Permaculture Out West

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Ardeer have a community fruit & veg exchange on the third Saturday of each month, between 12 – 1.00 pm.

Anyone living in the area can attend or join other committee activities

Location: Ardeer Playground(corner Suspension & Yallourn Streets)

Bring your basket, jeep or wheelbarrow of home grown fruit and vegies to swap with produce grown by other Ardeer gardeners.

Dates

19 February

19 March

16 April

21 May

18 June

16 July

20 August

17 September

15 October

19 November

The Newport Organic Collective, affectionately known as “NOC”, has won a “Business Excellence” award, Community Groups NFT category – from the City of Hobsons Bay. Other winners include local cafes, franchises and Australia wide companies.

The criteria assessed by the judges in all categories included;

• Business Panning & financial management
• Marketing
• Customer service
• Community involvement
• Professional development
• Environmental Sustainability

NOC President, Madeleine Ellis, and Members Liz Maasen & Marianne Lavelle accepted the Award on behalf of the Members at a Gala dinner on October 22.

NOC was established in June 2009 by a project team as part of a Diploma of Sustainability.  The team fast tracked the establishment process and used Community Based Social Marketing theory, combined with business skills, to get NOC off the ground.  Once established as a legal entity under the Incorporation Act committee members were formally elected.  All of the project team have taken an ongoing, active role in NOC, with most taking Committee roles.

For more information about NOC contact Madeleine Ellis   0409 712 003

Newport Organic Collective wins a Business Excellence Awards.

Do you want to rent an eco-home that is close to the city? Interested in growing vegies and looking after some chooks in a home with an established, post-Blitz garden?

We are moving overseas for awhile, and we are looking to rent out our lovely three bedroom home at: 28 Fontein St, West Footscray.

The house is in very good condition, and it is only about three minutes walk from Tottenham station, which is less than 20 mins away from the city loop stations. It has three bedrooms and two bathrooms, dining room, loungeroom, laundry and kitchen, as well as an free standing study out the back. Eco features include: 5000 litre water tanks, solar panels, and full insulation. The backyard was also Blitzed approximately a year ago, and since then, raised garden beds have begun to produce good amounts of food,  and six young fruit trees are beginning to produce.

Rent is $1600 pcm. This includes our eight chickens (who are also available for adoption), and all electricity/water discounts that result from the tanks and panels.

The house will be available from January 10th (2011) on.

If interested, please contact De at: animataquartet@yahoo.com.au

Community Dinner

Come along and meet members of the new Maidstone & West Footscray Residents Group (MAWFREG).  It’ll be our first chance to get together and meet others in our neighbourhood.

Wednesday 17 November, 6 – 8pm

Maidstone Community Centre

21 Yardley Street, Maidstone

The delicious set menu will consist of pasta or chicken and salad and apple cake for dessert.

Spaces are limited so pre booking is required.

Registrations need to be lodged at the centre no later than Monday 15 November.

To register for the dinner, call Maidstone Community Centre on 9317 0747.

maidcomm@maribyrnong.vic.gov.au

You are invited to provide feedback on Maribyrnong City Council’s draft Food Security Policy 2010 – 2013.

The draft Policy has been informed by international, national and local research including local community consultations. Council is now seeking feedback on the scope and role of the Draft Policy, the identified barriers and strategies, potential gaps and priority issues.

Please find via the council website link:

• an overview of the draft Policy
• Background Paper, and
• the Draft Food Security Policy.

To assist in providing feedback, a short on-line survey can be completed via Council’s homepage –  – www.maribyrnong.vic.gov.au.

Feedback can also be provided in person, via email, phone or post. Submissions need to be received by Friday 12 November 2010.

The feedback received will then be considered for inclusion in the final Policy. It is anticipated that the final Policy will be presented to Council for adoption in December 2010.

Please contact Jane Torney, Safer Communities and Health Promotion Project Officer on 9688 0182 or jane.torney@maribyrnong.vic.gov.au if you have any additional questions or feedback.

You’re invited to attend a Meet & Greet BBQ on Sunday 7 November 12noon-2pm at the Maidstone Community Garden, 21 Yardley Street, Maidstone.  RSVP details below….

If you’d like to be involved in your local community, have a say about what happens in your area, got some great ideas or some issues to discuss, then please come along and introduce yourself, have a chat and something to eat, and register your contact details for the next steps.

If you can’t make it on the day, we’ve have set up an email address for the group, so please send your details to:  mawfreg@live.com.au

We don’t intend membership being too time-consuming, as we all lead busy lives.  Maybe meeting once every couple of months or as issues arise, keeping in touch between time via email.  We’d like to start with having some really, interesting speakers  present to the group as a way to begin our journey.  The intention is to be a positive and proactive force for the area, not necessarily focussing on negatives.    If you have any ideas for interesting speakers, please let us know.  Many of the people who have shown interest so far, have their own areas of specialty and could possibly make presentations to the group.   Some of the first topics of interest may be: the future of the Maidstone Hall, local parks and open space, dog parks, planning, etc.  Maybe we start planning for the first Community Christmas party for our neighbourhood.   Who knows?!  Anyway, it’s all open to suggestion at this stage.

PLEASE feel free to forward this to your networks or print out the flyer and display at your workplace or somewhere locals will see it, i.e. supermarket, dog park, kindergarten, etc.   The more the merrier!  Contact details are below if you need more info.

PS.  We’d really love some assistance with letterbox dropping so we can spread the word before the 7th.   Is anyone willing to assist?

regards, Wendy Lang

mawfreg@live.com.au

http://groups.google.com/group/molm

WestLink Public Information Sessions

As part of the consultation process for WestLink, Linking Melbourne Authority is holding three public information sessions “so people can learn more about the preferred WestLink route and have the opportunity to provide feedback.”

LMA says “Members of the community are encouraged to come and talk directly with the project team, view large maps of the preferred route and see an overview of the work we have done in Phase 2. The sessions are a chance to provide direct feedback about the preferred route.”

You can attend any of the three display sessions:

Saturday 23 October 2010

11:00am to 3:00pm
Sunshine West Community Centre
25 Kermeen Street, Sunshine West

Sunday 24 October 2010

11.00am – 3.00pm
Whitten Oval (Footscray Football Ground)
417 Barkly Street, West Footscray

(Note that there is plenty of parking available.)

Monday 25 October 2010

11:00am to 3:00pm
Hyde Street Church Hall
10a Hyde Street, Footscray

Contact for Information Sessions:  California Nguyen, Linking Melbourne Authority, Ph: 8562 6824 www.linkingmelbourne.vic.gov.au

FREE Screening of Food Inc.
Tuesday October 5, 2010, 7.15 pm.

You will never look at dinner in the same way again.

An eye-opening expose of the modern food industry, Food, Inc. is both fascinating and terrifying, and essential viewing for any health-conscious citizen.

‘The industry doesn’t want you to know the truth about what you are eating,’’ says Schlosser in the film.
‘‘Because if you did, you might not want to eat it.’’

Food, inc. has been described as The Inconvenient Truth of food.

This polished shockumentary graphically and disturbingly reveals the unintended consequences of the concentration of food production to just a handful of massive companies, with processed genetically modified corn and soy as the basis of the national diet.

THIS is an important film. It’s a warning. Don’t follow the US down the path of food self-regulation.

This free screening will be followed by a panel discussion and Q & A, with organic/biodynamic farmers, free-range egg producers and nutritional experts.

Not recommended for anyone under the age of 16.

Tuesday October 5, 2010 7.15 pmWilliamstown Mechanics Institute Cnr Melbourne Rd & Electra St.Williamstown.

Tickets are free but you MUST book.

TO BOOK Go to www.hobsonsbaytickets.com.au

Or contact the box office Monday to Friday, 9.30 – 4.30, on 9932 4074

For further information contact Madeleine Ellis 0409 712 003

An initiative of the Newport Organic Collective Inc, with support from the Williamstown Film Society and the Victorian farmers Association.

Food Inc.

Join us for some school holiday fun
Compost Cake A FREE environmental performance for kids
This comic performance aims to teach children about composting, recycling and reducing consumption andwaste. All welcome, particularly suitable for childrenaged 8 to 12, all children must be supervised by an adult.
Presenters: Katya Konsumption and Mr HydeOur Planet Enterprises

Through song and comedy and unexpected turns Katya Konsumption and her strange next door neighbour Mr Hyde discover the ins and outs of composting and get straight on their recycling know how.
Date: Tuesday 21 September, 10.30-11.30am
Location: Footscray Community Arts Centre,45 Moreland St, Footscray. Melway 42 E5
Bookings Essential – book online at www.maribyrnong.vic.gov.au/greening
This is part of the City of Maribyrnong’s FREE monthly series of Greening Maribyrnong Conversations.
For further information and to register contact Council’s Environment Officer on 9688 0357 or visit www.maribyrnong.vic.gov.au/greening – It only takes one minute to register online.
Thanks to the Footscray Community Arts Centre fortheir support of this event

Back in the 1970′s, there was a bit of an oil embargo, and suddenly the oil that we took for granted became very expensive. For people in the US, it came as a very rude shock. Up to 1970, the US was the main oil producer in the world, like the way Saudi Arabia is now.

The oil embargo helped bring about a new people movement in the US, where sustainability, low energy, growing your own food came to be thought as a way to change to a low energy world. The shift to the low energy world lasted until the early 80′s. One of the many interesting projects that came out of this was the Master Conserver course http://www.culturalconservers.org/library.php. The course looked at things like:

• Home Buyers checklist
• Heat Loss calculations
• Home Insulation
• Weathersealing and caulking
• Hot water conservation
• Indoor Air Quality
• Energy efficient windows and doors

The list goes on. All the topics had instructional handouts that contain a wealth of knowledge that is difficult to find in books nowadays.

We are fortunate that someone saved all these handouts, scanned them and made them available for our generation. Please save a copy of them so that the valuable information in these handouts can be saved, and more importantly, be used to make our own homes more energy efficient. The address is http://www.culturalconservers.org/library/masterconserver.pdf