Second Miso Making Workshop

Saturday May 11th postponed until the 18th at 10am at Melliodora.

Cost is $30/person + cost of ingredients (koji $17, salt and soy beans tbc).

Miso soup to be served at the end of the workshop.

Bookings essential: hrn@internode.net.au.

Maximum of 9 people, so best be quick.

Kinglake & Kitchen

Day 1 of the Kinglake Regenerating People Place Prosperity Preparedness conference was truly a knockout. With so many speakers the day promised to be almost too full, but in groups of three the speakers managed to bounce off each other, stick to time constraints and be up for questions at the end of each session.

The content, as you may have seen in the program, is broad ranging due to the inspired organisation of Daryl Taylor. This event was made possible with monies from the 2009 Black Saturday fires funding for badly affected areas.

See if you can make it to Day 2 of this event on Sunday May 5th—National Permaculture Day—to celebrate the best of lessons learned in the wake of disasters close to home.

Inspiring stuff!

Please email us for car pooling options.

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Gardening Volunteers Wanted

The Kitchen Garden program at Daylesford Primary School is looking for volunteers. If anyone is available to assist, even for one session, please contact Jennifer Thompson at the school on 5348 2480. Other Shire schools would be also interested in Volunteers for their gardening programs with students; it's a great way of helping the younger generation go green.

Earth Render Workshop

Join local builder James Henderson, an authority on earth renders and earth buildings, for a workshop at the Rocklyn ashram (393 Dean Barkstead Rd, Rocklyn).

Learn how to do a clay/sand render with a little chopped straw; the most basic and the most popular of the earth renders.

Join James as he demonstrates wet and dry processing, tests the clay for use in render, prepares the walls and details, mixes the render and shows a variety of application and finishing methods including lime and clay casien paints.

3 - 5 May 2013

Option 1: $250
Friday after 2pm until Sunday 
Includes: Shared accommodation, all food, yoga sessions and workshop

Option 2: $220
Saturday 8.30am until Sunday
Includes: Shared accommodation, all food, yoga sessions and workshop

Day Options: $100 per day
Saturday 8.30am - 5.00pm
Sunday 8.30am - 5.00pm 
Includes: All food, yoga sessions and workshop

Yoga sessions:
6 - 7 am yoga posture class & meditation
Daily Yoga Nidra - deep relaxation
Evening program chanting

Bookings essential.

Ph: 5345 7434 or yogarock@satyananda.net

Miso Making

Thank you to everyone who attended the miso making workshop today. And an especially big thank you to tutor Rick Tanaka for showing us how to make a short maturation miso.

 

It was a great afternoon where we learnt about the history of miso, traditional processes to make it, various types of miso, maturation times and the by product, tamari. A fantastic workshop. Thank you Rick!

Regenerating...

Regenerating People Place Prosperity Preparedness is a two day conference exploring a diverse range of community regeneration and disaster preparedness issues and opportunities, experiential learning and the latest in-depth research findings.

Featuring fire scientist Kevin Tolhurst, ecological historians Tom Griffiths and Bill Gammage, trauma psychiatrist Paul Valent, economic regeneration consultants Peter Kenyon and David Engwicht, social entrepreneurs Margi O’Connell and Jan Owen, climate modeler Penny Whetton, sustainability activist Cam Walker, community safety policy experts John Handmer and Blythe McLennan and socio-ecological resilience practitioners David Holmgren and Erin Bohensky.

You can download the program here.

For those who are unable to attend, the event will be filmed and hopefully screened at an upcoming HRN film night.

For those who are able to attend, please email us for carpooling possibilities.

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Wild Foods: Regaining Local Knowledge 

Want to know more about what local food you can eat for free without doing any work, except for a restorative walk? Join Patrick Jones for a four hour forage on the outskirts of Daylesford identifying edible-medicinal leaves, seeds, mushrooms and fruits that constitute bush foods, weeds and other naturalising plants. Learn some of the eighty-five species that Jones and his family incorporate into their diets.

Saturdays starting 20th April till end of term
1-5pm (all weather except torrential rain)
$30 per person
Contact Daylesford Neighbourhood Centre for bookings on 5348 3569 or daylesford@ourneighbourhood.org.au

Film night #49: Ecuador

Click for bigger

Here's the trailer:
(If you're reading this in your inbox, you may need to click through to the blog to watch.)

Media

Permaculture: A Rhymer's Manual, the 12-track album from Formidable Vegetable Sound System brings simple concepts of sustainability into the spotlight through mnemonics, memes and music. The album is being launched on April 6 at CERES in Melbourne.

Meanwhile, up here in the hills, HRN is busy working with the band's frontman, Charlie Mgee (Permaculture Ukulele) to organise a gig for kids of all ages in Daylesford. We're very excited! Watch this space for more details.

Here's one of Charlie's songs, There's No Such Thing as Waste, based on Permaculture's 6th principle, Produce no Waste:

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Helena Norberg-Hodge (The Economics of Happiness) is one of the pioneers of the localisation movement and has been working for over thirty years promoting the renewal of local communities, economies and cultures. Manish Jain (Schooling the World) works to actively resist and dismantle what he describes as the global industrial education system and to regenerate local wisdom traditions by encouraging the teaching of local ways of knowing in India. Helena and Manish are speakers at this year's Economics of Happiness conference in Byron Bay and were interviewed on Thursday by Phillip Adams. You can hear the interview here - it's well worth a listen.

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Another podcast that's well worth a listen is Has our obsession with food gone too far? We live in a time where even the blandest offerings can be labelled 'gourmet', what and where we eat is front and centre in popular culture, while those who feed us have attained an almost revered status. But despite being better informed about the food we eat, its ingredients and nutritional value, our food choices are often questionable and health outcomes are trending downwards. So has our obsession with food gone too far? Or not far enough ?

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And for those who missed Dave Jacke's Daylesford talk on edible forest gardening, here is an excerpt:

Films, Fermentation & the Feminine

The Transition Film Festival has just had a spate of sell-out screenings in Melbourne and is now coming to Castlemaine as a part of the Castlemaine Fringe Festival.

ANOTHER WORLD IS HAPPENING is an important collection of short documentaries about the Australian and international transition toward a sustainable global society, curated by the Transitions Film Festival. Featuring stories about community energy projects such as Hepburn Wind, the Beyond Zero Emissions vision of a Zero Carbon Australia, sustainable economics, the global renewable revolution and more.

These inspiring, positive stories will prove that another world is not just possible, it is happening all around us. 

The films will be shown on Friday the 22nd of March at the Theater Royal starting at 7pm. Have a look at the trailer:

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We are going to do a much awaited miso making workshop with Rick Tanaka on either April 4th (Thursday) or April 6th (Saturday) at Melliodora. The cost will be $25, and $15 for 1kg of koji starter (sourced from the Blue Mountains) that you will need for your batch. There are 8 places available for this workshop. Please email us to indicate your interest and preferred day.  More info soon.

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Su accepting her honour

Congratulations to HRN's very own Su Dennett, who on Thursday was added to the Hepburn Shire International Women's Day Honour Roll.

As those who know her personally can testify, Su is a tireless worker towards a fairer and safer community in our shire. Su is a stalwart when it comes to social justice, especially concerning the rights of women and enabling better opportunities for local women and their families to access healthy food.

Su is a fierce campaigner for environmental justice and is considered both a local and global pioneer of the permaculture movement. Su's life has been dedicated to how we can better work to achieve harmony with the land and with each other. Su's work in networking local families to local farm produce has enabled many local families to eat best practice agricultural food at affordable prices. This has helped grow the burgeoning community food system, a system that recognises food miles as an enormous contributor to climate change, and Su has worked closely with community gardeners to further expand a local and just food economy.

Su has been an active member of the council's sustainability group, and worked with council and fellow community participants to establish the shire's Energy Descent Action Plan, a first of its kind in Australia. In all Su does she brings love and empathy and good humour to the task. She performs in our community as an exemplary elder and someone who sets an example of strength and integrity in all her activities, both personal and public.

Well done Su!

Dave Jacke: Edible Forest Gardens

Dave Jacke, author of Edible Forest Gardens, is coming to Daylesford and you are invited to come and hear him speak:

Wednesday March 13

Senior Citizens Room (behind Town Hall)

7pm for a 7.30pm start. 

Cost is $10 per person

Bookings essential: 

hrn@internode.on.net or 5348 3636

Dave Jacke is a permaculture pioneer who has taken the Forest Garden concept beyond it tropical origins showing it can be adapted to temperate climates.

This talk is a unique opportunity for local permaculture practitioners and anyone interested in ecological solutions to hear Dave Jacke speak while he is in Central Victoria.

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This coming Thursday, March 7 at 5pm, please come along to the Town Hall for the annual International Women's Day Honour Roll celebration that pays tribute to women in the Shire whose contribution, courage and example have led to significant social change for women. Local food activist Su Dennett has been nominated so come on down to show your support for Su. All community members are welcome to attend this free event.

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This coming Saturday is the monthly working bee at the Albert Street community garden (next to the library), as well as the Harvest Swapmeet. 10am – 12pm. Bring along your excess bounty to swap as well as your gardening tools for the bee and some seeds/seedlings to plant. Some suggestions are garlic, coriander, broad beans, pak choy, tatsoi, turnip, lettuce, carrot and peas.

Sharing Food

 

Our first community dinner for the year is at Conti on Thursday February 7th at 7.30pm. 

$15/person.

Please book by email or phone (5348 3636) by Tuesday 8pm.

Come one come all!