8 Years Ago…

8 years ago on the 13th of February 2008, this blog hit the interwebs with its first post titled Why I choose to lead a Sustainable Lifestyle.  When that initial post was published, my family had been living as lightly on the planet as we could for just under 18 months.  We have been living this way for nearly 10 years and we’ve come so far!

Since that post, The Greening of Gavin blog has grown into a repository of sustainable living articles and how-to posts that now numbers well over 1840, with over 2.5 million page views.

It’s an achievement that I am very proud of.  Rarely did I have the passion to maintain anything that long, however never had I been so driven by such an emotive subject with real passion.

I’ve been motivated to share everything we’ve learnt along the way by people like yourself who leave comments, send emails and voicemail asking thousands of questions.

People like yourself who want to leave behind a better place for future generations and who understand the importance of living such a lifestyle and the influence that small actions have upon friends, family, and the community as a whole.

I think I may have stopped long ago if it wasn’t for your kind words of encouragement as this blog grew into something that is now a part of my soul and moral fibre.

When I write here, I feel empowered and alive, especially in the knowledge that thousands of you will be reading and sometimes replicating my projects, and acknowledging that there might just be something in this lark.

Although I have begun to reduce the volume of posts consciously from nearly every day, to once or twice a week, due to other commitments, the lifestyle is well embedded in everything we do in our personal and professional lives.

My original motto still rings true;

An Ordinary Australian Man Who Has A Green Epiphany Whilst Watching A Documentary, Gets a Hybrid Car, Plants A Large Organic Vegetable Garden, Goes Totally Solar, Lowers Consumption, Feeds Compost Bins and Worms, Harvests Rainwater, Raises Chickens, Makes Cheese and Soap, and Eats Locally. All In The Effort To Reduce Our Family’s Carbon Footprint So We Can Start Making A Difference For Our Children & Future Generations To Come.

I haven’t changed it since the day I wrote it, because it’s what we do.

During this blog’s ‘life’, I started Little Green Cheese and it’s associated YouTube channel because of my passion for cheese making, one of the hobbies I picked up along the way.

Kim and I also started a sustainable living skill sharing business, Little Green Workshops, with another one under development (it’s a surprise), both with green themes and developed with our environmental principles and values foremost at mind.  Sustainable products, sourcing, and operations are the values we use when making every lifestyle decision.

Here we are, eight years on, still going strong.  This is us, sustainable warts and all.  If we can live mostly sustainable in the suburban landscape, so can everyone else if they choose to.

So here’s to the next eight years!  I wonder what it will bring?