Buy Nothing New October 2015

Posted on October 2, 2015 by anthonypickering

So Buy Nothing New October started yesterday. A. and I have decided that we will pledge again for this.

http://www.buynothingnew.com.au/why/

Given how over the last few months I have had to clear out 10 cubic meters of stuff into skips this will be a cathartic process for me.

It will also be a nice break for our bank accounts which have been pummelled by the work on the back yard and granny flat.

I have enough items to keep me in projects probably till the end of the year LOL J as does A. with our room looking like a quilting store 🙂

Our main driver is that we need to reduce our impact as a collective reduce the amount of stuff we are stealing from our kids future!

We all have to try to live by the motto

Reduce then Repair then Reuse then Recycle

So why not give it a try what is the worst that could happen?

The heat is still on …

Posted on January 15, 2014 by anthonypickering

Well day 3 of the heat wave is almost over. It should cool down at about 2am with the way things are going 🙂

Garden has done ok. A few sections have taken a hiding but the one thing that surprisingly so far has taken a real beating was the banana tree I had been gifted. I am surprised as this I though in a good container of water would have loved the heat. Clearly wrong on this one. It will recover but it interesting to see how things operate in these conditions. In many ways we are in uncharted territory with so many once in a life time heat waves in in 5 years.

I covered the bees with some shade in the form of a trellis but after A. got an email from the Victorian apiarist association we did a bit more work. They suggested a sheet or box of polystyrene on top of the hive to help insulate. Seems to have worked as the last two days the back hive had none and there where bees outside cooling it but yesterday and today in even warmer temperatures they seemed fine.

We really need to get quilt boxes for them all and some Warre style tops as well. Warre hives maybe not in our plans at present in what we are doing but parts of the design I can see working with our langstroth hives.

The water bowls are checked each morning and it is nice to see the stone carving I did 18 months ago working so well as a reservoir for our bees 🙂 It is really important that you have stones or gravel in the bowl. Bees drown easily and this or floating rafts in the water supply help them to stay out of the water.

Ducks and chickens are really feeling it the shaded pond seems to be helping and they are just staying in the shade.

The water from them is keeping some of the trees happy and it is being swapped out regularly for them.

Shade and water is all they really need.

The kiddie pool idea worked out well even my wasabi so far has stood up well (touch wood) the other plants seem fine and the wicking beds are doing their thing and the fruit trees are ripening well and even that mint seems to standing up to the heat. If a small section of food forest works like this interested in seeing how half the backyard will work.

One area we are struggling with is the house. We really need the insulation in the house. Being uninsulated it is just not staying cool and locking it up has had minimal effect. The shade sail is working well though and the back half of the house really makes a huge difference to the heat in that section it has been cooler than the back half. This sort of passive design is a winner.

When the kids come home they ask for a cool bath and this seems to make a huge difference along with a couple of small fans.

Other than we are just ensuring we keep our fluids up.

It is interesting but I think people have forgotten how to deal with this in their lives. Lots of people have lost pets by not setting them up correctly (not even enough water) and people look broken limping between air conditioned buildings and onto the train.

If this is the future people are going to need to adapt to it in regards to them and their properties. I was discussing with A. with the way that power grid is simply not standing up to the load I am wary of relying on this technology. Our house is better than most and we have the capacity to improve it to be less reliant on systems that can fail so we will.

Two days to go so hope all the Melbourne people are doing as well as me. Interesting times ahead and we will see more of these heat waves I believe.

On the upside it is not to bad to come home and go out into the backyard and be hit by the smell of warm honey and fennel 🙂 not to bad at all.

Buy Nothing New October 2013

Posted on October 3, 2013 by anthonypickering

So buy nothing new October has come around again. Last year we did this and enjoyed the process it made us look at our buying habits and how we can reduce our load on the world and save some money at the same time.

Even now it has made me look at things. A store I shop at had some interesting stuff and I had thought hey I could use a couple of things, then thought no I can’t it is buy nothing new October oh well next month.

Then I read this article http://www.artofmanliness.com/2013/09/27/how-to-turn-your-garage-into-a-blacksmithing-woodworking-shop/

And it reminded me that with tools(one of the things I was looking at) it is quantity not quality and I have learnt this the hard way a few times. I have quality saws and chisels I was given 20 years ago by my grandfather they are still some of the best tools I have. It is a concern that even people like me who think about this stuff can be drawn into the marketing ploy so easily and it takes something like buy nothing new to get perspective. So far from being a silly stand on soap box and look at me it can make people think. At the end of the day sadly my dollar seems of more value than my vote these days.

As with last year A. and I have looked at exclusions and have come up with two. One is anything I grab at the Elmore field day I am taking my daughter to tomorrow. And the other is a couple of things I will need for a wicking bed skill-share/working bee with the local permaculture group.

On both occasions I am going to be careful and remember to look at anything with a close eye on its environmental effect and long term ness. For the wicking bed I am going to trawl for second hand stuff if I can’t find it I can retreat and grab it new if I have to get it last minute for the get together.

And I had my eye on one of those dynamo torches at that store in question then I remember the last one I bought failed after on 12 months. Probably best to wait in hindsight and buy something of better quality.

Oh and that wheel barrow I fixed last year in buy nothing new in October 2012. Still going strong.

A Busy Week

Posted on September 8, 2013 by anthonypickering

Man what a busy week. After restarting blogging here and realizing that I was paralyzed by own my thought pattern I have found that the process of just getting into the blog has led to a burst in energy here doing the real stuff here in urban hippie land.

We have a function here in a week or so and (more on that next week) add to that A. has finally run out of patience at not being able to get into the car port for the last 12 months.

I have so many projects where I have all the parts and have just been in a state of ennui it will be a while before I need purchase anything which is a great situation to be in.

This weekends projects have been to get the back yard into a safe state for non-urban hippy children and adults. Our kids are not helicopter parented and they know about nails in old pallets and to stay away from the stinging nettle. Not all kids have had that well a developed level of self-preservation J or have made as many mistakes …

So the back yard was cleared up and looking pretty swish. Unlike other times I have made sure that it has not been a quick cleanup. Where possible I have finished projects rather than just dumping the items in the area where the shed will be moved to as a hidey spot. If I couldn’t I have grouped them into projects to be worked on later.

A number of things done will be posted in the week to come. Such as extending a chicken run getting the front garden bed started but the big one was the side path and clearing up the 1.5 cubic meters of road base that I have had in the drive way for the last year or so and was threating to get me into trouble with the non-hippie wife.

While cleaning up I found a large amount of snails and slugs and the girls have been very happy to help my getting rid of them 🙂

As you know I am great collector (read hoarder) of things and hold a great believe in the idea of not buying something new if you have something that will fill its place.

The side of the house in the coolest and least sunny part of the site. I store my mushroom logs there and have wasabi and other shade loving plants. It also provided access to the back of the house and it has been a bit of disaster with a lot of water coming down and a lot of weeds needing to be managed.

So the first order of the day was to get down some weed proof material. I could have purchased weed mat but I had a lot, and I mean a lot of the bags that I get my organic chicken food in. So why not utilize them? Why buy more stuff made from petro chemicals when I already have it here and have to purchase it for what I need?

So I laid them in an overlapping pattern and then piled on the blue metal road base and when I ran out of bags grabbed dome the old ripped tent tunnel cover I had that was not water tight enough for a wicking bed and used that. By the end of the weekend the base is down and the rest of the phase will be to compact it and then a thin layer of sand, and then lay second had bricks that I have been collecting (and using for garden beds) finally as nature abhors a vacuum I will supper seed the brick gaps with a mixture of herb seeds, roman chamomile and lots of dandelion seeds mixed with sand. Those spots in high usage area’s will remain clear the rest will produce for the bees and for us. As I go through the phases I will explain each one and why I am doing it this way.

Phase one is the road base, and it was chosen is for two reasons.

One. We have quite reactive soil and I have seen what it has done to concrete slabs in the back shed and the road base has a bit more flex in it. In a worst case scenario the bricks can be pulled up re-laid if they get too moved.

The second is embodied energy. While the breaking up and transporting the basalt for the road base is intensive it pales in comparison to the amount of energy for concrete. Don’t get me wrong we use concrete and will continue to. For some jobs it is the best and most effective product but where possible we limit its use.

I also got a wicking bed in a bath ready to go and this will hopefully be completed by the end of the week.

Time to get some sleep… need to go to work to get a rest tomorrow.

Didn’t plan it so going to have to wing it.

Posted on September 6, 2013 by anthonypickering

Last year a friend gave me some amazing Sicilian basil. Big leaves perfect on a slice of bread as it had a milder flavour and was large enough that two or three leaves covered a slice of A. sourdough.

Teamed up with good cheese it was awesome.

So at the end of summer it died back to a few twigs but a lot of seeds. I put the poor sad pot at the back door with plans to put a bag over it to collect the seeds for next year. But each time I walked past less seeds where there and I forgot or got busy. It would have taken me 5 minutes to do it but didn’t…

It is a luxury in this time we are in that I don’t have to stress about it as I can always go online and find some or ask the friend again. In the future we may not be so lucky in which case I would hope I am more disciplined or one of my neighbours is. Seed saving is a skill I am more intermittent at than good at. I is a skill that I have said I will work on this year along with better propagation techniques.

But I did have an idea that sad forlorn pot was still! There maybe, just maybe some of the seeds in it?

So I am going to do a bit of an experiment. I covered the pot with a light dusting of good potting mix and chucked it in a tub it allow the water to wick up. It went into my new propagation hot house. What is the worst that could happen? Some weeds grow? Chickens can eat those.

It got me thinking that now is the time to work on skills and experiment now, build for a future where at the very least everything we do will become much more expensive and learning very unusual skills harder as $200 flight to another city to do a course becomes a $500 train trip or $1000 plan ride.

It is a reason my garden beds are mostly made with recycled blue stone blocks or bricks they will last forever and can be reused over and over again with little to no additional fossil inputs.

So as i have said before go out there and skill up, But I add to that go out there and experiment as well!

Are we all making it easier to do nothing at all?

Posted on September 3, 2013 by anthonypickering

So I have been quiet again… nothing new there … (or NO news there 🙂 )

And have been contemplating why?

I had a think on father’s day as sick number 2 child was sleeping in the sun next to me and came to the conclusion I have been my own worst enemy in a number of ways recently. I have been looking at what I have been doing and going well that is not blog worthy, that is not environmental ‘enough’ and worst of all comparing. I think that other person is doing everything so much better than me. Look they are living in a yurt made of their own hair and fuelling it with their own dried dung while living entirely of raw foraged food…

Perfection is a dangerous, dangerous thing. It can easily paralyse us and make us look at what we are doing and says I can’t compete with that and simply give up. It is something those of us interested in a better world need to consider. Often near enough is a damn side better than not at all!

I think looking back on it that has been an issue with me over the last 6 or so months. Recently however I have had a couple of the shining examples that have held themselves out as the saviours of various parts of the world and I have been comparing myself to start to look not so perfect after all.

They don’t look bad, not even poor, quite good actually but not perfect.

It has made me consider that we all do what we can and judging yourself to harshly is counterproductive. I lost sight of why I am doing what “I” do and lost my own direction. So I am going to get back on the horse and live by the old motto below.

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are, when you can!

Now amusingly as we speak of full circles. Sunday was father’s day and strangely enough I had a ground hog moment when I realised that last father’s day I worked on my mini seed raising hot house and again I did the same thing this year.

The unit last year worked ok but had a few serious faults and lead to some losses so I wanted to do something a bit different and easier to use this year.

So it has had an upgrade with recycled windows replacing the builders plastic and it now has much better access as the two windows at the front are hinged which will mean I can see everything and easily access the seedlings to manage them and check on them (which is a major cause of failure last year).

I have moved it so it is not in the way but close enough and easy to get to keep an eye on it.(we live in this house it can’t just be my green playground)

I was lucky and have been harvesting the hard wast for a while and it made of repurposed material, an old shelf I found, some old shower screens for the ends, and windows I picked up as hard rubbish, even the boards are from a pallet I found. Only some of the screws are new.

In the end I like making stuff up from what others in our society perceive as no longer useful the environmental aspect is important but anyone using a cheap commercial mini hot house from Aldi or Bunning’s is still doing more for the environment than those who poo poo the purchases of such items on environmental grounds and do nothing.

Again do what you can with what you have! If I worked out all the environmental background noise of my cordless drill I used to build my mini hot house if I had only bought one for occasional use then the cheap plastic seed raising hot houses looks very good in comparison (no Congo gorilla parts for a start in the battery components or slave child labour to mine those materials)

To me not wasting that is the primary driver. Not spending $60 or $100 is a good thing as it allows me to utilise that money in a far more environmentally effective ways in the rest of my life style.

But as I don’t get to make stuff in my challenging white collar job it is kind of cool to make it myself which is as good a reason as any.

As you can see I still need to seal a few gaps and add some latches but it is a working unit now and will be for a number of years if I look after it.

Even without those steps I can now start to plant up some seeds and get into the doing what I can part for the coming spring.

A quick question. When was the last time you read about a complete failure on a blog by the blog poster? Something I need to rectify myself on this site from now on. I screw up recipes and other projects all the time and learn from them.

Expect to see some failures documented in the future. 🙂

Gross Amounts of Inspiration

Posted on April 13, 2013 by anthonypickering

Well despite having only just caught up with sleep, being part way through a 15 day juice detox and getting back to a busy week of work I am still buzzing from my last weekend and start to the week. I went to the amazing Milkwood Permaculture Institute up in Mudgee to attend a natural building course.

I will not go into details of the building process as I think it is only fair for Milkwood to publish the detailed steps in their excellent blog (they allready have an overview of the build so jump to their site and have a look once you have finished reading this post) which I would strongly recommend that people sigh up for.

Suffice to say I had a great 4 days we built a rubble foundation, stacked bales, built a reciprocal roof, rendered the outside with lime render, the inside with clay render and put second hand timber on the roof in preparation for a earth roof they are planning (we didn’t quite get onto this but that was no biggie)

My brain was fried by the sheer volume of information and the professional builder who was the instructor gave us amazing amounts of information and was so generous with his knowledge it was ridiculous.

But it was more than the course. Being at Milkwood showed what can be done. As Sam the builder said ‘Many talk the talk, these guys walk the walk’. We did a quick site tour and the knowledge and skill and the understanding is everywhere. From the management of water to energy to food production. All done with a level of practicality I don’t often in people who are out to change in this area.

The people on the course where great and everyone got a chance to try everything as well as get good sound theoretical knowledge and ask as many questions and discuss options.

We ate incredibly well (most of it from Milkwood) and sat outside and watched the stars, drank tea, planned and chatted as a group.

Even the 11 hour drive home and a couple of hours sleep before heading to work, worked out well. It gave me the time to sort through the info I had in my head and idea’s I need to get into. And boy do I have a few idea’s.

I have already put in more winter vegies and am looking at the hot house glass going I have to get this going now. I have to get the new chicken pens sorted. And a host of other things to keep me entertained.

It is still unlikely I will ever get a consensus for a move out country and build something as grand as full sized sustainable house and permaculture life style block 🙂 At the end of the day I do see a reno of my place in the very near future and a weekender where I can put in more food forest and my own zone 4/5 and build of a small place to stay in. Probably a lot like the one we built up there. The reciprocal roof is such a thing of beauty I couldn’t not have one on any building I built.

I also gained a huge amount of knowledge about what to do with my place to get it more efficient. So I will continue to dream and will most likely be back to Milkwood to do more courses. I will also still keep working on getting the most out of my little urban block. After all not everyone can have acreage in a finite future and being able to do what I can in the suburbs is the most important thing.

Oh and one last thing. I got to see the mythical upside down fire in action. And yes it definitely does work.

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Making Olla

Posted on March 4, 2013 by anthonypickering

Making the Olla

I have commented on the olla bed in a previous post. The bed has worked well providing us with most of our salad greens over the last year and as I have just replanted it again this time with a different mix including some tomatoes.

With the prospect of a hotter dryer summer this year I will be adding in some more in other beds and thought this might be a good time to go over the process I used to make up the olla and beds.

The olla that form the core of the unit are simply an unglazed earthen ware container to hold water. The water will pass through the pores of the clay by the process of osmoses, being drawn into the soil and the plants roots will take up the moisture from the soil. It allows you to avoid watering every day and wastes a lot less water as the water is applied directly to the roots of the plants avoiding evaporation. I have also noted that while the planted seedlings did well weeds could not get going as there water is kept below the surface this reduced the weeding. The down side of this was that without extra watering vegetable seeds will not germinate effectively so you are best to used seedlings that you have grown in a hot house or warm bed.

I was lucky that I a friend of A.s mother had some old terracotta pipe pieces she was selling for $3 each and I had some old pot saucers I had got with some pots from Bunnings a few years ago.

The first step was to sand back the glaze from the pots inside and out. What these pipes where origonaly meant for which is to keeping water in is not what I am after. I am after a porous effect and sanding back the glaze helps this osmoses effect.

I then used some silicon to attach the bases and filled them with water to make sure that they (A). did not leak and (B) to see if over time the water started to move through the walls of the pipes as intended.

Two of them worked straight away and in an hour water could be seen beading on the outside of the pipes walls.

A quick extra sand and the last one filled and rechecked and all three were up and running.

All up they probably cost me about $5 each. In third world countries they cost around 25 cents each made locally and while this might sound cheap if you do the math’s 25 cents for person on a couple of dollars a day adds up to around $40 each if I purchased them here in Australia.

These olla can also be a great way to use up old terracotta pots joined together when they get old as the qualities that you need which is the breakdown of the glaze on the pots over time is why they are less useful now as pots and make great olla.

Shortly I will post on how I used them in a bathtub garden bed along with an integrated worm farm.

A Sunday

Posted on March 3, 2013 by anthonypickering

Our Sundays can be a but a hectic but they have fallen into a bit of a routine.

As our youngest decides that 5:30am is a good time to wake up and demand some food typically one of us is up even on the weekends at that time.

Chickens and ducks get fed, any plants needing it watered (depending on rain), cats fed and then a homemade breakfast.

I then head off to the community garden or my garden and do some work, Catch up together for swimming classes a few hours later, home for lunch, a nap for one of us while the other heads out with the older child to get anything that we need for the week ahead(I also do a fair bit of urban foraging for pallets at the is time in the industrial area’s near home)

Back home for stuff around the house (today was getting the ropes off the shade sail and replacing it with real hardware). Kids bathed, dinners cooked maybe one of neighbors over for dinner (we do this a lot), clothes ironed for the corporate week, house cleaned up as much as we can before we collapse in exhaustion.

Sounds normal and probably is. I will draw yourself to a few details. Homemade breakfast and lunches. Today we had sourdough hot cross buns and coffee for breakfast, and great lunch post kids swimming lessons of artisan bacon, home free range eggs, sourdough, tomatoes and mushrooms with a good red rind soft cheese and baked beans. Again with coffee.

So all of this set us back maybe $20 at the max for both meals. In the day A. and I would go to a café and the meal for one of use would be this much on one meal. We see a lot of the people in our swim class head to café at the swimming center and they probably spend twice that for a meal for them. And that is fine. We just choose to save our money and know where our food comes from.

The garden and the community garden help to keep us sane and in good fruit and veg. It is easier to just buy it but not better.

The shade sail cost us probably $1000 in total (probably a bit less) and we had neighbors who put in a similar one by a professional company that set them back $15,000. Now there’s took two weeks to get put in, mine took about a year to get ready. It does the same great job and keeps the back of the house 5 to 10 degrees cooler on a really hot day. Kids sleep better we sleep better. Again skills in house, be it cooking, concreting or managing the tension on the sail it is all skills to have and use.

Our evening meals on Sunday are typically a roast, stew or curry. And we would more than 50% of our time have a neighbor around for the meal. We enjoy their company they bring some booze we chat we eat it is all good. One thing we always try to do over the weekend is to get some extra meals ready and that also means a big curry or stew so we have enough for lunches. A meal at work canteen will set you back a minimum of $10 for a meal that is $50 per week $2500 per year… Yes I would prefer that in the bank or off my mortgage thank you very much.

Tonight I managed to get 10 meals together for the week (1 meal a day, 2 people, 5 days) and juice 4 cups of lemons (got a big bag from my parents) while chatting to my neighbor and cooking a meal. We are set and I can still be social even while doing things (hey I can drink beer and cook curry)

Even the setback of finding my work pants in need of repair was handled by A. who just pulled out the sewing machine and just repaired them. Again a set of skills used.

The reason for this long winded post is to show that while busy, we spend a lot of our time with each other and the kids, we get a nap often and save some money. I think this is how is should be. Yes we are buggered some times. Yes some days we order pizza and I end with a meal of two minute noodles and a can of tuna for lunch on Mondays but all in all we like this. We like the extra money in the bank it keeps us sane in this crazy world and our kids like to watch us do stuff not just stare at the TV screen. It allows us to control our consumerism and keep it under control. The skills are critical. I keep harping on about this the more skills you can build the better off you will be.

Learn absorbe, do!

Well this Sunday has come to an end and my last task before collapsing is to get this post out. Have a great week of work and remember if you a wishing it was Friday you are wishing away 5 days of your life.

Making it a bit easier – Laying Boxs on the easy

Posted on January 31, 2013 by anthonypickering

Like it or not we all lead very busy lives and the amount time we can get things done in impacts on what else we can get done.

Time should be treated as, as much of a resource as water, soil or anything else required to live your life. And it is very much a non renewable resource, once gone it will not be back. The effective use of that time is what allows us to enjoy the sit down and the time spent with kids, family and friends.

I harp on about how every dollar is time out of your life the less you have to spend the less you have to make the more time you have to enjoy yourself. Pretty simple equation.

I try to tackle the regular jobs that need to be done as efficiently as I can. Getting the setup of this helps out a lot and I was reminded of this morning when I needed to clean out the chickens laying box’s before work.

needs to be cleaned

For a lot of years I had an old 44 gallon drum that I used to use as a chicken laying box in my chicken run. It was something I inherited from my sister with her chickens when she moved north. It sort of worked as the rest of my chicken run was from recycled hard waste. It kept the chickens out of the way and provided them with a space to lay in. The problem with it was that to clean it out was a pain. It meant that I had to reach all the way in and drag out the old straw. The task was messy and unpleasant as you ended covered in dust and chicken manure. It was also time consuming and the combination meant it happened a little less often than would be optimal.

The other big problem was that it was dark and had lots of nooks and crannies could easily lead to lice and other pests not being cleared out of the laying box allowing for reinfestation.

When I mentioned this process clean out process to a girl at work she said her dad of Sicilian decent just used large plastic pots as laying boxes. Easy to clean easy to handle and can be washed out and left to dry in the sun giving the nasties a good dose of UV to kill them off.

I had no spare large pots but I did have some large plastic barrels used for importing olives that I had picked up.

So I cleared out the old 44 gallon drum out of the shed and cut the plastic barrel in half and washed it out thoroughly and viola as below I had laying box’s setup. A board at the front to stop the chicken kicking out the straw and it was finished.

Where as before the clean out took 15-20 minutes of messy work the clean out now takes 30 seconds dump the contents into the compost bin.

emptied out

Give them a quick squirt out with water if required and dry. emptie out and ready for straw

Fill with straw and done. Maybe two minutes on average and can be done in my work clothes without any worry of getting messed up.

all clean

Mine are on the ground as my birds seem to prefer not to roost but you could easily put them on a shelf up a bit higher if you wanted to as they weigh next to nothing.

I am going to be sharing a few ideas on my chicken run. Partially because i promised it when i started this blog but also my friend Libby from libby cooks is building a new chicken run so it seems like an opportune time to post on the subject.

I am NOT an urban hippie

The rampant ramblings of someone trying to live a greenish life while seeing the world. From Melbourne Australia to the United Kingdom to the Netherlands this is a look at life as lived.

Category Archives: Building & Repairing