Growing Vegies in a Box - First Step to a Blue Mountains Food Garden

Lizzie Connor and Sue Girard have been teaching residents of the Blue Mountains the fundamentals of growing vegetables in small containers. I experienced their first workshop at the Festival of Joy 2007 held at the Katoomba Community Gardens. Their combined wealth of knowledge empowered the participants both young and old with the knowledge that it was possible to grow salad vegetables without a garden.

Last month I was invited to participate in another workshop held at Lizzie's Katoomba house on a day that was particularly cold and wet. However, the atmosphere was convivial and both Sue and Lizzie taught us some of the principles of Permaculture and together we helped create 4 boxes of veggies.


On Lizzie's deck, we were able to see previous boxes in different stages of development and a bubble wrap cover invented by Sue that provides protection in harsh environments.









Another workshop will be held in June and online support is available to all at http://www.katoombachamber.com/ (follow the links to Kitchen Gardens and then to Questions and Answers). Sue and Lizzie are both members of the team that monitor the Forum and help answer queries.

Photos by Helena Wong.
Maryanne Bell.

APC9 2008 Reflections by Sue Girard

Over the Easter long weekend a small group of BMPN members attended the ninth Australasian Permaculture Conference (APC9) organised by Permaculture North and held at Turramurra. Many other participants from across Australia attended for all or a number of different days and everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves and learned new and stimulating ideas. The main topic on the agenda was Water use and conservation and this was very apt because the weather "drizzled" for the whole four days.

The Conference was called a "convergence" and this was indeed the right word for such a gathering because this year it was 30 years since Permaculture One was published; all the big names in Permaculture came to celebrate: Bill Mollison, David Holmgren, Geoff Lawton, Haikai Tane, Robyn Francis and Rosemary Morrow. A full list of Australasian personalities and Roberto Perez from Cuba, can be accessed from Permaculture North's website.

Proudly BMPN played a small part in the presentation of this event. Our Rosemary Morrow spoke on Water as well as being on the panel of experts and facilitating several sessions. Pat Rayner introduced David Holmgren’s session on his property Melliodora and later Aaron Sorensen and Dan Deighton speaking on Permaculture in Schools. Celeste Salter introduced Josh Byrne’s talk on Conserving Urban Water and also Ross Mars’ talk on Working with Water and my daughter Jessi Girard sang the opening song at the Public Forum on the Saturday.

I wanted to attend just about every session presented but of course with four sessions running at a time that was impossible. Any of you who know me will recognize that my interests are design of urban landscapes, and getting PC knowledge out there by education and different types of media. So I went to sessions on teaching delivery styles and ‘web entry’ for PC but I also sat in on sessions I thought I knew least about - such as sewage, swales/ keylines, and development overseas. I’m not sure I can relate in words exactly what I learnt but I was definitely inspired by what I heard at this convergence.

Highlights for me were meeting and talking with people I had heard so much about over the years: I sat with Bill Mollison for one of my meals and we talked exclusively about PC, David Holmgren was one of my neighbours in our tent city and we were able to talk about things other than PC, I talked with Carolyn Nuttal about her experiences in schools and about her and Janet Millington’s new book Outdoor Classrooms, I talked with Jill Finnane about book illustrations (anyone who has seen her book From Lawns to Lunch will understand why), I talked with Roberto Perez about lots of things Cuban and I became reacquainted with Russ Grayson, Fiona Campbell, Robyn Francis and Rob Allsop. Oh and Josh Byrne was as nice to talk to as he is to look at!

Ecological Footprint Calculator

There are a few of these on the internet and this one was developed with the Victorian EPA, Global Footprint Network and WWF Australia in 2007. It is easy to use and offers different PC options.

http://www.epa.vic.gov.au/ecologicalfootprint/calculators/personal/introduction.asp

The benefits of this calculator are that you can choose simple or advanced questions that allow you to accurately identify your actions and when the final asssessment is made there is an option to follow that will suggest additional changes to be made to further reduce your footprint; if you were to accept these additional changes a final result is shown.

Celeste

Film review of Power of Community

The video "The Power of Community - How Cuba Survived Peak Oil" was shown at the Carrington Monday, 17 March, 2008 by BMPN.

Peak Oil is the point where oil prices inexorably go up because of rising production costs due to declining reserves. It has been predicted to hit globally about now, and indeed we are seeing oil prices rising. Since much of our society is based on having cheaply available fuel for transportation, peak oil will affect all of our lives dramatically. So I was interested to see how Cuba coped with the sudden severe drop in the oil that was available to them after the Soviet Union broke up in 1991.

The transition was very difficult. For four to five years there were severe food shortages, so much so that some pregnant mothers were malnourished, children were underweight, and the average adult lost about 24 pounds. The government imposed food rationing, thus making sure that everybody got a minimum amount of food. During the ‘Special Period’, as Cubans call it, providing food for survival was an obvious priority.

No longer having access to industrial fertilizer and the fuel to transport farm produce, Cubans began to learn how to garden organically on urban plots in Havana, and on private land that the State released to local groups. They were aided in this by a group of permaculture teachers from Australia. Oxen were reintroduced for plowing; their manure helping to build soil fertility. Agriculture became much more labour intensive, and in time agricultural workers were among the highest paid workers. It took four to five years for soil fertility to build and for ample locally produced fresh vegetables and fruits to be available.

None of this is surprising. Permaculturists and Peak Oil activists have been thinking (and acting) along these lines for years, and the Slow Food Movement is helping people get started with workshops showing people how to grow their own food. http://www.katoombachamber.com/content/view/19/34/.

However, seeing the images of Havana and the on-site interviews with Cubans who had been through the Special Period made the prospect of coping with Peak Oil seem more real. (Roberto Perez was an enthusiastic Cuban permaculturalist featured in the film and he recently visited Australia.)
Cuba's drop in oil availability was sudden. Ours will be a slow decline, and the transition will be affected by the introduction of renewable energy, energy-efficient cars and buildings, and related thrusts towards sustainability. Techno-optimists say we will be okay but others are doubtful. I found myself wishing that people from the NSW Department of Planning would see the video, since some of the stress of the transition from abundant oil to high-priced oil, with all that it entails, could be mitigated by advanced preparation. Andrew Gaines