Permaculture Out West

Archive for January, 2010

POW is looking for people to take on the following roles until our AGM in July:

Fundraiser (x2)

Events/Projects Coordinator (x 1 or 2)

POW has so many exciting ideas for the West – community gardens, market gardens, a LETs scheme, organic co-ops, permaculture playgroups, urban WWOOFers, community supported agriculture, establishing a transition town – but without fundraisers and project coordinators, we can’t make these happen.

Be part of a great team of people actively involved in making the West a hub of community projects focused around urban food production & distribution.

Email info@pow.org.au and ask for the job descriptions!

THE IMPACTS OF A LOCAL FOOD SUPPLY: WHAT IS THE EVIDENCE?
Are you interested in and aware of locally grown food and the local food supply system?
The Community Planning and Development Program at La Trobe University (Bendigo) is conducting a VicHealth funded research project to document the impacts of the local food supply (locally sourced fresh produce).
Can you provide us with an insight into your local food supply?
We particularly want to hear about the characteristics of your local food supply and any social, economic or environmental benefits. Your contribution will be used to generate a comprehensive understanding of local food supplies specific to your area. The project will provide up to date information on a range of issues relating to local food supplies.
How can you take part?
A team of researchers from the Community Planning and Development Program (Dr Katherine Fraser, Ashlea Hunter, Melissa Kennedy and Christine Slade) will be visiting a location near you to conduct a series of interviews and focus groups. If you would like to take part, please phone Christine Slade on 0418 887 272 or email cslade@westnet.com.au
Please read the attached participant information sheet for further details about the project.
If you require further information contact me at La Trobe University -t.budge@latrobe.edu.au
With thanks and regards,
Trevor Budge

Click on links below to download pdfs with information about Local Food Supply project, and a consent form

LocalFoodSupplyInfoSheetCSLADE

LFS Consent Form

general information

The following fruits and vegetables are at their best and cheapest this month.

Fruits:

Banana, Blackberries, Blueberries, Grapes, Honeydew, Nectarine, Orange, Peach, Plum, Raspberries, Rockmelon, Strawberries, Tomato, Watermelon.

Vegetables:

Asparagus, Beans, Beanshoots, Beetroot, Broccoli, Cabbage, Capsicum, Carrot, Celery, Cucumber, Eggplant, Lettuce, Mushrooms, Rhubarb, Turnip, Zucchini.

POW ran a workshop last Saturday (16th Jan) on preserving food using a food dehydrator. There’s a lot of advantages to drying your food. It reduces the weight and bulk of fresh food dramatically: 2kg of apricots can be turned into 0.5kg when dried. Food drying preserves the nutritional value of the food, extends its life (even longer when stored in the fridge), and concentrates the flavour. All types of food can be dried: fruit, vegetables, meat, fish, herbs and flowers.

My electric food dryer is 500w. The cost of running it for 24 hours works out about $2.40 for me. I’m on a 100% green power tariff, so my CO2 emissions are offset 100%. The way I see it, I buy the produce when it’s in season and cheaper. I dry it, and then can eat it when it dearer and out of season.

The best low cost dryer is the sun. It may not be as easy to dry your food compared to a electric food dryer; one of the drawbacks is when the sun goes down, any produce still drying needs to be moved to a dry place so that it doesn’t take up moisture from the night air or from water condensing on a solar dryer. But food drying has been done in the sun since, well, since Adam was a boy, and it’s just a matter of adjusting our mindset to be more patient.

I’ve been looking around for some solar food dryers, and have located a couple of websites that have some good designs. One is Geofinder (http://www.geopathfinder.com/9473.html), and another is BuildItSolar (http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/Cooking/cooking.htm#Drying). BuildItSolar has a solar food dryer design made from 2 cardboard boxes. That’s the one I’m planning to build on the weekend. I’ll post an update to tell you how it goes.

OK, so it’s not been too wet, and it’s summer as well. However, now’s the time to start planning for when we do get some decent rain, and how we can make the most efficient use of it.

Melbourne Water have designs on their website for creating rain gardens. A rain garden is like a regular garden except its positioned to make the most of rain falling on hard surfaces such as paths and roofs. Melbourne Water has designs for container raingardens and for an inground raingarden.

The idea of the raingarden is to filter the water using plants, with an overflow connection to your stormwater drain. The water going into the stormwater drain has been filtered to a much better quality, which is much better for the waterways where the water ends up.

Click here for a link to Melbourne Water

Tuesday 16th February at 7pm: Maribyrnong City Council will vote on POW’s submission to stop the sale of the old Maidstone Community Hall and to turn it into an urban market garden. We received a very positive response from Councillors Clarke and Carter when we spoke before them last year and a strong presence at this meeting could be enough to persuade Council to vote in our favour. Please come and show your support.

We are having a meeting this coming Thursday 28th January at 7:30pm to discuss what else can be done to persuade Council and what to do if Council votes against our proposal. Members and non-members of POW are welcome and encouraged to attend, especially local Maidstone residents. Venue: 28 Fontein St, West Footscray. We hope to see lots of you there!

To read our proposal. Click here.

Please consider becoming a member of POW. You’ll be helping us to start making differences in our community.

By becoming a member, you can get the following benefits:

As a thank you, you get to choose from one of the following as a free gift for joining – a fruit tree on dwarf rootstock, a mix of vegetable and herb seeds, or a perennial plant.

You’ll have access to people with a wealth of knowledge on how to design a house to planning your garden.

You’ll receive discounts when purchasing permaculture books from Permaculture Melbourne.

You’ll be joining a vibrant community of people, who are aged from 20 to 75, who come from all walks of life, but who all have a passion about community and the earth.

So please consider joining. You choose how and when you participate; come along to meetings, or just provide support from afar.

Please send an email to membership@pow.org.au and we’ll arrange for you to join.

Radio National had an interview last week about aboriginal astronomy on Ockham’s Razor. Ray Norris from the CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility pointed out that Aboriginal Australians have the oldest continuous culture in the world, and their Dreaming stories have amazing depth of knowledge about the sky. One of things he discusses in his new book “Emu Dreaming – An Introduction to Australian Aboriginal Astronomy” is the calendars used by the Aboriginals. Aboriginal calendars tend to be more complex than those used by Europeans. The seasons were marked by things like particular stars or constellations in the sky. Sometime the calendars are about particular foods and harvests.

I went searching on the internet for more information and came across a seasonal calendar for Melbourne. Wurundjeri people are the traditional owners of the territory from north of the Great Dividing Range, east to Mount Baw Baw, south to Mordialloc Creek and west to Werribee River.

The seasonal calendar for Melbourne was compiled by Dr. Beth Gott of the School of Biological Sciences, Monash University.

See http://home.vicnet.net.au/~herring/seasons.htm

High Summer November, December, January

WARRA WARRAP/GARRONG, late Black Wattle, with pale yellow blossoms, flowered in November.

As the summer advanced, the land began to dry, and people congregated around the reliable water-sources, the creeks, rivers and billabongs.

Fish was an important food – Galaxias moved up the river from the sea.

Where rocky falls blocked the river, as in the Prince’s Bridge area and at Dight’s Fails, fish would accumulate in large numbers, and could be easily taken.

Eels started to come downriver. Fish traps were set.

Water sources were important for the wildlife, so large animals such as Kangaroos and Emus would come to drink and could be caught.

Lizards and snakes were active.

Grasses flowered – Kangaroo Grass, Wallaby Grass, Spear Grass, Tussock Grass and the Common Reed.

Fruits ripened -, MORR – Currant-bush

GARRAWANG – Apple-berry, White Elderberry, Kangaroo Apples and

Sweet LAAP – Manna, could be collected beneath the WURUN – Manna Gums

Small tuberous plants died back, but the women still knew where they could dig for their roots, which at this time were at their best. .

When people went up into the mountain gullies for firedrills, they ate pith from the centre of treeferns. In warm weather, big shelters were not needed unless it rained.

Late Summer, February – Mid March

Autumn rains arrived and days became cooler. Plants now able to renew growth.

Burning where scrub or tussock grass had become too dense to clear the undergrowth and provide fertilising ash so the small tuberous food plants could grow after the rains came in March. Burning also made it easier to catch animals.

DJAAK, Wattle gum , was plentiful, and in the middle of this month the WARRAK Banksia or Honeysuckle, Long-leaf Box and Silver-leaf Stringybark came into blossom, providing sweet nectar, and attracting birds.

March – the female Short-finned eels moving down the streams to the sea; the male eels had been leaving in smaller numbers during the spring and summer. These were an important food, and among the vegetables there were the starchy roots of the water plants, which began to die down after their summer growth.

Some late summer fruits such as Mistletoe berries were also available. Birds started to flock before heading north for the winter, to be replaced by other birds which will soon start to arrive from Tasmania.

Early Winter, April & May

All sorts of fungi appeared with the rains, while the ground was still warm.

BUNJIL, the Eagle, was building his nest

Brush-tail and Ringtail Possums were mating

Bolin Bolin billabong started to fill.

Many different moths emerged, and were food for birds during the day and for Sugar and Feathertail gliders at night.

Eastern Grey Kangaroos and Wallabies fed on the new growth.

Deep Winter- June, mid July

Echidnas were breeding, birds nesting.

The flats near the rivers and creeks were often flooded;

Low lands generally were wet and cold, unsuitable for camping, so people moved to the best sheltered spots on the uplands, where they were able to catch koalas, possums, and wombats, and to find grubs in the trees

The leaves of the water plants had become dry and brown, but the small tuberous herbs were green and growing; the roots of both were good food.

Fragrant nectar came from BURGIL BURGIL, Honey-pots, Acrotriche serrulata, a small shrub which hid its flowers close to the ground.

BULAIT- Cherry Ballart formed fruit.

People constructed good bark WILLAMS (shelters) and kept fires burning for warmth.

They wrapped themselves in rugs made from possum skins.

Early Spring – Mid July, August

Mid-July, MUYAN, Silver Wattle, started to flower, the first wattles to do so. It earned the name of ‘Barak’s Wattle’ because when he died at Coranderrk on August 15th 1903, MUYAN was in full golden bloom.

YELLOW BOX also flowered, providing much nectar.

EARLY NANCY was the first of the small food plants to flower

By late August MURNONG was budding.

People moved slowly towards the lower lands as the spring temperatures rose, there they were able to snare ducks, to catch other kinds of wild-fowl, and,

as the season advanced, they would get eggs from the nests of all kinds of birds.

True Spring- September, October

A time of plenty. Lilies, Orchids and MURNONG flowered, and still provided root vegetables. Greens were consumed in large quantities.

Flowers everywhere -Wattles, Hop Goodenia, Burgan, Kangaroo Apple, as well as orchids and small lilies which had been building their tubers over the winter.

Snakes and Lizards became active, young Kangaroos came out of the pouch.

Migrant birds – the Sacred Kingfisher for example, returned from the north.

Tadpoles appeared in ponds, and the river, fed by melting snows from the mountains

Water-plants put on green leaves. Nowadays this flooding is prevented by dams