The Greening of Gavin

Sustainable House Day 2013 – 8th September

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Don’t wake up on Sunday with a post election hangover.  Do something useful and visit a Sustainable House near you!  You will learn so much that you will walk away with your head swimming with ideas.

Did you know that each year the average Australian household contributes 13 tonnes of greenhouse gas to the atmosphere—enough to fill more than 700 balloons every day, while each household also draws an average of 73,000 buckets of water a year – enough for around 12 baths a day.  We can do better than that, surely?

Personally, Kim and I have held three sustainable house days here at our home in Melton West, but we are taking a break this year so we can check out other houses in our area to gather some ideas.
To get a feel for what to expect, you can read about our previous Sustainable House Days at these links;
Take it from me, we had a fantastic time showing visitors around the place, pointing out and describing all the sustainable features that we have retrofitted into our suburban oasis.
Here is the blurb from the SHD site;

“Sustainable House Day, Sunday 8th September will be celebrating its 12th year. The event will continue to showcase some of Australia’s most sustainable homes to the public as millions of Australians continue to embrace renewable energy, recycling, and other practices suitable to their lifestyles.”

This year Homes are open for FREE from 10am – 4pm, Sunday 8th September 2013.

So do yourself a favour, shake off any election blues that you may have, and visit a sustainable home near you this weekend.
You will not regret it!

Changing To The Real Reality Channel

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credit: bizarrocomic.blogspot.com

Life goes on day by day with the realities of the world being shrouded with a heavy fog for many who choose to remain so.  Sustainable/simple living remains outside the fog in the minds of many people still stuck in their current reality.

But how do we help to change people’s world view and assist them in removing the veil over their eyes?

Well let me try and explain how I do this on a regular basis with an analogy.

Imagine that there are only two TV channels available in your area.

You are watching the “real reality” channel, while those around you are watching the “seriously head-stuck-in-the-sand” channel.   You really feel tempted to simply ask them to get off the couch and change channels.

However you need to do this in such a way as not to criticize that person’s current beliefs or perspectives, because you know it would be counterproductive.

What you will need to do is talk to them at their level, knowing that they are watching that “seriously sandy” channel.  Don’t belittle.  It turns peoples minds off straight away.

Instead, be enthusiastic when you talk about the things that you do, or the behaviours you have ingrained in your life.

If the conversation on the “seriously head-stuck-in-the-sand” channel is regularly about football or shopping for shoes, then begin to start your own conversations about food gardening, generating your own electricity, your lack of utility bills, or even your favourite fruit tree or chicken.

You will soon find that a few interested people with begin to watch the “real reality” channel occasionally  and start to enjoy this new channel.  The more interesting conversations that occur, the more people begin to watch, little by little.

As the presenter of your local “real reality” channel, be mindful that your viewers are beginners.  Start with basic content, and build it up.  Don’t go headlong into climate chaos and peak oil just yet.   If your channel starts running this stuff too early, you will lose half your viewers in a heartbeat.

So slowly does it.  With any pop-culture TV show, it must remain interesting and relevant.  Within a few months your “real reality” channel will become a talking point, and most people will know where it is on the dial.  If someone asks a question about backyard chickens to another, they point them to the “real reality” channel by word of mouth.

This is when you know that your channel is being watched regularly with enthusiasm.  As with everything in life you will quickly find avant “reality” channel watchers come out of the woodwork!

Hopefully, this analogy and post has struck a chord with many of you who already watch the reality channel.

Let me know if you have had similar experiences helping people to change channels.

Sustainable House Day 2012 – Wrap Up

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What a beautiful day we had for Sustainable House Day.  It was sunny, but cool in the morning, warming up to about 18C (64.4F) in the afternoon.

We played the tours of the garden a little different this year.  The plan was that I would be the singular tour guide and take groups around the grounds every 30 minutes.  However plans don’t always work out that way.   The first tour took 40 minutes, the second took 50 minutes, and then it took an hour each after that.  No two tours were exactly the same, and it all depended on how many questions the visitors asked.

So the grand total for the day was;

68 Guests and 13 volunteers = 81 Visitors for the day.

We were pleased with the turnout, and managed to get everyone around.

The gardens looked lovely in the warm sunlight, and everyone enjoyed themselves.  This year we had many more locals than in previous years, probably due to the fact that I managed to get an article into one of the local newspapers four days before the event.  Kim and I also got to meet many of the local readers of this blog, which as always was a great joy to us both.  It was so nice to show readers around the place, that before hand they had only read about.

As always my daughter Amy volunteered to be the greeter who signed people in and gave away the free information sheets and magazines that we were given by the sponsors.

We set up a soap display showing some of the ingredients for home made soap.  Many visitors were impressed the with simplicity of how it was made, and with minimal ingredients.

Whilst people were waiting for the next tour, Kim and the other volunteers made sure that they felt welcome with a chat and answered any questions.  The display boards were also popular and many questions were asked and answered whilst waiting.

By lunch time, I had given two tours to quite large groups.  I believe that there were about 12 or so in each tour.  One of the visitors was Jessie (aka Rabid Little Hippy) and family who we had the pleasure of meeting for the first time.  She recently bought a property in Ballan which is not far from us.  She gave us a gift of a small jar of Lemon Butter (yum) and some home made dark chocolate, which Kim was so impressed with that she is going to have a go at making it herself.  Cheers Jessie!

We had a few things on display, and Kim made up descriptions of each item.  The two worm farms were a hit and kids just loved looking at the wriggly worms!

The emergency blackout box or standalone power supply was a big hit.  So many people asked if I had electrical experience, but I told them that I just read a few articles on the net and figured it out for myself.  I was into electronics when I was a kid, and was a radio operator by trade in the Navy for twenty years, but other than a basic grasp of low voltage electronics a long time ago, it was all self taught.  I should write an eBook about it I reckon.

People were also amazed that I had free transportation, other than riding the bike of course.  The fact that I could charge the electric bike from my battery box amazed a few.

The pool are looked very inviting, however for safety reasons, we fenced off the entire area with orange temporary fencing.  Everyone liked the potential of the grape vines, and the fact that all of the lighting around the arbour and gazebo was solar LED fairy lighting.

Then the photos ran out as it got busy again.  You have already seen Cluckingham Palace, and the clay oven, which were also big hits.  The chooks put on a great show, and many fell in love with the idea of backyard chickens.  I think I managed to convince a few and dispel the myth that they smell.

I also had two displays on the oven side of the house which were the old trusty Fowlers-Vacola water bath preserving pan with lots of preserves that we made last summer, and a display of my home brew kit.  I put down a batch of my well-liked Aztec Gold beer on the Friday evening, and people saw it fermenting away.  Many were surprised with the low cost of making your own beer and the little effort it took from start to finish.

The wicking bed got a lot of attention especially for those who were thinking of starting a veggie patch.  The big selling point was the once weekly watering it needed, and that I told them that you could even go away for a week and your veggies would not be dead when you came home.

Explaining my reasoning behind removing the front lawn and planting an orchard instead was interesting to most, and hopefully a few more lawns will be ripped up around here in the coming season!  All the fruit trees looked very healthy and even a few were still covered in blossom.  I showed them the way that we sheet mulched the beds, which made sense to everyone.

That is where each tour ended, and I got a round of applause from each group or a hearty round of thanks.  Many visitors then wandered back around at their own pace to look, read and ask more questions of the volunteers.  It was quite laid back, and now rush, and some even came on the tour twice!

I must have talked for 6 hours straight, and welcomed the five minute break that Kim made me take in-between tours.  I really enjoyed the day as did Kim and all the volunteers which I thank from the bottom of my heart.  Without the members of the Melton Sustainable Living Group, the event would just not have been possible.  Well done team.

Did any of my Aussie readers manage to get to a Sustainable House on Sunday?  What did you learn?