The Greening of Gavin

Archives for September 2009

Real Life Inspiration

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I won’t be posting much this week, as we have lots of house guests staying for the week.  I will be enjoying time with family, which is something everyone needs now and again.

However, tonight I am going to leave you with the most inspirational YouTube video I have ever seen. 

It is about a young man from Malawi called William Kamkwamba, who wanted to change his world for the better and achieved more than he could have ever dreamed of.  Watch it for your self.  I guarantee that it will move you as it did me.

William Kamkwamba: How I harnessed the wind

I hope you now feel that anything is possible if we put our mind to it.  Think of what we as a species could achieve if we were all as determined to change our world for the better as William did?  I feel truly moved that I had the privilege to watch him speak.  Lets not take things for granted and treasure everything we have in our lives as a gift.

Gav

Busy Posting At Other Blogs

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My turn again over at the Simple, Green, Frugal Co-op with Cheese Making Tips.  It is a compilation of all the lessons I have learnt over the 8 months or so that I have made cheese as my hobby.  Please pop on over and have a read.

I have also been campaigning up a storm over at the Melton Sustainable Living Group Inc website, with a post titled, “An Eye on Climate Change“.  It also has a link to the Oxfam Australia site who are running a campaign before the Climate Change negotiations due in December at Copenhagen.  I urge you to sign the petition and send yet another message to our elected officials who one day may listen to the will of the people. The more we send, the more they may understand that we are definately concerned about the number one issue that faces the human race.  Here is a copy of my edited form letter that I sent her.

Dear Senator, the Hon Penny Wong,

I want Australia to take a lead in the international negotiations for a fair global agreement to tackle climate change. I am aware that our Pacific neighbours are already dealing with the impacts of climate change, and so is our own country over the last few years. Today’s dust storm across the eastern states is a fine example of the consequences of our inactions so far.

I read the blog reports from the UN climate E-monitors project and believe that Australia could be taking much stronger action to help the people of the Pacific.

I was disappointed to see that the Call to Action issued at the close of the recent Pacific Islands Forum failed to endorse emission reduction targets consistent with what the science tells us: that rich countries must reduce carbon emissions by 40% by 2020 if we are to avert catastrophic climate change.

Climate change is already having an impact on Pacific people through storm surges, more frequent cyclones, coastal erosion and loss of clean water and farmland.

I urge the Australian Government to advocate at the United Nations climate talks for a collective emissions reduction target for rich countries of at least 40% by 2020. Without that scale of commitment, many Pacific communities will face extreme impacts and dislocation.

Given developing countries will also need to reduce their emissions and adapt to climate change, I also urge the Australian Government to support actions within the UN process for wealthy countries to fund the adaptation and emission reduction costs of developing countries, including our Pacific neighbours. In particular I call on the Government to make an immediate public commitment to contributing Australia’s fair share of the $180 billion dollars that will be needed from wealthy countries around the world annually to help fund emissions reductions and climate change adaptation in developing countries.

Finally, I ask that the Australian Government take action to help communities in the Pacific displaced by the impacts of climate change to relocate, to ease their anxiety about the future of their children, their livelihoods, and their cultural identity.

I look forward to seeing Australia play a positive leadership role in the UN climate negotiations at the G20 this week, and in Copenhagen in December 2009.

Yours sincerely,
Gavin

Modify it on the Oxfam site as you see fit.  I did!

Enjoy the other posts, and keep up the pressure on your elected officials wherever you may be on this big blue marble of a planet!

Willing Workers, But A Sad Ending

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It is with a heavy heart and tears in my eyes that I write this post.  We had a wonderful afternoon, but a very sad evening, and all shall be revealed near the end.

When I got home from work today, we decided to weed the front garden and get rid of all of the golden oxalis before it had a chance to form their new bulbs for next year.  We started off great, and for about 10 minutes, Kim, Amy, Ben, the two dogs and I were working away (well most of us anyway) filling up buckets with weeds. I had to take it easy because of the back and rested every 15 minutes, and did it on my hands and knees so to avoid any back strain.  I then had a great idea, which I read about in the Seed savers book I got for fathers day.  Why not let the chickens help us out, and they can eat and dig out all the weeds with us.  They might even reduce the bug population while they were at it.  Well, it took a little convincing with some sunflower seeds, but we got them all out into the front orchard and away they went.  Have a look at the video to see what they got up to this afternoon.  Please watch the video before reading on further.

Anyway, we worked for two hours, everyone working diligently away.  When complete, the wheelbarrow was full and the orchard looked great.  All the new fruit trees have leaves or buds ready to bust open. 

There was a couple of slackers, namely the dogs, Ben, and something was not quite right with Polly Chicken.  She looked out of sorts, even in the video she wasn’t scratching around as ferociously as the rest of the chooks and prefered to be separate from the other three hens.  Kim and I had noticed that since moulting season started in about June, she started to look out of sorts.  We knew that she was at the bottom of the pecking order, because we had seen the other hens peck her quite often and she was always the last one to the food or kitchen scraps.  We also noticed that her comb on top of her head was the smallest out of all of them, and that the most eggs we had each day for months were only three maximum.  Someone was not laying, and hadn’t for a quite a while.

So when it was time to go back to the chicken run after the weeding, we managed to get them all back to the run, and then something bad happened.   Polly Chicken collapsed and started to breath funny.  She looked like she was in a lot of pain and I rubbed her crop gently just in case she had something stuck and that seemed to do the trick after a while.  Kim even gave her some natural yoghurt as we had read that it is good for their digestion.  After about an hour of TLC, she looked like she was back to her old self again, and Kim even checked on her just before sunset and noticed that she had gone back into the coop and was eating some seed, then ducked into the hen house to go to bed.

At about 8pm, I had a wierd and funny feeling that something was wrong with Polly Chicken, so I went to check on the chooks just to make sure.  To my dismay, I found Polly limp, but still warm.  I went and got my torch to see if her pupils would dialate to see if she was just sleeping heavily, but no dialation or heart beat,  so I determined that she was dead.  She must have passed away about an hour before hand when she went to sleep.  With a tear in my eye, I told Kim who burst out crying, and so did the Ben and Amy.  We found a carboard box, and I rested her limp body in it, closed the lid up and put it back into the secure coop until morning.  Kim and Amy are going to dig a hole tomorrow and I will wrap her up in a cornstarch shopping bag, and bury her in the garden.  I know she was only a chicken, and that I am a sentimental old fool, but she was a hard worker, laid lots of yummy eggs, and we all enjoyed her company for the year that she was with us.  I am so glad we caught her on video this afternoon and that her last day was a happy one for her.

Rest in peace Polly Chicken.  Be happy, wherever you may be, and may the early bird always catch the worm.