*Burp*

A huge thank you to Vince and Adrian for sharing their beer brewing wisdom with us last Saturday. Here are some pics and a video from their workshop:

Gorgeously Goat

All Things Goat Festival
Sunday 4th November, 10am-3pm
Bullarto Primary School

Come and experience:

• a variety of goat breeds on display- Meat, milk and fibre
• milking and goat husbandry demonstrations
• a goat sausage sizzle
• stalls featuring local produce
• a great opportunity to find out more about goats and what makes goats so great for self-sufficiency

This event is being run by the Central Highlands Goat Club who promote 'Supermarket in a Goat': Milk Bank, Backyard Baskets, a Trading Table and Makers' Market.

Supermarket in a goat is about how goats are an important part of self-sufficiency.  Meat, milk, manure, and bleat!

• They have fresh or frozen raw goat's milk available at their Milk Bank.
• Backyard baskets are chemical, spray free, locally grown boxes of mixed fresh produce.
• The Trading Table allows members to sell different things such as fresh fruit, veg, herb, flowers, frozen berries, preserves, jams, lemon butter, cordials, soaps, eggs, honey, etc at their meetings. (10% of sales go back to the club for insurance and to fund future club events.)
• The Makers' Market are an active group with a number of different stall holders at Glenlyon and Kyneton Markets. 

 
The Central Highlands Goat Club meets on the 1st Sunday of the Month at Bullarto Primary School.  They bring a plate and have a lunch at 12.30 followed by a discussion at 1pm. They do farm tours and workshops at different properties. Their meetings cover a wide range of subjects and give people a chance to learn about goats prior to getting them, assistance in locating suitable goats when set-up and ready, access to discount animal health products and feed, on-going advice and assistance.

Membership is $20 year.

Email centralhighlandsgoatclub@gmail.com for more information and to join their email list to be informed of club events.

Reminder & Retrofitting

Hi all, this is a reminder that if you're interested in doing the beer-making workshop this weekend, please let us know ASAP as we don't yet have the numbers.

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There was a great article in The Age a few days ago about retrofitting the suburbs that focused on David Holmgren's vision for what the 'burbs can one day be again:

"...places where people can grow more of their own food, work at home and meet their needs while consuming far fewer resources...You can minimise your costs by slowing down, going fewer places and being more productive with the underutilised fixed assets you've already got."

For further reading, the journo, Michael Green has some other interesting articles on his website.

If you're interested in reading David's full report, Retrofitting the suburbs for the energy descent future, you can download it from the Simplicity Institute website.

You can also watch a fantastic talk that David gave on the same subject at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne: 

Beer o'clock

We are excited to be offering a brewing course at the Town Hall on Saturday 27th October from 10am to 2.30pm. The tutor is Vince Cirilo. Vince will be teaching us how to make three beers: a red ale, a nut brown, and a pale ale. All beers will use the Partial Mash method.

We will make three 4.5 litre beers and have the option of bottling the following Sunday from 10am to 1pm. (TBC on the day.)

All equipment and ingredients will be supplied but please bring along 6 stubbies for the bottling to allow everyone to take home at least a taste of the 3 brews. Please also BYO a local dish to share for lunch.

Cost for the workshop is $25. Bookings essential. Limited spaces. To secure your spot, please email us.

Equinox Dinner, Bushfire prep and Doing it ourselves video

Well, the winter has turned into an awesome spring with 4 seasons playing out at least once a day. And can you believe it, the equinox is almost upon us!  Join us to celebrate at Sunflower Organics on Thursday 20th September at 7.30pm (opposite the Farmers' Arms pub) but be quick to book as the venue is reasonably small. It is our usual sustainable eating out dinner - set menu of as local as possible food and costs $15pp

2012 September 23, 00:49am

The Sun in spring
 On the day of the Spring Equinox, the Earth’s poles are the same distance from the Sun. In Melbourne, the Sun rises due east, sets due west and gets to 52° above the horizon at noon. On this day there are roughly 12 hrs of day and 12 hrs of night. Artist: Frey Micklethwait. Source: Museum Victoria.

On another note, if you haven't already done your bushfire preparation work during the winter, there is still time and you can always borrow the HRN fire rakes, slash hooks and branch loppers so you and your friends can do some work together, around your house or on a piece of public land close by. Remember all the bulletins that Joan Webster put together? Please revisit them, they are really worthwhile.

Do watch Theo Kitchener (Melbourne)'s animation. It is a nice little summary of the state of affairs globally.

Back by Popular Demand

After the success and interest from the last workshop, we have another sauerkraut and kimchi how-to session planned for this Saturday (Aug 4), from 10am - 3pm at the Senior Citizens room of the Town Hall.

Either bring your own ingredients or email Su to order some vegies by this Thursday night or Friday morning 8am at the latest. She will do a costing and let you know how much things are.

What to bring:

chopping board
knife
potato masher
a 4kg bucket with lid
ice-cream container or other food grade container
good quality salt
cabbage
chili
any root vegetables including ginger, carrot, beetroots, parsnips, turnips and daikon

Also, we will make a pot of soup to share at lunchtime and bake a loaf of bread.

Yum!

More Weeds, More Wool

Hope to see you all this Thursday for our 48th film night:

Click for bigger

And some photos from today's Wool Spinning & Carding Day: 

Wool & The Wonder of Weeds

BYO wool project, a spinning wheel if you have one and a home grown/home cooked contribution for a shared lunch.

We also have another film night coming up: The Wonder of Weeds (BBC4) on

Thursday July 26th at the Savoia Hotel at 7.30pm. Dinner bookings on 5348 2314.

Unfortunately due to lack of numbers we have had to cancel the shoe-making workshop. If you've paid, please contact us for a refund. We intend to restructure the workshop and will possibly offer three separate components. We will also be applying for funding to bring the cost down.

Hope everyone is keeping nice and snug. Looking forward to seeing you at the wool day and/or film night.

Sharing Skills

Thank you to everyone who came along to our sauerkraut and kimchi making workshop last Saturday. We won't know for another four weeks or so, until the ferments are ready, but in terms of our enjoyment and skill sharing, the day was a huge success

One of the main things HRN tries to do is encourage the learning and sharing of skills that will help prepare us for an energy descent future. Which means courses, tutorials and workshops galore.

This Saturday (July 13—sorry for the late notice) Stephen Oram (woodworker of fine furniture and harps) is offering a free workshop from 10.30am - 12 on repairing and maintaining garden tools in conjunction with the Daylesford Community Food Garden's 10-12 monthly working bee at the Albert St garden.

Bring your old or broken tools that need fixing and extra files, screwdrivers, chisels, etc that might be useful in doing the repair work.

Do you have any skills that you'd like to learn or teach? Please let us know and we'll get some more workshops happening.

Cabbages, Carrots & Cobbling

Got too many cabbages and carrots? Don't know what to do with them? Or have you just not gotten around to making kimchee or sauerkraut?

Well....let's do it this coming Saturday at the Town Hall at 10am!

If you haven't got the ingredients, we can do a bulk buy but please let Su know by Tuesday evening so she can put the order in.

You will need to bring your own crocks/buckets with lids, cutting board/knife, potato masher and salt etc. We will be using Sandor Katz's recipes.

Let us know ASAP if you want to come along. This is a free workshop but bookings are essential.

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Another workshop that might appeal to you is Duncan McHarg's shoe making workshop, also being held this Saturday and the following three Saturdays.

At his previous workshop, six HRNers participated and we are all stoked with our shoes.

We are looking for three more participants so please forward this to anyone who you think might be interested and contact us if that's you!