The Greening of Gavin

Happy New Year 2016

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Happy New Year 2016

Goodbye 2015. Hello 2016.

Many look to New Year’s Day for a fresh start, but to me, it’s just another day.  However, I do take the time to look back and reflect upon the year just past.

It was certainly a full year.  My main greening activity were the workshops that Kim and I teach and running our online shop, however I still managed to keep the suburban food farm maintained and fruitful.  Even the chookies are happy and healthy and still laying a couple of eggs each day.  Who says small business needs to take over your life.  We simply make time to fit in everything especially when it is important to us.

We certainly feel blessed to be sharing our journey with you all and we love our lifestyle.

It’s low stress, rewarding, joyful, sustainable, and of course frugal.  Even by working four days a week in my corporate job and taking another pay cut, we are still managing to meet our mortgage payment goals, still putting food on the table, and still are able to pay our low energy bills.  Thank goodness for solar and energy efficiency measures!

I’m still thinking about goals for this year, but one of them will definitely be to keep on top of maintenance around the place.  I will list the goals once we finalise them in the next few days.  Some will be personal, some will be geared towards our small business, but all will be important.

So here is to setting SMART goals.  I think that setting goals are much better that some vague new year’s resolutions which are usually not time bound or attainable.

So to you dear reader, have a Happy New Year 2016 and may all your goals be achieved or at least started during this rotation around the Sun.

Thanks for reading in 2015, and see you in 2016.

Yours in greening,

Gavin x

The Great Kilowatt Challenge eBook – On Sale!

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A year in the writing, The Great Kilowatt Challenge eBook and companion worksheet are now available for purchase at my eBookstore!

Here is the book blurb;

The Great Kilowatt Challenge

The Great Kilowatt Challenge eBook

The Step by Step Guide to $aving Easy Money off Your Power Bills

Want to save some easy money off your power bill, but you don’t know where to start?

Are you sick of paying a small fortune on seemingly ever rising  electricity costs?

Do you want to take back control?

Well you can right now!  The Great Kilowatt Challenge is an eBook and worksheet designed to help you get control of your electricity consumption and lower that bill.

The step by step four week challenge will help you gain a better understanding of how to determine which appliances and behaviours within your home are costing you the most money, and how to turn that around back in your favour.

The companion worksheet is available as downloadable content within the ebook.

This comprehensive eBook is exclusive to The Greening of Gavin readers only.  You will not find this excellent guide anywhere else on the web or at other ebook retailers until a few months time.

Get it before you receive your next electricity bill.  You won’t regret it!

For more information about what the ebook offers, head on over to ebookstore.

 

A big shout out goes to Pam for proof reading it, and to all the beta testers who participated in the very first Great Kilowatt Challenge in 2011.

From that original and successful series of blog posts came the idea for the eBook where it saved many readers a lot of money off their power bills.

The worksheet, which is found as a link within the eBook, has full instructions for entering your meter data, and assists in automatically calculating your daily electricity usage and cost.  It couldn’t be any easier than that.

I have also included a weekly feedback option within the eBook where the challenge participants can share their results and ask further questions if needs be.  I don’t expect that everyone will share, but the option is there if you want it.

Anyway, thanks for being patient with me while I put this eBook together.  It is well worth the wait!

Green Living Goals for 2014

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Lets start 2014 with a bang, shall we?  Our goals for the year……

Personal and family goals are important, and certainly much better than New Years resolutions, which most people inevitably break within the first week or two.  That is of course if everyone agrees to them.

The goals I am about to announce have been discussed as a family group, and we are all on-board.  This initial agreement will go a long way to achieving them.

Now, to get everyone up to speed, I wrote about how to set goals in this post titled The Secret to Emptying the Too Hard Basket and Setting Goals, which will help as I work through our little list.

I proposed two goals, Kim proposed two, and Ben proposed one, so our list looks something like this;

  1. Investigate Native Beehive placement.
  2. Publish at least one podcast a month with Kim as co-host.
  3. Teach my son Ben how to cook dinner at least once a week.
  4. Perfect at least two mould ripened cheeses.
  5. Install a third rainwater tank.

Lets break them down further and why we want to pursue these goals for 2014.

1.  Investigate Native Beehive placement

This was the first of Kim’s suggestions.  It really surprised me, as I have been dropping the hint of a bee hive around the yard for ages.  What prompted her into action was a documentary titled More Than Honey.  In fact, it was just the trailer that she saw (which you can view here; http://youtu.be/Wh_IRrBeu-0), and she did a bit of research about how bees are dying all over the world, and what it would mean to humanity.

However, I did reminder her that I was allergic to bee stings (blow up like a balloon), and that we would probably have to opt for native sting-less bees.  We may be out of luck as native bees like warmer climates, so Victoria may be too far south.  I will have to do some more research.

We want to have a hive up and running by June, and we do not want to manage the hive ourselves.  I did read somewhere that you can call an apiarist and they will place the hive on your property, check in on it once in a while, and perform all the hive maintenance in return for some honey for our family.  We have lots of pollination opportunities for the bees, so pollen will not be an issue.  There are lots of well established native eucalyptus trees as well on offer.

All I have to do now is find someone who will supply and maintain them for us.  If anyone knows details of such a service, I would be grateful of any details via comment.

2.  Publish at least one podcast a month with Kim as co-host

Since our first Greening of Gavin podcast together, which was Our Christmas Special in case you missed it, Kim has expressed a desire to co-host the show on a regular basis.  Now I am certainly not precious about hosting it alone, as I found the entire co-host experience uplifting and a whole lot of fun.  The podcast stats also show that many of you also enjoyed the last podcast.  So to that end, Kim has agreed to appear at least once a month, maybe more if we have something special we want to talk about.  That leaves three other podcasts a month for a solo act (yours truly) or a guest interview.  As it was my suggestion, I look forward to making sure this goal gets completed!  I may even have to change the podcast’s name.

3.  Teach Ben how to cook dinner at least once a week

Ben is now 14 and at that stage of his life that he wants to learn how to cook.  I suggested to him that he helps me out on weekends, when I give Kim a rest, and to my delight he agreed.  In fact, we want to get to the stage, where he can prepare the evening meal with a minimum of supervision.  Sounds like it will be great fun teaching the lad.

Ben making chocolate moouse

4.  Perfect at least two mould ripened cheeses

+Ian Treuer, my guest on the last cheesemaking podcast (Episode 18), has inspired me to take a step outside my cheese making comfort zone and try making some more mould ripened cheeses.  I particularly like the look of his Little Squirrel cheese, and the size of his Camembundy.  They both look delicious and are potential candidates.  Kim as also requested a milder form of Stilton, so I will work on a few blue varieties as well.  As mould ripened cheeses need low temperatures to mature, I will need to make them in the autumn.  Summer will be far too hot, with room temperature around 25° C most of the time, dropping a little at night.  The cheese fridge is not cool enough for the 7° C required to age these types of cheeses.

My Stilton cheese

5.  Install a third rainwater tank.

This one will be pretty easy.  I already have two rainwater tanks installed on the suburban food farm, so the only barrier to this goal is saving up the money.  I am looking at getting a 2000 litre tank, which is about $800.  I should have that saved up in about six months.  Installation will be a cinch, as I will locate it in the carport right next to the existing one.  The base concrete slab is already there, so I will simply interconnect the two tanks to extend the water storage.  Easy peasy.

Anyway, these are our goals that we are going to try our best to complete before years end.  Should be lots of fun, and we will keep you up to date on our progress.

Have any of you set goals for 2014?