The Greening of Gavin

Brass Monkey Challenge 2016

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Winter is here well and truly and it’s time for an update on this years Brass Monkey Challenge 2016.

We’ve been experiencing minimums of 0 – 5°C (32 – 41°F) during the night, and daytime temps of 10 – 15°C (50 – 59°F).  Whilst it may not be cold for some of you, it’s all relative, because in summer we have daytime temps of around 27 – 45°C (80.6 – 113°F).

Brass Monkey Challenge 2016 2015

Not a cold as this little fella!

So to save on energy bill, particularly natural gas, a couple of years ago Kim and I decided to give ourselves a challenge to see how long we could stand not having the heating on in the house.  Could we handle it and use behaviour and passive heating to keep warm?

Well the answer (for the 3rd year in a row) is a resounding YES!  It’s been quite easy.  We even gave it a name.  The Brass Monkey Challenge!

Our single wall furnace does not even have the pilot light lit, and we have managed to stay warm so far.

During the day we wear a few extra layers and use passive solar heating by letting light flow into the north facing rooms.  This heats up those rooms and we let use those rooms in the evening.

At night we shut all the internal doors of all rooms which keeps the ones we’re in warm.  We also pop on another layer of clothing and throw a couple more blankets on the beds for when we go to sleep.

With my office door closed and my computer turned on, the room heats up to a comfortable 18°C (64.4°F) in the evening.  As it is also one of those north facing room with a double glazed window, it gets up to about 22°C (71.6°F) during the day.

Kim’s office is south-facing, so need an hour of heating first thing in the morning with the reverse cycle air-con, then that’s it.  It stays warm all day.

It has been because we’ve invested in the comfort of our home as well.  We fitted double glazed units to all the north facing windows.  You can read about the double glazing installation here.

Double Glazing

We also added extra insulation batts to the roof space.  That has been a vast improvement of the heat holding properties of each room.  The installation of the extra insulation in the ceiling was document here.

All external doors are solid wood and have draft strips that shut when closed.  We also have draft snakes against the inside of those doors, just in case.

All other windows have closed pelmets fitted to stop cold air circulating behind curtains and have draft strips where necessary.

So there you have it.  That’s our Brass Monkey Challenge 2016 and staying warm and cozy.  Although we are not swanning around in T-shirts and short (and neither should you in winter), it is definitely possible to not have any heating on in a cool/temperate climate and stay warm.  You also save on your energy bills as well and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  Wins and high-fives all around.

For other tips about how to stay warm in winter without the need for heating, have a listen to our podcast episode about our original Brass Monkey Challenge.

Have you tried a similar challenge at home?  We would love to hear about it in the comments!

Busy as a Bee in Spring

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I know that everyone leads busy lives, and we are no exception.  One would think that because we lead a simpler lifestyle that things would be a little less hectic, but not so.  We’ve been busy as a bee in spring or to put it in Australian,  we’ve been flat out like a lizard drinking.

Since my last post we’ve got a few things achieved;

  • Taught a Beginner’s Soapmaking Workshop,
  • Harvested the last of the summer crops due to the warmer than usual April,
  • Cooked every dinnertime meal,
  • Added four new cheeses to my cheese making repertoire, and
  • Attended a Content Creator’s lab hosted by YouTube.

Of course there were the regular things we do around here like clean out the chook house, water the fruit trees, try to grow winter veg seedlings (not much luck there).

So let’s have a look at a few photos that I took over the last couple of weeks.

Content Creators Lab YouTube

Content Creators Lab YouTube at Docklands Studios

I was invited to Docklands Studios here in Melbourne by YouTube to learn how to produce engaging content for my YouTube channel cheeseman.tv.  They contacted me just before my channel reached 10,000 subscribers, so I was chuffed with the invitation and learnt a lot at the lab.  I have been creating regular cheese making content each week and I am pleased with the feedback I’ve been getting.

Speaking of cheese, I’ve made the following types in the last couple of weeks; Edam, Havarti, Mysost, and Gouda.

Edam before waxing

Edam before waxing

The Edam was a great cheese to make.  It had some quirky steps that I’d never come across before like washing the curd, so it was good fun.  Here is the Edam video and full recipe so that you can have a try as well.

Then I made a Havarti the next day, which is not quite ready to show you, as it still has some steps remaining before I wax it for maturation.  It should be ready for further aging on Sunday.

Waxed Gouda

Waxed Gouda

The next cheese was Gouda.  It was another attempt at this dutch cheese that was a dismal failure back in 2009.  I just hadn’t got the courage up to try it again, but I found a new recipe to work with, and I believe it turned out well.

The video that I took during the process is not quite ready, so please subscribe to my YouTube channel you will get a notification when it is released using the button below.

After all that cheese making, I had a lot of whey left over, so I decided to try my hand at Norwegian Whey Cheese or Mysost.  Yes, another cheese!

It’s pretty simple to make.  All you do is bring the whey to the boil then simmer for about 6 hours until whats left is thick and gooey.  Then you add a pinch of cinnamon and allow to cool and set.  Essentially it is all the leftover protein and lactose so it’s quite sweet.  Delicious on toast for breakfast.

So much cheese making fun.

On to gardening.  Autumn has been a disaster in some ways.

It’s been hotter than normal so that means that the cabbage moths are still breeding.  So much so that all my Cauliflowers and Broccoli seedlings were decimated, and given to the chooks as a snack.

I’ve needed to water so much, and we’ve also had little rain which is unusual for autumn.

However, on the other side of the coin, we’ve just picked the last of our summer crops which just kept on going.  We have the last cucumber in the fridge crisper, and a small bowl of tommy toe tomatoes still being used for snacks and salads.

We also had a couple of unexpected Australian Butter Pumpkins that grew out of compost.

IMG_1289

Here is the one that I had been keeping the snails and slugs off.  They didn’t like the cedar shingle that I sat it on, which was a surprising deterrent.

IMG_1291

The other one, which was a bit sneaky, grew in the Tahitian lime tree until it got too large and snapped a branch off and fell down.  Naughty pumpkin!

Last of the summer harvest

Last of the summer harvest

We also picked a few eggplants which we gave away because Kim and Ben don’t like them.  I know, criminal because I make a mean Moussaka.

Another thing that happened was that our solar PV system went on the blink for a few days.

State 104

Don’t Panic. It’s just a State 104!

The error on the inverter caused me to call my installer, Energy Matters, who I found out were bought out by Sun Edison.  They were helpful and were about to send out a qualified solar electrician when the system started working again.

It wasn’t the system at all, but a drift in the grid frequency by a few Hertz.  You see, all grid tied inverters check the grid frequency before starting up, expecting about 50 Hz.  Apparently this happened to so many people in our area who had PV that the distributor finally fixed it.  Not much we could do about it except wait until it worked again.

I think I might start looking at battery systems that I can add to my system to store some of the excess to keep our night-time grid usage down and help alleviate this issue should it occur again.

So there you have it.  Pretty hectic hey?

We have more workshops over the next few weeks, so the weekends are pretty full.  I don’t expect that bee to stop being busy anytime soon!

The Future of Suburban Food Bowls

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I recently read an article that described how my closest city, Melbourne, is expanding at its peripheries and beginning to eat into its own food bowl.

The surrounding areas are fertile land in which market gardeners have been growing those perishable vegetables like salad greens, Brassica, and asparagus. These vegetables don’t usually fare well when transported long distances. When suburbs overtake or threaten these food bowls, city dwellers are going to have to find a substitute.

Now the article did mention that the total fruit and veg supplied to Melbourne by its “food bowl” was 41%, which would reduce to 18% close to the year 2050 due to the sprawl, but I think we are going to have just a few more issues on our plate by then!  I don’t believe they reported a holistic picture of what is actually happening.

Conventional oil supplies have already peaked globally and we are clutching at straws, sucking up the last reserves of hard-to-extract oil from things like tar sands, deep water drilling, and hydraulic fracturing. All these extraction methods are harmful to the environment and pollute water supplies.

peak_oil2

There will soon come a time when oil prices will rise again  to a point that transportation will become prohibitively expensive and in turn, cause food prices to skyrocket globally. Without our nearby food bowls, perishable fresh food will become a luxury item. This will be only one of the issues caused by declining oil supplies, but keeping in tune with the theme of the post, I will refrain from rambling. If you want to learn more about Peak Oil, check out this starter post titled “Plenty of Oil?”.

So what about our changing climate?  2014 was the hot! Four independent data sets show that last year was the hottest in 135 years of modern record keeping.

Will that have an effect on our food bowls before 2050? Your bet your shirt it will. Here in south-eastern Australia, we are already seeing the impact of climate change, with shorter winters and warmer summers. Rain patterns have moved further south into the Southern Ocean with average rainfall over the year getting lower.

Global average carbon dioxide concentrations since 1980, with photo of Mauna Loa Observatory in background. Adapted from Figure 2.36 in State of the Climate in 2014. Climate.gov

Global average carbon dioxide concentrations since 1980, with photo of Mauna Loa Observatory in background. source: Climate.gov

We have already seen lower grain and bean crop yields due to the lack of late winter to early spring rains and extreme heat in October, which is predicted to raise food prices.

Our food bowls located closer to the cities are mostly irrigated, but if it doesn’t rain, reservoirs that supply these crops dry up, and water restrictions are imposed. Urban dwellers shouldn’t waste water in times of plenty anyway because we live on the driest continent, but in our part of the world, water restrictions or rationing will become the norm. Less water means less food with soils drying out and become dust bowls instead of food bowls.

So what’s the solution to urban sprawl gobbling up our surrounding food bowls and ways to mitigate the effects of peak oil and climate change on our food supply?

Well I can think of two pretty good ideas. Better city planning and urban/suburban food farms. I will leave better city planning to professional planners who need to think about population density a little bit harder, so I will focus on creating our own suburban food bowls.

Most of us have a little bit of space around our residences. It doesn’t matter if we own, mortgage, or rent, we can still use tried and tested ideas to grow food in our homes.

As a general observation, I believe we spend so much time, effort, money, land, and precious water maintaining lawns in the ‘burbs. As I have alluded to, fertile land is being replaced with suburbs, so why can’t we grow these perishable crops, like salad greens, and the basics right here in the spaces we live?

Suburban Food Bowls

Pumpkin crop 2015

It’s a good question, one which has been discussed often on the blog, but over the next few posts we are going to work through some of the perceived barriers that people often come up with that prevents them from taking that first step and some solutions on how to overcome them.

In the next post we will discuss growing food in containers for those of you who do not have much open available space.  You would be amazed in how much you can actually grow in a space as small as a balcony or courtyard.

Suburban food bowls - Planting out the capsicum seedlings

Planting out the capsicum seedlings

The third post will cover raised garden beds for those with poor soil like sand or clay.  Rarely are Australian soils of good quality especially when burbs are stripped of topsoil when they are developed so most food gardeners are forced to create raised beds to solve this problem.

In the final post, I am going to cover how to grow fruit trees in confined spaces, where I will demonstrate how to fit in lots of trees either in the ground or in large pots and get them to fruiting stage and further.

So I hope you will join me on this suburban food farm series, that will provide enough information to get you started growing food in suburban food bowls, and to prepare for the future.