Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 8 i Pip Magazine

KOREN HELBIG Koren is an Australian freelance writer recently returned from Spain and now living on an organic farm in South Australia’s Adelaide Hills. She is particularly fascinated by unconventional people and oddball lifestyles. Koren stumbled across permaculture while interviewing various folk for magazine stories and noticing this strange word repeatedly popping up – many referenced permaculture as a major turning point in their lives, so she had to know more. Now completing a permaculture design certificate at The Food Forest, Koren dreams of building her own straw bale house and living l argely on homegrown food. See her work at korenhelbig.com. SAMANTHA ALLEMANN Samantha is a Melbourne based writer and editor. She has recently joined the Pip team as Editorial Assistant. With a background in higher education publishing, Sam…

BOTANICAL NAME: Tropaeolum majus – the genus name comes from the Latin word for trophy, an allusion to the likeness of the flowers to the helmets and shields displayed at Roman triumphs. ORIGIN: Peru’s cool highlands. DESCRIPTION: An annual which behaves as a perennial in warm climates. The modern breed of nasturtium is bushy with deep red, bright orange or yellow flowers. CULTIVATION: Nasturtium flourishes in rich soils, although it can tolerate poor soils. Seedlings are difficult to transplant so it’s best to plant the seeds directly. SAVING THE SEEDS: The spreading bushes are flowering right through the growing season and the harvesting of the seeds can be done whenever the three-lobed seed compound becomes brown and feels dry and light. It is however possible to harvest while still green…

Hibi Farm is nestled on a sprawling suburban block in a quiet court in Melbourne’s not-quite-inner north. You could be forgiven for forgetting you were in the middle of postwar-built suburbia and instead had been transported back in time to the Swiss Alps, Heidi-style. Chickens peck around the goat pen, which sits at the back of the yard, beyond the extensive fruit and vegetable gardens. Michi Pusswald, a householder at Hibi Farm, scrapes out the straw bedding. His wife Angelica nuzzles Tessie, a bearded Toggenburg milking goat, leading her up onto the milking stand. Michi and Angelica are on the ‘goater’ shift this morning, and that means an early start. Hibi Farm sits at the centre of the Hood; a loose collective of local households living the good life. Central…

A key objective for the organic farmer is to create a closed-loop system that recycles all of the nutrients and organic matter back into the property from where it came. Directed by principles such as ‘Catch and Store Energy’ and ‘Use and Value Renewable Resources and Services’, our permaculture properties should also follow this important objective. Growing your own plants to provide mulch becomes a critical design feature to consider if a closed-loop system is the desired outcome. The focus of this article is on fruiting orchards and food forest systems; to identify the support plants we can grow to achieve the ‘chop and drop’ technique of mulching. Chop and drop refers to those plants we grow which can be cut periodically with the branches and leaves thrown underneath and…

As a culture we have chosen climate change. We have created it through unbridled desires, our modes of travel, consuming passions and our gluttonous economic form. As a family, on a household income that would be considered below the poverty line, we have chosen another path. LIVING WITH THE SEASONS In many ways how we live is a form of neo-peasantry, observing and interacting with the six distinct Jaara seasons (early spring, true spring, early summer, late summer, autumn, winter), drawing on the surviving spirit of the moneyless ecological agrarianism that has existed on Dja Dja Wurrung country, where we live, for millennia. We spend the autumn preserving food, filling the cellar, collecting fallen wood on foot, and planting alliums, broad beans and brassicas. The winter is a time for…

Michele and Dario Franzinelli’s garden is called Jetto’s Patch, a 1482 m2 block that grows over 500 different types of produce. In 1989, their suburban Perth backyard started transforming into the thriving vegetable, herb and cottage garden it is today. Their dream was for a garden that could be eaten from all year round, so that they would not need to rely on supermarkets for food. ‘It has turned into a continuing experiment as to the range of what can be grown and the list has become surprisingly large,’ says Michele. Jetto’s Patch now contains 200 food-producing trees (including 46 citrus, 18 types of apple, 12 types of bananas and 11 nut trees), 23 vines, 168 seasonal vegies and 144 seasonal herbs and edible natives. ‘The object is to follow…

Krshnadas and Prem Kranti farm their quarter acre plot in his backyard in urban Bega, NSW. On the edge of town, just dipping into the flood zone of the Bega River, his plot pumps out enough food to supply to a box scheme, a weekly market stall, the local wholefoods shop and private clients. Krshnadas does most of the work in the garden, but Premkranti helps when she has time. ‘She is a great pest control person and a good weeder,’ says Krshnadas. All the food is grown using organic principles (although not certified), with Krshnadas planting by the biodynamic calendar, although he wouldn’t claim it is biodynamic. ‘I focus mostly on leafy greens as they are best fresh and I can supply them fresh to the customer,’ he says.…

Our family has been recycling and reusing our humanure (human waste) for around seven years. We have used a bucket toilet system in both a suburban home on a small town block and on our current farm. We have always used bucket toilets alongside the existing flush toilet. The bucket literally sits in our bathroom next to the flush loo. By doing so, we’ve taken the pressure off the septic and town sewerage systems already in place. This saves our precious drinking water, not to mention money and chemicals, from otherwise being poured into a system in which people have the convenience of simply flushing their waste away. WHAT IS A BUCKET TOILET? It’s a very easy and cheap way to take full responsibility for your own humanure; to compost…

The winner this issue is Levi Orenshaw, aged 6 from Kincumber. Congratulations Levi you receive a set of Little Permies activity cards. Parents send in photos of your kids in the garden or with their homegrown produce to win a download of Grow Do It, the latest Formidable Vegetable Sound System CD. This album is for kids who want to be able to look after themselves, the place where they live and the people they live with by growing and eating healthy food, growing a healthy mind & body and feeling inspired to do amazing things that can change the world! To enter send name, age and address of child to maude@pipmagazine.com.au. BERRIES BUSHSCHOOL COMPOST FARM GOAT KNITTING MULCH PERMACULTURE PIP RASPBERRIES WINTER WOOL HOW TO MAKE MINI WICKING BEDS…

PERMACULTURE MARKET GARDENER: A Visual Guide to a Profitable Whole-Systems Farm Business by Zach Loeks (New Society Publishers 2017) Review by Robyn Rosenfeldt This book is a guide to profitable, vibrant and sustainable permaculture- based market gardening. Zach Loeks is an educator, designer, consultant and farmer from Canada who says that we must balance the mimicry of natural systems with the practice of profit. You won’t find plant charts and guides here. This book takes a step back and looks at the farm as a whole ecosystem of people, soils, animals, plants and customers. With chapters on farm ecosystems, whole farm mapping, holistic planning and design management, Loeks focuses on planning and design. He also explains in detail his own permabed system and how it works. This book is about…

Hello faithful readers, In bringing together this issue of the mag, I am reminded more and more that permaculture offers so much in the way of solutions to the challenges facing many of us today, from rising house and food prices, work and time pressures, and the industrialisation of our food systems. In this issue, we meet people around the country responding to these problems by being more self-reliant and creating their own solutions. When we read about Meg Ulman and Patrick Jones’ life and their bucking of the system in Neo-peasantry; a way of life, we see that we don’t have to be weighed down by the costs and demands of modern living. They live car free, have a modest-sized house and block, and use their neighbourhood commons for…

When Shani Graham and Tim Darby learned about peak oil and climate change, their first instincts were to leg it to the country. ‘I was keen to stay in the city, although I couldn’t see how we could make that happen,’ recalls Shani. After much consideration, instead of fleeing the problem, they decided to channel their energies into running sustainability business ventures in urban settings. Tim and Shani set up an environmentally friendly B&B called the Painted Fish on Hulbert Street in South Fremantle. Soon after, they purchased a property down the street, retrofitting it to incorporate solar passive principles, making it more sustainable. They then began running Living Smart courses, behaviour change programs aimed at educating people to reduce their environmental impact. Inspired by what they’d learned on Hulbert…

Nestled among gums in South Australia’s Adelaide Hills lies an elegant home, made largely of rubbish – old car tyres, glass bottles and recycled cans. Such unconventional materials are key to constructing an Earthship, the now global ‘radically sustainable’ building technique pioneered by renegade American eco architect Michael Reynolds since the 1970s. It was a visit to Adelaide by Michael himself that sparked this project at Ironbank, one of the first official Earthships to be built in Australia. Michael had popped by to speak at UniSA in 2009 at the behest of Martin (Marty) Freney, an industrial design lecturer there. Afterwards, the pair headed up to Ironbank with a few students for a hands-on lesson in creating the Earthship’s fundamental building block; tyres ram-packed full of soil, which they casually…

Inspired by their experiences WWOOFING around Australia and volunteering at their local community garden, Alison Mellor and her partner Richard Walter embarked on an urban sustainability adventure. They retrofitted their 1950s suburban house in Wollongong (on NSW’s south coast) and transformed their backyard into a flourishing food garden. Ten years on, they reflect on the design process, the changes they’ve made and the lessons they’ve learned. IN THE BEGINNING In 2007, we first came across what would become our house and garden. It sat on a north facing 920 m2 suburban block. We saw a blank canvas ripe for creating a flourishing food garden, and plenty of potential to retrofit the small fibro house for sustainability. We spent three months working on the house before we moved in and during…

When Indira Naidoo first started filling her 13th floor balcony in Sydney with plants, few people thought that the novice gardener would have any success. ‘Because I’d never been a gardener, generally everyone was sceptical,’ Indira recalls. ‘Really the only person who was positive was Peter Cundall. He said, “just give it a go – you won’t know until you try”.’ Indira now grows around 60 different varieties of fruit and vegetables on the balcony of her inner Sydney apartment. ‘The things I’ve found that grow the most successfully tend to be tomatoes, and surprisingly, lemons,’ Indira says. ‘I do carrots, radishes, potatoes, strawberries and lots of herbs. I love adding fresh herbs into everything I cook, so there’s always plenty of parsley, mint and basil. The kale’s coming up…

This simple beanie pattern is a breeze to whip up in sizes for everyone in the family and is perfect for early rising gardeners to take the chill off winter mornings. The simple construction makes it a great step up for beginner knitters who are ready to move on from scarves, but aren’t quite ready to knit in the round. You can fancy it up by using a self-patterning yarn either bought from the shop or home-dyed using beautiful natural pigments (see Pip Magazine issue 7 for our how-to on natural dyeing!). MATERIALS 1 x 50 g ball of 8 ply yarn (x 2 for a large beanie) Pair of 5.5 mm needles Yarn needle for sewing up SIZE Medium size beanie GLOSSARY * K2tog across: Knit two together. Put…

In an unnumbered house on a dirt road in Kabul lives a small community, the Afghan Peace Volunteers (APVs). The members are mostly Hazaras, people who have been appallingly discriminated against in invasions and wars. They have no reason to believe in peace nor even consider it is possible. Yet a core group of these young people teamed up with a visionary Singaporean doctor, Hakim Tek Young Wee, to focus on the needs of the poorest people in their community. They also wanted to make a statement about war; its pain and impact. This is imaginative and dramatic peacemaking. The residential APV community is just a short walk from the Borderfree Nonviolence Community Centre (BNVCC) where the APV activities take place. Fifty or more young volunteers come and go all…

We have access to lots of coffee grounds. Just wondering about putting it around the fruit trees in the orchard which is also the chook run? Will they bother eating it and is it bad for them? Or will they be cackling and crowing all night?! [Cheryl, Brogo, NSW] Chickens don’t tend to eat used coffee grounds. They hold little nutritional value for them and caffeine is not good for chickens. The chickens will however scratch around in the coffee grounds and may make a dust bath in it. Their scratching will help you spread the coffee around the garden. In the chook run, the mix of coffee grounds, manure, hay and food scraps makes a great base for compost; I rake this all up and put it directly into…

Goats are entertaining, intelligent and productive animals and can offer a lot of inputs into a permaculture system. Due to their varied palate, they can be very useful in managing woody and weedy vegetation, as well as blackberries. In fact, much of their feed can come from excess growth around the garden. Having fresh milk on hand is also a strong motivator for many potential goat keepers, with homemade goats cheese being a delicacy. Goats can also be kept as a meat source, as well as for their manure, which adds fertility to soil. Unlike larger hooved animals, goats can be kept in urban areas, as long as they are taken out to forage daily. BENEFITS OF KEEPING GOATS Manure & mulch: Goats provide useful manure that can be used…

PROFILE Living a committed life of service to humanity and this beautiful planet is natural for Rosemary (Rowe) Morrow. She has been working and supporting people in areas of need for more than four decades through teaching permaculture in places where others don’t go. Without permaculture, the needs of people and the land would be less adequately met. Her work has helped establish permaculture as a globally relevant, accessible and practical way for addressing pressing planetary problems. Rowe’s career in permaculture has been dedicated to helping people in the greatest need. She has journeyed to meet and learn from farmers and villagers in some of the most challenged places. She seeks to offer information that makes a difference in places affected by worsening climate change, and countries facing the impacts…

The fruits and aromatic leaves of the tropical and subtropical rainforests of Eastern Australia provide a whole new palette of spices, fragrances and flavours for the adventurous cook. These uniquely Australian flavours, merged with the creativity stimulated by living in a multicultural society, readily give rise to an endless array of culinary innovations. It’s surprising how many of these plants are frequently included in regular landscapes, native gardens and public plantings in parks and streetscapes in Sydney and further south; some are quite frost hardy. Most of our subtropical bush foods come from rainforest understorey environments; sheltered, frost-free microclimates with dappled shade. In the garden these understorey plants will grow successfully under the canopy of taller trees or in protected areas close to the house where they receive some shade…

KAT LAVERS The Plummery sounds like a sprawling countryside property. Its garden beds grow an abundance of vegetables, with surrounding fruit and nut trees underplanted with shrubs, herbs and flowers. Bubblegum grape shades the house and there’s a greenhouse with bananas and babaco. A quail aviary sits by the side of the house and on the southern side are avocados, feijoas and a cherry guava. Yet all of this is contained on a 280 m2 block in Melbourne’s inner city suburb of Northcote, at the home of permaculture designer Kat Lavers. Last year, the Plummery provided 350 kg of herbs, vegies, fruit, eggs and honey, with Kat only spending half a day a week gardening. ‘Sometimes I dream about planting oaks and chestnuts, but the reality is I don’t have…

‘Ligaya’ means happiness in the Tagalog language. ‘It’s a special kind of happiness, one that comes from connectedness with family and community,’ explains Malcolm Haines. It’s a fitting name for his family’s garden. Located in Gawler South, South Australia, Ligaya is home to Malcolm, Jelina and their son Marlon, as well as Athena the Labrador, three chooks, several fish and ‘innumerable bugs’. Ligaya grows an abundance of food within its 61 m2. Malcolm reels off a huge list of what it has yielded over the last year. ‘Lablab beans, sweet apple berry, muntries, edible chrysanthemums, Jerusalem artichokes, five kinds of deciduous fruit trees, seven citrus, four types of guava, pepinos, okra, olives, hops, two kinds of passionfruit, assorted herbs, the usual kitchen vegies, two types of melons, daikon, strange radishes,…

Close to Perth’s central business district, something is growing by the Midland railway line. For over 20 years, Perth City Farm (a not-for-profit community garden, educational centre and urban oasis) has been welcoming members of the community through its gates. The team that started Perth City Farm was made up of Rosanne Scott, Chris Ferreira, Clayton Chipper and Neal Bodel, with support coming from not-for-profit, non-political society Men of the Trees. Men of the Trees aimed to improve WA’s environmental quality, get local youth involved in environmental efforts and promote health and wellbeing through permaculture. ‘We wanted to inspire people to do environmental work,’ Chris explains. These values have flowed through to Perth City Farm, in addition to others the farm would go on to develop. Using the acronym PEACE,…

Many adults think back to their childhoods with fond memories of being outdoors, roaming freely, with long periods of time playing on the farm or beach, in the creeks, fields and forests, being out from sunrise to sunset. This freedom and time to connect with nature is so often denied to children today and is to the detriment of their health and our planet. In response to this, Australia has seen a range of bush schools develop across the country. Also called forest schools, these educational programs are set outdoors, so children can connect with nature through play and exploration. Bush schools encourage children and educators to be in the natural Australian environment on a regular basis as part of their school day. Most bush schools currently run for one…

JOKE! HAHA. Why does the mushroom get invited to all the parties? Because he’s such a fungi. BOOK REVIEW! The Thank You Dish by Trace Balla Review by Ella Woodger Rosenfeldt (Age 9) This book is about being thankful to all the people and animals that help bring food to our plates. It is about a girl named Grace who thanks the kangaroos for not eating the carrots, the alpaca for the wool so Aunty Amber could knit a scarf so Uncle Fred wouldn’t freeze so that he could catch a fish, and last of all her mum for cooking her dinner. Every page has lots of beautiful drawings. I like it because it’s got a pattern to the story that makes it fun to read.…