Thank you and Merry Christmas to everyone who’s responded so positively to the writings and films I’ve been posting on Our Permaculture Life – on this Blog, on Youtube and Facebook,

After decades of ‘just doing it’, I was encouraged a year ago to start writing about our permaculture way of life and have received such amazing feedback both in person and online. It is so uplifting to know so many people are interested in living a simple &natural way of life.

I so enjoy receiving the comments you write, and participating in discussions about the various topics. I’d love your suggestions too (please fill in the v.quick survey below).

The ripple effect of our actions, our words, our thoughts – our work and the way we choose to live – is profound. It’s so important to be thinking about change – exploring the possibilities and taking positive, practical steps.

16 POPULAR POSTS FROM ‘OUR PERMACULTURE LIFE’

1. My Permaculture Garden – a 30 minute tour of my award-winning garden, plus list of species.
2. Morag’s Simple and Successful No Dig Garden Method – a step by step guide (film coming soon)
3. How to Make Comfrey Tea – a super easy natural homemade fertiliser
4. Worm Towers – a quick and easy way to turn food waste into garden fertiliser – without digging or turning. and Worm Tower Film Clip – a superbly simple way to put your foodsraps back in the soil
5. 7 Ways to Use All of Your Pumpkin Plant – simple abundance
6. City as Farm: City Dwellers Love to Grow Food – weaving food growing into the cities
7. Ingeniously Simple Idea to Harvest Compost Worms By 8 Year Old Boy – innovative thinking from my young home educated son.
8. Temporary permaculture for renters – 11 ideas for growing abundant food without owning land
9. Live simply: 14 Ways to Save Money and Avoid Debt – practical and common-sense advice
10. Save over $23,000 a Year and De-stress with a Few Simple Living Strategies
11. Five Easy Steps to Make Cheap Beeswax Wraps & Reduce Cling Wrap Use – make your own beeswax cloths in minutes for less than a dollar.
12. Five Simple Ways to Improve Your Soil – having great soil is the basis of healthy plants and food.
13. Did you know our clothes are poisoning us? More Reasons to Choose Simple Natural Fashion for Earth Care and People Care – it’s good to know the backstory to where many of our ‘things’ come from
14. 27,000 Trees A Day to Wipe Bottoms – What’s Your Wipe of Choice? – taking a closer look at a  very common household consumable
15. Why I Let My Young Children Leave School To Learn At Home… an introduction to the way I home educate my children
16. 9 Ways to Simply Use Chia: an easy ‘superfood’ to grow at home – great ways to grow and use chia, and some yummy recipes too.

PLEASE SEND YOUR SUGGESTIONS AND FEEDBACK

I’d love to get your feedback and suggestions about the topics you enjoy most and those you’d like me to write and film more about. Either leave a comment at the bottom of this post or click on this survey monkey link – it should take less than a minute to complete.

The post 16 Best Posts on Our Permaculture Life : Practical Simplicity for Everyday Life appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

A natural-coloured old wool blanket dyed with vegetables. These colours are fast. Purple carrot = purple (of course). Onion skin = orange.  Avocado seed = light brown.

Brown onion skins boiled for 1 hour in water. The fabric is then submerged into this pot and boiled for another hour. The samples above were only in for 15 minutes. While the colour does not wash out it fades over time – then you can simply refresh the colour with another soak.

Boiling up the purple carrot and avocado colour pots.

Last weekend I took Maia and Hugh to do a family-friendly natural dye workshop with Alieta, Leeza and Olin from the Forest Art Collective in Maleny. It revolutionised my thinking about what we can do about making non-toxic clothing – I’m totally hooked!

The learning circle.

Fabulous creative science. Many young children loved this workshop.

I really cannot believe how simple and effective the techniques are and how colouring fabrics this way creates only a tiny bit of compostable waste – the onion skins, boiled carrots and avocado seeds.

The waste from the botanical print dying process – compostable leaves, re-usable twine, and reusable metal scraps.

During the workshop we also experimented with botanical prints using leaves on natural fabrics. Here are the sample strips I did. You can see silky oak, eucalyptus, cinerea, bleeding heart – on silk, cotton, wool and paper.  I can’t wait to keep experimenting and making my own hand-dyed organic clothing. Thankfully there’s a great shop in my local town where I can source un-dyed organic fabrics.

My first go at creating natural botanical prints using natural fabrics and paper, leaves, water, twine and an iron rod.

I moistened the wool strip. (NB: you can see the original colour of the wool here that was used in the carrot, onion and avocado dyes)

Roll the leaves tightly in with the wool onto a rusty iron rod. The iron helps to fix the plant print to the fabric and give the black colour.

Bind tightly with twine to hold it all in place when it is boiled. Wool with

Create whatever patterns you like – here I used cinerea and eucalypt

I added 4 different leaf arrangements on my rod. It is also possible to have a large piece of fabric folded over to create leaf patterned prints.

Boil the wrapped iron rods in a pot of water for 1 hour.

I unravelled my stick as soon as it came out of the pot – so curious to see what had happened. If I’d had the patience to leave it rolled and moist for 3 weeks, all the colours would be far more intense.

We used iron at the workshop, but by wrapping and boiling with different rods you can get different effects. When you boil up in a stainless steel or aluminium pot,  iron = black, copper = blueish tinge, wood = neutral. The metals also fix the colours.

The post Chemical-free clothes: Easy DIY Natural Dye Using Common Foods appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

image source: www.onegreenplanet.org

• Synthetic fibres shed and accumulate as toxicity in nature. 
• Natural fibres biodegrade and are recycled by nature. (Most of my old clothes end up as mulch, worm food and compost)

Those of you who have read my blog posts before know I focus on food and growing, but today I am moved to write from a different angle. Thanks to the many recent conversations I’ve had with people on this disastrous link between fast fashion, ecological systems disruption and toxicity in our food.

Please join me in thinking about this big issue and next time you are heading out to make a textile purchase. And please me spread the word by sharing this post with your friends and networks.

Think, buy, use, renew and make natural!

Might be time to get those alpacas …. image source: www.goodonyou.org.au

The post Did you know our clothes are poisoning us? More Reasons to Choose Simple Natural Fashion for Earth Care and People Care appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.