest and would like to give it a try.

We used about one quarter of our large Gramma (because it is not too sweet or strong in flavour) pumpkin for this recipe - but a slightly green butternut pumpkin would also work well.

Cook about 1 kilo or gramma in a little water for half an hour - once cooked. Drain and gently squeeze / squish to remove excess fluid. Mash with a fork and add 1 1/2 cups sugar, juice and grated rind of 1 lemon, 1/3 cup of sultanas, 1 tablespoon of brown sugar and 1 teaspoon of each nutmeg and cinnamon. Mix and allow to cool.

To make the pastry, rub 150 grams of butter into 1 cup of each plain and self raising flour with a pinch of salt. In a cup mix one egg with 2 tablespoons of sugar - add to flour / butter mix. Mix well - add a little milk if necessary - roughly kneed the mix together and divide the dough into 2/3 and 1/3 portions. Roll out the 2/3 portion of pastry to line the base of a greased pie dish - add the Gramma filling, and then roll out the last 1/3 of the pastry for the lid of the pie. Sprinkle top of pie with a little more sugar. Cut a breathing hole in the top of the pie. Bake in a moderate oven for about 1 hour.

Serve with ice-cream and / or cream. Enjoy - we did.

With only 1/4 quarter of the pumpkin used it was roast pumkin for the Sunday roast and now a large pot of pumkin soup is brewing. And still half the pumpkin left.

What are your favourite pumpkin recipes?

We still have a pile of Grammas to eat and more pumpkins to be harvested from the back yard - so I would love to hear what you do with your pumpkin harvest.

Some holiday downtime

2011-04-17T22:00:00.000+10:00

It is amazing how much the kids can unwind with a couple days away .... a much needed break after a busy first term.

Creative time

Campfire stories and games

Walking

Some great caves to expplore and let the imagination run wild

Exploring the light and shadows

Time spent absorbed in minature landscapes

Changing my monthly habits

2011-04-11T13:57:00.002+10:00

Today I received a parcel in the post to help me reduce my "monthly" impacts... I have been delaying taking the plunge to a more environmentally way of dealing with my "monthly" – but no more excuses now.

I am looking forward to reducing my "monthly" expenditure and waste.

Our Landcare District is now online

2011-04-07T15:50:00.000+10:00

Many of you know that I am the Landcare Coordinator for the Central Tablelands District of New South Wales - that's around the Orange and Bathurst area.

Well, we have just gone online - myself and 3 others from the group completed a website design course through our local Business Enterprise Centre (BEC) and after only four evening classes here it is.... please take a look.

Enhancing our native section of the garden

2011-04-05T21:53:00.000+10:00

It was the Friends of the Orange Botanic Gardens Plant Sale day on Sunday. We went down and got some native plants for our front garden - a few different Correa species, a BlackWood (Acacia melanoxylon), some local Hibbertias (Guinea flowers), a Tea tree and a Swainsona pea.

We planted them on the same day - along with all sorts of left over native plants I have had in the hothouse over the last year. I am hoping that these plants will have a month or so to establish before the Orange winter sets in.

This all helps to make our "wildlife garden" or zone 5 on our Permaculture design for our suburban block.

It is going to be so nice to have our own "bush" in the front yard - soon we will have frogs and birds right outside our windows. Our littlest is also keen to go "bushwalking" in the front yard.

Our Earth Hour contribution

2011-03-28T10:27:00.013+11:00

I have heard mixed reports about Earth Hour - whether or not it's worth doing? We won't do it unless the big companies do it! We can't make a difference!

Well we did it. We joined a small group of Orange residents up on the summit of Mt Lindsay - the event was organised by ECCO (Environmentally Concerned Citizens of Orange) and OCAN (Orange Climate Action Now). We sat and had our evening meal looking out over Orange city by torchlight - it was also our youngest boys birthday so was the perfect opportunity to celebrate.

We had switched off - we just turned the power off at the fuse box as we left home.

Was it worth it? Yes, because I believe we can make a difference. In our Session 2 reading for the Energymark group there was a pie chart reflecting usage of power in NSW - about a third of all power in NSW goes to residential households! This figure alone gives me the conviction that we as households can make a difference - we don't have to wait for the industrial or commercial sectors. It is our belief that every little bit counts - so we are trying to reduce our footprint as a family.

Our new Energymark group

2011-03-17T07:39:00.000+11:00

Recently we have joined an "Energymark" group - Energymark is a CSIRO initiative to help households and communities reduce their carbon footprints, lower energy usage and save on power bills. We meet on a Sunday evening once a month to discuss climate change and exchange ideas as to how we can make a difference.

Reducing our household power consumption was one of our major goals for this year and this group is providing the nudge that we needed to start thinking about things we can further improve on around the house.

Prior to starting this program we had already made some major reductions in our household power consumption through solar hot water. The graph below shows our household power consumption and the effects our actions have had already (you may have to double click the picture to enlarge it so that you can read the information).

In summary, we have installed solar hot water - the reduction in power use for heating our hot water is seen by the reduction in the green line over time - even over winter in Orange when we run a booster frequently. We have also installed just under 1 kW of photovoltaic panels on the roof and installed an efficient gas space heater in the living area to reduce our use of the the 1980's ducted electric heater. This has dropped our electricity use considerably - follow the red line on the graph.

The purple line at the bottom of the graph is the our net solar power export - we have recently changed to a gross export meter which will improve the monitoring of our solar power generated.

Putting all our power and gas consumption along with water use into a spreadsheet was one of the first things that we have done through the Energymark program and this has been a real eye opener. We have also put our water and gas consumption onto a spreadsheet, and have combined our gas and electricity information to present a CO2 emissions graph.

It has also been the incentive we needed to start planning what else we can do to further reduce our power consumption and greenhouse gas emissions of our household.

How does your household rate for power consumption?

In Australia you can calculate a star rating for your household energy and water use on the NABERS site. We have gone from a 1.5 star energy rated household to a 5 star energy rated household in the three and a bit years we have been in Orange - but there is still room for improvement.

Have you monitored the changes you are making at a household level? We have found it a rewarding process.

Going well on our sustainable meats New Years resolution

2011-03-07T23:13:00.000+11:00

At the beginning of the year we made a resolution to eat mostly local, organic or free range meat. To date we have been able achieve our goal by:

Buying local and free range meet from local shops - Totally Local and the Farmgate Butchery.
Going to the local take-away shop that uses free range chickens when we need a hot roast chook rather than getting a non-free range hot chook from the local supermarket.
Even the big supermarket chains in town now offer a range of meat products to support our resolution - we can get free-range chickens (whole, pieces or sausages), free range pork and organic beef.
Finally, we decided to try some kangaroo meat - considered a more environmentally friendly option than the hoofed animals we normally eat (sheep and cattle) and to have lower greenhouse gases produced. So we tried Roo stroganoff after seeing Linda and Tricia's recipes in the past. Everyone loved it - so I am sure it will be on the menu agin sometime.

Testing the powers of vinegar outdoors

2011-02-28T17:34:00.001+11:00

It's been a while since I started using vinegar as a cleaner indoors in the kitchen and bathroom - and I am totally converted. Vinegar is a great glass cleaner, helps remove those stubborn stains around the stove and on the kitchen bench. Vinegar cleans our stainless steel appliances (fridge and dishwasher) - getting rid of those little kids fingerprints and leaving a clean streak free surface.

A few weeks ago I read a snippet somewhere that vinegar can be used as a weed spray outdoors. Having found uses for vinegar indoors I could not wait to trial vinegar in the outdoors. Further research on the Internet brought up numerous articles on vinegar (or acetic acid) as a herbicide - read some here and here and here.

So here is our home trial of vinegar as a herbicide and the results we have observed so far.

I filled a pressure spray pack with 2 litres of vinegar (just the cheap white vinegar) and added a small squirt of dishwashing liquid (to help get better leaf coverage) and went out to the front yard to trial my new herbicide on cat's ear, paspalum, couch and dandelions (photos in this order).

The photos on the left show photos of the weeds at the time of spraying and the photos on the right are the same plants just 2 days after.

The results look promising.

Vinegar (or acetic acid the main chemical in vinegar) acts as a drying agent on the leaves of the plants. You need to apply the vinegar on a warm sunny day to get the best effect (or the best drying out) - and the leafy plants like the dandelions showed signs of drying out almost immediately. Even the grasses (paspalum and couch) are showing signs of being weakened. Vinegar is a broad spectrum herbicide so you need to be careful with your spraying - spray only the plants you want to kill and do not spray on a windy day. Vinegar is not as powerful as commercial broad spectrum herbicides- and you should expect to have to reapply your treatment several times.

I am inspired by my initial results and will keep repeating the vinegar applications on our next sunny day to keep weakening the weeds and hopefully eventually eliminate them from this section of our garden.

A week of solar cooking

2011-02-26T17:27:00.000+11:00

Tricia and Heather have asked me to contribute to their soon to be published sun oven cook book. This has inspired me to cook a whole range of things in our solar oven this week - luckily it has been a mostly sunny week.

We started with baked squashes and golden nugget pumkins - picked from our garden.

Then had an Indian feast of dahl and a palek paneer (spinach and cheese) with rice.

We stewed some rhubarb from the back yard with some new season apples from a local orchard and topped half of it with a cobbler and the other half a baked custard mix.

In the oven now is a weekend batch of chocolate muffins for the kids.

If you have some recipes you would like to contribute to the upcoming solar oven cook book contact Tricia and Heather at solarcookbook@gmail.com .

No time to ride or walk?!?

2011-02-22T11:09:00.000+11:00

It has been easy to get into the habit of convincing myself that when I am running late then I do not have time to ride or walk to drop our smallest at preschool or daycare. Well excuses no more - because having sat back and worked out the time difference - it's nearly nothing!

I started thinking about this the other day when I drove down to pick up our littlest from preschool - I was happily lost in work on my computer at home when I looked up at the clock and it was time to be at preschool (we get charged more if we are more that 10 minutes late!). Thinking I was short on time I grabbed the car keys and drove down. When I got there I could not find a car park within coo-ee of the gate so ended up parking and walking anyway. Reflecting on this it would have been quicker had I just walked down in the first place!

Our littlest walking to preschool in winter last year.

Similarly, daycare for our littlest is a bit further away than her preschool, but I took note of the time it took to ride her down and for me to ride back and it is only 10 minutes longer than driving down - and I get exercise.

Even in the depths of an Orange winter the boys enjoy riding down to pick our littlest up from daycare.

So why do I drive? Bad habits I guess.

Soft drink bottle flowers at the community garden

2011-02-20T19:49:00.000+11:00

On the weekend we spent time down at the ELF Community Garden making flower sculptures from soft drink bottles and harvesting this seasons potatoes.

Carefully cutting petals from a soft drink bottle.

We used a hole punch and some paper fasteners to attach the petals to the base of the flowers.

Then we put on a stem and some extra wire as decoration - the kids displaying their finished products.

There were too many kids wanting to make plastic drink bottle flowers so we did not get time to make these gorgeous saucepan lid - venetian blind flowers. Hopefully we will have another workshop soon as I would love some of these in my home garden.

After we finished the flower sculptures we spent some time working in the community garden. Bandicooting for potatoes was a favourite for many of the kids.

The potato harvest.... it was mashed potato for tea tonight so that we can make the most of some lovely fresh potatoes.

Our next community garden working bee coincides with a day introduction to permaculture- we will be building wicking beds, no dig gardens and compost heaps. We can't wait.

Setting up to catch the heat from our northern brick wall

2011-02-15T11:15:00.000+11:00

Living in the Central Tablelands of New South Wales at over 900m in altitude presents some problems for growing a range of plants - here is the backyard in our first winter here about three years ago. Yes that is snow.

Probably harder on the plants are our heavy frosts - last winter we lost all our lemons in one heavy frost - they all half froze on the tree.

To try to buffer some of our more sensitive plants from the cold we have lined up a row of pots against the north facing brick wall at the rear of the house. I am hoping that the wall will absorb the warmth of the winter sun and help take the edge of the winter weather for the mandarin and passionfruit in particular. In the future I would like to paint the wall a dark colour to help it absorb more heat. In summer the wall is mostly shaded by the eave and the pots do not get too hot.

This was one of our microclimates we identified while studying the Permaculture Design Certificate last year.

A weed compost tea

2011-02-10T17:09:00.000+11:00

A couple of weeks ago we did a big weed tidy up out in the front yard - we pulled up lots of couch and kikuyu - I did not want to put it in the compost heap because both these grasses are invasive and spread by runners and they don't die in the compost heap.

So I put them into a spare wheelie bin we have here and filled it with water - covering the weeds.

That was about 2 weeks ago - we now have one batch of smelly weed compost tea or extract.

It is too strong to use undiluted..

But once diluted to tea strength it is a great fertilizer for the garden.

What a great way to get those nutrients and other goodies out of a weed - once we have used the liquid the grass should be well and truly dead and it can go onto the compost heap.

There are lots of links to compost teas and extract - check them out here and here and here.

First year of fruit on our plum tree

2011-02-05T13:30:00.002+11:00

We planted our plum tree about two years ago. Last year we had only one plum that fell off (or got knoocked off by a soccer ball?) before it rippened... this year marks our first plum harvest.

Collecting plums before the birds get to them.

Harvesting blood plums as the kids go back to school reminds me of our plum tree when I grew up - we harvested and bottled these plums about the time we went back to school.

Maybe we will have enough plums to bottle the extras in a couple of years.

Finally - a list of what we would like to achieve this coming year

2011-02-03T12:32:00.001+11:00

We have been busy in holiday mode doing all sorts of fun things but as work and school routines return I have been finalising our "resolutions" for 2011. Below I have listed 5 things we would like to achieve over the next year - among the more general goals of moving toward being more sustainable.

1. SIMPLIFY THINGS - We have accumulated many things in and around our house which sometimes lead to a life more complicated than it should be - and more cleaning. So this year our biggest resolution will be to make a start on the de-cluttering of our house and shed. I would like to systematically go through our "stuff" this year and assess what we use and want, then get rid of the excess.

2. HEALTH - I would like to see us all get fitter. I have an aim to get my walking fitness back so that I can enjoy extended bushwalks and start back with overnight hikes. Maybe we could start to take the kids on overnight hikes - our oldest is certainly requesting it.

3. ENERGY CONSUMPTION - I would like to assess where we can make reductions to our energy use - this year our focus will be on household power consumption.

4. HOUSEHOLD WASTE - I would like to focus on ways of reducing the plastic waste in our household. We already use "re-usable" shopping bags most of the time - but we still generate a lot of other plastic waste.

5. LOCAL, ORGANIC OR FREE RANGE MEAT. Over the past year or two we have changed our shopping habits and have moved to including much more local and organic produce in our diet - this will continue. With more options becoming available in the rural centre of Orange I would like to see if we can only buy local, organic or free range meat.

So here's a belated cheers to 2011. I am looking forward to another year of challenges.

Finding ways to cool down as it warms up

2011-01-30T18:07:00.000+11:00

With the holidays drawing to a close and the weather warming up we have been spending time in and around water - a lifestyle I think the kids would be happy to continue with.

First we met up with Tricia and Little Eco up at Myall Lakes National Park - pop across to Tricia's page for some wonderful pictures. No TV, no computer and no MP3 players for 4 days - it was great to sit back and watch the kids just play and explore.

Of course we did do a lot of swimming....

There was lots of quiet time... here the kids were making the most of Grandma time - drawing and playing hangman....

We took the opportunity to take in the natural environment through a couple of short walks...

Once back home in Orange we spent the evenings at Lake Canobolas.. the kids tested their skills in a kayaks and can't wait to get back out again.

Sadly it is the last day of the holidays... and school goes back tomorrow and we all go back to work in earnest. It has been great to get out and enjoy a range of activities over the summer break - so much of it was outdoors, non-technological and overall very refreshing.

Taking the opportunity to explore

2011-01-24T08:55:00.002+11:00

Recently we made the trip into the Blue Mountains to pick up Dad from an afternoon train from Sydney - we took the opportunity to head across to the mountains early and do a walk. We did the Grand Canyon walk near Blackheath in the Blue Mountains National Park.

Apparently the track was first opened in 1907. On talking to my Mum she walked it on her honeymoon forty plus years ago. It was a great walk with a lot of the track cut into the side of the cliffs of the canyon and although it is fairly short - about five kilometres you get to climb up and down lots of steps. With the kids we took about 4 hours to do the walk - our littlest walked the whole distance without being carried and was that determined to be the first to finish the walk she nearly ran up all the steps out of the canyon.

Here the kids are descending into the canyon.

Walking along the bottom of the gorge just before getting to the steep edged canyon.

Lots of the creek crossings have been recently upgraded ... a fantastic job by the National Parks.

Stopping at one of the many waterfalls along the way.

Descending into more dark, wet forests.

The track along the valley floor.

Rock-hopping along the creek.

Dad was very jealous that he was commuting instead of doing the walk with us.

As a new school year approaches

2011-01-21T08:55:00.001+11:00

With the school holidays nearing an end I have started getting the boys ready to return to school.

This year we are trialling new rubbish-free lunchboxes. We had rubbish free lunch boxes last year but I returned them to the manufacturer because the hinges broke after only a few weeks of use - we got new replacements but they too broke. This year I have found lunchboxes that have no hinges or clips and are dishwasher safe, have no BPA and are easy for the kids to use (especially our preschooler). Here's hoping that these work better and we will get years of use out of them - the kids love being rubbish free for lunches and snacks at school.

We are also going to trial reusable sandwich and snack wraps this year - to try to eliminate paper lunch bag use all together this year (sometimes I have to put the kids wraps or sandwiches in a paper lunch bag to prevent them falling apart).

Last year I got the boys to choose pencils from our pencil tin at home - we did this for most of the year and we have used most of our old pencils up - it always amazes me how many pencils get sharpened away to nothing in a school year.

This year we have tried to buy pencils and stationary that is either recycled or made from sustainable sources - it is great to see the choice of "eco-stationary" increasing in the shops.

I have not found any "eco-coloured markers" yet.... does anyone know where I can get some?

Footnote: as requested some further information on where to get the sandwich wraps... I got these ones from here, but you can get them from here and here and here and I am sure many more online shops. Julie at Towards Sustainability also made her own - check them out here.

Sometimes it is just nice to reflect on what has been achieved

2011-01-19T16:51:00.001+11:00

The photos below reflect the changes we have made to our yard in a little over 3 years... it really inspired me to find the old photos.

The backyard when we bought the house in winter 2007

Same view - summer 2011

Our littlest infront of the apricot tree in 2007....

and in front of the same apricot tree in summer 2011..

The front yard as it was when we first saw the house in 2007...

and now in the summer of 2011.

I am so glad that I found these old photos of our place....it does highlight what can be achieved in a relatively short period of time - in this case about 3 and a half years.

Our compost is cooked

2011-01-17T16:44:00.000+11:00

Back in the middle of winter last year the kids helped me build a compost pile - this is what it looked like then - lots of layers - we had straw and shredded paper from the chook pen, some weeds, some of the dirt from the floor of the chookpen, lucerne straw, lawn clippings. We piled it up high and left it.

Last weeked we used our lovely composted soil as a top layer in some new raised beds - the lower half of the beds were filled with aged garden mulch straw bales.

Look at those healthy worms in the new soil.

Here is our youngest boy planting out some seeds into the fresh rich soil in one of our raised garden beds.

And just a week on..... the climbing beans are really taking off..

This has really inspired us to build more compost heaps to create more soil - it's so much nicer than anything you can get in a bag from a garden supply centre.

Holiday juggling fun

2011-01-13T14:21:00.000+11:00

The boys spent the afternoon making some juggling balls and then refining their juggling skills.

We found some old balloons in the cupboard along with some rice and a funnel. For each juggling ball we used about a half a cup of rice and three or four balloons.

We filled the first balloon with rice using a funnel.

Then we cut the neck off two or three extra balloons and used the shortened balloons to cover the first rice filled balloon.

With a few extra balloons over the rice filled balloon the juggling balls are ready for use.

Now to brush up on those juggling skills....

Reflections of 2010

2011-01-12T12:36:00.000+11:00

It is hard to believe that we have had our family blog going for nearly a year now - our first post was after a hectic Christmas break in the 2009 - 2010 summer holidays - the catalyst for a more sustainable way of living. Our goals for 2010 were simple and relatively undefined - we wanted to achieve a more sustainable lifestyle.

As broad as our goals were I feel that we have made lots of small changes that are contributing to a more sustainable life for us. Here are some of our highlights -

1. COMMUNITY

We have become more involved with our local community groups. I completed a Permaculture Design Certificate last year which has resulted in the formation of a local permaculture group - Central West Permaculture and we are having fun participating in Permablitzes at various members places and are now starting to organise seminars and workshops for 2011.

We are regular participants in the community garden working bees at the ELF in Orange. Through our involvement in both of these groups we are meeting a wide range of people trying to achieve similar goals which has been inspiring.

The kids in particular really enjoyed the plastic weaving workshops we went to and are now getting ready to create things for the 2011 Waste to Art competition.

2. CONSUMPTION AND CONSUMABLES

We are looking at our areas of consumption and trying to find ways to lesson the impacts.

Firstly we reduced the amount of single use and plastic packaging that comes into our household and are looking for ways to reuse the waste that comes into our household - for example shredding old mail and personal papers for use as bedding material for our chooks.

Water use has been audited at our house. We are also looking at ways to further reduce our consumption of town water and to manage water on our urban block. Thanks to a local council water saving initiative we got water saving tap fittings and a shower installed early in 2010.

We have been trying to reduce power consumption and are looking for better ways to manage our power consumption.

We have purchased more clothing from the local op shops and I am proud to say that since making a set of hankies for everyones use we have only purchased tissues for the boys to take into school for use in their classrooms.

The kids love their rubbish free lunches and Dad takes lunch to work more often. Dad also uses his Keep Cup for those work coffee refills.

We try to be more efficient with our cooking and have a sun oven (OK when the sun shines!) and a pressure cooker - both have been a worthwhile investment.

I made a pledge to make my home office more green - using recycled paper, using less paper, lights changed to CFLs and switched off etc.

3. FOOD

On the food front we preserved nearly all our fruit, jam and tomato sauce for 2010.

We are buying a much higher percentage of local and organic foods, with less packaging.

When buying coffee and chocolate we only get those that are endorsed by Fairtrade or the equivalent.

We choose organic and non-homogenised milk, free range (and organic when available) chicken meat and shop at the monthly farmers markets.

Our olive oil comes from a ranges of producers that I know personally from the Orange and Parkes districts.

4. HOME GARDEN

We have been building up the fruit and vegetable gardens in our back yard and have enjoyed a great harvest of a range of things from berries to cauliflowers to lettuce and greens. The kids have become involved in the garden and I often spot them out in the yard "stealing" fresh goodies.

5. TV and TECHNOLOGY FREE TIME

The introduction of TV and technology free Tuesdays and Thursdays to our house has been a great success. I like that the kids tell Dad to turn the TV or computer off - it gives us more time for games, quiet time and homework. We have also been trying to get the kids out and about more - whether it be down to the park on their scooters or out in the bush and among nature.

Of course we have achieved more that what I have highlighted here, but I still feel there is so much more to be done. Over the next week or so we will be working out where we would like to go and what we would like to achieve for 2011.

Getting back on deck after the Christmas break

2011-01-08T22:10:00.000+11:00

I have been very reluctant to start working on the computer after the Christmas break... but as I start back at work next week I thought I would start back on our blog. I hope you have all had a great break with family and friends.

I have chosen to start the year by simply sharing some photos we took on our break.

A post flood Castlereagh River at Gilgandra.

Washed out bridge near Coonabarabran.

Christmas Bells (Blandfordia nobilis (Blandfordiaceae) Liliaceae) in Washpool National Park.

Straddling the border.

Decorating the Gingerbread House...

Walking along the coastal rocks on the Suunshine Coast - trying to find some nature in a very built up area.

A wet walk in the forest inland from the Sunshine Coast.

Among the giant Bunya Pines and Hoop Pines at Bunya Mountain National Park.

We all had fun exploring so much over the break. We are now catching up on gardening and making the most of what is left of the holidays before school goes back.

A lesson in camouflage

2010-12-21T10:39:00.006+11:00

Collecting the washing from the line just before yet more rain gave the kids a chance to explore "camouflage".

Here is a moth as we found in on a piece of clothing.....

A quick look underneath revealed a pretty underside....

Here is a better look at the underside patterns...

And camouflaged again on a plant base...

We identified this moth as a Red-lined Geometrid.

Grassy box gum woodlands to end a year of work

2010-12-19T10:08:00.000+11:00

I decided to spend the last day of work for the year out in the field... as the kids were already on school holidays they came too. We went out on an excursion to an on-farm grassy box gum woodland - here are some photos from our day. I think the pictures speak for themselves.

We were exploring some of the wildflowers - spring is late here as we were at about 900m ASL.

Here's a Blue Pincushion - Brunonia australis.

The kids got into recording the plants they saw.....

Our youngest boy ended up with a list of over 15 local wildflowers for the day (as a botanist I got a rough list of 45 species so I think that's great effort for a seven year old)

This is a close up of the flowers of the Blue Devil - Eryngium ovinum

The Blue Devil - flowers in bud

The star-like arrangement of the flowers on the Blue Devil

The kids found lots of snake skins... there must be lots of shiny snakes getting around

Exploring animal habitats in a grassland - the kids found a small scorpion here.

A Fringe Lily - Thysanotus tuberosus - I love the fringes on the edge of the petals in this species.

All in all we all had a great morning out exploring nature and it was a great way to finish work for the year.

Thanks John for being the caretaker of such a great grassy box gum woodland.

Harvesting summer berries

2010-12-17T20:16:00.020+11:00

Last year we planted three types of bramble berries (raspberries, loganberries and boysenberries) in the back yard and we are now getting our first harvest - just a year on.

The kids cannot wait to get out and harvest a small container of berries each day.

It has been great to see the excitement the kids show at harvesting and eating foods from the backyard.

Making our straw bale gardens more permanent

2010-12-15T20:15:00.000+11:00

When we started our summer tomatoes, squash and eggplant in straw bales it gave us a chance to see how the location of the gardens went with the paths the kids and dogs use in the back yard. They have proven to be ideally located.... although one bed had to be moved a little to get it out from under the clothes line.

Here is our strawbale garden just after it was put in place..

With the locations settled on it was time to make the beds more permanent.... I took the chance to get the kids to assemble some raised garden beds after school... there has been no homework in the last week before summer holidays.

The beds were about the same size as two strawbales...so with minimal disturbance to the bales we now have two raised garden beds.

With the new raised edges on the gardens the tomotoes and eggplant should have better protection from the dogs and soccer balls.

Local gifts for the kid's teachers

2010-12-12T11:57:00.011+11:00

This year we are giving the kid's music and school teachers local produce as thank you gifts.

We have such a range in Orange - it's great.

It is also a great way to make for a more sustainable Christmas.

What are you doing to make for a more ethical and sustainable Christmas this year?

Reviving old picture frames

2010-12-10T12:08:00.008+11:00

We have a series of photos from our early hiking and travelling days in our hall - they are close to 20 years old and starting to show their age. Dad had often remarked that we should update them and I hadn't really known what I could update them with - until Dad suggested some of the kid's artwork.

Being the end of year - school desks are being cleared out and artwork is coming home daily. So we are selecting some of the kid's brightest and more colourful art pieces to replace our more tired photos in our hallway.

The result is great....

and the kid's are so proud of their mini art gallery.

We will soon be sorting through the rest of the paintings and drawings to get a selection to wrap the Christmas presents in - this was a great hit last year.

PS - I have just included a "like" button on our blog- I have met many of you who read my blog through work but I rarely hear from you. Sometimes it would just be nice to know that you are reading and enjoying our blog. So if you enjoyed reading please send us a :) by clicking the "I enjoyed ready your blog" button at the bottom of each post.

Home made Christmas Cards

2010-12-08T11:54:00.000+11:00

We have decided to try to not to get caught up in all the commercialism of the festive season this year and make a more sustainable Christmas... here is another thing we have done.

Home made cards - photos printed from our 2010 family snaps and mounted on 100% post consumer recycled card (cut up manila folders as that was all we could find), decorated with more cut up recycled manila folders. They will be posted out in 100% recycled envelopes. They look great and we are going to have lots of fun choosing which card we will send to all of our family and friends.

Are you making your own cards? Or maybe you are choosing where you buy yours from? Make your choice of cards a more ethical and sustainable one .

A special thankyou..

2010-12-02T08:36:00.002+11:00

Got this hand painted treasure as a thanks for teaching this year.... Thanks B-L L and the rest of the class.

Starting to organise for a more sustainable Christmas

2010-11-30T10:27:00.000+11:00

Thanks to Linda's post the other week on rustic soap making I have been making my own soap for the first time - and having fun doing it. It should be just hard enough before Christmas.

Being new to soap making... and starting from scratch it was a bit like being in a science lab again...

weighing and measuring, stirring and mixing.. and watching for colour changes etc.

We poured some of our soap mix into milk cartons to set and found the kids modelling clay cutting wire a great help in slicing the soap into bars...

We used a variety of other plastic containers (eg yoghurt tubs) and silicon baking moulds to make a range of soap shapes.

We now have enough soap for us for next year as well as Christmas presents for friends and family - there is lemon grass scented soaps, lavender soaps and oatmeal soaps. The best shaped soaps will go into a sustainability goodies bag I have planned for relatives for Christmas - oh there goes the surprise.

I would love to get some of the books Tricia referred to in her post on soap making using some garden weeds - maybe that can be a Christmas request.

Sonya from Permaculture Pathways also has some great soap ideas for more inspiration and Gavin from the Greening of Gavin has put together a great soap making tutorial.

Starting to harvest the winter produce

2010-11-28T09:17:00.000+11:00

I planted cabbages, broccoli and brussel sprouts over winter, but for most of winter they sat in the garden doing nothing. With the warm spring weather lately they have taken off and I am finally harvesting some - which is finally making room in the garden for my summer crops such as corn and tomatoes.

It has been part of our "permaculture home garden plan" to include many more perennial fruits and vegetables in our garden - a plan that looks like it is already starting to pay off as the garden looks fantastic this year. I am excited about the developing berry crop we have - all our one year old loganberries, boysenberries and raspberries look like they are going to produce fantastic fruit. We will have red and black currants soon as well and maybe even a few Chilean guavas and blueberries. Lots of new fruits that we were not able to grow in Forbes because the climate was too hot.

We are still trying to work out the best time to plant things in our Orange garden - the seasons and growing seasons are so different from what we had at Forbes three years ago.

Going into winter this year I pickled hard boiled eggs for when the chooks went off the lay over winter...... that way we could have some eggs for salads or satay or the like. But the chooks laid well all over winter and are in fact still laying well. So we have an egg glut - I have started sharing eggs with the neighbours.

Can you be more green in a big city?

2010-11-18T21:08:00.000+11:00

A recent article in New Scientist this week suggested that in most cases you can be more green in big cities.

In particular, for example, the carbon emissions of a New Yorker were 30% lower than the American average.

In China the government is moving people into high density living in cities where they can do less environmental damage. It seems that a cities ability to concentrate people in a small area - rather than letting them spread out across a rural landscape can help reduce each individuals carbon footprint.

Dense urbanisation can also reduce your reliance on a car. Quite obvious really - country people often commute longer distances daily and have less public transport options.

I wonder if Australia's cities are of high enough density to show these patterns?

I am not sure that a regional centre like Orange would show these trends?

Quick and easy gardens

2010-11-17T13:01:00.000+11:00

We had some lucerne hay left over from our permablitz the other week – so this is what I have done with it.

I laid down some newspaper and cardboard, put the hay bale down and watered it with seaweed and fish emulsions – then left it for about two weeks, watering the bales every couple of days.

After two weeks I made a little hole in the bales and put my hand in to test the temperature – this is important because the bales get very hot inside initially and you will have to wait for them to cool down. Last year I measured the inside temperature as about 60oC - almost too hot to touch.

When the inside bale temperature has cooled so that it is luke warm rather than hot I simply dug a small hole in the bale, put in some good soil mix and then planted my seedling directly into the bale.

This year I am going to try basil in with the tomatoes, along with some other herbs like parley and dill and I may even try some lettuce.

Last year was my first year at trying this method of quick gardening - primarily becasue I ran out of room in our garden beds and it was a great success – below are the kids in March this year in front of our bale garden – we had two cherry tomato plants and a pumpkin growing in this single bale. The bale garden produced the best yielding tomatoes and pumpkin – and rarely needed any additional watering.

The best thing is that when the plants stop producing you can use the well composted bale as mulch on the garden – no waste.

A morning at the community garden

2010-11-14T09:42:00.000+11:00

Everything seems to be getting busy as the end of the year approaches - project deadlines, school presentations, music concerts and end of year work gatherings. So it was nice to spend yesterday morning working, chatting and harvesting at the community garden at the Environmental Learning Facility at the Orange showgrounds. The community garden is open to the public all the time and the working bees are on the morning of the second Saturday of the month - the same day as the local farmers markets.

There was lots of weeding to do.....

Some planting..... here we are planting corn, climbing beans and cucumber together in a "guild" - this combination of plants has been used extensively by native American groups in North America and is called the "Three Sisters". Some good material on guilds in permaculture can be found here and here and here.

And finally, some produce to take home... this rhubarb ended up as a rhubarb and apple cobbler...

What guilds or companion planting works best for you? I would love to hear.

A snapshot of our fresh food miles

2010-11-07T09:21:00.000+11:00

I have been less mobile over the last month while my leg injury heals and have been a little slacker in chasing down local fruit and vegies supplies and own garden is now only just waking after the Orange winter.

I used the opportunity to just see just where my fruit and vegies in one shop came from.... it is only a calculation from farm (or closest guesstimate for some produce) to our house in a direct line - so does not include getting transported to market, then a warehouse before getting out to our local store.

So here is my list from earlier in the week (just from the fresh food shop)-

Tomatoes (NZ - 2200 km)
Kiwi fruit (NZ - 2200 km)
Bananas (Mackay QLD - 1350 km)
Free range pork (near Geelong Vic - 715 km)
Oranges (Griffith NSW - 305 km)
Pink Lady Apples (WA - 3050 km)
Asparagus (Koo Wee Rup, Vic - 650 km)
Mushrooms (Sydney, NSW - 163 km)
Mini Roma Tomatoes (Coldstream Vic - 590 km)
Red Capsicum (QLD - 800 km)
Zucchinis (Vic - 600 km)
Broccoli (Vic - 600 km)
Pineapple (QLD - 800 km)

Avocados (WA - 3050 km)

Beans (Kalbar QLD - 710 km)

Garlic (China - 9000 km)

Mangoes (Darwin NT - 3000 km)

All in all - the average distance fresh food came from (as the crow flies) was 1752 km!!! Staggering I thought - considering it was likely to be a huge underestimate of actual miles / kilometres.

That was inspiration enough for me to work harder at sourcing local produce. Here is our "100 mile diet" area.

Taste Orange has a good information page on the 100 mile diet for Orange including a 100 mile directory .

For more general discussions on Food Miles check these links out -

An article about where it all started.... The 100-mile Diet

Choice has put together a great article on the distance food travels to get to use - Food Miles - Why eat local?

CERES in Melbourne have also put out a great report on food miles, including the green house gas emissions - here is an extract -

"Data was collected to establish food miles and greenhouse gas emissions estimates for a typical food basket in Victoria. The total distance of the road transportation in the food basket was estimated at 21,073 kilometres (km), almost the same distance to travel around Australia’s coastline (25,760 km). The total distance for all transportation of the food basket was estimated at 70,803 km, equivalent to travelling nearly twice around the circumference of the Earth (40,072 km), or travelling around Australia's coastline three times.

The total greenhouse gas emissions estimate for all food trucks transporting all road-transported food items, over the total road transport distance, was 11, 327 tonnes (t) CO2–e. If all the food trucks were transporting all food items on the same day, the emissions from this one day of transportation (11, 327 t CO2–e), is equivalent to 2, 832 cars driving for one year."

Check out the full report here.

OUR COMMITMENT
We as a family will be looking more closely at all the food we purchase and will will be using these simple ideas for reducing our food miles...

Grow our own food where possible (being our third year in Orange our home garden is now starting to be productive)
Become more active members of the community garden at the ELF (Environmental Learning Facility) in Orange - the Orange Farmers Markets are nearby on the same morning (second Saturday of the month)
As a first stop - shop at local shops or directly from the wonderful orchards in the Orange area
Eat fruit and vegies that are in season - don't get cherries from the USA in mid winter because you can.

What do you do to reduce your food miles?

Have you ever worked out the food miles of the food you buy from shops?

Our permablitz

2010-11-01T11:26:00.000+11:00

Continuing on from the Orange permaculture course we have started a Central West Permaculture Group and a permablitz at our house was our most recent event. Here is what we did...

I gathered materials..... native cypress mulch from a sawmill, some old railway sleeps, some mixed over sized rocks, 20 bales of lucerne hay and all the newspaper and cardboard I could find.

What we did - thanks to all the members from Central West Permaculture Group - we put out a layer of wet newspaper down and spread out lucerne hay under my fruit trees - then we put in some fruiting shrubs (gooseberries and black currants) and a couple of native Hardenbergia violoaceae (Happy Wanderer) plants to produce nitrogen in the food forest.

Before the sheet mulching (above)...... and now with a thick layer of lucerne straw (below)

On the other half of the front yard we constructed a dry creek bed with a shallow rock filled wetland at the end..... now I will have to propagate some local sedges, rushes and reeds to cover the banks and shallow waters to make a good frog habitat.

Digging the swale for the dry creek bed (above) and filling with rocks (below)

We also put down a layer of cardboard and newspaper under the many native trees and shrubs I have planted in the front yard and then covered the paper and cardboard with the cypress pine mulch...

What a reduction in lawn mowing.... only the nature strip out the front now ... and all that organic matter helping to build soil health and condition the soil.

All completed in four hours thanks to the help from some of the permaculture group members for the price a hot lunch - bargain hey. Who's place is next?

Digital postcards and stories for Landcare

2010-10-29T15:52:00.002+11:00

How simple can it be to share a story about Landcare in your area.... get a few words together (max about 70) a photo and you can make your own Landcare digital postcards.

Here is one that I have made for my Landcare district - Central Tablelands Landcare - which covers the Orange - Bathurst district of NSW.

We have also recorded some PlaceStories of our group activities in the "Central Tablelands Landcare" project,

Check out some of the other postcards and placestories being created by the Digital Landcare community...

Slashed feed-in tariff for solar power in NSW

2010-10-28T16:25:00.000+11:00

Not sure if you heard the news..... but in NSW the gross feed in tariffs for solar power have just been reviewed and reduced from 60 cents to 20 cents a kilowatt hour!!

We have our solar array generating and feeding into the grid already so our 60 cents a kilowatt hour is locked in until 2016.... although I think there is a 300 megawatt cap. However, if you were considering installing solar power but haven't signed an agreement yet you will be stuck with 20 cents per kilowatt hour - which for most will make the installation of solar panels an unappealing and non-viable choice.

A range of news articles have been published on the topic - here are some if you would like to read more.

Slashed feed-in tariff makes solar hot water even more attractive - Government - News - Southern Courier

New South Wales is slashing the gross feed-in tariff for its solar bonus scheme because it is costing too much - Sydney Morning Herald.

Power blame game heats up (TheAustralian Article)

Simple creative fun

2010-10-27T09:56:00.000+11:00

We journeyed into Sydney last weekend to catch up at a work reunion... we are lucky enough to have an Auntie and Uncle in the Blue Mountains who looked after the kids while the adults travelled down to Cronulla for a ferry cruise.

I just wanted to share with you the creations the kids created with Uncle A... aren't they wonderful... no wonder the kids always want to visit Uncle A and Auntie C... we have a plane a bus and a racing car.

This of course is following on from our middle child's obsession about collecting things for next years Waste to Art competition run in our council area by Netwaste. He has been carefully stockpiling all sorts of waste - from lolly wrappers to foil to bottle tops.

Wild spring weather..

2010-10-17T21:17:00.000+11:00

I had been really enjoying the onset of warmer spring weather over the last week or so..

The apples are blossuming...

The red currant fruit is setting...

And the fresh greens in the garden are finally starting to grow enough so that we can harvest them for meals..

And then came a few wild days... first came the rain and wind....

Then the wind and snow...

The snow came late for the wildflowers in one of our local reserves... (Creamy Candlesticks - Stackhousia monogyna)

Making the most of spring snow with some friends at the Pinnacle Picnic ground on the slopes of Mt Canobolas

Missing my walks and rides with the kids

2010-10-13T09:57:00.001+11:00

Over the holidays I managed to injure myself and needed stitches in the front of my shin. Not the best spot as it is known to be one of the worst spots to heal... so here I am nearing two weeks after the accident... still with the stitches in and on my second round of antibiotics.... and getting bored of sitting down with my leg up while the rest of the family do things like skiing.

But one of the things I am also missing is walking our littlest to preschool...

And riding with the boys to pick up the littlest from daycare - especially now that the days are getting warmer and longer..

I neglected to mention that it is Ride to Work Day! Hope you all got on your bikes... I wish I could have..

Finding a use for man made snow

2010-10-08T13:14:00.000+11:00

Never thought I would say that it was good to have man made snow on the ski slopes..... but for the last half of the week Dad and Grandma have been up with the kids playing on the last of the man made snow after the closing of the official ski season last week ... the man made snow was still over a metre deep, well groomed and made an excellent playing area for the kids that was close to the car.

I have injured my leg and are resting off the mountain much to my frustration...... snuck up to take some photos though and to take in the fresh spring alpine air...

Holiday treasure hunt

2010-10-06T13:37:00.000+11:00

We have been away from the blog over the last week as we were attending a family wedding in Sydney. The extended family booked accomodation on Cockatoo Island - with views of the harbour and the Sydney Harbour Bridge and all sorts of natural historty and other historical things to explore - we all had lots of fun on the island.

By the second day on the island the boys were asking for more activities to do and a treasure hunt was suggested...... so a treasure hunt list was created and the search began.

The list -

orange leaf
blue flower
round small pebble
feather
long leaf
round leaf
seed pod
Y shaped stick
white flower
smelly leaf
purple and white leaf
heart shaped leaf

Getting the treasure hunt list checked off first was our littlest - who had collected things with a little help from Grandma

Dad helped our youngest boy....

And our eldest got to do the treasure hunt all on his own...

It was lots of fun for all involved... including Dad and Grandma...

After we checked the lists off all items had to be returned to where they came from... that was almost as much fun as the initial treasure hunt...

Our first out of class "Permablitz"

2010-09-26T23:05:00.000+10:00

After our Permaculture Design Certificate course finished in late August we promised that we would continue to work as a group to do "permaculture" things. So today we completed our first out of class permablitz ... and we had lots of fun... our goal was to create the base for a new Zone 1 kitchen garden using sheet mulching.

Here is what we achieved.....

We started by laying wet newspaper over a sprinkling of well aged sheep manure....

Wetting all the newspaper to be laid - a job the kids loved....

Nearly a complete covering of newspaper...

Now for the lucerne mulch layer......

All mulched now...... I think we used 20 bails of lucerne!!!

Some paths went in then some young seedlings were planted into some additional compost within the mulch.

A new Zone 1 kitchen garden laid out.....

The next task will be to fill it with a mix of perennial and annual food plants.....

It is amazing how many hands make light work... this was all achieved in just over 3 hours...

Next permablitz is at our house in a month.... I have on the list of things to do - a dry creek bed, a sheet mulched area under some newly planted fruit trees and the planting of shrubs and ground cover in our fruit tree orchard as well as more shrubs, sedges and shade loving natives in our native plant conservation zone.... should be fun.... can't wait ....

Who says young kids don't listen

2010-09-25T21:30:00.001+10:00

For the Sustainable Living Expo last weekend we made up some small sample packs of local wattle and kurrajong seed to be propagated at home by anyone who wanted to try. The kids helped put on some labels saying what species we had in the sample pack and how to propagate them.

Being seeds with a hard seed coat the instructions said that the seed had to be put in hot water before it was planted out into tubes. Our littlest must have been listening to the boys and myself talking about this process and the other night came out with some seeds reading for planting!!!

She had filled the seed packet with hot water from bathroom tap... and wanted to plant the seeds - packet and all.

After a positive word about her attempts to propagate the seeds we went about learning how to do it correctly together. So I got her to put the seeds into a coffee cup and we poured hot water from the kettle over them, waited for the water to cool and then we planted them.... now we just have to wait until they grow....

I am always amazed at how much little kids take in from the conversations that occur around them....

Sustainable Living Week in Orange

2010-09-22T21:23:00.000+10:00

It was Sustainable House Day on Sunday 12th September.. in Orange the week following was Sustainable Living Week and we participated in a few activities. In my role as the local Landcare coordinator and as a teacher at our local TAFE I helped out on a infomration table at the Sustainable Living Expo last Saturday and then we spent most of Sunday looking through some local sustainable homes... and here are some photos I'd like to share.

We started at this house... a house feature in Sanctuary Magaziine

Water features are always a hit with the kids..... we plan to get some water features into our garden...

We loved all the north facing windows we got to see... and are so jealous that we have a 1980's house with very little northern aspect..

More north facing windows..

A small urban permaculture garden......

A 1980's house that was designed with good northern aspect...

A deciduous vine on the western wall..

I would have liked to see more houses that have been retrofitted to improve efficiencies that were not designed for in the first place but we did get to see some good ideas in action.

A suprise in the glasshouse

2010-09-19T22:31:00.000+10:00

With our recent spring weather I ventured out to the glasshouse and found these...

.. they are Blunt Greenhoods. I have bought them inside and they are now sitting on my window sill above the kitchen sink. Mum gave me a pot of them to look after a couple of years ago.. and these are the few flowers that the slugs and snails did not get.

I also have some sun-orchids about to open ... they will come inside on the kitchen window sill when they are flowering.

Plastic bags...

2010-09-12T11:39:00.001+10:00

I finished my bag I was weaving from plastic bags.... Rough I know but it was my first attempt at weaving..

it now hangs in the bathroom collecting toilet rolls for reuse as vegie seedling pots...

At least these plastic bags are not going to be picked up and carried by the wind and water to pollute our great oceans....

Below I have put a great "Mockumentary" on plastic bags. It is from a campaign to get support for bill AB 1998 and getting California to kick its 19 billion bag per year habit. For more information on the campaign visit the Heal The Bay website. Unfortunately their bill to ban the use of single use plastic bags in California failed to pass the senate last week.

What do you do to limit your use and disposal of single use plastic bags?

A very wet month....

2010-09-10T11:32:00.000+10:00

I just looked up our rainfall statistics for August - I was curious to see just how wet we have been this year compared to the norm.

We got rain on half the days in August this year... with a total of about 240mm for the month (nearly the highest on record which is 270mm) - the long term average is just 94mm. The local water supply has reached full capacity - the first time in about 5 years - our heavy water restrictions have been dropped back to a token Level 2... and everything is very wet. A great way to go into spring and summer and in contrast to an earlier entry I made about our dry weather.

It has however been a difficult month or so to get any washing dried... and with three kids that like playing in the water and mud it has been an uphill battle to get clothes dried.

Our solution - like many households - has been to live with clotheshorses in our main living areas - a wash house....

Having said that, I have not had to resort to using the clothes dryer that we strategically left in the shed when we moved to Orange a few years ago - it's a great incentive not to switch it on!

Plastic weaving workshop

2010-09-07T11:55:00.000+10:00

Last night we went to a plastic weaving workshop...

I wanted to start learning some weaving techniques so that I can not only make us of some of the plastic that goes into our recycle bin but also I would like some practice before I move on trying some weaving with local native fibre plants such as matrushes and flax lilies (Lomandra and Dianella species).

Here is what we started with.... a pile of plastic bags......

We slowly started to weave it all together.. row by row.. here is the first row...

We were starting to make a bag... so here is the base taking shape..

And then... we started turning up to the make the sides...

But that is as far as I got on the evening... so my homework is to keep going until I get a bag to ensure I don't forget the weaving technique... lucky it's a TV free and computer free night tonight!

The kids had fun and tried their hand at weaving old yoghurt containers with strips of breadbags...

What's in your recycle bin?

2010-09-04T20:34:00.001+10:00

Over the past year we have been trying to reduce the packaging and rubbish that comes into the house but we still manage to fill our recycle bin most fortnights for collection!!

To try to work out were we can cut our packaging or find new ways to reuse the things we are putting in the recycle bin we tipped a fortnights recycling on the floor in the kitchen and we sorted it (well the kids did - thanks kids).

Nearly sorted now.... milk cartons, tins, glass, plastics, paper and cardboard...

Now for the tough work.... what can we do to reduce the amount of these entering the bin in the first place - or if we can't reduce it how can we reuse it!

The glass jars we already keep for jams and chutneys etc... the best way to reduce the number of jars we are getting we will try to preserve more things next year. I would like to try some tomato paste this summer and maybe some curry pastes.

The tins we put into the recycle bin... the kids suggested plant pots... but I think the best way to reduce these is to bottle our own tomatoes this summer - as the majority of cans we generate are from canned tomatoes. This is a little scary though - if we had 1 bottle of tomatoes a week that's 52 bottles of tomatoes for the year. I might have to hit the op shops and clearing sales for more preserving jars.

Last summer we bottled cherries, peaches, nectarines, plums and pears - as a result we have not bought (much) tinned fruit this year.

We have recently changed to milk cartons - what can we do with all these. We use some for growing plants - but I am not sure what to do with the rest - maybe some tree guards or even use them as "bricks" to build a cubby house for the kids on the back deck.

And well, plastics - we have been trying to reduce the amount of plastic that enters the house but it's hard. We have reused some of the plastic bottles as little "mini-glasshouses" to protect seedlings in the garden. More recently I have been saving bread bags and other clean plastic bags and are going to a plastic weaving evening next week - that should be great. I love the idea of making stuff out of rubbish.

What's in your recycle bin? Can you reduce it? Can you reuse it?

Remembering that the three R's are REDUCE REUSE and then RECYCLE.

All those saved toilet rolls..

2010-09-01T20:15:00.000+10:00

Recently I have been watching as some of you from warmer climates have started planting out seeds for your summer gardens.. I have been patiently waiting. We have been saving toilet rolls over the winter (part of our waste reuse activities)...

On the weekend I had the kids cutting the bases and folding them under to make little pots (see here and here - who supplied the idea in the first place)

Then we filled them with a mix of river sand and compost....

Now we have started some of our seeds in mini hothouses on heat beds... we planted tomoatoes, pumpkins and cucumbers.... and nearly used all those toilet rolls we saved over the winter months.

Once the seedlings are large enough I will move them out to the shadehouse before planting them out in the garden after our last frosts - in Orange that is around the Melbourne Cup (first week in November).

The season is turning

2010-08-25T10:22:00.000+10:00

For many of you spring has sprung already.... but for us up on the tablelands ... well we are only just seeing the first signs of a season changing.

So with more snow predicted for tonight and tomorrow in the higher hills near Orange I share these pictures of the our plants starting to warm up to spring...

The Blackcurrant cuttings that I took in early winter are waking up

(earlier because they are inside on a head bed)

The plum tree blossoms are almost popping open....

The roses are opening their first leaves...

The apricot tree is heavy with blossom buds...

and the magnolia buds are about to open....

I love the change in seasons... it's been such a long wet winter here....

Food Inc

2010-08-23T20:19:00.000+10:00

I just took my littlest along to see Food Inc today. I am not sure where to start with any digests that I have walked away with today apart from the fact that I don't really know where to start looking at "food quality" issues here in Australia.

My littlest walked away saying she just wanted to eat healthy food - but that some chocolate was OK - she is a chocoholic.

I liked the quotes at the end of the movie - I think I got a these couple correct:

"You can vote to change the system - three times a day"

"You can change the world with every bite"

On the way home from the movies I stopped down the street to collect something from a shop - the shop attendant asked how my movie was and then enquired as to what film I watched - I said Food Inc. Silence. Then after an explanation about the fact that 80% of Americas beef is processed by only 4 companies the shop attendant replied - "it would have been good to be friends with those company owners before they got that big". And then came "that would not happen in Australia though".

Designs nearing completion

2010-08-20T15:17:00.000+10:00

In earlier blog entries I have referred to the Permaculture Design Course that I am doing here in Orange. Well - we are nearing the completion of the course and our garden designs are due to be presented to the rest of the class next weekend.

I am feeling nearly ready in some areas of our home garden design... like what I have put together for a section of the front yard.... I have plans for a mix of fruit trees, fruit bearing shrubs, the native pea Hardenbergia violoacea and other flowers to attract pollinators and predators - a perfect plant guild I think.

... but work on the back yard design is still well a little more in draft ...

I have had lots of fun reading and thinking about how we can be more productive in our home yard... and I love the ideas of permaculture that encourage the use a a wide range of perennial plants so that the maintenance of the garden once established will be less. That sounds good for someone like me who is struggling to say no to new work projects.

I look forward to sharing with you how I progress in implementing my grand ideas to our garden... or maybe how the harder task of getting the design ideas past the family committee progresses.

A landscape of regeneration

2010-08-11T12:34:00.001+10:00

On a recent trip to Nyngan teaching I made the realisation that the landscape as a whole was regenerating... I was out looking at trees on farms from a biodiversity and Aboriginal cultural heritage viewpoint. It is the old trees in he landscape that might hold the scars of Aboriginal occupation and of course it is also these old trees that are full of hollows that are so critical to the survival of many hollow dwelling animals in our landscape - but I could not find them in the landscape.

On close inspection of the paddock trees I soon came to the realisation that nearly every tree in the landscape had been ring barked or cut and was in fact a multi stemmed regrowth tree.

Here you can see the original tree that has died and the two new shoots that have regrown to give a multi stemmed or coppiced tree.

Once you start looking closely at trees across the landscape you begin to realise that they are all growing back multi stemmed after being ring barked or cut off years ago.

Again another close up of a regrowth tree...

Once I was aware of this as an issue I started looking at trees on my drive home from Nyngan to Warren to Dubbo and it was hard to find any stands of trees that were not this coppicing / multi stemmed regrowth.

With so many regrowth trees in the landscape we were unable to find Aboriginal scarred trees - many of which were probably cut out or removed from the landscape. Instead we did find some stone artifacts which was great and always brings home the fact that the land was occupied prior to European colonisation.

Trees were cut or ringbarked by early graziers to encourage the growth of grass to feed stock. Trees have also been lopped for stock feed in times of heavy drought or cut to provide building materials or fenceposts.

The ability of nature to recover - it's resilience - always amazes me.

Imagine the these landscapes if all these trees had of just died instead of resprouting and regenerating.

Imagine the scorching summers of over 40oC with no shade.

Imagine a whole landscape that had lost its ability to generate rainfall from its trees.

Imagine a landscape with few birds and animals.

It is always quietly reassuring to see resilience in a landscape.