Here’s a lovely article “Community Gardens – Valuing Shared Spaces” just published in Natural Artisan Magazine.  It includes an interview with me about the wonderfully positive impact these shared gardens bring to communities and those involved.

Grab a cuppa and enjoy ….

If you scroll to pages 14-17 on the magazine below, or click this link to see the four-page article. https://issuu.com/thenaturalartisan/docs/the_natural_artisan_-_winter_2016/14

Speaking at the Northey Street City Farm Winter Solstice Fair Food Forum last weekend – with Emma Brindal, Dick Copeman and Thor Svenson. The gardens were just thriving with people, music, great food and such a fabulous eco-community vibe.

I will definitely be including an exploration of community garden design and development in our Permaculture Design Course coming up from August 29 – September 9. I hope you can join us.

The post Urban Food: Community Glue: Community Gardens – Sharing Simple Sustainable Living appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

Evan and I most recently met with Vandana Shiva in Indonesia.

Vandana is one of the world’s most prominent environmental advocates. She is an Indian scholar, environmental activist, anti-globalisation author and tireless campaigner for seed freedom – a clear and loud voice for Earth Democracy – calling for seed sovereignty, water sovereignty, food sovereignty and land sovereignty. 

To provide a place where people can come to immerse themselves deeply to learn about these ways of seeing the world, the paradigm shift needed and to gain practical skills, she has created the Earth University in India, connected to Schumacher College. She encourages us all to become activists for Earth Democracy…

“Become the seeds of change in any place in the food web which is so rich and complex – become a seedsaver, an organic farmer, an activist, a chef, a nutritionist …”

Back in 1992, I was volunteering in the Himalayas at the Ladakh Project with Helena Norbert-Hodge of ISEC and Vandana came up to Ladakh for a week to help establish a community seed-saving project. I watched as the mothers and grandmothers of the community were so empowered by her – they mobilised their community networks and created the seed exchange network within just a few months.

Since then I have crossed paths with Vandana on many occasions – at Schumacher College in England, and more recently at the launch of Slow Food Bali’s community seed saving project.

I look forward to spending the evening with Vandana surrounded by my dear earth activist friends.  Who knows what will emerge from a gathering like this.

Maia and Hugh also attended Vanadana’s talk at Slow Food Bali’s seed project launch.

• The Vandana Shiva Reader (2014)
• Making Peace with the Earth (2012)
• Soil not Oil (2007)
• Earth Democracy (2005)
• Stolen Harvest (2000)
• Monoculture of the Mind (1993)

The post Making Peace with the Earth and Becoming Seeds of Change appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

I share the stories I read with Evan, discuss the ideas with the children, and pass around the magazines to friends, family and our WWOOFers.

I have tried online versions, but there’s just something about the print version that is so appealing – particularly a really well-designed magazine with excellent photography and inspiring and challenging writing.  It’s often the unexpected articles, the ones I might not click on in the online version, that surprise and intrigue me.

It’s a simple joy, but I love the anticipation of receiving my magazines by mail and sitting down with a cuppa to do the initial scan, working out what I am going to read first and then making the magazine last as long as I can.

One of my all-time favourites is Resurgence Magazine which has recently merged with another of my favourites, The Ecologist.  I have been subscribing continuously since 1992. This magazine is filled with articles about ecological thinking, peaceful and sustainable living, and positive activism.

After writing about plastic waste and the impact of microbeads the other day, I was delighted to read an article about California banning plastic microbeads in the new issue of Resurgence. Vandana Shiva, one of the environmental activists I most admire, writes too about a Manifesto for Sustainability

Another magazine I stumbled across more recently is Dumbo Feather. I love delving into the long, deep conversations they have with extraordinary people who are doing very amazing things with their lives, following their passions – being 100 percenters as they call it. They wrote  an article about three steps to becoming a 100 percenter – asking ‘What is you were able to align your values with how you live? “Pass it on” is printed on their cover page – I always do.

And finally, I have to say PIP Magazine: Australian Permaculture is another favourite too – full of absolutely practical information about ways to live a simple and sustainable life, I’ve been writing for this magazine since issue 2 – contributing articles, an overview of permaculture projects around the world, and now also contributions to the kids page.  In the latest issue includes an article I wrote about Nature Kids and the importance of connecting children with nature.

There are of course so many other magazines I enjoy reading. I find them in the newsagent or library and occasionally buy, but these three I think represent my favourites.

Have you got any amazing favourites? I’d love to learn about other wonderful reads.

The post Great reads to inspire living a simple, meaningful and interesting life. appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

Firstly, my garden – there is so much abundance there if you include all the edible leaves, flowers, roots, fruits and shoots. Secondly, I source a fair amount by trading with friends and visiting local farmers, markets and my local food coop.

Wild foraging is another way of getting package-free food – it’s fresh and it’s free. Everywhere there is actually so much food. Street trees, parks, river banks, pathways, community gardens and abandoned spaces. Around here there are wild raspberries, dandelions, nettle, chickweed, wild amaranth, purslane and so much more.  

One of my favourite parts of workshops I run is walking around the garden foraging for food. We smell, taste and collect things that usually get overlooked – I talk about how to grow, harvest and cook the unusual foods.  I’ve also organised workshops too where we go on a wild forage for weeds and feast on our findings for lunch. 

My garden is designed as a forager’s garden. I delight in discovering my dinner. It is full of so many plants – perennials, self-seeding, herbs, flowers, fruits, roots, shoots – and there is always a surprise.

Since my garden is such a source of foraging abundance, I haven’t been wild foraging for a while but I am re-inspired to head out to the wilder parts after coming across a great book yesterday about foraging for wild food in the city. The Thrifty Forager: Living off your local landscape by Alys Fowler 2011, and a new edition in 2015.

Alys Fowler (image source: litfest.ie) is author of several books (Slow Gardening, Abundance, The Edible Garden, The Thrifty Gardener, Garden Everywhere and The Thrifty Forager). She also writes a weekly column on gardening for Guardian Weekend magazine.

In the introduction to The Thrifty Forager, Alys addresses straight up the fear that people have of foraging for food – “Is it clean?”  She answers this by questioning whether supermarket food is any cleaner, suggesting that it is possibly more polluted.  She encourages people to become “competent foragers – knowing the land management practices of where the food is being picked – knowing what and when to pick, observing the landscape and watching for changes”.  She believes that what she picks from around her is far more beneficial to her and her surroundings that anything she buys about of a package.

When I lived in Brisbane, we were always foraging. We harvested Macadamias from our street trees, tamarinds from another road lined with them, fallen mangoes, lilly pillies from parks everywhere,  and lots of other bush foods.

Another really useful book I have for finding out what to look for is the Weed Forager’s Handbook: A guide to edible and medicinal weeds in Australia by Adam Grubb and Annie Raser-Rowland. 

There’s also Food for Free by Richard Mabey. Collins 2012, which lists over 100 common foods you can find out and about. 

excerpt from Food For Free

At the same time that I found The Thrifty Forager, I saw The Rurbanite: living in the country without leaving the city (2013) by Alex Mitchell (also author of The Edible Balcony, and a columnist for the Sunday Telegraph). I related to being a ‘rurbanite’. This is how I felt as a city farmer – getting Northey Street City Farm set up 20 years ago. I remember actually being referred to as an ‘Urban Peasant’ in a newspaper article with a picture of me in my overalls with a garden fork over my shoulder.  

The Rurbanite is a good read for people who want to live grow food, keep chickens and bees, live simply, but stay in the city. There’s a growing band of urbanites – the urban homesteaders, the city farmers, container growers, curbside gardeners, urban food foragers and guerrilla gardeners. With 75% of the global population expected to live in cities by 2050, growing food in the city, and connecting with and nurturing the natural and wild spaces in the cities is becoming more and more critical.

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