Peak Oil Ball

Click for bigger

Come and help support the Mayor’s Emergency Climate Fund to help Hepburn Shire communities with emergency relief for climate-related disasters such as fire, flood, winds, etc, and innovation in renewable energy.

Date: Saturday 3 December 2011
Time: 7:00 pm
Venue: The Palais, 111 Main Road, Hepburn Springs
Tickets: Dinner and Show: $65. $600 per table of 10
Show Only: $25 - at the door on the night
Music by the Cartwheels Big Band
Quiz by Rick Tanaka
Drinks at bar prices

• Prize for best recycled outfit
• Prize for best local natural fibre outfit
• Prize for who ever walked to the event from the furthest away

Book at the The Palais, 111 Main Road, Hepburn Springs
Ph: 5348 4849 www.thepalais.com.au

Another date or your diaries is December 10 when SBS gardening guru Costa will be in town to help launch the Hepburn Wholefood Co-op.

A PS from last time about Seed Saving. The Seed Savers Handbook is usually $32 but for orders of 4 or more it is $19, so please email Liz on relocal.liz@gmail.com by 4 December if you'd like to add yourself to a bulk order. $19 if you drop off your money in a (second hand) envelope with your name on it to Melliodora, 16 Fourteenth Street, Hepburn, $21 if you pay afterwards, to cover costs.

Also mentioned at the film night was the possibility of a bulk buy of some of Juliette de Baircli Levy's books about dog health and Farm and Stable. Unfortunately we haven't found any bulk buy options, so perhaps instead you could look at purchasing them from ABE books, a website that collects together suppliers of second hand books.

Peak Oil Ball & Saving Seeds

Hi all,

Firstly just a bit of housekeeping: the Community Dinner that was scheduled for tonight has been cancelled due to lack of numbers. In the future if you would like to see such events go ahead, please make sure you book in advance.

The next upcoming event is the Mayor's Peak Oil Ball on Saturday Dec 3 at the Palais. Details to come.


Thank you to everyone who turned up for the screening of Juliette of the Herbs at the Savoia. What a lovely film and what a lively discussion afterwards. Thanks to Margot for being the scribe. Here are the notes from the night:

How do we create a culture of seed saving and swapping?

Save seeds from our home gardens and community gardens.

Swap them at community garden working bees and at the monthly harvest swap meets.

Be careful as cross pollination can occur between some plants eg: zuccini, squash and pumpkins. Daikon crossed with wild raddish makes a useless root.

Growing successful plants means they are better adapted to a specific area, but they can lose the individual characteristics the plant started with.

Adaptability vs quality.

Rijk Zwaan is a Musk-based seed company that specialises in breeding and supplying vegetable seed for commercial cultivation. Maybe we could have an excursion out to see how they their company operates.

To save seeds make sure you identify what they are:

•     Variety
•     Lineage (how long you have been growing the plant)
•     Where the plant was grown (wet or dry part of town)
•     When the plant was harvested
•     What type of soil the plant was grown in
•     How was the plant fertilised?
•     Was the plant grown in sun or shade?

 

Perhaps we could have a communal stamp made up with all the info we need to know about seeds. Variety, shade, frost sensitive etc.. Just like regular seed packages.

Do we want to have a centralised shire seed bank?

Resources:

www.seedsavers.net

The Seed Savers' Handbook by Michel and Jude Fanton

Film: The Seed Hunter

Reminder for Pardon My Carbon and community dinner

The Rod Quantock show is this Thursday. Please let us know by tomorrow if you would like to join an HRN table for what promises to be an entertaining night. BYO dinner (local of course) and drinks to share.

And the Community Dinner is on November 16th which is the following Wednesday. Book if you would like to join us so that we can set table.

Old Is New Again, Transition Conference in Melbourne, Rod Quantock in Daylesford & film night this Thursday

Well, just take a look at the Automatic Earth blog: October 30 2011: Reviving the Department of Subsistence Homesteads and discover 'the solutions' from the States to the1933 great depression...anything look familiar?

You can watch Nicole Foss explaining finance - highly informative but give yourself a free evening and a nice snack before you settle in. Or shall we do a film night so we can talk about it?

You may be interested in this MAV Transition Conference but if you can't get there (or it is a stress on the finances), contact a Councillor or Shire officer to suggest they go.

SHARE is hosting Rod Quantock again so if you want to join us on the HRN table, let us know. The cost is $19/head.

Oh, and don't forget film night this Thursday and in preparation, think about what seeds you have or could collect to swap/gift this year.