Upcoming event reminders, some interesting links and event reports

Some reminders about upcoming HRN (and other) events, to put in your diary now. Events beyond the bushfire prep workshop are TBC, details will follow...

- Today! Friday 24 September, 5pm: The very first Critical mass in the main street of Daylesford. Ride your bike and meet at the Daylesford Primary School zebra crossing to help raise awareness of bikes on the road!
- Wednesday 29 September: Food survey meeting, email us for more details. Come along to find out how you can help with our Food survey project, get to know your local community food producers and strengthen our local food network, all at the same time!
- Saturday 2 October, 10am: Bushfire preparation workshop with David Holmgren, Spring Creek Gully.
- Thursday 14 October: Film night - Bullshit
- Thursday 11 November: Film night - The Oiling of America
- Thursday 9 December: Community meal, final event for 2010

Here is a link we've been waiting for a (relatively) quiet moment to send out, to ABS Quick Stats for the Daylesford Urban Area. The statistics here give a bit of a picture of our local area relative to the rest of Australia, which is very interesting in terms of thinking about how we are placed as a community and what we need to do to relocalise and build our resilience.

On that topic, I (Liz) must say I was quite inspired by attending the Holmgren Design Services "Advanced Permaculture Principles and Planning Tools" course on the weekend, particularly by the Community Resilience Mapping of Hepburn exercise, during which most course participants assessed Hepburn to be relatively well off in terms of future energy descent scenario capacity... It was also amazing to learn more about how to read our landscape and find out so much more about our local area, and also to consider permaculture design principles and ethics in a deeper way. What a (gold?) minefield of things we all have to think about now! I highly recommend the course for future reference for next time it is run... Ask me about it any time.

Course participants viewing our local area from a vantage point on Elevated Plains. Photo by Liz Wade.

Also on a related topic, we were recently sent a link to a Dateline report on concerns in the United States about the earth's future and the different ways people are responding, ranging from reserving space in an underground survival shelter to transitioning to a sustainable life post-carbon. Could be worth a watch...


The recent HRN Bio-fertiliser workshop with Eugenio Gras was also fantastic. A number of people from near and further afield learned how to make a fermented liquid fertiliser for our gardens and fields, and so much more. Eugenio was an engaging presenter and the hands-on workshop helped us understand the process of making bio-fertiliser and also lime sulphur, and all that they can do for our soil and plants. For those who couldn't make it along, you can check out Eugenio's presentations and instructions for making bio-fertiliser, lime sulphur, and more, here.

Last night's film, Food Inc., was quite sobering for all who attended I'd say... Makes me glad to live right here, where we have local food available for us to eat that is not all entangled in the multi-national corporate system... Thank goodness for local farmers, CSA vegie box schemes, bulk food coops, all the local folk who grow their own, harvest swaps, seed and seedling sharing and other wonderful things we are so very lucky to have right here.

Locals and a visiting WWOOFer at a working bee at Rod May's farm in Blampied. Photo by David Holmgren.

Be part of the solution and help us with our food survey project to help find out more about, and to strengthen, our local food network, and to build food security for the future. Yeah! (Starting with that meeting I was talking about next Wednesday!)