Starting to organise for a more sustainable Christmas

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

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?

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?