Growing Your Way to Freedom

People often ask me why I grow my own food. I simply reply that it gives me freedom. I can eat fresh, wholesome food straight from the garden, in the sound knowledge that it did not come from far away, or was raised using pesticides,herbicides or fossil fuels. I am providing food for my family’s needs. What could be more sustainable than that?

Here is a good example. The Dervaes family who live in Pasadena, CA in the USA that have achieved amazing things on the same sized suburban block that many Australians own. Theirs is a 809 square metre block and just about every single scrap of land is used to grow food. It is a very inspiring story.

And a longer video about the family and their Path to Freedom;

Did you notice they they didn’t have any rainwater tanks? Somehow I think that if any of us went to this extreme, we would have to have a 50,000 litre tank squirreled away somewhere!

Anyway, sorry about the mass of date changes for the next meeting. I will be so happy when we get a committee together and set regular meeting dates. Oh well, early days.

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Clay Oven Workshop

On Saturday, the group held a clay oven workshop at Gavin & Kims place which was well attended by members of the Melton Sustainable Living Group. We had ten willing workers at our disposal, and we managed to occupy them all on various tasks during the day. So from this: To this in two hours (plus one day's drying and sand removal)! So let me step you through what we did during the workshop. However, be warned, there are lots of photos (click to enlarge). Before everyone turned up at 10am, I received an order at 8am of 1 cubic metre of packing sand, which has a high clay content. Kim and I had to shift this sand from the roadside to the area where we were making the oven. It took me the good part of an hour to do this work alone. After a cuppa and a biscuit, I made this template for the sand dome. It is 50cm high and 85cm wide. This picture shows how the sand dome was being formed. Four people on a quadrant building up sand. ...

MSLG Mozzarella Workshops

by Gavin Webber I find teaching people new skills exciting and very satisfying. Saturday was no exception. This workshop was offered to members of the Melton Sustainable Living Group and if we were desperate for numbers, it was going to be open to friends. However it turned out to be so popular that we had 12 interested members within a week. I offered my services for free and each student paid $15 to cover organic milk costs and ingredients. As I mentioned in my last post, I split the workshop participants in half, and I taught two back to back mozzarella cheese making workshops, the first from 10am - 12pm, then a break and the next from 2pm - 4pm. Both classes were fully booked, however we had a late cancellation for the first class. You can see the setup below. This is the undercover area just at the entrance to the house. Nice and clean and out of the weather. You can see six small camp stoves, rubber gloves, and cl...

Backyard Chickens Workshop 16th April 2011

Yesterday, my friend Jan and I presented a workshop to the Melton Sustainable Living Group members and friends. The workshop is one of the regular monthly activities the group holds on the 3rd Saturday of each month. I believe that it was informative and I certainly had a good time presenting it. As requested by one of my readers on The Greening of Gavin , we captured the highlights on video and I placed it on YouTube. I hope you enjoy all the chicken antics and my presentation! Gavin Webber President, MSLG Inc.

Melton Sustainable Living Group

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