Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Happy New Year!

It's been a big year.

The birth of our beautiful boy in March.

September 2013 with Granny at the park

Rediscovering myself and my talents in motherhood. Not insignificantly for me, learning to breastfeed - which we did exclusively for around 6-7 months and looks like continuing for a while yet.

I enjoyed reading about breastfeeding, balancing my mostly western perspective. This one is a cracker - Breastfeeding in Mongolia. Seriously funny. Apparently, the best wrestlers are breastfed until they are nine. No comment!

My husband Rodney and I continued our shenanigans.
Note from me for Dad when he arrived home from work (one of Reuben's words on card)

Note from Dad for us on our return from a walk (on the back of an envelope)

Doing a feed with Sir Patch Paddington, the kitten, snuggling in.
yay!


Hello 2014, I'm looking forward to getting to know you!

I'm looking forward to gardening, organic food cooked from scratch and showing our beautiful boy our world.

Friday, December 20, 2013

Stay Calm and Carry On

Some days I feel frantic, without any space for thought... a mad rush to do... not much! How often do you feel like that? Of course, I usually only realise after the day is done that I haven't actually achieved all that much, other than add a few grey hairs.

We've had several days like that in the last few weeks, thankfully now I am feeling the "slow and gentle rhythm" (as Rhonda would say) of being at home, caring for our son, pulling together a fast dinner and casually catching up on a week's worth of washing while chatting on the phone ;)

The secret is, I've heard, habit.

 if you haven't heard of it, a quick description...

Slow is about considered action creating a leading a life worth living... a life fully experienced moment by moment. In taking the time to fully live each moment, life yields multiple synergistic benefits in happiness, well-being, frugality, sustainability and more.

Of course, this might be a rose coloured view of what we can expect... but optimism is better than pessimism! 

Claire blogs about her Slow journey and a recent post nailed how to create new habits:

"3-Phase habit hacking approach using Slow principles
Phase 1 – reflect and observe to understand context before devising strategy
Phase 2 – create the habit hacking plan
Phase 3 – implement plan"


Slow and steady wins the race!

Sourdough starter
Recently, I have been consistently making my own bread, although not sourdoughm I've settled into a routine that takes about 5 minutes using biodynamic wheat! This is what I like to think of as a happy medium rather than striving for perfection and ending up with store-bought bread ;)

I've also been picking something from the garden every day - this habit drives the other habits to water, fertilise and sow. The garden isn't much now, but those zucchini flowers I fertilised the other day are promising! Beginning with the end in mind leads me to ask 'will we eat that?' and 'will it yield?'.
David's cherry tomatoes

I hope to revisit the Slow philosophy from time to time with this blog. Check out your local library for more information ... a good place to start is - Carl Honoré.

Monday, December 16, 2013

Being a Parent in a Declining Ecosystem

I've been reflecting on how I feel about having brought a child into this unsustainable and hectic society. Good... but why?

Given that our global society has a few challenges to address like ecosystem collapse and declines... we should have a few concerns! Climate change is the biggie.

The conclusion that I've come to is that I am optimistic. I love people and I trust our better instincts.

Hope springs eternal, but it is somewhat justified. Industrial ecology and permaculture exist. Paul Stamets exists - he's awesome, see his 6 ways mushrooms can save the world talk!

His trials with turkey tail mushrooms helped to save his mum's life
He is hope embodied for Fukishima locals. He's suggesting ways to capture leaked radioactive material that has made its way into their ecosystems. Awesome!


I trust our family unit. I hope all families are as lucky as us.

I admit to a deep mistrust for the kind of people that watch TV and can't 'see the wood for the trees'. The kind of people who gave a mandate to our Australian government (in 2013) to ignore our changing climate... since then many worthy programs have been de-funded.

Ross Garnaut (economist) reported in 2011 that "households will pay almost the entire carbon price", but of course, this was to be a means to the end of saving costs from climate change in future.

Since then, Tony Abbot (who studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics) has gone on to begin to unravel many of the government institutions put in place to either understand or address climate change.

Lawyers and economists have no business managing our environmental obligations with a bunch of spin and rhetoric! Not much hope here in Australian politics - Or is there?

This is an awesome little clip with a vision for my hometown, Perth.


I find my hope in small steps that people are taking like slow living, home composting, innovations in renewable energy, people like Greens senator Scott Ludlum! Just to name a few.

I am a firm believer that if we are healthy and our value systems are healthy - that we will make the right choices.

Are you pushing in the right direction?

Sunday, December 15, 2013

Double Yolkers: Insects and Sustainability

Chickens just love insects!

I've come to love insects too!

Insects love doing something I think of as 'up-cycling'... take some offal, or worse (!)... and feed it to insects to create high protein, high fat food for chickens.
This is so much better than bought food.
Why? Well, whenever our chickens get a lot of really awesome food... they have twins!! Awesome!!

Double yolker!
Bow before your leader...
My favourite is black soldier fly larvae, an excellent alternative to a worm farm although you can do both!
Ringo the chook hanging out like a junkie near the black soldier fly larvae composting unit (foreground).
Of course, insects can also be fed to other animals and I'd like to suggest... bartered to people with chooks or fish.

I can't get enough of them! Black soldier fly larvae can be cleanly frozen and delivered whenever you visit ;)