We just wanted to let you know that we aren't having a January Culture Club. Our first fermie get together for 2017 will be Saturday February 4. Watch this space for details.
If you're around on NYE, come and join the community gardeners in the annual Daylesford NYE parade. Think colourful costumes, big hair, yarn bombed bikes and scooters, political placards, wheelbarrows piled high with plants, straw bales and kids.
We are meeting outside the MS op shop on Duke Street at 7pm on the 31st.
Hope to see you there.
Happy holidays from all us here at HRN HQ!
We're looking forward to another year of relocalising together in 2017. More growing, more sharing, more making, more preserving, more helping, more repairing, and a lot more dancing.
Sourdough, mead, jun, sauerkraut, kefir, kimchi, kombucha... Whatever you've been busy making at home, please come along to our second Show + Share day and inspire others to confidently make and mistake, as we discover collectively the exciting world of fermenting.
Meg Ulman won't be there for this next Culture Club. She and her partner Patrick will be at the International Indigenous Health Conference where Patrick will be giving a keynote address entitled Fermenting Country- caring for the ecology of our gut, after which Meg will be taking a fermenting workshop. We wish them all the very best.
We hope you have a great festive season. Don't forget that in some countries sauerkraut juice is sold as a hangover cure...
Were Indigenous Australians the world's first bakers? Come and discuss this delicious history while we take our sourdough making skills one step further from where we left off at last Culture Club's fermented grains workshop.
We will be learning new techniques and recipes so come and learn, try, and most importantly, taste the latest offerings in this country's long lineage of breadly goods.
Did you know that sourdough bread may contain vitamins B1-B6, B12, folate, thiamin, niacin, riboflavin, vitamin E, selenium, iron, manganese, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, zinc and potassium –in addition to uniquely balanced proteins and fatty acids? Whoa! This is in contrast to most commercially produced breads, which maintain only a fraction of their original nutrient content after all the processing they undergo.
Come and learn the art, craft and some of the science of making sourdough bread fermented with wild culture, as well as some other fermented goodies made using various grains.
Please note the earlier finishing time of 12.30pm. No need to bring lunch this time. Just your person, your friends and your enthusiasm.
Don't forget HRN has two exciting upcoming events:
This Friday night at 7pm, Charlie Mgee and his band Formidable Vegetable Sound System, will be launching their new album, Grow Do It in Daylesford. They're calling it a kids' album, but that hasn't stopped any of us adults boogying around the HRN HQ while we listen to it.
There will be a delicious supper available, too, to replenish our stores after a big night of dancing.
Here's a sneak peek of Kimchi, one of the songs from the new album:
(If you're reading this as an email, you might need to click through to the HRN blog to watch it.)
If you love kimchi as much as Charlie and would like to learn how to make it, we warmly invite you to come along to this Saturday's Culture Club for our free Back to Basics workshop where we will be making kimchi, sauerkraut, fermented carrots, pickled carrots, and a carrot kvass.
This will be a hands on and hands in workshop. Here's what you need to bring if you'd like to make your own:
Kimchi
Ingredients
- flaked or fine salt
- 3-4 cloves of garlic
- a thumb of ginger
- chilli flakes, or dried or fresh chillies
- fish sauce (optional)
- daikon radish (optional)
- sugar
- Chinese/napa cabbage, though ordinary cabbage, bok choy, etc works fine too - need about 1kg
- 1 carrot
- spring onions (optional)
- plastic gloves (optional) Utensils
- clean 1L (or thereabouts) jar
- grater
- chopping board + knife
- mixing bowl
Sauerkraut
Ingredients
- one or more cabbages
- salt
- optional: whey, onion, garlic, chilli, spices (cardamom, coriander, fennel, star anise, caraway etc) Utensils
- large bowl (preferably stainless steel) for pounding into
- pounding tool - eg. pestle
- grater
- large chopping knife
- chopping board
- 2 wide mouthed jars or crock - size depends on quantity of ingredients you want to make up. About 1 litre is a good size to start with
Carrot Ferment
Ingredients
- 4-5 carrots
- salt
- optional: whey, onion, garlic, chilli, spices as above Utensils
- large bowl (preferably stainless steel) for pounding into
- pounding tool - eg. pestle
- grater
- large chopping knife
- chopping board
- 2 wide mouthed jars or crock - size depends on quantity of ingredients you want to make up. About 1 litre is a good size to start with
Pickled Carrots
Ingredients
- 4-5 large carrots
- 4 garlic cloves
- good quality salt
- black peppercorns
- mustard seeds
- 2 bayleaves
- fresh dill or dill seeds
- optional: lemon, chillies
Utensils
- 1 2-litre jar or several smaller jars
- knife
- chopping board
Carrot Kvass
Ingredients
- 1 carrot
- salt
- whey (optional) Utensils
- 1 large jar
- chopping board
- knife
Eeeeeeeeeeeee!! We can hardly contain our excitement! Charlie Mgee is returning to Daylesford with his band Formidable Vegetable Sound System to launch their new album Grow Do It.
Supporting, is the ever-talented effervescent Mal Webb, launching his new album Not Nor Mal, with the help of Kylie Morrigan
Tell your friends and get your dancing shoes ready! It's going to be one hell of a fabulous night.
Sourdough, yoghurt, water kefir, jun, suerkraut... Whatever you have bubbling away at home in your crocks and jars, it's time to give them an airing. Our next Culture Club is going to be a Show + Share day where we can share stories, recipes, experiments and wondrous flavours.
We have a month until then, which is plenty of time, even in our cold houses. Can't wait!!
Yoghurt, whey, milk kefir, cultured butter and yummy cheeses... Please join us at our next Culture Club meet-up to learn and share knowledges about fermenting dairy.
Come one, come all and please help us celebrate this wondrous time of year with community friends, a shared dinner and much merriment. For more info on the Hibernal Solstice, please visit this site.
What a fabulous opportunity for all of us to brush up on our pruning skills (under the skilled guidance of biodynamic orchardist Ian Clarke), while socialising and keeping warm.
Here is it folks, our first Culture Club workshop. Please put the date in your calendar and come along. It's going to be a fantastic day of sharing, learning and experimentation. We can't wait!
HRN is extremely excited to be launching Culture Club: for fermenters of all passions and experience. We are hoping it will be a regular get together. We thought a casual dinner was a good start, then we can all decide what we want the group to be.
Will we run workshops and have making days?
Will we visit people's homes and businesses to see what they have bubbling away in their crocks?
Will we have a cabbage planting day at one of the Daylesford Community Food Gardens and then a sauerkraut making bonanza when they're ready?
Will we organise crock making classes at Clayspace?
Or will we just have regular dinners where people bring fermented dishes to share and cultures, scobys and starters to pass around?
We have no idea what will come of it, but like a wild ferment, we are open to whatever comes in.
Please bring a dish to share made from local produce (and including a fermented ingredient or not, it's up to you), some starter or scoby to swap (if you have any), some fermenting recipe books (if you have favourites), a cushion to sit on and much fermented enthusiasm.
Like to live more sustainably but not sure how to get there? Are you wondering how exactly your personal values align with your ecological values?
Your Personal Ecological Values Check-up is a workshop that explores your own values, giving an insight into the universal values that create the conditions for living sustainably, and looks at what living sustainably means to you in practice.
Maximum participants 15 people, so booking is essential. RSVP laurel@share.asn.au Gold coin donation.
Award-winning Australian writer, editor and anthologist Bruce Pascoe is leading a movement of researchers who are rewriting Aboriginal history in Australia. On Thursday April 7 2016 Pascoe will visit Daylesford for the below free events.
2pm tour of Dja Dja Wurrung tools at the Daylesford Museum
3pm reading by Bruce of his young adult fiction at the Daylesford Library
4pm planting of murnongs (yam daisies) at the Daylesford Library community garden
7.30pm in conversation with David Holmgren for the event: Land Cultures: Aboriginal economies and permaculture futures at the Daylesford Town Hall
Poster by Ian Robertson
The evening event will commence with a Dja Dja Wurrung smoking ceremony and Welcome to Country. A Hepburn Shire Council representative will present a progress report on the Shire’s recognition and reconciliation projects. Pascoe’s keynote address will be followed by a response
from David Holmgren, co-originator of the permaculture concept and Hepburn Springs resident,
before opening the discussion to the floor. Supper will be provided by Hepburn Relocalisation Network (for a gold coin donation).
All events are free and people are encouraged to attend any or all of the events.
Bruce Pascoe has a Bunurong and Tasmanian heritage. In his latest book, Dark Emu: black seeds, Pascoe shows that the Aboriginal history we were taught in school — that indigenous Australians were chancey hunter-gatherer nomads — is a fiction. Using point of contact journals by European explorers, Pascoe demonstrates the extent of the ecologically sensitive agricultural practices that existed in Australia pre-1788, and shows that Aboriginal Australians were possibly the world’s first bread makers, preceding the Egyptians by at least 18,000 years.
If you’re going to participate in one significant cultural and learning day this year, this may well be it. Come and join the discussion and understand how the foods of Australia pre-1788 may become the foods of a climate-altered 21st century economy that acknowledge and celebrate the past.
The day is presented by Hepburn Relocalisation Network with the generous assistance and funding of Hepburn Shire Council.
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For all media enquiries please contact Patrick Jones: 0418 523 308 permapoesis@gmail.com
Great to see some sensible information on the ABC. Remember HRN has lots more relevant useful information here and that HRN has tools for you to borrow for fire prep work, see here
Have you seen this 'Story of Stuff' challenge ? Join me in doing it, sure to be thought provoking, inspirational and fun, Maureen
Mini-Online Course on Connecting to Your Purpose
What’s your purpose?
In the chaos of the day-to-day, it’s easy to lose sight of what motivates you to make the world a better place.
It's a new year, and a great time to get centered and reconnect with your sense of purpose. What's your deepest passion? What helps you come alive?
Starting January 25th, we are offering a special one-week January Changemaker Challenge, focused exclusively on helping you connect with your purpose as a Changemaker.
Frederick Buechner describes purpose as, "the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.” It’s a beautiful reminder that we all play different roles in creating a better world, and that the process of doing that work can itself be joyful and fulfilling.
Complete with videos from Annie, hands-on interactive online exercises and some additional tips for practicing what you've learned, this short course will take only 1-2 hours to complete. It's free, and you can go through the content at your own pace.
By the end of the course, you will have developed a purpose statement that will help get you started making positive change in your community and in the world in 2016. We'll compile and share some of our favorite purpose statements with you, and check-in on your progress in a few months!
The Changemaker Challenge will run from Monday, January 25th through Sunday, January 31st.
All you need is an internet connection, about an hour or two over the course of the week, and a desire to make the world a better place!
