If Chickens Could Talk...

They would say "Thank you very much.  You are my heroes!".  That would go exclusively to Kim and Ben for keeping them alive during this heat wave.

Kim and Ben's heroic actions of keeping the chooks cool by spraying them with a mist of water, every two hours over the last three days has been exemplarily.  I am so impressed because as I have written before, Kim doesn't handle the heat well at the best of times, so to be brave enough to go out into 42-45C heat every two hours was just simply fantastic and above and beyond the call of duty.  If they had a Victoria Cross for heat waves, then you two would get it.

Well done to you both, I am so proud of you!  Edwina, Bunty, Polly, and Ginger blow you both a big kiss.

 

Meltin' in Melton

I just saw the ice cream van go past my house and look what happened! 

All I wanted was a box of ice creams for the kids!  It has been 43C for two day in a row, and it is forecast for a similar temperature tomorrow.  I wish this heat was over, but we will just have to do our best.  I have been watering the veggie patch every morning at 0530 with mains water when I am allowed and tank water every other day.  The tank is now 25% full, and as it hasn't rained since 10th December 2008, I reckon it will hit rock bottom before it gets any better.  Kim has been spraying the chooks to make sure they stay cool every couple of hours, and they are doing well.  Well done love!

This morning I had to pick 3 cucumbers as they were starting to get sunburned.  This evening, I picked about 4 kg of blood plums and put them in the fridge.  The plums that are exposed to the direct sun are burnt, and only good for chook food now.  Luckily there are so many more sheltered from the sun under the canopy.  I also picked about 3 kg of tomatoes tonight, and put them in the fridge.  There are quite a few that have been burnt as well, but not enough to cry about.  When it cools down a little I will make some pasta sauce to preserve for later on in the year.  I even have my eye on a tomato jam recipe.

Tomorrow, I go back to class again and attend day 2 of my carbon accounting course at Swinburne Uni.  I finished the project plan on time and submitted it on Australia Day, so I am hoping that it was OK.  We learn about how to put a carbon inventory together in Excel and how to calculate the CO2-e emissions for different things like municipal waste, burning petrol in cars, natural gas etc.  Should be fun, and I will write up a quick post about it tomorrow night.

To finish of, a bit of education in the form of the latest ZapRoot video.  It features a nudie Kate Winslet and how she was tricked into posing with fur.  Makes the mind boggle, but PETA were very upset about it!  Don't mind the picture below, there is no real nudity in the story.  There is also a very good little feature about Ocean Acidification and how rising CO2 is killing our reefs and ocean creatures.  

ZapRoot 072

Enjoy!

Thanks!

I would like to give a big thanks for all the massive support and kind words via comments and personal blogs over the last 24 hours.  I feel overwhelmed to say the least, and your words give me the courage and strength to keep on spreading the message and doing what I am doing.  I just hope that my whole TV segment doesn't cut!

I expect that if the Today Tonight piece goes to air that I may be contacted by other media outlets to tell my story, but time will tell.  Not getting my hopes up, but the more I can represent the views of the majority of my readers the better off we will all be in the long run.

There has been some encouraging news out of the US over the last day or so.  The Congress has approved President Obama's stimulus package that includes US$11 billion for a green electricity grid. Now it has to pass through the Senate.  It looks like Al Gore has been in the Presidents ear of late and might just see his lofty goal of 100% renewable energy in 10 years come to fruition via his RePower America campaign.  Good on you Al.  I really look up to you, even though you were a politician once.  I suppose that is karma really because you, Al, now have the moral imperative and the mandate of the American People to move forward on advising the current administration regarding climate change and how to solve the crisis.  I reckon you may just break through the special interest groups firewall and get that change that you and the public are after.  There is hope after all, and if you guys lead, most of the world will follow.

So, once again, thanks to everyone for their wonderful encouragement today, it really does make a difference. 

As for becoming PM, Daharja, I don't think so, but thanks for the vote of confidence.  For one, I hate politics but I love this new found activism I have embraced.  Look how the mighty have fallen regarding Peter Garrett.  I would hate to be stifled by the collective party like he is right now.  It is time for the people to speak and the politicians to listen and start working for us and not for corporate greed.

And to my sister, the Mrs Cabbage Heart.  Thanks for the accolades, but you are biased!  We are family.  Mind you, I feel like all my readers are like family.  When you think about it a bit, we are all in this together, so why wouldn't we be family?

To Margaret from the UK, thanks for the award.  I really appreciate you thinking of me.  Just doing the best I can. 

Thanks Sarhn for the "Sarhn Award".  How cool is it to receive on of those.  I wonder what it looks like, but I reckon it will be better than an oscar!

And finally, to anyone else I have missed, THANKS A MILLION!

Gav

 

Where is the Crisis?

When I talk to people about the seriousness of climate change and peak oil (which, if you read this article about the current research on the climate crisis, you soon realise is far more dire than anything you'd guess if you only follow the mainstream media), people tend to not take me too seriously, for two reasons:

1. "If what you say is true, why isn't the government doing a lot more?", and,
2. "If what you say is true, why aren't there people protesting in the streets? Why isn't there a really big, loud protest movement?"

Therefore, one reason for taking drastic public measures in the form of activism, street marches, protests, walk against warming etc.  in addition to just changing your life as best you can is quite simply to create a sense of urgency in the general population. Because right now, that sense of urgency is not there at all.  Mind you, that may change pretty soon if water gets scarce and food supplies dwindle.

The mechanism that counteracts the creation of a sense of urgency by the usual means (i.e. by articles about droughts, heat-waves, melting ice shelves etc. in the newspaper, posts in environmental blogs similar to mine, and speeches by our political leaders) is this:

A while ago, I was working at in an office tower,  when there was an alarm. It sounded like it might be something serious, but I didn't know for sure. So I looked around to see how other people reacted. Since nobody seemed overly worried, I concluded that it was probably not a signal to leave the building, and so I continued working instead of running down the fire stairs (sure enough, it turned out to have been some technical glitch with the alarm system).

The same happens in the larger context. When ordinary people read truly alarming stuff in the newspaper, hear it on the radio, or see it on TV, they will check around them to see how everybody else is reacting. If other people don't seem to be overly worried, they'll shrug, decide that the alarming report was probably exaggerated, and continue about their daily business.

Only in the case of climate change and peak oil, we know it's not a technical glitch, and it's not an exaggeration, either. They really should be worried. Not being worried, right now, could turn out to be fatal for the entire human race.  An all this talk about saving the planet is rubbish.  We need to save ourselves from ourselves.  The planet will get along just fine with out us, albeit in a slightly altered state, but with a lot less species inhabiting it.

It is this reason, in my humble opinion, is why we need to start behaving like people who really do believe they are living in the time of the greatest emergency mankind has ever faced. We need visible and drastic action because only visible and drastic action communicates to people that there is an emergency going on.

My reaction of late has been a strong one.  Not only am I trying to live a sustainable life, I am now acting as if there is a real emergency (there really is, you know), hence me jumping at the change to get politically vocal any way I can.  If more people also begin to notice the emergency, then my work is done, and people will begin to act in a better way to help avert the climate crisis by voluntarily lowering their carbon footprints, or alternatively, the government of the time acting on policy and legislating large cuts in emissions and change the way we use fossil fuels.  Crisis over, and the emergency really goes away. 

I believe that in this point in time that this will be the only way we will be able to save ourselves, unless a global leader takes the reigns and leads us down the right path to avert the emergency.  But leadership is a rare commodity indeed in our current democracies.  It will be up to people like you and I to step up to the crease and bat to a record score!  Food for thought indeed.

Spreading The Word

Today, during my lunch break, I had the privilege of being interviewed by Lynda Kinkade for a story on Channel 7's Today Tonight.  It will mainly be about the lack of strong government policy, and partly about some of the green things I have done around the place.  I believe that there will be others in the story as well, as she mentioned that there was another family they were going to visit after me, and a few environmental group were going to have their say as well. 

I mentioned how disappointed I am about the current state of government policy regarding the year 2020 emissions target of 5%; the free permits that will be given to polluting industries under the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme; and how very pissed off I was about the lack of leadership regarding renewable energy feed-in tariffs in Victoria.

I also got to talk about why I began to lead a sustainable life, and the benefits of this lifestyle, but I don't think the story will feature much about that.  After the interview which was held on my deck, we had some shots of the electricity meter spinning backwards, the Solar PV panels on the carport roof, the inverter, the Hybrid car, and Solar Hot water panels, the front page of this blog, and me typing a fake post.  They also took pictures of my last power bill which was $39 in credit, and last the similar bill period for last year which was for $726, or to put it another way,  40 kWh last quarter vs 4290 kWh for the same quarter in 2007.  Renewable energy has made quite a difference for the better as you can see. 

I also talked about how so many people are trying to make changes at the grass root level, with big polluters doing nothing to stem the tide.  I think I mentioned how clean coal was a farce and the biggest oxymoron of this century, and I might have mentioned how the coal and power industry have their heads so far up the politicians arses regarding their lobbying efforts, it was the main reason the 5% target was settled at.  Nice.  I just hope the message is not lost on the cutting room floor.

The whole exercise took about an hour, all in 40C heat.  I was practically melting in Melton!

The story will be aired next week some time in Melbourne, but I don't know about the rest of the country.  I will know more when Lynda calls me in a few days time.  Either way, I will record the story, convert it to a video and post it on this blog.

What an exciting day it has been.  All this fun, and I actually got lots of work done as well!  Telecommuting is cool.

 

Gross Feed-in Tariff Petition

My good friends over at Energy Matters have started a small grass roots campaign regarding a renewable energy gross feed in tariff.  It is in the form of an online petition, that I encourage you all to please sign it if you believe in this worthy endeavour to help give a massive boost to the number of installations of renewable energy systems throughout Australia.  Here is the content of the petition;

"Dear Ministers, Senators and Senate Committee Members,

Re: Renewable Energy Feed In Tariffs

We, the undersigned, believe that Australia should implement a nationalised, simple and uniform renewable energy gross feed in tariff system as soon as possible, rather than relying on individual states to develop and maintain their own systems, most of which offer far below what is required  to encourage the uptake of renewable energy systems.

It is crucial that Australia implement a gross feed in tariff model over a net feed in tariff scheme. A net system will only pay on surplus electricity produced, which provides little incentive for home owners and business to make the substantial investment in solar and wind power equipment.

A gross feed in tariff program should  pay a minimum of 80c per kilowatt hour of electricity generation which is fair compensation for the production of clean electricity by privately funded installations. The program should operate for at least 15 years and include an initial 6 month period whereby rebates currently in place are still available to allow the solar industry time to adjust and to stimulate uptake in these troubled economic times.

This rate and commitment will give a much needed boost to investment in and uptake of technologies much cleaner than low-emissions coal, with the added benefit of generating thousands of new jobs in the clean energy sector.

Countries such as Germany, a nation with far less solar resources than Australia, have proved the effectiveness of the gross feed in tariff model for many years. Germany now has the greatest solar power capacity in the world and has generated hundreds of thousands of renewable energy sector jobs due largely to their gross feed in tariff program. Australia is lagging far behind and as a consequence, our greenhouse gas emissions are increasing.

Australia has extensive solar resources and we should be making better use of those rather than focusing energies and investment on the long term viability of environmentally destructive coal-fired power generation.. Emissions controls such as Carbon Capture and Storage require as much as 20 percent of the electricity a power plant generates and the long term safety of such processes is still unproven.

It is only with the full support of the voting public of Australia that the Government will meet its goals of lowering greenhouse gas emissions and the people are ready to play their part if given the proper support and tools to do so.  It is far better, safer and more economically viable not to produce emissions in the first place, and solar energy and wind power offer proven emissions free power generation."

For those of you not familiar with my own opinion regarding the current net feed-in tariff that Victorian State government is currently implementing, have a read of this post, "Feed-in Tariff is a Travesty".  If the state governments can't get the coal industry monkeys off of their backs, maybe it is time to try a little harder.  Maybe if we get enough signatures on the petition, the Commonwealth Government might stop dancing around the edges of the renewable energy debate and take some affirmative action and implement a gross feed-in tariff. 

A gross feed-in tariff is where the energy-producing household or business (the more the merrier) is paid for all the energy their system produces and not just the electricity fed back into the grid as in a net feed-in tariff.  This is a fair system, and it encourages maximum private investment in renewable energy systems.  The gross feed-in tariff is currently working well in many countries throughout the world and is responsible for a boom of renewable energy into those countries energy mix.

Once again, I humbly ask my readers to help take positive climate change action and join me in signing the petition by either pressing the button to the left or visiting the Gross Solar Feed In Tariff Petition site.  Both Kim and I have signed it for a greener Australia.   Help to stop all the hot air coming out of Canberra, and get some government action happening!  Leave me a comment if you have taken the time to sign.  It would be great to see a huge list of comments for this post!

Gav

 

Not A Good Forecast

This week is going to be very hot.  Here is the forecast for Melbourne, Victoria, from the BOM.  The temperatures are in Celsius.

Forecast for Tuesday

Sunny. Min 15 Max 38

Forecast for Wednesday

Sunny. Min 25 Max 41

Forecast for Thursday

Sunny. Min 26 Max 40

Forecast for Friday

Sunny. Min 24 Max 40

Forecast for Saturday

Sunny. Min 24 Max 40

Forecast for Sunday

Cloudy. Min 23 Max 31

Forecast for Monday

Cloudy. Isolated showers. Light winds. Min 23 Max 30

As you can see, not a pretty site, and still no rain since the 10th of December.  This forecast is for Melbourne, and typically we experience temps that are about 2 degrees higher than the city.  With the rainwater tank at 50%, and just about every day over 40 for the next 5 days, I hope the water in it lasts until it rains again.  I dare say I will have to water every single evening just so the veggie patch survives.  We will have to keep an eye on the chooks during the day and give them a squirt with the misting bottle every so often.  We will let them out so that they can sit under the plum tree in the cool shade.  I reckon they will be OK.

Power consumption will be at an all time high during the week, and I dare say the power grid will struggle to keep up with the demand for air conditioning.  I wouldn't be surprised if we experience some brown outs near the end of the week. 

Kim is going to go into hibernation for the week, and stick to the air conditioned part of the house.  We have lots of meals we have made and frozen for the week, so we will not be doing much cooking in the kitchen.  This should help to keep the house a bit cooler as well.

I believe that most of Southern Australia is going to face similar temperatures over the next week, so those of my readers that share this locale, I wish you luck surviving the heat.  Apparently it is going to be the hottest week in 100 years!  Who said that climate change is not real?

 

The Yellow Peril

My main post today is over at the Simple, Green, Frugal Co-op.  It is about how to opt out of phone book deliveries to your home or business. 

But for a bit of fun, here are other things you can do with the Yellow Pages. 

You can build a miniature shopping mall.  As if we really need any more of these monstrosities!

You could construct scarecrows for your veggie garden.

You could make a car. 

Or a fortress to keep the zombies out after the apocalypse!

If you like, you could make a large reptile to scare door to door salesmen away from your home.

Or, if you are really crafty, you could make this lovely dress with the white pages.  Or weave this cowgirl suit from the yellow pages. Nice!

Or you could just opt out of the delivery once and for all!  Then you wouldn't have to get all creative.  Remember, Reduce first, Reuse second, and Recycle if all else fails.

Gav

It Is Done!

Not for the squeamish, but warts and all, here is my extracted tooth.

Gross, I know, but if you ever want to scare small children into brushing their teeth when they absolutely refuse, I give you full permission to show them this bedtime picture.  I reckon they will fly into the bathroom quicker than their little legs can carry them and be brushing as quick as the Flash!

My mouth is still very swollen, but it is such a relief to have this out.  Decay managed to get into the tooth between the filling and the side wall of the tooth.  It missed detection at my last checkup three months ago, and was not on the X-ray back then either.  It just goes to show that it doesn't matter how regular your checkups are, when your tooth wants to go, it just goes.  A bit like life, I suppose.  A bit like a box of chocolates.

I managed to get a herbal remedies book from the library just before the procedure, so I will let you know if I find any good tips.

For those of you in Australia, have a great Australia Day weekend.  I am going to have a small two day break starting tomorrow, and should have more great posts to share from Sunday onwards.

Aveagoodweekend!  BeaudyCobberDiggerMate!

Assessing Transport Needs

Yesterday, a big weight was lifted from my shoulders. We finally managed to sell our second car! We got rid of it not only for environmental reasons, but for financial ones as well.

Since August last year, I have not been able to drive a manual any further than a few minutes due to my back injury. It seams that using my left leg constantly on the clutch was one of the causes of the relapse I had way back then, that took me out for three weeks. So in true human fashion, I simply avoided driving it. In the end, Kim stopped driving regularly because of MS, so the decision was fairly simple. We figured that by just having the car in the garage we were loosing over $900 a year in registration and insurance costs. That is a big hole in anyone's pocket. In the end it was quite funny how we found a buyer.

A few weekends ago, we invited our mate David over for a BBQ. It was so hot and messy over the chook-house side of the garden, that I decided to wheel the BBQ over to the carport area that overlooked the veggie patch. It was a much more pleasurable place to socialise, and we wouldn't get the constant complaining from the chickens! When ever we are outside, they want to come out of their coop as well. Naughty girls.

Anyway, as the second car was in the carport parked next to the well driven Hybrid, we got talking about fuel efficiency, and all things car like. Then David asked me how much I thought the car was worth, and I said that it was around the two grand mark, but would check. He then mentioned that he wanted to pick something up for his son, who is learning to drive, and he didn't want to buy him a car from a dealer who might sell him a lemon. He knew that we looked after everything we owned, and trusted us, so I suggested that he buy it from us, because we just didn't need a second car anymore. David jumped at the chance, so I had to quickly buy a new battery as the existing one would not charge, he replaced a broken wing mirror on the passengers side (I didn't know how), and I paid for the roadworthy certificate. It passed inspection first time, so no extra work had to be done. We agreed on a price of $1950, which was a bargain for him, did the paper work, and he picked up the car yesterday afternoon. He called us after he drove it to Bacchus Marsh, and said it was a great car to drive.

Some of the reasons why it took us so long to sell it were;

• Kim didn't think our luggage would fit in the hybrid when we went on holidays! Seeing that two of the kids have now left home, and I would rather spend my holidays here at home in my garden paradise, there are no longer those issues. Even if the kids did live here they are old enough to go on their own holidays without us, and if they did want to come, we would have hired a larger vehicle just for the holiday!
• Kim didn't want to get rid of the only car we owned. A logical reason, but because the hybrid is leased, the only real option after the lease expires is to buy the car anyway, which we have decided to do. So strike that reason to hold on to it.
• It was a safety blanket because it was the first car we had bought together as a couple. Emotional I know, and not a good reason for keeping it.

This list is not a dig at Kim. It is just that she is my balance when I tend to rush into things. She is the Yin to my Yang, so to speak. She comes up with reasons for why we shouldn't do something, and I find the reasons why we should, and attempt to convince her. If I can't, it probably wasn't worthwhile anyway. I think I have done fairly well so far!

So we will now have an extra $900 a year to play with. It will be used to pay down the home loan, so that I can retire earlier. The cash from the sale will go towards the purchase of the hybrid in October when the lease expires. Now that can only be a good thing.

The only regret I have is, that even though I have now reduced my carbon footprint by disposing of the second car, and have gained financially, someone else is still actually using it, so there is no net reduction in carbon emissions. If anything, there will be more emissions, because I only drove it once or twice a year! Maybe I can convince David to offset the yearly emissions via Green Fleet. Now that would be a coup.

Natural Toothache Remedies

Day 7 of this torturous ordeal.  Visited the dentist again yesterday, and she took an X-ray this time.  Unfortunately, the tooth is dead, and has to either come out or have a root canal and crown that would cost over $2000!  So the tooth comes out on Thursday.  She wouldn't pull it on Monday because it was too inflamed and infected, so I am on a course of antibiotics to settle it down before the extraction.

Which brings me on to the title of today's post of natural remedies.  I have found two that worked at various stages of the pain.

On Sunday night after the I was nearly ready to get the pliers out of the tool box and extract it myself, Kim started searching the web for something more natural that would ease the pain.  The painkillers were only working for a very limited time, and at about the 3 hour mark after taking them the pain came back stronger than ever. 

She discovered a remedy where you cut a clove of garlic in half lengthways and press the cut side into crushed rock salt.  You then place the garlic/salt mix on top of the affected tooth and gently press the juice out of the garlic for about 5-10 minutes.  I was a bit skeptical at first, but after about 30 minutes the pain became less intense, and after about an hour it was just a dull throb, which I could handle.  I applied this at about 2300 Sunday and it lasted until about 0700 Monday, at which time the pain came back stronger than ever.  I tried the garlic/salt method again Monday morning, but it only worked for an hour or so and was then unbearable.  So it was back on the painkillers for most of the day.

This morning, I took some of my readers advice and went one further.  I was given a metal tea ball for Christmas, so I put about 10 cloves into the ball, and infused them in boiling water for about 5 minutes.  A weak clove tea with a teaspoon of sugar, helped relieve the mouth pain associated with the infection.  I then took out one of the cloves from the ball, which was now moist, and placed it on the tooth in front of the infected one and gently chewed it.  In about 5 minutes my entire mouth went numb, like the feeling you get after a Novocain injection.  The pain went back to a dull throb again, and I managed to keep this up all day, putting in a fresh moist clove from the tea ball about once every two hours.  A potent remedy if there ever was one!  In fact, I am chewing on one now. 

I am very impressed with these two natural medicines, and it make me think that there are so many more out there to be found.  I have so many herbs in the garden, them must be more uses for them than just culinary.  It looks like I will be off to the library tomorrow after work.  I might need something else to help out after the extraction on Thursday!

Sick

I hate toothaches, and yes, I have a big one! In fact I have had it since Wednesday lunchtime and has been increasing in severity ever since.

I called in sick at work on Friday, and managed to get a dentist appointment at 1230. The nice dentist lady had a poke around and could only see an inflamed gum between two bottom right molars. The tap on the teeth test didn't show that anything was amiss, so she recommended that I rinse 3 times a day with Savicol mouthwash to assist in the healing process.

Well I did as she instructed for the rest of Friday and all of Saturday, and I thought it was getting better. Then this morning at 3am, BANG, it hit me. I woke up thinking that someone had punched me in the head and then like a big sooky la-la, I started crying, a lot. Not a good look for that time of the morning!

I have figured out that the tooth to the rear of the inflamed gum was actually the cause of the initial pain, consequently, I am in pain and doped up on strong pain killers that I had left over from my back injury. Every four hours, when the medication wears off, I get the same excruciating pain I had early this morning.

Other than watering the veggie patch and feeding the chickens early this morning (it was a big effort let me tell you), I have been in bed all day, nursing the pain like a big grumpy grizzly bear. Kim has been worried about me, and tried to find a dentist that could help me, but being Sunday, she didn't have much luck. She is going to try and get me in first thing tomorrow and hopefully, the dentist should be able fix me up within 30 minutes flat. Until then, I will have to suffer in silence and keep on the painkillers!

What does this event have to do about sustainable living? Well, not much really. I thought I would just share the pain and let you know why my blogging has been erratic for the last week.

Wish me luck tomorrow, and all being well, I should be back to my normal self again.

Political Suicide

What a crazy week here in Australian politics!

Factions of the coalition party which is currently in opposition to the elected government are openly calling eco-environmentalists similar to the Nazi Party!  The Senator Barnaby Joyce (Nat) drew comparisons between responding to climate change, environmentalists, and Nazi Germany when referring to the proposed emissions trading scheme.  He is also quoted as saying, "'I think that is a load of rubbish, to think that Australia is going to change the climate. It is not." 

Well, I believe that Senator Joyce has his head stuck firmly up the big industrial polluters arses or at least his own!  Call me a Nazi, you jumped up fat cat political prick (I know, I stooped to name calling).  Why don't you take a good hard look at yourself, and look what is happening to the climate in the state you represent.  How hard it it to pick up a copy of "Nature" or Scientific American" and have a look at the facts for yourself.  Maybe even an IPCC report or two might change your mind.  But as always you only think of the short term gain for your corporate buddy's and not the longer term pain that all of humanity will suffer as a result of your pigheadedness.  Unless the leader of the coalition can put his foot down, not only will both parties be irrelevant nationally, but internationally as well. This dated, but relevant article explains why.

Paul Kelly, 'The Insiders', ABC-TV, 27 July 2008:
"if you look around the world, look at what Conservative leaders around the world are doing. In Britain, in New Zealand, in the United States, they are accepting climate change and they are moving ahead with measures to combat it.."  The coalition is moving in the opposite direction!

If that was not enough for the week, the Liberals are in fighting amongst themselves regarding climate change policy.  They don't have a unified policy, which I suppose is the problem.  Apparently they are going to back the CPRS legislation in the lower house and the senate, even if the Nationals (lead by Sen Joyce) vote against it.  How weird is that?  The Nationals and the Greens voting against the same piece of emissions legislation but for totally opposite reasons.  The Greens (and myself) believe that the target of 5% reduction of emissions from 2000 levels is far too low, and the Nats think that it is far too much and will devastate our economy.  This left/right business cannot be applied to all issues. Sure, in politics you have the left and the right, but in this issue about climate change, the largest one that humanity has ever faced, there is only one decision to make.  Do something about it, and do it now!

No habitable environment means no economy, get it? If the Opposition is still fooled that the noisy climate sceptics and deniers are in the majority, they will find themselves forever in opposition and totally irrelevant. Time to get on with action, not spoil for time so that more profits can be made from emitting more greenhouse gas emissions to the detriment to our one and only home, planet Earth.

Carbon Accounting

A great course so far!  Day One was very interesting. 

We first did introductions, by playing Sustainabingo.  A little game where there are a bunch of squares on a bit of paper with a bunch of questions to break the ice e.g. who owns a worm farm (pick me), or who has a rainwater tank.  You get the general idea.  You introduce yourself to each of the course members and ask them a question and then tick off that box.  The first to get all of their boxes tick calls out bingo and wins a prize.  Funnily enough, no-one won, simply because there were 20 boxes and only 19 course members!

During the morning we learnt about the carbon cycle, and how it all works.  I won't go into it here, but you can learn about the carbon cycle from Wikipedia if you wish.  It is very similar to what we were taught.  We also learnt how humans have thrown the natural cycle out of kilter by burning fossil fuels. 

After lunch we started to get into the National Greenhouse Accounts, and how different types of things emit Carbon Dioxide, Nitrous Oxide, Methane, Hydrocarbons, and Sulphur Dioxide, which are the known Green House Gasses as agreed in the Kyoto Protocol.  There is a book of tables that has been produced by the Australian Greenhouse Office that lists all the multipliers for each of the types of emissions.  Working in pairs, it took us a while to work through a few scenarios, and that was with the facts in front of us.  Just imagine having to go through an organisations records to get all of the details and come up with a carbon inventory.

Well guess what?  That is exactly what I have to do in the next six weeks.  During the first two weeks, I have to formulate a project plan to complete a carbon inventory for a small company or NGO, and in the following four weeks, write a report and present it to the class.  The good thing about this course is that it is competency based assessment, so you get to go through the entire process for real, and end up with an industry acceptable outcome. 

Yesterday, I approached the Alternative Energy Association, of whom I am a member, and asked them if they would like me to calculate their carbon inventory and produce a report for them for free.  Well, after a bit of consultation they jumped at the chance.  I believe it will be win-win for both of us.  I get to perform a fair dinkum carbon inventory on a real NGO, and they get a free report that they can publish in Renew magazine!  I met a nice lady named Sophie, who I am having my first meeting with tomorrow to go through what I require for the project plan phase.  It should be great fun, and I am excited to finally be doing this sort of stuff. 

I have to hand the project plan in by 27th Jan, so there goes my Australia Day weekend.  I think I will be a busy boy! 

The next classroom day is the 30th, and we hit Excel to do some pretty detailed calculations about how to put swags of emissions data together so we can present it in a meaningful way.  I am looking forward to it.

Who knows?  I might be able to do this for homes and businesses in my spare time for a few bucks!

 

A Busy Day

No rest for the wicked, so they say.  I don't think I was wicked, just very busy for most of the day.

Up at 0730, had a cup of rooiboss, and got ready for the gym for my exercise rehab session.

Out the door at 0810, had a great workout, and then back home to get stuck into the garden.  Watered the entire veggie patch and did a little bit of maintenance (pruning runaway tomato bushes), but half way through, Kim brought out breakfast to me, and we ate it al fresco.  A bacon, egg and mushroom toasted sandwich.  How decadent, but Sunday is our once a week breaky treat day.

After breakfast, it was back to watering.  Kim went next door at about 1000, and I then cleaned out the chook house.  It was just their sleeping house this week.  I clean out the run fortnightly, and their little house once a week.  The house generates about two 10 litre buckets of chook poo and pea straw, which I let rest and dry right out for a week and then either use it for mulch or dig it in to a new bed.  The plants love me for it.  Here are the happy chickens after I put them back in their coop.  They are all very healthy, and love the perch I made for them out of the dead cherry tree from the front yard.

After the chook house, I decided to clean up the shed.  I was sick of hoarding all of the e-waste that I had collected over the years, and removed four wheelbarrow loads of old monitors, computers, DVD players, and other consumer electronics.  I put them in a pile near the Hybrid, and will take them to the recycling centre when I find one.

Then I tidied up the benches, sorted through all of the glass jars I have collected over the winter, put all the PETE bottles back in their boxes and swept the floor.  I should have taken a before shot, but all you have to imagine is over a year of neglect with junk everywhere.  A bit of a bomb site.  This is what it looks like now.  Very tidy.

I now have an area for my home brew making on the steel bench, and probably enough room for soap making as well.  Notice the Caustic Soda to the right.  I nearly have all the ingredients now, just got to track down some coconut oil.  And yes, I like Star Trek!

I also have a place for all of my fowlers-vacola jars and preserving pan.

And a little to the left.  

It gets quite hot in the shed, so when I work in there, I have a pedestal fan turned on.  To keep the home brew fermenter at a constant temperature, I put it under the bench sitting on the concrete slab.  It keeps it at about 24C during the summer months, which is just right for brewing.  

I finished the shed after about 3 hours of hard labour, and decided to have a little rest.  Just as I sat down, Kim came back home and asked if I would like a glass of Perry from Henry of Harcourt.  I certainly didn't refuse an offer like that.  It was divine.

Then I caught up with some paper work.  I had a look at the course notes for the Carbon Accounting course I start tomorrow.  I am looking forward to it and am very excited.  Hopefully, I will meet some other like minded people during the course, and it will open a few new doors for me.  Will have to wait and see.

At about 1600, I decided to make dinner from the garden.  I even wrote a short post about it.  I forgot to mention that I had home preserved plums and icecream for desert, and Kim and the kids had a piece of chocolate marble cake that Megan made yesterday. 

As the evening draws to a close, I am about to watch a TV show on SBS called Changing Climate, Changing Times.  It is from France, and looks pretty good.  I let you know if it taught me anything new.

Dinner From The Garden

What a wonderful meal!  I just prepared the most tasty meal from the veggie patch, with over 85% of the food on our plate originating from it.

First I made a Zucchini slice and I tried the recipe I found on Julie's blog "Towards Sustainability".  If you have a spare zucchini or two, give it a go because it was just so yummy and I highly recommend it.  Thanks for sharing Julie. 

I have not been a big fan of the zucchini, but now I am a convert!  Now I know what to do with the other bizzilion zucchini's that are growing in the patch!

I used the following home grown ingredients.  Zucchini, capsicum, onions, eggs, which is about 80% of the listed ingredients.  Very nice.  I served it with a freshly picked garden salad that had about 5 different lettuces and mizuna.  I also added a few baby rainbow chard leaves and some baby nasturtium leaves to give it a bit of kick.  I tossed through some Tommy toe cherry tomatoes from the garden, and some cheddar cheese and raw mushrooms that we bought.  Everyone loved it, and there are two slices for tomorrows lunch.

I really love growing and cooking our own food.  It makes all the hard, but enjoyable work worthwhile.

Bon Appetite!

The Green Thing

My main post today is over at the Simple, Green, Frugal Co-op, but here is a supplement to that post.

Being green, eco-friendly, a friend of the earth, a hippy, sustainable living, or whatever you want to call it these days is not really that hard.  It is people's current mind-set that makes it hard (to them).  I believe that like all new things in life, it just takes a change in attitude and behaviour and the rest just comes easy.  Once it is imbedded into you lifestyle as an ongoing habit, it becomes a natural part of your day.  You might even influence someone else in your journey!

Here is a video from a great green site, Green Thing, which sums it all up for me.  I hope you like it.

Meet Green Thing from Green Thing on Vimeo.

Enjoy!

 

Skills For A Simple Life

I have written previously about re-skilling for a low carbon future, career wise, but I haven't given much thought about re-skilling for my personal interests regarding sustainable living.  That was until I received an email from my friend Linda, and attached to it was the local Melton Shire Learning Directory. 

Until now, I really haven't been one for short courses on "how to...", but as I grow in thirst for knowledge about being able to make more things for myself, I find that I am not superman, and that books can only give you so much of the picture.

So, guess what?  I signed up for two cheese making classes today.  One is called "Cheese Making workshop - Basic", where I will discover how to make your choice of cheese from Wensleydale, Haloumi, Fetta, Parmesan or Cheddar.  You can then add a selection of herbs, spices or flavours to personalise your cheese (straight from the brochure).  The other course is "Cheese - Mould course".  In this class I will learn how to make soft cheeses, Brie, Camembert, Blue Vein or Stilton.  These have the addition of either Penicillium Candidum (white mould) or Penicillium Roquefori (blue mould).

Sounds exciting doesn't it.  Course 1 is in February, and course 2 is in March.

That got me thinking as to what other things I would like to learn how to do or make.  I came up with a simple list.

• Cheese making.  Locked in!
• Soap making.  Kim wants to do this as well!
• How to build a wind turbine
• Make an outdoor oven.  Locked in!
• Sausage making and smoking meat
• Make a solar still to change salt water to fresh water
• Sun drying fruit & vegetables for storage
• Wine making. I have mastered Beer making already!

Hopefully, I will be able to attend a workshop/course locally or somewhere in Melbourne to learn these skills. 

Now, I don't expect to learn all the skills I need for the future.  With the community building we have started in our area (more about that soon), we should meet others who will have other valuable skills that will supplement our own knowledge.  This may even lead to a new branch of LETS in our area.  Who knows?  Watch out, things are beginning to pick up around here.

The Ant and the Grasshopper

by Aesop (620-560 BC).

In a field one summer's day a Grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing to its heart's content.  An Ant walked by, grunting as he carried a plump kernel of corn.

"Where are you off to with that heavy thing?" asked the Grasshopper.

Without stopping, the Ant replied, "To our ant hill.  This is the third kernel I've delivered today."

"Why not come and sing with me," said the Grasshopper, "instead of working so hard?" 
"I am helping to store food for the winter," said the Ant, "and think you should do the same."

"Why bother about winter?" said the Grasshopper; "we have plenty of food right now."

But the Ant went on its way and continued its work.
The weather soon turned cold.  All the food lying in the field was covered with a thick white blanket of snow that even the grasshopper could not dig through.  Soon the Grasshopper found itself dying of hunger.

He staggered to the ants' hill and saw them handing out corn from the stores they had collected in the summer.

Then the Grasshopper knew:

It is best to prepare for the days of necessity.

 

---

This Aesop's fable has rung true many times in my life, but none more than it has since my green epiphany.  In my view this story has a much deeper meaning.  I feel that I am the ant, and much of the rampant consumerist society around us all is the grasshopper.  The grasshoppers of today don't sing and dance, but spend on credit, and don't give a second thought about saving for the future or about future events like climate change, peak oil, and energy decent, to name a few.  They just party like it's 1999!

Will the proverbial grasshoppers of our time learn a valuable lesson before the hard times come?  How many will be knocking on the ant's door?  When those hard times are upon us, what will you be?  An Ant who prepares and saves, or a Grasshopper who wants to buy and inevitably gets everything they touch, but needs none of it?

I believe that humanity has partied like the grasshopper, so hard and for so long, it has squandered much of the planets resources.  We have left a huge mess in our wake, and have left none for "days of necessity".  Now is the time to be frugal and wise like the ant.  I personally have found that living a simple life, and treading lightly on the planet can offer such great rewards that most of today's grasshoppers could never imagine.  How can they feel the sheer joy that goes with voluntary simplicity.  Complexity is a distant memory for me, with meaningful living here to stay.  The grasshopper in the story learnt a valuable lesson.  Work hard when required, and reap the rewards when the time comes.  Live within your means, and save for the future.  Simple really.

Look, don't get me wrong.  I am not trying to push any type of lifestyle on anyone and not trying to be preachy.  Make up your own mind, the choice is yours.  I am just making a comparison of today's social problems against a simple story written by a Greek slave more than two thousand five hundred years ago!

The story gives me hope that others will learn by example and will finally have an aha moment of their own.  If we can't learn from the moral from this story today, even during a financial downturn, then when can we? 

A Dry Patch

Here in Melton West we have had an unusually dry spell.  What am I taking about, this has happened for the last 8 years!  The last time we had any rain to speak of was 10th of December 2008 so you can imagine how dry it is around here.  Before that, it rained in July.  I have never seen the ground so dry and dusty.  Thank goodness for a rainwater tank, and the privilege of being able to water the garden two days a week from mains water whilst still on water restrictions.  I have to supplement with tank water about 3 days a week just to keep the fruit and vegetables alive.

The lack of natural rainfall tends to stunt the growth and yield of the harvest, but being a keen as ever, I simply plant more seedlings to compensate.  Here is an example.  My brother Scott sent me a photo of his sweetcorn.  He lives in South East Queensland, and they have had tonnes of rain lately.   Check out the height of those things! They remind me of Day of the Triffids.  

Well done Scott, but I expect the rain has helped just a little!  In comparison,  here is my crop of sweetcorn.  Small, but 40 plants in total to make up the stunted growth.  The tallest is about 120cm tall.

The taller plants have two ears of corn each, and are maturing quickly.  In this bed I have two plantings, one month apart so to enjoy a longer harvest. 

Just the other side of the tree to the right is the other bed I planted in the front yard.  It contains cucumbers at the front,  and to the rear are watermelon, rockmelon and African horned melon.  They are growing steadily as I am using gray water from the washing machine every other day on these.

Here is a different angle.  You can see the melons better.

The bed behind that one is the next plot that I intend to tackle, and the one behind that is where I am going to pull out a dead bush (can't remember the name of it) and plant two blueberry bushes.

Leaving the front yard now and through the gate you can just see above.  Kim and I took out one of the veranda trellis to give the illusion of more room in the east side garden.  It certainly worked, because it now feels like a much bigger space.  We can even see the chook house in all its glory.

Just behind those pots to the left of the shot above is my Dwarf ANZAC peach tree that is two years old.  It has cropped in the last week and we harvested about 40 peaches.  They were the best we have ever tasted.  Small, sweet and juicy.  Click to enlarge.

	The tree has grown so much in just two years.  It is grafted onto Dwarf root stock.  I bought the plant from the Diggers club.
Here is some of the fruit just before we picked it all off.  I did initially begin to just remove the fruit we needed day by day, however a funny thing happened.  The chooks had been ignoring the fruit, possibly because they didn't know it was edible.
	Kim decided to go up to the tree when Edwina was watching her and Kim bit into the piece of fruit.  The chickens went berserk! Edwina started pecking at the low hanging fruit, and then all the other girls ran over and got stuck in as well.

Kim started screaming and tried to nudge them away with her foot!  Well that didn't work and I came outside from making my cup of tea and saved the day.  I picked the three pieces of fruit they were attacking and threw them about two metres away, told Kim to guard the remaining fruit, and then proceeded to pick up each chicken whilst they were distracted and put them all back into their run.  Crisis over, and I laughed so hard!  I then went inside, got a bowl, and picked all the fruit, which we ate over the course of the last week. 

The next bed which is beside the chicken coop contains purple Russian tomatoes, Jalapeno chilies (2 years old and going strong), and rainbow chard.

Around the other side of the house where the main veggie patch is located are beds.  In the first bed we have the pumpkin and zucchini patch, which is going well.  I am just starting to get small pumpkins and zucchini developing now.  Note the two blueberry bushes in pots at the head of the bed.  Those are the ones I am planting in the front yard.

I have noticed a lack of bees on this side of the garden, so I am having to pollinate all of the cucurbits by hand. 

Before I started hand pollination, I notice that the Golden nugget pumpkins would develop flowers and then shrivel up when the flower died.  I now have a few big fruit since I took over the sexual relations for these plants!

The next bed are the lone eggplant (aubergine), and 3 varieties of tomato, Tommy Toe, Black Russian, and Tigerella.

 

The citrus trees in the pots behind are receiving about 3 litres of water a day each from the water we save from the pre-hotwater in the shower.  It keeps the fruit from dropping off with a daily water.  I noticed last year that when I watered them twice a week, the pots dried out so quick that not only did the forming fruit drop off like lemmings over a cliff, but the leaves went yellow very quickly.  This year I have avoided both problems.

Bed number three contains the sole capsicum plant from last year, and is cropping well.  It has bigger fruit than last season.

It also contains the wicking pots surrounded by the lettuce I planted about 6 weeks ago.  They are so healthy that we have such an abundance and I can't even see the pot lids anymore.  I think I planted too many seedlings, because I usually have such a bad strike rate.  I fill the wicking pots only on the two days a week I use mains water.  The soil stays nice and moist.  You can even pick the lettuce in the heat of the noon sun and they are still crisp.  In this bed I also have red spring onions, mizuna and snow peas at the back.

Bed number 4 contains more tomatoes.  I have a Tigerella, a Effie, a Mortgage lifter, Tommy Toe, and two unknown from a mixed packet of tomato seeds.  It will be a bit of a surprise when they fruit.

 

Deep inside the mass of tomato vines, there are my first ripe tomatoes.  No prizes for guessing which type they are.

 

The last bed has two small capsicum bushes, Yellow current cherry tomatoes, and rainbow chard.  Strawberry pots and Rosemary in front of the bed.  The strawberries are developing runners, so I will have to buy a few more pots and plant them up.

All in all, not a bad garden for bugger all rain! Here it is in all it's glory looking from the front.

And from the rear.

A lot of work has gone into the patch so far this year, especially with keeping the moisture levels up.  All worth it though in the long run, and I get a great feeling of joy knowing that very soon I will be harvesting lots of home grown produce.

A Little Day trip

With a thirst for some local cider at Harcourt, Victoria, yesterday we set off on a day-trip mainly because we were all getting cabin fever from staying at home so much over the holidays. 

We set off at about 1100 with a picnic lunch (sticking to our first goal for the year) and headed up to Kyneton as the first stop, which was about 40 km away.  The hybrid got good fuel economy (funny about that) of about 5.8 km/100 litres because I have started to use Ethanol 10 fuel in the car.  The jury is still out as to whether this type of fuel is actually any better.  Sure, it is 3 cents a litre cheaper, but the fuel economy is not as good as straight unleaded fuel.  Time will tell and I will write a separate post about it in the future.

The reason we stopped off at Kyneton on the way to Harcourt was because Kim wanted to visit a cupcake shop that she had seen on a travel show on telly.  We stopped off at the information centre first, had our picnic lunch, found a map of the town, and set off again.  We found the shop in historic Piper St, but alas, it was closed for the week.  Just about every other shop in the street was open except for the cake shop.  Apparently, the shop did very decorative cup-cakes that are to die for.  We will never know.  Maybe next time love.  Across the road we found a fantastic little nursery.  The nursery had espaliered trees which I though I could do with some space I have behind the chook house.  I have large poles in the ground already, and only have to put up some trellis to tie the trees onto.  Here are some photos, click to enlarge.

Espaliered Apple Tree	Large Apple tree with Ben
Large Apple tree without Ben	Espaliered Olive tree

After the nursery we dropped into a bakery and Kim and I shared a little carrot cake, and Ben scoffed a little chocolate mud cake.  Nice!  So nice in fact, that Kim is baking her very own Carrot Cake as I type this.  The smells are amazing!

We then jumped back in the car and 45 km later we got to the cidery, in a little town called Harcourt.  The Cidery is called Henry of Harcourt and has about 14 acres of apples on the property.  Kim and I sampled all of their faire, but I had to tip most of mine out because I was driving.  Kim felt quite tipsy after the tasting which made me laugh.  We bought 20 bottles of cider and perry which cost us $100.  Not bad at $5 a 500ml bottle and it tasted fantastic to boot! Here is a picture of Drew Henry, who, with his son Michael run the orchard and make the cider on site.  If you want to learn a bit more about the Australian Cider industry, have a look at this ABC Landline segment called "Cider House Rules".  At the link there is a video of the report to the right of the page.  We watched this report on TV last Sunday, found it very interesting, and that is how we found out about the cidery in Harcourt.

Their orchard looks well maintained as well.

Drew was a proper gent, and a fantastic host.  His knowledge of ciders throughout the world was second to none.  It was so nice meet him and we will definitely be back his way again.  He even gave us directions to one of his mates wineries, that he says makes a fantastic Pinot Noir.  Unfortunately, we did not get to the winery, as we had to get home by 1600.  Megan was minding Butch and the chooks for us, and had to go to work at 1630.  Maybe next time.

All this time, Ben was outside looking at the duck pond near the cellar door, and was also trying to catch the 10 week old chickens.  Ben has grown very fond of our chooks, and is now trying to convince us to get some young ones.

The trip home was uneventful, and we really enjoyed out time out.  As always, we both said we should do this more often, and probably will.  So, what sort of food goes well with cider.  Well, apparently, soft cheeses and crackers go down a treat!  For dinner we decided to get out all the fruit and cheese we had, and together we made a platter for all four of us.

The olives were from Rockbank (10 km away).  All the cheeses were made in Gippsland (about 80km away), and the strawberries, peaches and apricots were from Bacchus Marsh (13 km).  The picked onions were home grown/made, and the cider we picked up as described above.  Everything else was Australian made. 

So it was about as local as you could get a platter I reckon.  We certainly felt great afterwards, and really enjoyed our day.  It is a pretty good feeling attempting to be a locavore.  I believe we could give the 100-mile diet a fair run for its money around here.  I think I will have to talk to Kim about that one before we set out on that adventure!