The Greening of Gavin

Archives for May 2016

Cheese Studio in Action

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I know that many of you follow my cheese video tutorials on YouTube, so it would probably come as no surprise that they do take quite a bit of effort to create.

Lets go behind the scenes, and check out my cheese studio in action shall we?

Cheese Studio in Action

Cheese Studio Set up

As you can see, I use LED studio lights, with rechargeable Lithium Ion batteries so that I am not tethered to a power cable.  These lights are energy-efficient and are perfect for the kind of work I am using them for.  The lights extend up to 2 meters tall.  Rarely do LED’s blow, so I should get a long lifespan out of these lights.

You will also notice the very tiny camera on a tripod.  I managed to pick up the tripod second-hand on Ebay, but the camera itself is a GoPro Black Hero 4.  I chose it because it too has a rechargeable battery and it takes the most amazing video and photographs and has a small environmental footprint.  As it is waterproof down to about 130 metres, I will also be using it around the garden when I get a bit of sunshine to take footage for the Greening of Gavin channel.

What I also like is that all the batteries are charged using my Solar PV system or using GreenPower.  Keeps it all pretty green except for the manufacturing of the individual components.

Certified Curd Nerd

My new organic cotton T-shirt. I love it!

For the talking head part of the videos, I use my iPhone on a small tripod which does pretty good video as well.  In fact all the photos that I take for the blog are taken on my phone.  There is certainly no need these days to purchase a fancy camera, unless you really want to get into the art.

It’s all very easy to set up and pack away to get started on the evening meal.

Even if I make a cheese for the first time, I still film the process in case it turns out as per the recipe, which more often than not it does.

Even if it doesn’t work out, I can show others not what to do!  This saves a heck of a lot of time and doesn’t add any more time onto the cheese making process.  So it is win-win for me and you the viewer.

However, I do make mistakes quite often.  Here is a rare blooper snippet from an upcoming cheese tutorial complete with background noise, mispronunciation, Kim offering sound advice, and a retake!  I’m not normally that snappy, but this was about the fourth take, so patience with myself was wearing thin.

 

Once the footage is in the can (so to speak), I then edit it using software called Pinnacle Studio 19, which has some rich features including picture-in-picture, montages, and tile overlays.  I use most of the features during editing, which can take up to four to five hours per 15 minute cheese video.  I do enjoy the creative part of editing and the time just flies when I’m in the zone.

Anyway, that is how I make my cheese videos in my kitchen.  If anyone has any questions about the production aspect, I’m happy to answer them in the comments section.

Like the t-shirt says; Keep Calm and Make Cheese!

Liebster Award

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Fiona over at Life at Arbordale Farm recently awarded this blog a Liebster Award.  It’s an award that only exists in the blogosphere, and is given to bloggers from bloggers as a sign of appreciation.  It also helps bloggers connect and pay it forward.

liebster-award-button-image

The rules are pretty simple;

  • Post a short Q&A about themselves
  • Answer the questions the tagger has asked
  • Create a new list of 10 questions for their own nominees
  • Choose a list of their own 5 nominees and notify them

So as it is my birthday today, I thought what the heck, let’s have a bit of fun.

here are the answers to Fiona’s questions;

1. If you had to choose 3 charities to give $100,000 to which charities would they be and why?
  1. MS Society to help research for a cure for this disease that inflicts my beautiful wife Kim.
  2. Australian Conservation Foundation to help promote preservation for our amazing flora and fauna.
  3. The Climate Reality Project to promote awareness for action on Climate Change.
 2. What is the worst job (at home or work) you have had to do?
Prone to vertigo at height, the worst job I had to perform was to sand and paint the top of the mast of an Oliver-Hazard Perry FFG whilst serving in the Royal Australian Navy.  It was frightening, but had to be done.  I had to have a long lay down afterwards!
 
3. What strange food combination do you love?
A fried egg on Vegemite toast.  Delicious, but it does play havoc with my heartburn!
 
4. What is the one skill you don’t have but would love to master?
To play the guitar.  I have tried, but being left-handed and not of the right mindset, my brain just cannot figure it out.
 
5. If you could create a new law what would it be?
Bring back a price on carbon emissions here in Australia to lower our rising carbon emissions.  It worked once, it will work again.  Direct Action is a farce and is just a taxpayer handout to big polluters.
 
6. If you could change the perspective for every person on the planet about one issue what would it be?
 The benefits of living a more sustainable lifestyle.  If everyone lived this way, climate change and environmental destruction would be a thing of the past.
 
7.  If the shops closed tomorrow how long could you feed your family for?
 About 3 months if we carefully plan all our meals.  We have quite the pantry.  I would also plant as many vegetables as I could at the same time, so that we would at least have some veg every day.  I’d even plant out the verge, which is currently being wasted.
 
8. What do you think the 3 biggest environmental issues are?
  • Climate change.  Kind of goes without saying.
  • Hydraulic Fracturing and Coal seam gas mining.  It’s polluting our groundwater and increasing fugitive methane emissions.
  • The Sixth Mass Extinction.  By removing habitat, we are making species extinct every single day.

9. Which famous people would you have over for dinner and why?

  • Al Gore; he is an amazing communicator.  I’ve met him once, but not for very long at the Climate Reality Leadership training and would like to have a chat away from the limelight.
  • The Dalai Lama; I think he would have a pretty cool point of view about what the human race is doing to each other and the planet.
  • Vandana Shiva; one tenacious and clever lady who would be great to talk to about food sovereignty and the threat of GMO to our food supply.

10.  What is your guilty food pleasure?

Cheese, what else?  I can’t stop making it, or eating my own home made cheese.  At least I savour each mouthful!

Certified Curd Nerd

My five nominations are:

Jessie from Rabid Little Hippy.

Lynda from Living in the Land of OZ

Emma from Emma’s Garden Grows

Erin from The Rouge Ginger

Jane from Frugal Queen

My 10 questions for these amazing bloggers are:

  1. Why did you start your blog?
  2. What makes you smile every day?
  3. What is one of your talents?
  4. Who is a hero in your life?
  5. What is your favourite memory from your past?
  6. If the sky’s the limit, what would you like to do next with your life?
  7. What is your favorite season of the year and why?
  8. What’s your favourite inspirational quote?
  9. If you have some spare time, what do you do?
  10. Do you prefer a home-cooked meal, or to go out to a restaurant?

Over to you now!

Rejuvenating

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Even when you have all the systems in place, leading a more sustainable lifestyle is sometimes difficult to maintain.

Especially when something else starts taking up your precious time, like running a small green business, as well as a mostly full-time job, and trying to balance that with spending enough meaningful time with family and friends.

Enough was enough.

So, I decided that, with my 52nd birthday rapidly approaching, I needed to take some time off to rejuvenate and reflect upon things most important to me.  To that end, I have taken 5 days off work to do whatever I like!

Things like replanting a very neglected veggie patch.  Now that our long hot weather is finally over, I can plant a crop of winter vegetables and turn over a couple of the beds.

The leaves have dropped on most of the deciduous fruit trees, so they will also need a prune and shape.

But most importantly, there will be time to reconnect with family and friends around the clay oven, cooking pizza and having fun.

Work Play or Rest

I’ve also taken a good hard look at myself.  Confession time now dear reader.

Due to a lax attitude to my diet and exercise, I’ve put on a few too many kilos, just peaking over 102 kg (224 lbs).  It’s something that I not proud of and it’s very unhealthy at my age.  There; it’s out in the open now.

Kim and I have renewed our focus on simple and nutritious food and I have boosted my exercise hours per week.  I know it is as simple as fewer calories in and more calories burnt each day, but it does take focus.

I know it sounds easy enough, especially when I am planting lots of wholesome food in the veggie patch over my break.  We have also found that by planning to cook the evening meal together as a team, we are more likely to cook a non-processed meal, than to cheat and get takeaway food.

Why cook together, you ask?  Because we both enjoy cooking from scratch and get to spend more quality time together.  What more could you ask for!

Thankfully, the weight is starting to drop so I will keep you abreast of how we are managing to create wholesome meals each week.

Gavin at work

Also over my break, I will also be servicing my renewed passion for cheese making, of which I cannot seem to get enough of.  Not the cheese per se, but the process of making different types of cheese and then sharing it via cheeseman.tv (my cheese YouTube channel) with the worlds curd nerds.

Speaking of YouTube, I decided to dedicate my original channel just for cheese making at home.  This was a big step for me, as it meant that I had to remove all but a few very popular sustainable living videos.

So what to do?

Well, I just went ahead and created a dedicated Greening of Gavin channel that will include weekly Vlog posts as well as some of the original how-to videos and television appearances from the original channel.  You can subscribe to that channel with this link if you are interested; The Greening of Gavin YouTube Channel.  Very exciting times ahead.  Now take a breath Gav….

Kim and I are also looking for a way to start podcasting again.  It is definitely lack of time thing, because we are more often than not either packing orders or doing the bookkeeping.  It’s something we really enjoy doing together and have lots of fun in the process.  I know that many of you enjoy listening from the comments and emails we receive after each episode!

So this weekend (and a few days afterwards) I am looking forward to relaxing, renewing, and rejuvenating.  I will be master of my own domain, and take the time to work at the things I enjoy most.  I think it’s something that all of us should do on occasion, just like my new motto; Live MORE, Work LESS.

No one on their death bed

(c) Gavin Webber