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Showing posts with label Brenna Quinlan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brenna Quinlan. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 21, 2019

So much good stuff!

Hi everyone!

Just a reminder that the Wild Fennel herbal group is having its very first gathering this Friday the 23rd of August.

6.30pm - 8.30pm
6 Tierneys Lane, Daylesford
BYO dish to share for dinner (with as many local ingredients as possible) plus a plate & cutlery.
Please note this is a waste free event so no single use plastic please.

No need to RSVP, just come along!

* * *

Community food is serious business!!

Thank you once again to Serge, Jacques, Brenna, Charlie and everyone else involved in growing, picking, and sharing the amazing Captain's Creek organic veggies with the local community.

L-R: Brenna, Jaques & Charlie (Pic from Brenna's FB page)

The veggies were given away for a gold coin donation which went to HRN. Over $130 was raised. Thank you everyone!

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September Culture Club

The next exciting Culture Club gathering will be an excursion to Herbal Lore Liqueurs.
Please join us on Saturday September 7 from 10am - 12pm at Lot 2 Railway Crescent Daylesford.


Owners Roger & Sue will discuss health, wellness and herbs and of course the fermentation process they employ to make their alcohols. They will also provide an enjoyable tasting of their herbal liqueurs, all of which have been crafted using a combination of carefully selected herbs to fulfil a particular health benefit.

We hope you will join us.



* * *
Planting a bushfoods garden

Community Gardener Patrick Jones with Bruce Pascoe at the Daylesford Library Community Garden, 2016

Inspired by Bruce Pascoe’s critical work, Dark Emu, The Daylesford Community Food Gardeners seek to honour, help repair and reinstate the intellectual & cultural heritage of the Dja Dja Wurrung through the creation and cultivation of a bushfoods garden along the north facing wall of the library at the Albert Street garden. They are currently looking for an enthusiastic gardener to lead this regenerative growing initiative. If you are interested in applying for this voluntary position, please email justfreefood@gmail.com

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Natural Building Course

Castlemaine Community House is offering a practical introduction to the world of natural building.

Learn resourceful and ecologically-centred construction through fun building projects around the community garden and get some more tools under your belt for resilience and self-sufficiency.

Develop a confidence in building that you can apply to any backyard sustainability project or incorporate into permaculture design systems.

Such projects are many and varied and may include earth pizza ovens and outdoor kitchens, garden seating and landscaping, animal shelters, potting sheds, planters and wicking beds, solar dehydrators, compost bays and cold frames, setting up netting and shade systems, building a composting toilet, beehives or even a garden studio or summer sleep-out!


Natural building techniques and concepts covered:

Understanding the principles of passive solar, thermal mass and insulation, breathability, seasonality, building appropriately for climate, embodied energy and ethical resourcing.

Learn cob construction, bottle walling, light earth, sustainable carpentry, foundations and drainage for small structures, and natural finishing techniques such as clay/lime renders and plasters.

Throughout the 8 week course there will be information on sourcing materials, a survey of traditional and resurgence natural building, theory and demonstrations, Q & A sessions and lots of hands-on practice to really come to grips with the materials and techniques.

Dates: 7th October – 25th November (8 weeks)
When: Mondays 9am – 4pm
Where: Castlemaine Community House, 30 Templeton Street.
Fee: $350 (payment plans available)
Tutor: Perri Campbell

For more information and to enrol: www.cch.org.au/natural-building-course


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Networks for Action

Transition Australia is hosting a convergence in Melbourne next month. Meg Ulman and Nikki Marshall will be attending on behalf of HRN and Localising Leanganook to spruik all the wonderful initiatives our region has going on, and to learn from other communities.
For more info.
For bookings.

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Goathand gathering

Brad, Vasko and Patrick from Goathand co-operative are hosting a community working bee and lunch gathering. People are invited to come and learn what goats and shepherds with loppers can achieve together. A warming forest fire with endless hot drinks will keep our late winter labours well accompanied.


The 16 co-op goats have been on this site for a few months, and we’d like to do a final chop-n-drop session to leave the site looking wonderful. This is a cultural and learning day, so feel free to bring the whole family, an instrument or two and any friends who are interested in learning about community managed forests, goatherding and ecologically sensitive weed and bushfire mitigation in a climate change era.

Saturday August 31 between 10am and 2pm
Please bring a plate of food to share for lunch and any loppers, secateurs or pruning saws you may have.
Please contact goathand co-op for the exact location.


* * *

Annual Yandoit Shindig

Once again the good folk at Yandoit Farm are hosting an annual gathering for Central Victorian permies, gardeners, homesteaders, back-to-the-landers, suburban-retrofitters, farmers, conservationists, natural builders, local food lovers, neighbours, allies, and curious minds.

This is an opportunity to spend an afternoon & evening catching up with old friends and making new ones. Kids are welcome but need to be supervised at all times as this is a working farm with the potential risks that go along with that. Please leave dogs at home (assistance dogs excepted).


You are very welcome to come early for a swim in the dam or come prepared and camp overnight! (If camping, please let Michael know) Please also feel free to invite like-minded friends to come along. This informal event was created a couple of years ago to strengthen links between permaculture communities and individuals around towns like Ballarat, Castlemaine, Daylesford, Bendigo, Ballan and other parts of central Victoria. If you know people who might like to join in, let them know!

Saturday, 16 November from 4pm
Yandoit Farm, Yandoit
BYO food & drinks, musical instruments, comfy chairs and rugs
Facebook event page

Wednesday, June 6, 2018

Sourdough workshop wrap up

Wowsers! What a wonderfully wonderful sourdough workshop we had on the weekend!
Again, a big thank you goes to our presenters Alison + Katy, Chris + Loïque, and to the people who brought in loaves and toppings to share.

The talented illustrator Brenna Quinlan took these notes, which you can click to enlarge. Thank you Brenna!! You can follow Brenna's adventures via @brenna_quinlan


Tuesday, August 1, 2017

Slide Night Dinner + Working Bee

We are so looking forward to this community dinner + slide show event! Some of you may have seen Brenna around these last few months. She is currently living and volunteering at Melliodora, studying permaculture, and working as an illustrator on David Holmgren's forthcoming book, RetroSuburbia.

As a 23-year-old, Brenna began to question the worth of her university degrees and the consumerist good-job-and-double-garage-and-2.4-children society that she felt pressured to commit to. So she bought a one-way ticket to India in the hopes of discovering a more meaningful life direction.

She spent the next six years hiking, hitching, riding, cycling, driving and canoeing her way towards a more sustainable life. She cycled 12,000 kilometres from Canada to the Panama Canal on a second-hand bike, and in the process learnt to appreciate the pleasures of voluntary simplicity. 

Over the next three years’ travel, she didn’t once pay for accommodation, preferring to rely on the kindness of others and on the non-monetary gift economy. As a volunteer, she realised the beauty and challenges of off-grid living, and the different reasons that drive people to live this way. She began to learn about permaculture, and that there were other people out there who thought the same way as she did. In Argentina, she fell in with a group of like-minded locos from all over Latin America, and they named themselves Rucache (‘the house of everyone’). Together they began growing their own food, building their own space, and facilitating permaculture events in Brazil, Chile and Argentina. This fascinating chapter of her travels will be explored during Brenna’s presentation for HRN. 

Brenna came home late last year, now aged 30, to be with her family and to further her permaculture journey. 

Entry is by gold coin donation. Please RSVP by Tuesday August 2.




We had another successful working bee out at Rod May's farm on Friday. A big thank you to Su Dennett for organising it, Ian Clarke for taking the pruning workshop, for everybody's enthusiasm and elbow grease, and for Kirsten Bradley for taking these photos:













Also, sorry fermies but Culture Club is having a break in August to make time for more literary pleasures over the Words in Winter weekend. We are already busy planning the September Culture Club which will be a natural cheesemaking workshop. Watch this space for more info!