The Greening of Gavin

All Good Things Come to an End

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Yes, dear reader, the time has come.  Everything in life has a beginning and an ending, and I believe that it’s time to wrap up The Greening of Gavin blog and podcast.  All good things come to an end (to quote a very famous Star Trek series)!

All good things

It’s with a homebrew beer in hand that I say goodbye.

All Good Things…

With no major greening projects on the horizon or further lifestyle enhancements planned, I’ve essentially run out of things to say, which after 1,870 posts and 132 podcast episodes is quite understandable.

I’m officially passing the baton to a younger generation of bloggers and influencers who may have better luck convincing the masses further to live a more sustainable lifestyle.

I know that I’ve played my part in the rebirth of the simple living revolution judging from the amount of feedback and emails I receive every day, so I feel very proud of that accomplishment.  I, like you, can make a big difference in the world.

What have we achieved?

During the journey, we’ve retrofitted the house with many green features, renovated the gardens into an organic food farm, and transformed the way we think and live.  All that, as well as starting a green business teaching others some simple living skills.

When I reflect back to that crazy day when my whole world was turned upside-down, I would never in a million years have thought that the blog would have come this far and how it would eventually have impacted our lifestyle for the better.

And to you, the reader.  I thank you from the bottom of my heart for supporting and following my family’s journey and antics since February 2008 when I penned the very first post.  It’s been a wild ride, sometimes controversial, but always interesting and fun.

So where to from here?

Well, the blog posts and podcast episodes will remain online until either the internet is destroyed or peak oil begins to impact us all.  Just joking, it will still be here as a valuable resource for as long as there are bits and bytes.  Check out my archive for all the posts.

Also, I will still have a strong online presence as I will be maintaining the associated Facebook page and YouTube channel for The Greening of Gavin.  If anything exciting happens around here then that is where I will be posting this type of update.

Additionally, the YouTube channel, CheeseMan.tv, will continue to release a weekly cheese making video, as well as my cheese making blog and associated podcast at Little Green Cheese.

Little Green Cheese Podcast

Little Green Cheese Podcast

To cap it all off, our home business, Little Green Workshops, is still growing strongly and will more than compensate for any time I gain from ending the blog and the podcast.  We are still running cheese, soap, soy candle, and bath soak & scrub workshops each school term if anyone wants to learn these dying skills.  You can find all the details of these courses on our workshops calendar.

Little Green Workshops - end of year update

Click Through to the Shop!

Adieu

So dear reader, this is it.  Once again, thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the support, and I hope to see you on my other blogs and YouTube channels in the very near future.

Goodbye, my friends and keep on striving for a more sustainable world.

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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

8 Years Ago…

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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.

Gavin loving life

Gavin loving life

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.

Cob Oven Firing 4th layer

Cob Oven Firing 4th layer with Megan and Jake

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.

Caerphilly Cheese - one month old

Caerphilly Cheese – one month old

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.

Soap making record broken - Kim and Gavin

Gavin and Kim – Little Green Workshops

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?