“What is the role of growing food at home or in community gardens during the pandemic?”

“Why have so many people taken up gardening over the past few months?”

“What impact has it had on their lives?”

These are all very interesting and important questions!

Download this list of 10 of Morag’s favourite books.

Morag’s 4 part introduction to permaculture video series.

A new Pandemic Gardening survey found that a huge 98% of survey respondents said they will continue food gardening after the pandemic. Surprisingly, 19% said they couldn’t have made it without their garden. The survey team received hundreds of comments about how very important food gardening is. Respondents described it as liberating, essential, and life-saving. There were comments like: ‘it gives me hope and peace”. “gardening gives me purpose in a way that I haven’t got from working” & “there is a future when you garden.”

Join me as I discuss the role of gardening during the pandemic with Dr Nick Rose on episode 17 of my podcast Sense-Making in a Changing World

ABOUT DR NICK ROSE

Dr Nick Rose is the leader of the survey team, urban agriculture champion, Churchill Fellow, Exec. Director of Sustain Australia,  lecturer in Food Studies at William Angliss College, host of the National Urban Agriculture Forums , author (Fair Food & Reclaiming the Urban Commons ) & friend.

Nick sent out a call to gardeners around Australia and in just a month got over 9000 responses. His National Pandemic Gardening Survey was done in conjunction with Community Gardens Australia, Sustainable Gardening Australia, 3000 acres, Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation, Yerrabingin, Pocket City Farms, and was supported by Costa Georgiadis of ABC Gardening Australia and Diggers Club.

The pandemic gardening report is released in November 2020.

Enjoy! Subscribe to my podcast here.

Read the full transcript here

Morag Gamble: Welcome to the Sense-making in a Changing World Podcast, where we explore the kind of thinking we need to navigate a positive way forward. I’m your host Morag Gamble.. Permaculture Educator, and Global Ambassador, Filmmaker, Eco villager, Food Forester, Mother, Practivist and all around lover of thinking, communicating and acting regeneratively. For a long time it’s been clear to me that to shift trajectory to a thriving one planet way of life we first need to shift our thinking, the way we perceive ourselves in relation to nature, self, and community is the core. So this is true now more than ever. And even the way change is changing, is changing. Unprecedented changes are happening all around us at a rapid pace. So how do we make sense of this? To know which way to turn, to know what action to focus on? So our efforts are worthwile and nourishing and are working towards resilience, regeneration, and reconnection. What better way to make sense than to join together with others in open generative conversation.

Morag Gamble: What better way to make sense than to join together with others in open generative conversation. In this podcast, I’ll share conversations with my friends and colleagues, people who inspire and challenge me in their ways of thinking, connecting and acting. These wonderful people thinkers, doers, activists, scholars, writers, leaders, farmers, educators, people whose work informs permaculture and spark the imagination of what a post-COVID, climate-resilient, socially just future could look like. Their ideas and projects help us to make sense in this changing world to compost and digest the ideas and to nurture the fertile ground for new ideas, connections and actions. Together we’ll open up conversations in the world of permaculture design, regenerative thinking community action, earth, repair, eco-literacy, and much more. I can’t wait to share these conversations with you.

Morag Gamble: Over the last three decades of personally making sense of the multiple crises we face I always returned to the practical and positive world of permaculture with its ethics of earth care, people care and fair share. I’ve seen firsthand how adaptable and responsive it can be in all contexts from urban to rural, from refugee camps to suburbs. It helps people make sense of what’s happening around them and to learn accessible design tools, to shape their habitat positively and to contribute to cultural and ecological regeneration. This is why I’ve created the Permaculture Educators Program to help thousands of people to become permaculture teachers everywhere through an interactive online dual certificate of permaculture design and teaching. We sponsor global Permayouth programs, women’s self help groups in the global South and teens in refugee camps. So anyway, this podcast is sponsored by the Permaculture Education Institute and our Permaculture Educators Program. If you’d like to find more about permaculture, I’ve created a four-part permaculture video series to explain what permaculture is and, and also how you can make it, your livelihood as well as your way of life. We’d love to invite you to join our wonderfully inspiring, friendly, and supportive global learning community community. So I welcome you to share each of these conversations, and I’d also like to suggest you create a local conversation circle to explore the ideas shared in each show and discuss together how this makes sense in your local community and environment. I’d like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which I meet and speak with you today.. The Gubbi Gubbi people and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging.

Morag Gamble: So welcome everyone to the Sense-making in a Changing World Podcast. And it is my great pleasure today to welcome Dr. Nick Rose. Now, Nick is actually one of the core champions of urban agriculture in Australia. He’s the CEO or the executive director I should say of Sustain Australia. Um, I first met him when he’d recently come back from his, uh, Churchill fellowship, looking at urban agriculture, in where were you… in the United States in Canada and also Argentina. And following that he released a book called Fair Food. Now I’m just looking for the Fair Food: Stories from a Movement Changing the World which was published by University of Queensland and Nick has also subsequently gone on to publish a book with Dr. Andrew Gaynor called Reclaiming the Urban Commons The Past, Present and Future of Food Growing in Australian Towns and Cities, which features a number of people who were actually joined me on this podcast before Mariam Issa and David Holmgren. And I’ve got a little chapter in there too, about Northern Streets, city farm, and the work that we did there. Um, and as well as that too, Nick is a, um, he’s a lecturer at, and I, I’m not sure if I’ve got that right, whether you’re a senior lecturer or a professor now, but anyway, you’re at the William Angus college and you and teaching around rather extraordinary program there, a master, a bachelor Masters in food systems. So before we get into, um, some of the questions that I wanted to ask you today, particularly around your very recent pandemic gardens survey, um, I wanted to ask you about why urban agriculture, what drew you to focus your, your life work really on urban agriculture? What, what is it that makes you focus on this particular point?

Dr. Nick Rose: Hi Morag. And, uh, yeah, thanks very much the invitations to be with you, um, today and hello to everyone who’s watching or listening today. That’s a, yeah, it’s a really a really good question. Um, I guess if I think back over the time I’ve been, uh, involved in working with this, I have always been looking for a way to be the best agent of social change that I can be. And over time it became clear to me that a really great way to do that was through food and food systems and particularly urban food systems given the Australian context, you know, what is it, 85, 90% of us live in urban context, some towns and cities that we’re very much an urban, we’re very much an urban population. And, you know, it’s pretty much an urban world and we’re going to be increasingly so,, yeah, I think it was a, you know, years of reflection and study and practice and, you know, growing food, myself and being involved in local food networks and community gardens, I just, uh, yeah, just, uh, you know, accumulated, over a period of time, and then as you’ve mentioned, you know, going off and doing the Churchill fellowship and, um, you know, being inspired by so many wonderful people that I met when I was doing that travel. Um, yeah, I guess, I kind of around that time, that kind of crystallized that, uh, you know, the urban food systems culture was a really empowering and inspiring and great thing to be involved in at, uh, an, a huge opportunity in need in Australia, I guess, as well, in terms of, you know, and trying to make a contribution in this country in particular. Um, it seemed that, yeah, that that’s, uh, that was something that I had some familiarity with, but, you know, gain familiarity with it, um, through those years of study and, and travel and practice, and now, you know, with the roles of William Angliss and sustained [inaudible] position to actually, um, be able to start applying some of that and hopefully make some positive contributions towards, you know, change, um, in Australia. So, yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s a, that’s a short version of it, I guess.

Morag Gamble: So what is, what is the change that you’re wanting to see in Australia?

Dr. Nick Rose: Well, I think the way I speak about it is we’re in a time of, for me, you know, systemic crisis and challenge. And I think a lot of us, you know, are feeling that, and certainly in the permaculture movement, I think that’s been understood, um, you know, fairly deep level for many years, you know, well before the, you know, what’s been happening this year with COVID and think about the major crisis that people write about and talk about and speak about, you know, the climate emergency or biodiversity and species loss or soil degradation, or, you know, overexploitation of water, fresh water sources, what’s happening with the public health crisis, you know, all those things. So many of them come back to the way we manage land, the way we produce and process and consume food and, you know, and the way we dispose of it, we waste so much food. So I think that’s, um, you know, that’s the, the challenge and the power of the work of food systems, I guess that it’s, it’s at the heart of so many of these contemporary crises, but it’s also, I think the pathway to a better future. And for me, my reflection is that, and this is, you know, we can talk about this in a bit, you know, with the survey. Um, a lot of it comes back to a disconnection thinker, you know, particularly in urban contexts. Um, a lot of people are not connected with, um, you know, with nature, with their environment, uh, with each other, with themselves. Um, and so I think all the crises that we’re seeing manifest to really in lots of ways, you know, symptoms of that pretty profound disconnection, um, and, and, and a wide back to that in a way back to kind of discovering their connection is through, is through food and gardening in particular and growing some of your own food and developing that level of, um, yeah, you know, food literacy, ecological literacy, but also connection back to, you know, the foundations of life, of soil and plants and pollinators and, um, you know, compost, um, everything that’s involved in it.

Morag Gamble: Thanks, Nick. I think, I think you’ve touched on it, you know, like all the things, you know, why I also focus on food and, and care about, and it really seems to be that food provides you with that sort of that platform or that focus to be out of reach into just about every different aspect of society from economic aspect to the cultural, mental health, social community, nutrition, any kind of thread that you pick up, you can weave it through, uh, our food system, look at ways that we can address that. And, and I know that you also talk a lot about food sovereignty and I just want to quickly mention what that is and how, what you’re working on, um, describes your work in food sovereignty.

Dr. Nick Rose: Sure. Uh, so I guess my thinking around food sovereignty goes back to a time when I didn’t really, even haven’t heard that phrase when I would have meant. And this was a, you know, picking up again on your, your original question about what drew me to this area. Um, a real turning point in my life came, um, when I was in my early 30s, living in central America, lived in Guatemala in central America for about seven years and, uh, was fortunate enough to do human rights work with some farmer organizations and women’s rights organizations, youth organizations. Um, and yeah, I got to understand the history and context and reality of Guatemala and, you know, the fact that there was so such high rates of child malnutrition and food insecurity and economic migration. And then as I lived there for a longer period of time, I came to understand this again so much of that came back to agriculture and land in particular, in that context it’s about land and who owns it and how it’s used, what’s grown on it. Um, and those are all issues that are central to the food sovereignty movements. Um, and as I came later to understand through, you know, through research and study andgoing on to do a PhD about food sovereignty and meeting some of the, you know, some of the leaders of the campus center, um, you know, came to understand that, that those questions about, you know, land ownership and farmland and how it’s, how it’s managed and, um, you know, what kind of values, uh, you know, and the underpin that, uh, really, you know, so central to the, to the histories and the presence and the futures of whole kind of cultures and societies and communities right around the world, and indeed to all our futures ultimately, um, when you think about things such as the station of the Amazon, or in our context, deforestation in Northern Queensland, um, and it really is, um, I guess food sovereignty is really about, um, you know, those questions, those decisions, um, how they are made according to what values and principles they’re made and who makes them, and who gets to participate in those debates and decisions. And it really is about, it’s a, it’s a struggle. Ultimately it’s a political struggle for the, you know, the, the heart of the national and global food systems and the future of agriculture. Um, and, uh, yeah, for me, it’s ultimately, an existential struggle with matter of life and death quite literally, you know, now and in the future. Uh, and it really comes down to, you know, what do we value as, as a people, as a country, as communities, do we value life? Do we value fertile soil, healthy communities, healthy people, ecosystems, a sustainable future, um, is that what we want and prioritize, or do we value, you know, um, money essentially and profits, and particularly the profit of, you know, some large corporations that happen to dominate and make most of the decisions in national global food systems. And, you know, as we know at the moment, um, it tends to be the latter, you know, sort of structures the way we make decisions. And what we prioritize is pretty much about a very short term decision making process that is about, um, you know, privileging and prioritizing those particular interests and, um, yeah, and devaluing life and life systems. And, and so ultimately food sovereignty is, is saying, we need to, you know, we need to foreground life. Um, and that means participatory and inclusive, democratic processes about making these decisions and, um, and that they guided by a set of principles in sovereignty speaks about, you know, seven pillars. Um, the seventh of which is actually a spiritual one. It talks about the sacredness of food. And that I think touches on questions of first nations, um, you know, cosmologies and sovereignties and ideas of stewardship and that kind of relationship to land and place and country and ecosystem and that should be the basis on which we understand our relationship and connection to our communities and our land and our ecosystems.

Morag Gamble: It feels at this point in time that, you know, particularly in Australia, if questions of food sovereignty or even food security had not been on people’s minds before, they are certainly now as a result of, of the pandemic, you know, we saw the big toilet paper run, then the seedling run and everything to do with gardening, you know, there was, you couldn’t buy chickens, you couldn’t buy seedlings, you couldn’t buy seed, you couldn’t buy fruit trees, everything had had just gone. And so people were obviously at this point in time realizing the importance of being food secure and the importance of local food. Um, and so it’s an interesting point now that we actually have got to where, you know, people like yourself have been talking about food security and food sovereignty for a long time. And all of a sudden it was like, is it a great big door that’s been opened or a crack that’s been wedged open, and we’re seeing the need for what you’re talking about so much more. And the survey that you’ve just done had around pandemic gardening, um, got a remarkable response and some really interesting results. So maybe if you could just start there. So, the pandemic gardening survey, what, what is it, and actually what inspired you to, to open that up? And you’ve got a number of partners that you were working with that I believe.

Dr. Nick Rose: That’s right. Yeah. So, I guess the context for that is that, as you say, we’ve been you know, I’ve been working in urban agriculture for a number of years and with sustain… We decided to make that a focus of the organization and a priority to really push forward the, um, you know, the agenda of urban agriculture in Australia. Um, so in 2016, we had a first, global agriculture forum at Melbourne University’s Burnley campus. And then we followed that up with William Angliss, having an event in 2018. Um, and we’d been, um, you know, planning and in preparation for the third one, which was to take place in October this year and next month, which we’d seed care, gardening and farming in the climate emergency. And we had sort of been working on that for some months and we’d put a steering committee in place. So, um, uh, we reached out to organizations like Sustainable Gardening Australia, Community Gardening Australia. [inaudible] Collingwood Children’s Farm, 3000 acres, [inaudible] Indigenous Consultancy, Pocket City Farms, and Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation. Um, I think I’ve included everybody, I hope. Um, so that was like a steering group and then COVID happened and we, you know, reluctantly took a decision that, you know, events or just face-to-face events just non-starter this year. Um, but, uh, Community Gardens Australia Naomi Lacey, who’s the president’s, um, who was, you know, part of that organizing committee for this event and made us aware, uh, I think this was back in about April or May during the first lockdown that some community gardens and gardeners were being told that they could no longer attend the community garden during lockdown, that this was no longer a permitted activity. So she wanted our support in seeking clarification about that and decided to, you know, to write some letters and make some representations to all the health ministers at the states and territory level, and indeed the federal health minister to have community gardens in Australia, be declared an essential service during the time of lockdown. Um, you know, on the basis that if you can go to the supermarket and buy food, then you know, for a lot of people going to the community garden tend to get patch and, and getting, you know, really fresh food that, you know, you’ve cared for. And, you know, almost certainly grown without using chemicals is important and necessary, um, for a lot of people.

Dr. Nick Rose: So that was the first thing. And then, uh, so we did that and, you know, you’ve got certain level of engagement and response to those letters. And then, you know, media reports were coming out about, you know, nurseries selling out of seeds and seedlings and, you know, rush on seedlings at Bunnings and so on. Um, and, uh, yeah the perception that people, you know, being at home, what were they doing at home? Were they doing more cooking? Were they doing more gardening, seemed they were doing more gardening. Um, and then also, you know, discussions happening about, well, you know, all of us are now kind of isolated and we can’t socialize. And what impacts is that going to have on our, you know, our wellbeing and mental health, uh, and what is the role of gardening and growing food amongst all of this. So that was kind of, you know, the, the thinking behind the survey really to kind of like, just get a bit of a snapshot in is pretty unique circumstance that we see ourselves in. Um, this is early June this year. And, uh, but it was, you know, it was always kind of wanting to kind of like, you know, continue our agenda about promoting urban agriculture and raising the visibility of the sector in this space. And, and, uh, you know, having just made a decision to postpone our forum in 2021, we wanted to keep up momentum and continue the national conversation. So those were all the reasons why we decided to, uh, to do the survey. And as you say, we’ve got an absolutely extraordinary response. Um, a lot of that I should say is thanks to a couple of, well, one organization and one individual individual being Costas Georgiadis um, who yeah. Really embraced. He’s a supporter of our work, you know, as he has for so many different groups and people around the country for a long time, as you know, um, but he really embraced this survey and got really excited about it and decided to do a couple of what he called edible garden, Odyssey where he was in his kitchen in Sydney and then doing a Facebook live, stream, sort of going around the country, you know, just having people stand in their gardens and talk about what they were doing, uh, so that he did that a couple of times in early July, um, to help us get more responses. And then we also got the diggers club, um, to give it a push and send out a mail out their membership. Um, so with those two combined plus our own networks, uh, yeah, we managed to get over 9,000 people responding to the survey in a month, which was pretty extraordinary.

Morag Gamble: That’s amazing.

Dr. Nick Rose: Yeah. 90,140 people, um, yeah. From I can, I can show you, um, where they were, we’ve got, uh, we did, um, we can just show you who they were actually. So maybe I’ll, and I can speak to this as well, you know, for those who are listening. Um, so, showing in now my screen presenter mode. So I should say, this is what we presented to a national audience on the 16th of September. So you’ve got the link to the YouTube where this is, we would take about an hour to go through the whole presentation. So obviously I went to, I went to that. This is what we covered off in that, in that, uh, presentation. High level findings, um, as you were saying before Morag um, you know, what’s been interesting about this year is that these are kind of like a circuit breaker or prompting a moment of disruption and rupture in the fabric of normality. Although I have seen a lot of comments, which I agree with for, you know, the last thing we need to do is go back to normality or go back to normal because, you know, normal business as usual was, you know, the problem. And, uh, we, you know, as many respondents to this survey said, uh, we need to seize this opportunity this moment. It is an opportunity for, uh, you know, for a reset, for a reboot, um, and to, you know, to do, to make some sort of like pretty profound changes in the direction of, you know, sustainability and, and fairness. Um, but what people also said, um, and you see here, as we say, you know, time, um, it was kind of like being at home, not commuting, um, you know, this great kind of sense of slowing down a time and expansion, uh, that went with that. So, um, so as, you know, as we say there over 60% of the 90,000 people that responded to the survey said, they’d spent more time gardening because they had more time and that’s, you know, that’s really significant. Um, I talked about mental health before, and that was a key thing that we wanted to explore in this survey. And that was a key finding from the survey where over 70% of the respondents said, edible gardening either greatly or significantly improve their mental health. And that was really important, not just in terms of the impacts of COVID and isolation and social disconnection, but just, just generally, you know, there’s been talk for some years about, you know, uh, epidemic or pandemic of mental health problems in Australia and stress and anxiety and nervousness.

Dr. Nick Rose: So, um, you know, everybody who gardens knows, um, the mental health benefits of spending time outside and tending the plants. Um, but you know, to have it actually documented in this way with, you know, those kinds of numbers is really, really valuable. It’s a very big number. Then social connection, that was also, it was an important finding, is significant in terms of, uh, sort of policy change. Um, and another reason for governments at all levels and others to support these kinds of activities does bring people together. You know, even during a time like now of enforced, um, distancing, um, and this was a really big one for us and really, really important. Um, and this is, you know, from my interest and motivation, particularly as a Churchill fellow and doing that study, as you mentioned in the United States and in Toronto and Argentina, when I was particularly interested in exploring, um, back in 2014, when I did that travel was the importance and relevance of urban agriculture and community gardens and urban farms as a contribution to food security, particularly for marginalized and vulnerable people in our communities. And that came through very strongly in this survey, people growing their own food really does matter in terms of household food budgets, and particularly for, um, you know, members of low income households. Um, and then, yeah, there was a lot of, a lot of particularly new gardeners. And that was, I guess, another reason for doing the survey was to get a bit of a snapshot about, um, people taking up gardening. And as we’ll see in a moment about just under, I think about 8% of our respondents could be described as new gardeners, either taking it up since COVID or within one year in the last year. And those people in particular said they needed support and what they really want is advice and mentoring and guidance, which again is significant in terms of thinking about recommendations. Um, but also, you know, for people in the permaculture movement, it’s, I guess, really great validation for, um, you know, the work that’s been done over so many years with PDCs and workshops and courses and the like, um, so yeah, and then as well as the 9,000 responses, we had lots of parts of the survey where people could leave comments and people were, um, you know, very generous in their comments. And we had, you know, over 25,000 comments and some of them went to 200 words long or more. Um, so isn’t it, you know, a lot of work like days, if not, weeks of work pouring through all that and trying to, you know, um, analyze it. Um, and there were a number of themes that emerged from that. So you have to read people’s thoughts, some concerns about the future and worries about, you know, this being a time of increasing division and, you know, the politics of fear and xenophobia and racism, and, increasing kind of like economic and social political division. But, but also a lot of people talk about, you know, the silver linings of the pandemic and creating sort of community connectedness and, and a real awareness of what matters in life. A lot of people, you know, use that phrase that is slowing down and this being a time for reflection and to think about what what’s really important, what matters and…

Morag Gamble: Yeah, the sense of the deeper connection with local communities and that, and actually having the time to do the things that they’ve been wanting to do for a long time and getting into community sharing in different ways that they’ve never done before. And it’s, it’s been interesting.

Dr. Nick Rose: It certainly has. Yeah, absolutely. Um, so yeah, so this was, you know, just some feedback we got on doing the survey and how, you know, a lot of people really appreciated it and, uh, just, uh, you know, quotes, which I’ll read for the benefit of those listing this a younger guy in Adelaide, which I think is really touching. Um, and he said, I’m so glad someone is recording this awakening. I feel that gardening keeps me in touch with the basics of our existence. It reminds me that the complexities life can sometimes just require observation and interaction. It reminds me that the graciousness of life is abundant. These are qualities learnt in a garden. I think that’s really lovely. And, uh, yeah, so many comments were like, that was sort of like, sort of tossing up the of just, um, you know, capturing some of these, you know, very kind of poetic sort of, uh, comments and then turning it into a bit of a book with, uh, with pitches there.

Morag Gamble: Oh, that’d be an absolutely beautiful thing to do because obviously, you know, it’s, it’s such an important part of people’s lives. And as you’re saying about that connection and about feeling alive and about feeling a sense of safety, security purpose, all of those things, and as a sort of an inspirational guidebook and, and also valuing the role that gardening plays in that I think would be such a cool thing to do.

Dr. Nick Rose: Absolutely. Yeah. So let’s, um, another one on the, on the, to do list, it would be, it would be a great project to do. Um, but we’ve got, here is a pretty amazing resource and expression of sentiments that people expressed, um, over those weeks in June and July, um, uh, you know, it’s a real kind of snapshot into a moment, you know, you know, pretty unique here in Australia’s history. Um, and it’s, yeah, there’s, there’s so many kind of like beautiful and touching sentiments that, um, that, that could be, that could be, uh, yeah documented in that way. Um, so yeah, just quickly have a look at who the people were filled out the survey, and I think this is pictures , which obviously your listeners won’t be able to see, but those watching it as a video, we’ll be able to the, you know, the hands of a, you know, looks like the grandparents, with a little pot where a child is pulling out the strawberry, the young strawberry plant to report or plant, you know, it goes to that sort of sentiment of connection and passing wisdom and knowledge from one generation to the next. Um, and there’s such a wealth of knowledge in, um, in the, in that generation of people over 55, I think, uh, who’ve been doing, you know, many of whom have been doing this for 20 years plus, um, and I think it’s a huge opportunity to find ways for that knowledge to be passed on to younger generations and instill an appreciation of gardening you know, knowledge and how to do it well, it’s a real opportunity. Um, so yeah, so you see the majority of the responses to the survey were in fact from that older demographic. And I think that, you know, to a certain extent that reflects the Diggers club membership, where we go a huge kind of increase in respondents when the Diggers started out to thei r 75,000 old members. Um, uh, yeah, we did, we did get a, see a shift in the, the age range. Um, and so the, you know, the majority of the respondents are over the age of, um, 55, um, just around 70% actually are over the age of 45, but there are, you know, younger generations that are represented there.

Dr. Nick Rose: In terms of the, ethnic composition, see here that it’s a reasonably broad sort of, um, reflection of the broader kind of ethnic composition of the Australian, you know, Australia is a migrant nation, and we were pleased to see that over 2% of respondents identified as indigenous Australian as well. So we’re able to capture those perspectives and voices, as well. Now this was interesting. One in terms of income is to, I mentioned before about food security that’s, um, the poverty level in Australia is actually $50,000 per annum for a family of four. So 25% of the respondents to this survey, uh, or, or those that answered this question rather, um, stated their income has been less than, less than $50,000 per annum. So below that poverty line, um, and the average income, and then the main sort of need to make a distinction here between the, you know, the main, which is the, kind of li the raw average, if you like take into account, all kinds of income in Australia is actually $117,000 per annum for, for an adult. So, under 70 to $80,000, I should say for a household. Um, and so, yeah, the, the bulk of respondents to the survey were below that figure, but, uh, the median average income for the Australian adults, uh, is less than $50,000 a year. It’s about $49,000 a year. So definitely people answering this survey were, eah, word were, you know, on the whole kind of like below average in terms of their income. Overwhelmingly women, uh, answered the survey. So we’re not in a position, I guess, to say that that means that it’s overwhelmingly women who are the gardeners in Australia, or whether it’s women who are more likely to respond to this kind of survey. Um, but I think it’s worth saying is as you know, Morag and I’m sure many of your listeners too, as well, that, um, the majority of, uh, you know, gardeners and farmers and food producers worldwide, particularly in the global South, are, women. Small scale producers. And it’s certainly true to say that women do the bulk of the work of, you know, feeding the world, um, when we’re talking about, you know, growing food as distinct from growing sort of commodities that are traded.

Dr. Nick Rose: So that’s an important point, um, and sort of wanted to show you and just mentioned in terms of the geographical coverage that you see that, um, you know, people from right around Australia answered the survey. And in fact, those dots right around the country, uh, represent 62% of every postcode of all postcodes across Australia and about 29% of the total land mass. Um, so, you know, obviously the, you know, the concentration of respondents, uh, around the, you know, the major capital cities and bigger towns as you’d expect. Um, but there was a lot of people from rural and regional and even remote communities that answered the surveys. So, um, you know, so that was good to see and, you know, pretty good level of response from, uh, you know, from pretty much every state and territory, I guess, consistent, broadly consistent with the population distribution across Australia. With more respondents from Victoria, um, 42% in total compared to 23% in New South Wales. Um, so I just, you know, just quickly I can show you, um, Victoria there, um, inside it’s pretty wide coverage, um, you know, right across the States. And if we have a bit of a closer look at Melbourne, you can see as you’d expect that the, um, the larger numbers of respondents are from Louisiana, North suburbs of North… Brunswick. Um, but there’s, you know, um, people from, you know, most of the suburbs, um, with no radius from the CBT who, who answered this survey. So yeah, we really did capture, a lot of voices Queensland, right up the coast and several kind of inland regions. Um, there were respondents and in Brisbane itself, again, North and South of the river, um, and over towards [inaudible] So yeah, so there was, a lot of coverage.

Dr. Nick Rose: We can see, and I think this reflects perhaps the Diggers Club Membership as well, that over 50% of respondents were people that we might think of as longer term or experienced gardeners who’ve been gardening for more than, more than 10 years, and more than a third of them had been gardening for more than 20 years. Uh, but then you see in the upper left hand sort of part of that circle, uh, the new gardeners and I was wrong when I said before 7%, it’s actually closer to 10%. So 341 people brand new gardeners since COVID, and then a further 5% on top of that had been gardening for less than a year. And then another 20% who are, relatively inexperienced, I guess who’d only been gardening for one to five years. So, you know, a real range of kind of like a length of time that people have been gardening in response to this survey. And this is, um, what was another question that we wanted to know how productive the gardeners were, what kind of yields they were getting? Uh, so you can see there, uh, around 50% just under reported growing a little of their own foods are less than 10%. Um, then 30, just over 37%. So they grew some that was from 10 to 30% of their own food, which is still a fair amount. Um, and then a smaller number, but still significant 14%. That’s about 1200 people reported that they were growing a lot of their own food, more than 30%. Um, so, you know, I’ve got some pretty serious food gardeners out there. And then we wanted to kind of like blend those two kind of questions together and see what the correlation was between experience and productivity. And as you’d expect, um, more experienced -gardeners, uh, grew significantly more, um, of their own food. Uh, so the, the new gardeners, the ones that are doing it less than a year, or since COVID only 3% of them reported growing more than 30% of their own food compared with 18% of the 10 years, plus gardeners said they were going, um, more than 30% of their own food. Um, so yeah, so here’s like a younger, um, woman from Adelaide’s, saying, you know, she took it up since COVID spread here. Uh, and she said, our family realized how important it is to have the skills to grow our own food if need be. So we are learning from scratch, how to do so. We feel increasingly liberated as we acquire food growing knowledge and plan on doing much more in the future. And one of the other questions we asked was, you know, whether people want to, you know, plan to continue or expand their food growing in the future – 98% of respondents said that they did. And, um, a lot of people said they wanted to grow a lot more food into the future.

Morag Gamble: Significant isn’t it that 98% wanted to continue it. And, and I, I liked what that woman was just saying there about, you know, learning from scratch, but that she felt liberated. I guess there’s a really interesting point about how, you know, there’s a perception before that, you know, growing food possibly was something hard to do something that was, you know, you did only if you really had to, but people are realizing this sense of liberation and freedom and, and, uh, this opportunity that it presents when you actually do get involved in that and how it opens up doors to so many different things. It’s been quite a remarkable feedback that I’ve heard in lots of different ways too, and that, and the great sense of joy that comes from from doing it.

Dr. Nick Rose: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Those were, you know, there’s so many comments through this survey where people are talking about exactly those things. So we wanted to ask people what they were growing. Um, so that’s, how long have you been growing? How much are you growing? And this next question is what are you growing? Uh, and this is really important from a health perspective, um, you know, particularly people working in public health and what are the audiences that we wish to speak to in terms of the significance of this, is that people growing their own food eat well, you know, particularly if they learn how to do it at a reasonable level, um, they get access to all the things that we are told we’re supposed to be eating in terms of our, caring for ourselves and our bodies, and now nutritional health, you know, fruit and vegetables. So at 97% of respondents, so they’re growing vegetables, 66% fruits. Um, and then another 28%, very large number who are, you know, got backyard trucks and raising some of their own poultry. Um, so in terms of the vegetables, leafy greens, 94% of the people who were growing vegetables were growing leafy greens, uh, you know, herbs 71% legumes, 67% root crops and further 58% fruit and vegetables. So really, um, a wide variety of different foods. Um, and we see, you know, some tropical fruits and berries and vines. Then not just fruits and vegetables, but a whole range of other things that people reported from edible flowers to, you know, native foods, medicinal plants, mushrooms, foraged food, micro greens, nuts, edible weeds, of course, bees and honey. So, you know, really wide diversity of, um, 66 different types of, um, produce we counted going through the survey.

Dr. Nick Rose: And in terms of like, you know, what this means for people. This is a gardener from Western Sydney, uh, says, you know, planting in my garden has helped me greatly feel like I have more control and manage stress levels. So I’ve designed and created a new garden filled with only edible and medicinal plants, uh, food herbs with multiple functions. It had me thinking better, helped me get through some very challenging times. And now I’m seriously planning, converting my front yard into a food forest. I have more confidence in trying new things. Um, and an old lady from, uh, Victoria said, we already had two beehives and we have both morning and afternoon tea watching them. Sanity saver. Entertaining. The bees are addictive. So in terms of what this meant for people during the actual pandemic COVID itself, um, you know, we ask people what impact the pandemic had had on them. Uh, 47% of people said it made them feel anxious and worried. Um, 25%, they felt isolated and alone 21% lost work or income. Um, but interestingly about physical health, 27% said their physical health actually improved and only 13% said that their health got worse.

Dr. Nick Rose: Then there were a lot of other comments around this question, um, when we analyze them and looking through the survey as a whole, we come back to this, uh, these mentions of time, you know, there was thousands of comments and references to having more time and being happier. Like people talked a lot about feeling happier, even people who lost work, who lost income. So they felt happier because they were less stressed cause they had more time because they could spend more time with their partner or their kids or their family, um, and spend more time gardening and take care of themselves more. So, um, so that was a very common experience. I mean, for others, obviously it varied enormously, the pandemic experience, according to what your circumstances were and your experience, and for some sectors typically hard on education. And I guess, you know, people working in frontline health, uh, it has been intense and stressful and workloads have increase, those kinds of things. So I don’t want to sort of like paint an overly rosy picture, um, because it clearly hasn’t been for quite a lot of people. Um, but, uh, you know, for many people they experienced that expanded sense of time and, um, and that, you know, is important for people, you know, recovering from chronic illnesses, from serious illnesses, such as cancer, you know, forced kind of period of rest and self care, changing the focus of lives. This person says my partner and I spend more time discussing things that matter more in our lives, then statistics of profit growth in our bosses pocket. We now plan on ways of improving our lifestyle, our relationships and our friendship. Um, lots of, uh, yeah, lots of comments of that, to, of that nature.

Morag Gamble: The next one there too saying that they’re, um, in the process of, um, they were about to acquire a farm. So they’re actually, I wanted to be that they’re shifting they’re actually.

Dr. Nick Rose: Exactly. Yeah. Like people kind of making some really major life decisions and life choices and you know, this kind of like forced, um, period of reflection is really yeah. And it came through time and again, people saying, you know, it’s given us the space and time to think about what’s really important for us. Um, and yeah, a lot of people have, you know, made some, some really sort of important decisions. Um, and a lot of people really hope that there will just be a rush back to, you know, no more patents and business, and previous.

Morag Gamble: I think that also comes from us, not just rushing back, like each of us individually and, you know, the groups that we’re involved in to really make a conscious effort not to do that.

Dr. Nick Rose: That’s right. Yeah. It’s like, you know, that’s what I would say in terms of like where to next and what does this mean? It is about making conscious choices and conscious decisions and, and being, yeah. Being intentional about what we want the future to be, because it is one of those moments where, you know, the potential and possibilities for the future have opened up in many different ways and where it goes will matter a lot about what, what choices and decisions and actions we take right now. So that was a, you know, it’s, it’s been a major motivator for my work for years and particularly with this work as well. So yeah people spent more time gardening. So we, as a kind of like a baseline that we wanted to ask people, you know, typically how many hours a week do you spend in the garden? Um, so you can see there that, we got 16% of people who are very keen gardeners spending more than 10 hours a week. Um, and then, you know, another 20, I spent spending five to 10 47%, one to five hours a week and 9% less than one hour a week. And then we asked, um, you know, did the, uh, pandemic lead to more gardening? And the answer to that was overwhelmingly, uh, overwhelmingly. Yes. Um, so sorry, just to jump forward a bit, um, 25% said they’d significantly increase their edible food growing activity spent a lot more time in the garden. And a further 30% said that somewhat increased their edible food growing activities spend a bit more time in the garden, only 3%. So they actually had reduced their animal food growing activities during the, um, during the COVID periods. People taking the opportunity to grow a lot more food. So this gentleman from Broken Hill said, we’ve always had a home veggie garden then COVID happened. We set about to triple the size of a vegetable garden. We now grow 55 varieties of veg and 32 varieties of herbs. There are five adults in this household. We produce 80% of our vegetables and have large quantities in excess.

Morag Gamble: Fantastic. Yeah. It’s interesting how the localization of the food in our gardens has increased and also are people supporting local food systems. I know food connecting Brisbane was saying that they’re, you know, the people growing things, but then their business, um, quadrupled during over time too. So,

Dr. Nick Rose: Absolutely. Yeah cause people are thinking about where their food came from, like the reflecting about, you know, getting some control of their own food and growing some of their own food. But, you know, obviously, um, you know, most of us not in a position to grow most of our own foods, so we have to get it from somewhere. And I think with, uh, with supermarket shelves, emptying and concerns about panic buying and concerns about exposure to the infection, um, this, this is like food connect in Brisbane and CERES fair food here in Melbourne and their own little business that, um, we have started through the Melbourne food hub, uh, the grocery seed program, um, all those types of businesses have expanded. Um, you know, in our case, we started that in 19th of March with nine subscribers, and then within four weeks it was up to a hundred. Um, and then it kind of like fluctuated a bit and as, you know, seeing that lockdown was coming to an end, a dip back down to around 60, but now it’s back up around a hundred or so. So, I think that’s been a common experience for working in, in, um, you know, local food, um, veggie box type operations right around the country. So this question, you know, how important was gardening during COVID? Um, you know, nearly a fifth, 19% said extremely important. I could not have made it through. Um, and by that time, a lot of them psychologically mentally, but also in some cases, as a matter of food security could not have made it through without my garden. And a further 62% said, uh, very important being able to garden during this time has meant a great deal. And only 2% saying they could, they could take it or leave it.

Morag Gamble: Isn’t that interesting. 19% saying couldn’t have made it without the garden. That’s a huge proportion of response.

Dr. Nick Rose: It is. Yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, and this new gardener from the Western suburbs of Melbourne, um, only been gardening for a year, says it gives me hope and peace. It provides a sort of meditation or therapeutic quality, which allows me to cope. It gives me purpose, which I haven’t had from working.

Morag Gamble: Mm, wow. That’s powerful. Isn’t it.

Dr. Nick Rose: Is really is. Um, and this lady from the South Coast, New South Wales says gardening gave me a focus. It provided hope and reinforced my personal resilience. putting my hands in the soil each day, redirected my fear and anxiety about our future. I was able to transfer it to action. Um just, hundreds of comments like that, right throughout the survey. Um, and so, yeah, and then we came to the heart of what we’re wanting to explore which is just about mental health and gardening. Um, and so the question there was, to what extent have your garden activities resulted in improved mental health and wellbeing? And 38% said greatly – gardening makes me feel much more relaxed, less stressed and anxious and happier. And a further 32% said significantly – gardening makes me feel more relaxed, less stress and anxious and happier. Only 3% of people said gardening makes very little difference to me in terms of psychological and mental health. There’s this a new gardener again, less than a year, from Jalong. She said, my mother passed away in March and watching things grow, helping them into the world has been enormously comforting in a year where things feel like they’ve been put on pause. The inexorable growth of their vegetables has been a sweet and quiet lesson in motion, a sense of things carrying on. Um, and this, uh, this lady from Tasmania has heard it has kept me calm and focused on the future. There is a future when you garden. These are, you know, there’s so many comments. And so come back to the idea of the book, you know, just be The voices of gardeners around Australia during COVID is a great project. Um, I’m, I’m..

Morag Gamble: Oh you need to go? Well, thank you so much for that overview. And I know that there’s a couple of things coming up that people can follow up. So you have another webinar that’s coming up.

Dr. Nick Rose: That’s right.

Morag Gamble: That will describe, um, like you were saying where to from here, which is some of the things I’m really excited to hear about how to, how we can take this knowledge and then use that to advocate. I mean, for example, here in Queensland, we’ve got an election coming up, you know, what are the way that we can use this kind of information to then further advocate for positive changes in our local and state governments.

Dr. Nick Rose: That’s right. So when is the election Morag?

Morag Gamble: It’s on the end of next month?

Dr. Nick Rose: All right. Okay. Okay. Um, yeah, look I’ve kind of like felt this for years but I can’t sort of stress highly enough how valuable and important people growing their own food is. You know. It’s, it’s such a, kind of like a simple thing. That’s such a powerful thing. And maybe just like in with this, you know, last quotehere, I’ve got there a lady on the right, um, from the ACT who says I have cancer. My garden keeps me alive, especially on the bad days. My greatest joy is seeing my grandchildren through it, eating as they go for me. Keeping the garden going in times of stress is a way of asserting some control in my life of establishing and maintaining some normality while the world spins out of control. So, you know, from, from so many perspectives, um, uh, the simple act of growing your own food is, is such a powerful important thing to be doing. And, um, my hope is that with this survey and the data that is coming through loud clear from right across the country, that we can get the message through that this is a fantastic thing to be doing. The more of us should be doing it that, you know, we don’t need many of us who’ve got the space to do it. We don’t need anyone’s permission, um, often, um, but there is a role for state and local government to assist and help particularly when we’re talking about public spaces and community gardens and access to things like verges and nature strips, um, and making that space more accessible and more available. And that’s really, really important.

Dr. Nick Rose: When it comes to public land, the managers of that land be they water utilities or councils or state government have control over and can make that land available, or sometimes developers, in a private context can make that land available. Um, and also, you know, with some relatively modest funding, uh, providing the infrastructure in terms of, you know, beds or soil or compost or, or, you know, supporting labor, you know, to help people build those things. They can be such great projects, um, and ways of bringing people together with such positive outcomes. For me, it’s like a no brainer, but, you know, there’s all kinds of, you know, risk, aversion and fear on the part of government and, you know, worries about insurance, all these kinds of things. So, um, yeah, there’s a really great message that, um, that we want to be delivering to policy makers around the country on the back of these results. And so on the 9th of October, um, yeah, we’ve got this webinar where we’ll be, you know, going more deeply into the, into these findings and their implications, but also sharing some lessons from some people around the country. You’ve placed a bit of a trail in, in those kinds of areas. So one in particular, just to give you an idea is a guy called Chris Cornish, who was a counselor for eight years in the city of Bayswater in Perth, which became the first council in Australia to give permission to all residents, to grow food on their nature strips, without having to go through a permitting process or a planning process. And they just said, look, let’s go and put beds or raised garden beds, or, you know, just dig up your lawn and grow food. Um, you know, just as long as you take care of it, um, you don’t have to ask our permission and go ahead and do it. And if you want to grow food and sell a bit of a fruit orchard, new park, or a little community garden in a public park, um, that we’ve got responsibility for what you can do that as well. It’s a very simple process. And they met resistance from staff in the council and they met resistance from the insurance company, but they just pushed ahead and said, Nope, we, this is the right thing to do. It’s a great thing to do. And we’re going to, you know, deal with your objections and your concerns about risk, and we’re going to do it, and have done it so I can do it. It can be done anywhere. I know in Queensland, there was the very sad story of the urban food streets in the Sunshine Coast a few years ago. Um, so I know in Queensland that, uh, there is that kind of risk aversion. Um.

Morag Gamble: On the other hand, there’s also a lot of parks that are now got thriving community gardens and city farms. So there’s, you know, there’s, there’s an amazing amount of possibility that you see in all of the common spaces. And so sharing the examples, like what you’re saying with what’s happened in Bayswater over in Perth and how we can then ripple that out everywhere else. Cause I think it’s opening up the access and the possibilities to like what, you know, the title of your book, reclaiming the commons, that’s where a lot of the urban agriculture can and need happen. And I’m just making sure that there’s access to it, giving people the skills, giving people the tools. Running free workshops for community of how to get this up and running and, you know, maybe providing sets of tools to communities and seeds. And like you’re saying materials.

Dr. Nick Rose: Absolutely. That’s exactly right. So that’s part of what we’re wanting to do. So, you know, the next week when I was called an action agenda for edible gardening and urban agriculture in Australia, so the things that you just mentioned are exactly a part of that action agenda and that’s what, that’s what we’re wanting to do. And, you know, have a program, some parts of which are being done in some places and some in other places, but to bring it together and say, look here is how to do it. Here’s where it’s been done. Here’s what you need. Here’s a, you know, the resourcing that’s required and these are the benefits that are gonna apply from it. And, you know, there’s no better time than now to do it. You know, the need has never been greater.

Morag Gamble: I’ll put all the links down below of how people can get in touch with you, Sustain Australia, how they can find out about that webinar , a link to all the material that you shared today and also to urban agriculture, forum that’s happening next year as well.

Dr. Nick Rose:  Thanks. Yeah. Thanks very much Morag. I really appreciate that. And, uh, yeah, so with the forum just quickly, um, we’re going to do for the first time and urban agriculture month, it’s kind of like a national kind of celebration acknowledging and celebrating people like you. So since so many others around the country have been doing this for so long, um, to make it visible, to, to, you know, progress this agenda for greater recognition support. And that’s really an open invitation to everybody to, organizing event. We had the garden tour, a workshop or a talk, a lunch, um, you know, seed swap, whatever it might be, um, you know, in that month of April next year and really try and make it like a massive national event, to say that, you know, this is something that Australians really love and value, and we want, we want, want it to be recognized and appreciated and, um, and, and supported and enabled.

Morag Gamble: Fantastic. Well, thank you for, thank you for sharing this today and thank you for all that you do champion urban agriculture in Australia. It’s absolutely what Australia needs right now. It’s what the world needs is far more support for urban culture. I mean, it seems to be one of the key things that’s going to make the difference. It’s the difference that makes a difference.

Dr. Nick Rose: Exactly, exactly. And likewise, Morag. Congratulations. And thank you for all the wonderful work that you do as well. And it’s been great to talk with you.

Morag Gamble: Thanks a lot, Nick. Take care. Bye bye.

Morag Gamble: So thanks for tuning in to the Sense- making in a Changing World podcast today, it’s been a real pleasure to have your company. I invite you to subscribe and receive notification of each new weekly episode with more wonderful stories, ideas, inspiration, and common sense for living and working regenerative and core positive permaculture thinking of design interaction in this changing world. I’m including a transcript below and a link also to my four-part permaculture series, really looking at what is permaculture and how to make it your livelihood too. So join me again in the next episode where we talk with another fascinating guest, I look forward to seeing you there.

Subscribe & Share
Thanks for tuning into Sense-making in a Changing World today. It has been a pleasure to have your company. I invite you to subscribe (via your favourite podcast app like iTunes) and receive notification of each new weekly episode.

Each Wednesday I will share more wonderful stories, ideas, inspiration, and common sense for living and working regeneratively. Positive permaculture thinking, design, and action are so needed in this changing world.

What is permaculture?
Take a look at my free 4 part permaculture series or Our Permaculture Life Youtube and my permaculture blog too. For an introduction to permaculture online course, I recommend The Incredible Edible Garden course. I also offer an online Permaculture Educators Program (Permaculture Design Certificate and Permaculture Teacher Certificate) and involve young people in permaculture through Permayouth (11-16yos).

Warm regards,
Morag Gamble
Founder, Permaculture Education Institute

I acknowledge the Traditional owners of the land from which I am broadcasting, the Gubbi Gubbi people, and pay my respects to their elders past, present, and emerging.

Thank you Rhiannon Gamble for audio editing – a challenging task this week with poor connection

Thank you to Kim Kirkman (Harp) and Mick Thatcher (Guitar) for donating this piece from their album Spirit Rider.

The post Pandemic Gardening with Dr Nick Rose appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

Growing food for free in our gardens, streets and communities is so liberating – accessing an abundance of healthy natural food that is grown in ways that:

• supports health and wellbeing
• supports the regeneration of soil & habitats
• widens access to real food in times of need
• nurtures positive community connection
• re-invigorates the local community economy

Access to fresh food is so important to keep us healthy, and food harvest fresh in your compost-fed healthy soil is going to be more nutrient dense  … and it doesn’t need to be expensive.

Gourmet food straight from your garden can be an everyday thing.

Be inspired to get your garden flourishing now while you have more time, while the need is higher, and keep it up as a positive part of your life as a daily form of

• earth care, people care, fair share
• connecting with nature
• moving meditation
• activism for healthy soils and a safe climate

Recently in Wales, I visited an extraordinary young man, Huw Richards, who is passionate about sharing the skills and enthusiasm for growing good food at home. He has a hugely popular Youtube Channel that he started when he was 12 (!!!), and he’s already is the author of 2 books – the bestselling Veg in One Bed and recently released, Grow Food For Free. He is a wonderful teacher, speaker, leader and a member of his local permaculture group.

Watch my walkabout with Huw

As we wandered together through his fabulous garden in the Welsh countryside, he shared gardening tips, but we also talked about how he’s made this way of life his livelihood too.  You can watch the film below.

Huw is an inspiration and I encourage you to share this video with young people everywhere.

17  Zero-Cost Garden Hacks

To find out a little more about the gardening tips you’ll find in Huw’s recent book, Grow Food For Free – take a look at this recent film from his youtube channel.

Learn Permaculture to design and grow food for free.

Inspired to learn more about permaculture and would love to become a permaculture teacher? Join me in the Permaculture Educators Program. You can start anytime and take as long as you need. Click the link to find out more.

Kitchen Garden in a Small Space

If you only have a small space to get your garden going, there are lots of tips for getting started in this masterclass.

Small Space Kitchen Garden The Permaculture Way – Masterclass with Morag Gamble

The post Start a garden and grow food for free with Morag Gamble and Huw Richards appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

‘Eggy bake’ is a common meal in our house and one of our all-time favorites – named by the kids.

Eggy bake – this version with grated cheese on top from local cheesery. Typically we eat it plain. Rarely we have leftovers.

 

Another household favourite is pumpkin soup (veggie soup really) using all freshly harvested vegetables – pumpkin, Choko, potato, herbs, turmeric, ginger, garlic chives, mustard spinach, and many other veggies and greens we find.

 

I think our 4yo will discover one day that usually pumpkin soup is orange, not green, but both these meals are great ways to get him to enjoy lots of freshly-plucked organic greens.

 

Weeping rosemary hanging over the terrace wall gets plucked for most meals.

Anyway, I started typing up a recipe for the book I am working on, The Good Life Guide and realized that this meal was far more than the recipe could communicate. A simplicity of just listing the recipe ingredients and steps seemed somehow to diminish the inherent qualities of the food.

 

Tulsi leaves and seeds also end up in most salads, soups, curries, and bakes.

 

 For me it is the rich tapestry of connections that are cultivated through this food that brings it’s true quality to light – the connections with the seasons, with our local environment, with the soil, with neighbors, with friends, with each other in our family, with our play, with our home education, and our workplace.

 

Garlic chives and their flowers have an amazingly powerful garlic flavour.

Here is my first attempt to describe the eggy-bake process…

 

1. Send the kids up to collect the eggs from the chook house we built using timber our neighbour harvested in his woodlot and a gift of reclaimed iron sheeting. We have an eclectic mix of rare breed chickens that the children look after. The eggs are all different shapes and sizes – but all have superbly orange yolks because they free-range often.

 

2. Wander around the garden with a handmade basket collecting a wonderful array of herbs, flowers, and leafy greens (and purples). I take a leaf from this and a leaf from that so I don’t harm the plant and can come back again day after day for more. It’s a peaceful way to garden and harvest.
   
   I collect things like soft pumpkin leaves and shoots, sweet potato leaves and shoots, mustard spinach, any brassica flowers, and soft flower stalks, many varieties of kale, welsh onion leaves, the bolting shoots from coriander/cilantro, tulsi leaves, garlic chives and garlic chive flowers, Brazilian spinach … there are so many things to collect, even pea leaves, bean leaves, beetroot leaves, young chia leaves, young amaranth leaves, weeds – chickweed, dandelion leaves. The more diverse the selection, the more diverse the nutrients in the food.

   The magnificent red mustard spinach is making its way into every meal in these cooler months.

   I love this time in the garden, watching the birds, noticing things – new shoots on trees, self-seeding veggies, subtle changes, and simple beauty. I think about what I can add to the garden to increase diversity or adapt to the changing season.

   Brassica flowers are a wonderful treat. I often snack on them in the garden.

   
   I notice where I need to add some more compost or mulch. The compost is made from the chicken bedding, and the Azolla we harvested by hand from the lake. The mulch is often chopped and drop materials, but we do also go and pick up some local bales of grass straw that another neighbour orders in bulk for us all to use. The kids love to ride in the trailer with the bales slowly back along the little internal road within the ecovillage with the wind in their hair, singing in the breeze,  watching for hawks and kangaroos.
   
   I could ask the kids to harvest the greens too because they know where all the great greens are at any moment – the garden is their playground – and sometimes I do, but I just love this time in the garden pottering for a few minutes.

 

There’s always a surprise somewhere in the garden.

 

3. Ask my children to whiz it all together in the food processor with a bit of fresh milk from the neighbour and handmade ricotta from another neighbour.

 

4. Cook it in a solar cooker (for a lunchtime meal) or a solar-powered electric oven (for dinner).

 

5. Duck out to the garden again just before the eggy bake is ready and collect some salad greens. I like to wrap little bits of eggy bake in a leaf.

   Fresh mixed salad with self-seeding tomatoes and lots of perennial greens, edible weeds and edible flowers.

    
6. Sometimes I go the extra bit and drizzle a salad with homemade dressing – shaking together a little organic olive oil made just down the valley (sourced from the local organic food store), with some homemade kombucha vinegar (using a SKOBY dropped off by a neighbour, a chopped up garlic clove hand-delivered from a friend in Tasmania (traded for limes), and some herbs and spices from the garden like rosemary, oregano, thyme, or chilli, ginger and lemongrass. Even simpler, I grab a lime, lemon, or grapefruit and squeeze it over the salad. Delicious just like that!

    

   Fresh greens, snowpeas. tomatoes, citrus and garlic

    

7. Ask the children to set the table. Often they gather a little posy of edible flowers and lemon myrtle leaves and make a beautiful arrangement.
8. Sit down together and enjoy, discussing the particular flavours and textures that we like in today’s version. You see, they are always different – and that’s the beauty of it too. 

 

It sounds quite complicated, but really it’s ultimately simple. All the ingredients are all just here around us, it’s seasonal, it connects us with our neighbours and friends, and our local environment,  we all help to make it happen, we all enjoy it immensely because of the heart and soul that we know has gone into every part.  And, from start to finish, cooking from scratch, it usually takes us around 30 minutes to prepare and cook as long as we keep it thin in the glass cooking trays.

 

Brazilian Spinach has leaves all year round for harvest.

This is slow food, but it’s not slow, quite rapid actually. With three children – two of them boys with huge appetites – preparing good food quickly seems to be the best approach, as well as getting them involved in the process.

 

Keep in mind too that I typically garden for about 10 minutes a day to maintain this garden – not a huge commitment, but an enormous benefit to our health and to the education of my children.

 

Some other reasons I love this way of cooking:

• this is community food
• it’s package free – the natural packaging of the eggs goes back to the soil. The milk comes in re-used bottles.
• it’s part of nutrient cycles in the garden and is waste-free
• it is so satisfying and just makes me smile so deeply when I sit down to share this meal

What’s a simple meal you cook from scratch?  What does it mean to you?

The post Good Food: Good Life: My recipe for simple eggy bake straight from the garden. appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

What? The common Pawpaw Ointment is mostly petroleum jelly?

Call me naive, but I assumed that the pawpaw ointment I was using was made up of….well mostly pawpaw, not 96% petroleum jelly. Recently I took a closer look – the only ingredient I found on the container is ‘Carica papaya 39mg/g Fresh Fermented Fruit’  and a little note on the side saying ‘Contains Potassium Sorbate 0.1mg/g as Preservative’. Nowhere does it say petroleum jelly. I thought ingredients, especially main ones, needed to be listed. 

(Note: In Australia what most people call papaya, we call pawpaw.)

A-ha – only 39mg of pawpaw for every 1000mg. I should have read closer and delved deeper. Pawpaw ointment has always been put forward as a natural product so I didn’t suspect. When I first started using it back as a teenager, you could only get it in health food stores. Now the little red tubes are available just about everywhere. It’s promoted as a great all round natural healing ointment that is antibacterial and antimicrobial – good for lots of day to day issues.

Australians seem to be addicted to this stuff. So many households have it and I imagine many women (and men) would have a little tube in their bags. 

As it turns out, there are lots of other pawpaw ointments around that do not contain petrochemical by-products –  but I was using the little red tubes and tubs of ointment made close by in Brisbane. 

I know for sure that many you have already discovered this piece of information, but if you haven’t, now you know. I must admit, I’m feeling pretty silly. For 30 years I have used it on little cuts and scrapes, on nappy rash, chaffing, insect bites… I never knew it was mostly petroleum jelly –  a non-renewable hydrocarbon made from crude oil! How did I miss that? 

What is Petroleum Jelly?

Petroleum jelly is a by-product of the oil industry and can contain petrolatum and mineral oil. Apparently almost all skincare products in the US have Petroleum Jelly/Petrolatum/Mineral Oil because it’s a cheap filler. It’s also used in hair care products to give shine.

It coats the skin like plastic. It’s a barrier to lock moisture in or out – preventing the skin from breathing, excreting and absorbing. It slows the skin’s natural development and can contribute to premature ageing. 

Highly regarded scientist and eco-activist, David Suzuki, warns against using petrolatum on his website and explains why the EU restricts its use in cosmetics: (http://davidsuzuki.org/issues/health/science/toxics/chemicals-in-your-cosmetics—petrolatum/). His site says that :

‘petrolatum can be contaminated with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Studies suggest that exposure to PAHs — including skin contact over extended periods of time — is associated with cancer. On this basis, the European Union classifies petrolatum a carcinogen, and restricts its use in cosmetics. PAHs in petrolatum can also cause skin irritation and allergies. ‘

Additional research done by the Environmental Working Group  (www.ewg.org/skindeep/2007/02/04/impurities-of-concern-in-personal-care-products)adds that:

“Many of the cosmetic industry’s chemical safety assessments reveal that common petroleum-based cosmetic ingredients can be contaminated with a cancer-causing impurity called 1,4-dioxane.”

While the pawpaw ointment company in question claims to use pharmaceutical grade petroleum jelly (petrolatum) that is not carcinogenic. They say it is also hypo-allergenic and completely safe for all the family. This said, it still is from the petroleum industry and personally, I would much rather put natural products on my skin given the choice. I ignorantly thought I was. 

What now…?

In actual fact, I most often reach for a big leaf of Aloe vera from my garden for burns, rashes, cuts and so on. I also strap on a chunk of Aloe gel and let it soak in – for animals too. It is wonderful and totally fresh and potent. Not so great in my bag, but my own comfrey ointment is great for this.

Since I’ve been making my own comfrey lotion (using beeswax, olive oil and comfrey leaves from my garden) I’ve not been using the pawpaw ointment that much any more, but I’m keen though to learn how to make it and use some of those pawpaws that are ripening in my food forest.

The post Did you know that Pawpaw Ointment is made of 96% petroleum jelly? appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

Pesto – more than basil
Pesto is usually associated with basil, and yes I agree, it’s a wonderful flavour, but you can also make pesto from all kinds of garden greens or better still, a wondrous blend.

Today in my foraging, I harvested three types of basil, parsley, rocket, welsh onions, society garlic, cranberry hibiscus and sorrel. I blended these together with some toasted ground sunflower seeds, the juice of a lime and some olive oil and created an amazingly simple, but superbly flavoured pesto that can be used for all kinds of things, such as:

• pasta (veggie spirals are great with this)
• bruschetta (it’s great on the organic wood-fired local sourdough bread)
• soup
• salad
• dip

Extend the harvest
Often when the basil is on, it’s on! Making pesto is a great way to appreciate this abundance. I typically make up a big batch, then freeze in an ice cube tray. It’s a great way to extend the basil harvest.

Super greens for the kids
Also, because you can include any number of leafy greens, it is actually a great way to get your kids to eat an enormous dose of very nourishing greens.

MY GARDEN PESTO RECIPE

Here’s what I use for a really lovely texture of smooth pesto. As you can see, it’s more of a ratio I am suggesting here rather than exact ingredients. There is huge flexibility in the types of greens. It varies soo widely between seasons and regions!

Ingredients

• 2 cups leaves from your garden (basil or mixed greens – garlic chives, welsh onion, rocket, parlsey, mizuna, kale, spinach, silverbeet, pumpkin, sorrel, cranberry hibiscus, Brazilian spinach, nasturtium, and ‘weeds’ too like chickweed … )

• 1 lime/lemon, juiced

• 1/4 cup raw or toasted ground seeds/nuts (I use a coffee grinder)

• 1/2 cup olive oil

• 1/3 cup parmesan

NB: The leaves and flowers of the garlic chives replace the garlic in typical pesto recipes. It tastes great!

Method

Basically I just toss all the ingredients into a food processor and buzz until smooth, then spatula it all into a mason jar. It’s important to tap it down to ensure there are no air bubbles in the mix (will oxidise/go brown where there are bubbles) and I top it off with a little oil to keep it fresh. I store this in the fridge for about a week or two, but it doesn’t usually last that long though.  If you want to store it longer, it’s a good idea to freeze it.

The post Morag Gamble’s super pesto recipe using simple garden greens (8 mins) appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

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.

Amaranth is an amazing food – quite overlooked as a powerhouse. It’s simple to grow, simple to cook and super delicious.

Here’s seven good reasons to add it to your diet:

1. HIGH IRON: Did you know that one cup of cooked Amaranth grain (actually a seed*) can provide you with much of your daily iron needs? I was amazed when I read this.  Having been a vegetarian since early childhood, finding new ways to keep my iron levels up is always interesting news to me.
2. HIGH CALCIUM and Magnesium – also high in manganese, vitamins B and E, zinc and potassium.
3. HIGH PROTEIN: Amaranth is one of the most protein rich plant based foods. Its seed has 20% protein. 
4. HIGH LYSINE: Amaranth offers the highest source of vegetarian Lysine. Lysine, an amino acid, is a building block for protein, and it helps with calcium absorption and collagen production.
5. GLUTEN FREE: Amaranth is gluten free. It can be ground as a flour or cooked as a psuedograin.
6. HIGH FIBRE:  A diet high in fibre keeps the digestive system healthy
7. EASY AND FAST TO GROW: Did you know you can get up to 100,000 seeds from one plant!  Amaranth is super easy and fast to grow. It takes less than 30 days before harvesting small leaves and just 50 days to maturity. It can cope with heat and dry conditions a lot better than any other leafy green. It grows easily in many contexts and self-seeds readily. You can eat the young leaves, but older ones are best cooked and used like spinach. I add amaranth leaves to all sorts of meals – stir fries, soups, quiches, omelettes, frittata, curries etc. (Typically people have cooked amaranth leaves to reduce their oxalic acid content.

I love the look of amaranth in the garden – it’s flowers are amazing.

The post 7 Reasons to Grow and Eat Amaranth – A Simple Ancient Superfood appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

1. Feed soil life.
2. Protect soil life and structure.

As you know healthy soil = healthy plants = nourishing food = good health.  Plants in sterile soil perform poorly. Unhealthy plants are more prone to pest and disease problems, just as unhealthy food leaves us more prone to disease and malnourishment.

So what are superb soils? They feel crumbly and moist. They smell earthy. Their structure is open allowing movement of air, water and nutrients to plant roots. They are full of diverse and abundant life.

You may have read the previous soil post about soils in June: 5 Simple Ways to Improve Your Soil and Grow Better Food http://our-permaculture-life.blogspot.com.au/2016/06/5-simple-ways-to-improve-your-soil-and.html. In that post I recommended to:

1. Open the Soil
2. Feed the Soil
3. Add Organic Matter to the Soil
4. Mulch the Soil
5. Water Deeply

This is exactly what we need to be doing. I wanted to add some extra information here about why.

Did you know most plants have root extenders …..?!

Plants in real soil – superb alive soils – are supported by the web of life in the soil, in particular, fungus. Did you know that 90% of plants rely on fungus to access most of the nutrients and moisture they need – the fungal filaments are like root extensions. They go finer, further and deeper than roots could ever go.  So plants and fungus live in symbiosis – a mutually supportive relationship – and plants in this relationship are stronger and more resilient.

Why gardening in the ground is so important…

This plant-fungus relationship is why I recommend, wherever possible, to grow food in the ground and work to improve the aliveness of soils. (Understandably this not as easily achieved in balcony gardens and areas of soil contamination). The importance of connecting with soil life also explains why raised garden beds that are disconnected from actual soil can limit the vitality of your garden soils and plants.

How to create soil aliveness?

The base of the soil food web is organic matter.  More organic matter = more soil life. The two main things that support beneficial bacterial and fungal growth in the soil are: organic matter and protection from the elements, this also supports the flourishing of the entire soil food web.

What damages good soil?

• tillage damages the fungi – it severs the fungal threads
• fungicides and pesticides kill the good fungus, bacterias and bugs
• lack of organic matter – no food for soil life
• no soil protection – over-exposure to sun, rain and wind kills soil life

5 Simple Strategies to Feed and Protect Soils

Here are some natural and simple ways to feed soil life, protect soil structure and tend the soil:

1. Activate your soil with compost. 
I have a range of compost systems on the go, but I really love the simplicity and portability of the movable compost bins. I take them to an area that need a real boost, compost there for a while, attracting a zone of soil aliveness, then moving the bin on to another spot, but leaving the compost there to spread out, mulch over and make a new garden. There are also a number of herbs you can add into a compost to activate it. Read about these here: http://our-permaculture-life.blogspot.com.au/2016/01/improve-your-soil-with-herbs.html

Movable compost bin and worm tower – creating soil life hot spots.

2. Add compost worms to your garden ecosystem.
One way to do this is by installing simple worm towers throughout your garden, taking the benefits of worms and worm castings directly into your garden soil. It creates nutrient rich zones, and zones of soil aliveness. Visit my previous post about worm towers:
http://our-permaculture-life.blogspot.com.au/2016/01/a-quick-and-super-easy-way-to-turn-food.html and another which links to  the 7 minute film showing you how to do it.
http://our-permaculture-life.blogspot.com.au/2016/07/film-5-how-to-make-worm-tower.html

3. Add organic matter, compost and leafy greens to garden beds – in a no-till way.
Making no-dig gardens feeds and protects soils and creates a great environment for your soil life to thrive. This helps so much to support a thriving vegetable garden. By using the no-dig garden method rather than digging it into the soil protects the soil structure. Visit my previous post to see how to make a no-dig garden:
http://our-permaculture-life.blogspot.com.au/2016/01/morags-simple-successful-no-dig-garden.html

4. Plant deep rooted plants
I plant comfrey around the edge of the garden and beside the compost. The thick penetrating roots accumulate nutrients from deep in the soil and bring them to the surface. You can then use comfrey leaves as an excellent compost activator, to make a potent homemade comfrey fertiliser (http://our-permaculture-life.blogspot.com.au/2016/07/film-3-how-to-make-comfrey-tea-with.html), to add organic matter and nutrients into the soil layer while making a no-dig garden, or just to chop and drop. Also fruit trees with comfrey nearby seem to do better.

Comfrey

5. Regularly chop and drop organic matter.
I am often wandering around the garden, chopping back surplus growth and tossing it around trees and garden beds to feed and protect soil life. It’s amazing how quickly it breaks down and gets taken into the soil. Because having enough organic matter is so vital, I actually grow plants especially for this purpose such as the comfrey, Queensland arrowroot, lemongrass and pigeon pea – but many other plants can be used too, such as the abundant mulberry or pumpkin leaves.

Old pumpkin vines as chop and drop mulch.

In and around the veggie garden I mostly use mulch – a seedfree grass hay that is easy to work with around the little plants.

Thick layers of mulch get drawn rapidly into our soils.

I also recommend using cover crops (living mulch) to cover bare soils, open soils, add organic matter and renew areas.

DEFINITIONS: 

Bacteria – single celled organisms that are the most abundant microbes in the soil. 

Fungal filaments – the fine white threads called mycelium you can see in healthy soil. We need this mycorrhizal fungi (symbiotic relationship between the plant and fungus) – 90% of plants rely on it. It increases plant strength, increases water uptake, absorbs minerals & nutrients and in addition stores 1/3 of soil carbon.

(Interestingly, mycorrhizal fungi does not form relationships with the Cruciferae family (eg mustard, broccoli), Chenopodiaceae (eg spinach, beets) and Proteaceae (banksia, macadamia). Fungal numbers drop in the soil with these plants, same as when the soil is left bare and exposed.)

Protozoa – single cell organisms that eat bacterias and release nitrogen to plants. 

Nematodes – microscopic wormlike creatures, that are the most numerous multi-celled things on Earth and an essential part of healthy soil ecosystems. They are found in every conceivable habitat from the deepest ocean to the highest mountain. They feed on bacteria, fungi, algae, small invertebrates and other nematodes. Gardeners immediately think of root knot nematodes, and cringe in fear when they hear their name mentioned. Having root knot nematodes are an indicator that your soil ecology is out of balance – adding more organic matter, compost and moisture can usually help regain the balance, as well as planting a crop of brassicas that are more resistant to the root knot nematodes – particularly the mustard varieties.

The post The 2 Best Things You Can Do To Simply Create Superb Soils for Superbly Healthy Food appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

I am paying attention today because they are so cracked and sore, and because we made some lovely scrubs and salves yesterday at a workshop I held here in my garden (DIY Natural Health and Beauty Products) – just what my feet are calling for. These things can be made easily and cheaply.

Homemade mint sugar scrub – see below for instructions.

I knew my feet were in need of attention, but I recently bought a new pair of summer season shoes that seem to be ripping up my soles and aggravating the problem.  Back to closed shoes I think and a week of intensive care….

I’m going to take pictures every day and show you at the end of the week how well this has worked.

This is my three step process. It’s easy to do in the evening while I sit here and write, and catch up on emails.

1. Apple Cider Vinegar Soak

The warm vinegar soak softens the skin making it easier to remove the dead skin. I put in half a cup of vinegar into enough warm water to cover my feet and soaked them for 15 minutes.

2. Mint Sugar Scrub

This was the biggest hit of all at the DIY Natural Health and Beauty Products yesterday class I think. It immediately makes your hands and feet feel great, and it’s super easy. Immediately after the vinegar soak, while my heels are soft, I am using this scrub to help remove the dry skin and to soften, revive and nourish too.

• 2 tbsp coconut oil
• 2 tbsp raw sugar
• 6 leaves chopped mint
• zest of half a grapefruit (optional)

Soften the coconut oil if solid (I put the coconut oil in a bowl, then place this bowl in hot water till softened), then mix in the other ingredients. Store the scrub in a sealed jar/tin in the fridge and soften just before use.

NB: Make sure you don’t add the sugar to hot oil otherwise it will melt and not be a scrub, and don’t soften later in hot water either.

Collecting fresh ingredients from my garden for making herb oils for homemade beauty products.

3. Herb Beeswax Salve

• 1/2 cup olive oil infused with comfrey, chickweed and calendula infused oil. (see my previous post on how to make a simple cold infused herbal oil http://our-permaculture-life.blogspot.com.au/2015/11/making-comfrey-oil.html)
• 1/4 cup coconut oil
• 1/4 cup pure beeswax
• 2 tbsp cocoa butter

1. On a double boiler (or with a ceramic bowl over boiling water), gently melt the beeswax, coconut oil and cocoa butter.  
2. When fully blended remove from heat and allow to cool.
3. When still runny, but warm (not hot) add the herb infused oil.
4. Pour into jars or tins and allow to cool and solidify.

I’ll be repeating this every night for the next few days and going to bed with more salve and bed socks.

These are the things we made in the workshop. Everyone went home with a collection of herb oil, healing salve, hand and face cream and lip balm.

At the end our our day together, this was our board of things we covered.

The last two workshops for the year are:

• The Simple and Abundant Garden on 29 October 
• Harvest to Table on Saturday 12 November. 

There are still places on both of the these if you’d like to come and spend a day in my garden with me learning and creating. We have fun, learn a lot from each other and eat deliciously healthy food!

Workshop participants collecting herbs and flowers in my garden yesterday to make the products. The lovely ladies at the DIY Natural Health and Beauty Products workshop yesterday putting their hand and face cream in jars.

The post Three Simple & Natural Cracked Feet Treats appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

Bill Mollison (1928 – 2016)

612 ABC Radio: Morag Gamble in Conversation with Sarah Howells 

The topics we explore in this 25 minute conversation are:

• Remembering Bill Mollison
  (http://our-permaculture-life.blogspot.com.au/2016/09/thank-you-for-permaculture-bill.html)
• Fighting off the Flu the Permaculture Way
  (http://our-permaculture-life.blogspot.com.au/2016/09/home-grown-medicine-10-common-medicinal.html)
• Waste in the fashion industry and the environmental impact of synthetic clothes
  (http://our-permaculture-life.blogspot.com.au/2016/09/did-you-know-our-clothes-are-poisoning.html)
• Playing with Natural Dyes
  (http://our-permaculture-life.blogspot.com.au/2016/09/chemical-free-clothes-easy-diy-natural.html)
• Sustainable Clothing

“When the dreaded lurgy heads for your house, and the kids start sniffling, coughing, and sneezing, do you reach straight for the medicine cabinet? Or do you, instead, take a wander down the garden path, picking plants and leaves as you go, to make up a brew?

Morag Gamble from Our Permaculture Life would probably choose the latter option, and she joins us tonight to tell us why!”

Now that I’ve recovered from the ‘lurgy’, I’ve had a wonderful couple of days offering tours of my garden and organising a Young Ethos Scholars program – a masterclass for children in writing and theatre with a sustainability focus. I’m getting ready now for a workshop making salves and other natural healing and beauty products from my garden.  It’s going to be so much fun.

Northey Street City Farm’s permaculture design course students visited my garden this week. I love having the urban-rural connection between city farm and our place. (Photo: Emma Brindal)

The post Morag on ABC Radio: Remembering Bill Mollison & More Simple Living Discussions appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.