One year reflection

On Tuesday 12 July, it will be twelve months since I reached my goal date of being in the King Valley. So how has the journey of the last year been? Where am I now? Where am I headed?

The last year has been a good journey. I lived part time in the King Valley for most of it, travelling up and down to Melbourne each week. I installed an irrigation system around the house, rejuvenated most of the garden beds around the house and had a great yield of mainly tomatoes, potato and pumpkin. The broken fence over the creek meant I didn't plant more than four fruit trees on the plot, as the cattle ate the lemon leaves. I also finished Certificate IV Small Business Management. I didn't however, commence any of the three businesses I planned to: a permaculture market garden, making chutney and sauce and selling Guatemalan textiles.

Where am I now? Mainly in Melbourne, still working part time and only going to the King Valley monthly. The commute became too much, plus I realised my best network was in Melbourne and was where I get my energy from. Though I do love being up at the farm. I'm still very much involved with the local permaculture movement, plus have begun promoting Landshare in Melbourne. If any groups are interested in sharing land or a backyard for gardening, I'm happy to come and speak.

Where am I headed? Of the three parts to the plot, I've decided to not sell sauce and chutney. I just love making it for my family and friends but don't really have a great desire to make it en masse. Selling textiles is also on the back burner: I would really need to partner with someone to make it happen.

So what of the permaculture market garden? I've discovered that I really like the social connection at work, so a rather solitary job as a farmer may not give me everything. However, I also realised I would like to run workshops. Eventually teach the Permaculture Design Certificate. So I am going to learn by doing, and find myself some land or multiple plots of land (using Landshare) in Melbourne for an urban market garden. My new long term goal is to be a permaculture teacher.

It's disappointing to not have some major concrete evidence of achieving any of my three parts to the plot. But I have learnt along the way and become clearer in what I want to do in life. My permaculture future is still central.

Success at Screening of The Economics of Happiness

Andrew Lucas and Helena Norberg-Hodge

The Melbourne screening of The Economics of Happiness happened on National Permaculture Day, Sunday 1 May. I think fair to say it was a success, with around 300 people coming. The documentary showed both the negative impacts of globalisation on our culture and happiness and environmental and economical stability, plus featured many positive stories of communities who are relocalising, reconnecting with their neighbours and patronising their local businesses. 

 The Q&A Panel: Adam Grubb, Andrew Lucas and Helena Norberg-Hodge

After the screening, we had a Question and Answer session with the film maker, Helena Norberg-Hodge, and Permablitz founder, Adam Grubb, and transition initiative enthusiast and founder of Transition Bell, Andrew Lucas. Themes raised during question time included:

• how to include the older generation or ethnic groups that the sustainability/transition movement does not initially attract: pass some of your produce over your fence to your neighbour! Even if you don't share a language, you may find your neighbour starts handing you some produce of theirs. Andrew tried and succeeded
• what to do about going to a Permablitz and the first thing you do is head to Bunnings for a shovel (national hardware store that local hardware stores struggle to compete against): try your local hardware store, or Freecycle or Sharehood: not every house needs a shovel!
• how to get companies re-regulated so the people have more control: demand it from your politicians

One fact that interested people was a study on spending $100 at a bookshop. They found spending $100 at a book chain meant that only $13 stayed in the local economy, while $40-odd stayed in the economy if spent at an independent bookstore. This extra money went to management who were co-located, as well as services provided locally like accountants, lawyers and tradespeople.

My main aim for hosting the screening was to act as a catalyst for more local activity plus increase the membership of permaculture and transition initiative groups. Going by the buzz in the foyer both before and after the screening, I think the activity definitely affirmed many people were heading in the same direction together and were pleased to see they weren't alone. The groups who helped put the screening on (Permablitz, Permaculture Inner North, Sustainable Fawkner, Transition Brunswick, Transition Darebin and Transition Banyule) all had many people put their name down to find out more information. I'll admit, even though I organised the event on behalf of Permaculture Inner North, not many people put their name down for this. But it was great people connected with the other groups: there is a lot of crossover between us all. 

 The crowd

Thanks to Helena for appearing at the first Melbourne screening, to Adam Grubb, Andrew Lucas and Andrew McClelland for being on the panel, to the above mentioned community groups for spreading the word and to Moreland and Darebin City Councils who supported the screening both financially and through marketing.

Screening of The Economics of Happiness, Sunday 1 May 2011

I'm organising the Melbourne launch of a film 'The Economics of Happiness' and it would be great if a few of you Melbourne dwellers could make it.

Please join Melbourne permaculture and transition initiative groups at Darebin Arts & Entertainment Centre on Sunday 1 May, for a screening of ‘The Economics of Happiness’, a new documentary film by the International Society for Ecology & Culture (ISEC) about the worldwide movement for economic localization.

It shows how people around the world are already engaged in exploring alternative visions of prosperity: uniting around a common cause to build more ecological, more human-scale, more local economies – a foundation of an ‘economics of happiness’.

The film features a chorus of voices from six continents, including Vandana Shiva, Clive Hamilton, David Korten, Richard Heinberg, Rob Hopkins, Juliet Schor, Zac Goldsmith, Bill McKibben, and Samdhong Rinpoche, the Prime Minister of Tibetʹs government in exile.

The film on National Permaculture Day 1 May will be followed by a Q&A with film maker Helena Norberg-Hodge and those involved with local permaculture and transition activity.

Permaculture Inner North, Transition Brunswick, Transition Darebin, Transition Banyule, Sustainable Fawkner, Permablitz, Moreland City Council and Darebin City Council are the official co‐sponsors of this event.

When: Sunday 1 May 2011, 6pm-8pm

Where: Darebin Arts & Entertainment Centre, cnr Bell St and St Georges Rd, Preston

Tickets cost $15 or $10 concession, and are available from the venue by calling (03) 8470 8280 

View the filmʹs website: http://www.theeconomicsofhappiness.org

Become a Facebook fan of The Economics of Happiness: http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/pages/The‐Economics‐of‐ Happiness/129994847035746?ref=ts

The Economics of Happiness on Twitter: http://twitter.com/EconofHappiness

 

Joel Salatin Workshop

Free range pigs

Farming really does pay. Just ask Joel Salatin, of Food Inc fame and owner of Polyface Farm. Farming can support a family plus keep on supporting additional family members. All this while farming "beyond organic" rather than the current industrial agriculture model. How this all works, the nuts and bolts of Polyface Farm, is what I was priveleged to hear about at the two day workshop on Local Farms and Community by Joel Salatin. The last RegenAg workshop for 2010 (can't wait until the 2011 series, despite the FarmReady budget running out for this financial year).

Joel is a very charasmatic farmer and a great communicator from the USA. His farm focuses on growing pasture. His family have taken a degraded landscape that had lost significant amount of topsoil and turned it into a lush farm supporting (or supported by) various animals. The animals are allowed to express their natural behaviour which in turn regenerates the landscape. For example, birds in the wild tend to follow herds and thereby reduce parasites. Hence, the chickens follow the cattle around the paddock on rotational grazing, scratching through cow pats and eating bugs. Pigs love rooting things up, so the pigs turn dropped hay, cow manure and sawdust into compost while looking for the corn that has been sprinkled through it in layers over the very few weeks the cows are fed hay in the shed.

On the first day, Joel took us through the various elements of Polyface Farm:

• Salad bar beef
• Pasturised poultry (chicken eggs and meat, turkey)
• Pigaerator pork
• Forage-based rabbit
• Forestry

One of the past interns has recently begun a horticulture enterprise, so it will be interesting to see how that progresses.

Integrate rather segregate is one of the permaculture principles that Joel is excelling at. It has really made me think about including a substantial pasturised poultry enterprise at my plot because a) animals offer such an invaluable environmental service in fertilising and pest control and b) there is money in it.

The second day was on marketing and who is going to do the work. Joel's focus is on selling direct and local. This is all about creating local jobs. Selling direct also means the farmer gets a good price for the produce (I have been told five to one is the common ratio between retail price and the price the farmer gets). Hence the oft quoted line "there's no money in farming", which hardly entices the next generation to keep on the farm. Plus so many farmers are having to supplement their income by working off farm.

I was impressed by the Metropolitan Buying Clubs. Similar to a Community Supported Agriculture scheme, but with more flexibility. Orders are delivered to various hubs eight times a year. Each hub has a hostess who simply provide their house as a drop point and they just need to make sure a minimum order level is acheived across the members. Polyface has increased the number of products they offer, sourcing extra items from like minded farmers at the price the farmer sets. I'll ponder if I can use this model for my business, rather than a set box per week (though it will be different as I will mainly have fresh vegetables rather than frozen meat).

Finally, Joel touched on an aspect close to his heart: including, and creating jobs for, his family. This means being creative in devising new enterprises where each person in the family and their spouse has a role that allows them to express their strengths. The Salatin family have also opened up their farm to interns and apprentices. Leasing rather than buying farms was advocated as an economical way to commence farming.

Planning for succession was an important topic many in the audience had not yet fully dealt with. Nor has my family. The moral of the story: better to find out sooner what will happen with the farm than when you are 50 years old.

I left the workshop optimistic that food grown organically and sold locally was both possible and profitable. The title of Joel's book rings in my ears as a mantra "You Can Farm".

Rabbit Tractor

Count down to part time

Native revegetation of eucalyptus and wattles, top corner

One week before I go part time at my current full time job. This means I will have lots of time available to concentrate on my three projects.

Bring on my permaculture future!

I'll be balancing a couple of days of work in Melbourne and working on my Three Part Plot in the King Valley for the remainder of the week.

The spooky thing is at the beginning of 2010, I picked a date to aim for as a goal. 12 July 2010. A somewhat random date and I picked this as it is the date my term deposit matures. Then I had to work out what my goal was. I decided on:

• be part time in the King Valley
• have started my three projects (permaculture plot, preserves business and importing naturally dyed, hand woven textiles from Guatemala)

And guess what? My first week of going part time in my current job is Monday 12 July 2010. So I guess by picking a goal, always having it in the back of my mind, the physical, social and spiritual world made it come true. I'm not sure what "started" my three projects actually meant, but I guess you could say I'm following the permaculture principle "observe and interact" at this point by observing others and gaining knowledge first.

My plot in June winter, up to the ridge

My plot is a triangle. My motto was: keep your mind on the triangle prize.

Learning

I continue my crusade to learn as much as I can to do with permaculture NOW. And I'm not doing too badly. The other night, I sat in a very cold shed at CERES to learn about small scale wind power. I'm assessing how I can power a water pump at my plot or even power a building if I decide to build a house, classroom or storage for my produce.

Was the Australian landscape not covered with windmills at one time, slowly pumping up water?

Prices have dropped substantially for small scale solar power (due to a mix of technology improvements and government subsidies). Not so true for wind power. Quite expensive in comparison, now. Though the government has started cutting the small scale wind power sector some slack: I think they're eligible for the feed-in-tariff now.

A feed-in-tariff means when you connect your renewable energy system to the electricity grid, the energy retailer pays YOU for what electricity you produce. Technically, as Victoria has a net feed-in-tariff not a gross feed-in-tariff, they will pay for what you don't use. Eventually you'll have paid off the system and be earning money from your wind turbine or solar panel.

Not bad.

So I'll go away and ponder my options, weighing up the pros and cons of solar and wind. Or a hybrid. At least wind continues at night. And my plot is in a valley that runs north-south, which tends to be the predominant wind direction. Which makes sense when you're in Melbourne. I listen to the radio for both the temperature and wind direction in summer before deciding if it is really warm or cool: is there a cold southerly or a hot blast of northerly wind?

The tutor is writing a consumer's guide to small scale wind power for Sustainability Victoria, so keep your eye out for it. Very useful. He also recommended "Wind Power:Plan Your Own Wind Power System" published by Alternative Technology Association, for more information on windmills as opposed to wind turbines.

I was wanting to do a workshop on Australian bushfoods, which I plan to use on my plot and even connect with the local indigenous group, and a water wise gardening workshop. Unfortunately, they were both cancelled for lack of numbers. Very sad.

So if you're interested in learning, sign up to CERES workshops (so I can go to the workshops, too).

The Good Life

Sometimes it is useful to look to comedy for inspiration. I think Tom and Barbara from The Good Life sitcom of the 1970s display brilliantly what I'm trying to do.

Enjoy the laugh

The Good Life

Seed Saving Workshop

Our Seeds: Seeds Blong Yumi

Over the last few years I've become more and more exposed to the wonderful diversity of seeds. The wonderful treasure they are. And they belong to you and me. Not to multinational corporations. It was your family and my family that selected them, saved them, used them for hundreds of years.

Today I travelled out to Edendale Farm at Eltham. A little gem of a community farm that I never knew about until today. Similar to CERES, East Brunswick, but smaller.

Jude and Michel Fanton gave a wonderful session on how to run a seed saving workshop. They are the founders of The Seed Savers Network and have dedicated the last few years to help set up seed saving networks around Australia and the world.

I saw their uplifting documentary, Our Seeds: Seeds Blong Yumi while I was in Guatemala. I was trying to translate into Spanish for my workmates as we watched it. They were really interested as they could relate. If you want to understand how important to our culture seeds are: have a look. The doco focuses on the Pacific Islands and Asia, but it shares strong similarities to Central America. I'll try and get a copy for myself, soon.

I did the course so that I could build on my skills. I'd like to be able to share the knowledge of seed saving with others in my community. First, I can do a seed saving workshop for Permaculture Inner North. Later I could run seed saving workshops in North East Victoria, amongst other topics. Not that I'm an expert in seed saving, but we all know a little and it adds up.

Sustainable Living Festival

I've spent the last few days down at the Sustainable Living Festival, an excellent and varied event for the community. A lot of interesting organisations, both volunteer groups and businesses, have stalls, but I spent more time listening to the interesting array of speakers.
It was a good opportunity to listen to Professor Ross Garnaut delve into his greenhouse emissions research, focusing on transport. One option to reduce our transport emissions is to switch to electric cars. Garnaut pointed out that the electricity supply would have to be from a renewable source. If Victorians switched to electric cars with continued reliance on electricity generated from dirty brown coal, our greenhouse emissions would actually increase.
I was also lucky to hear Peter Singer speak on climate change as an ethical issue and the possible options of how each country could take responsibility for cutting greenhouse emissions. You could look at historical emissions or a future, equal quota up until 2050. By that method, based on current per capita emissions, Australia and USA would run out of its quota in six years, Germany in14 years, China in 24 years and Burkina Faso in over 2000 years (these figures are from my memory). That gives some perspective on each of our ecological footprints!
Both Gilbert Rochecouste from Village Well and Andrew Lucas from Transition Bell both spoke on what I am excited about: relocalising for a resilient, happy community. I really think this enthusiasm can be harnessed to effectively address peak oil and climate change. And have fun while doing it! Transition Bell have organised some really fun activities, including cooking with the local Croatian community. I love their audacious claims to titles such as “Fruit Tree Capital of Geelong”.
David Holmgren, cofounder of permaculture, spoke on designing fire resilient communities and landscapes. He’s a big advocate for designing the home area as the refuge, with a house being surrounded by a food garden creating an effective fire barrier (as you’re very likely to want to water your tomatoes and hence keep the area hydrated). I’ll have to read his “The Flywire House: A case study in design against bushfire”, available as a free eBook and has been reprinted.
I also bought some baby blue organic cotton sheets by Organature to match my hand-woven, naturally dyed bedspread from Guatemala. They use the off cuts for hankies (I have always used hankies over tissues and mine definitely needed replacing). I quizzed a few ecologically minded printers for my future printing needs, Print Together and Complete Colour Printing. And I subscribed to the Earth Garden magazine, which gives some good practical advice on sustainable living, some of which is by permaculture practitioners.


The Earth Garden magazine sitting on my organic sheets and naturally dyed bedspread.

The Beginning

After a year away from my sunburnt country, Australia, volunteering in Guatemala at a permaculture institute, my mind is brimming with ideas. And ones that I plan to follow through on. My three projects are:
-start a permaculture plot
-start an organic chutney and tomato sauce business
-import naturally dyed, hand woven textiles from Guatemala
Quite varied, right? I have a year ahead with a very steep learning curve and I'm looking forward to it.
I hope you enjoy sharing my adventure via this blog.
After returning in November 2009 from volunteering at Instituto Mesoamericano de Permacultura (IMAP), San Lucas Tolimán, Guatemala, I did my Permaculture Design Certificate at Mulloon Creek Natural Farm with Geoff Lawton. So I've at least started on my permaculture future.
Next is to learn about small business.