Community dinner, update on the Chile project and a message from Rob Hopkins

So, December has arrived fast and our last event for the year is a dinner so let us have an evening of pleasure with a shared table of local food, an update from Chile on their building project that we raised the $6000 for and a message from Rob Hopkins that was delivered to the MAV day that was held around the theme of transition at Flemington Racecourse last month. We (the small Shire that we are) had 7 people from our local community, including John Collins and Jill Berry from the Council in attendance so Transition is definitely on our priority list in Hepburn Shire. Rob's message is quite inspiring so we look forward to seeing it together. It will be at the Savoia as usual at 7.30pm Friday December 10th.
Also, if it takes your fancy, bring a song a short story, a poem or a skit for us all to enjoy.
Please book.
And if you need a new something to wear, you might just find it at the clothing swap at Breakfast and Beer on the same afternoon between 3 and 6pm

Don't worry if you forgot  the Bushfire Prep working bee at the Hepburn Hollow on Sunday 28th November, it was too wet. BUT do continue to do fire prep around you home; it may seem wet but who knows when the grass will dry off and become a fire hazard;  the HRN tools are always available here for you to borrow. The hollow is starting to look good so take a bike ride, maybe pack a picnic and have a peek.
A couple of inspiring blogs, one local and one a bit further away
 Finally, the Melliodora Solstice Party is on Saturday December 18th. By invite only. Mail us.

Sustainable Building Expo 13/11; Cambodian Women's Health Centre fundraising event 14/11; Hepburn Hollow working bee 28/11

Don't forget SHARE's Sustainable Building Expo this Saturday. Details on the SHARE website share.asn.au. HRN will have a stall, so drop by to say hi and let us know if you'd like to help us wo/man the stand.

Some news from some local women is copied below about a fundraiser this Sunday for a Women's Health Centre in Cambodia.

Also, note in your diary now, there will be another Hepburn Hollow bushfire preparation working bee on 28 November. Full details next week (though you probably know the drill by now anyway)...

"A fundraiser is being held on Sunday 14^th November to collect items for a group of five local women and three children to take over to a Women's Health Centre in Cambodia where they will volunteer for a few weeks.


For women in Cambodia, “crossing the river” (giving birth) is seen as the most dangerous day in a woman's life. Extreme poverty, nutritional challenges, isolation, ill equipped hospitals and lack of knowledge about warning signs in pregnancies all contribute to Cambodia's high maternal mortality rates.


Denise Love, a registered nurse and midwife from Sydney and her husband Gary self funded the Women's Health Centre in Takao, which officially opened on 1 August 2010. In the first eight weeks over 800 women were seen. Denise says that “Whilst we first went to Cambodia with the intention of supporting pregnant and birthing women, it became obvious that we also needed to start with basic life skills. The villages we have been visiting and talking with are asking for some very basic help such as how to access clean water, reducing diarrhea, help with coughs and how to grow fruit and vegetables. We are also opening a small school for 5-7 year olds on December 1 2010. A local 16 year old Khmer boy is going to be the teacher and is looking for any support we can give him. It is a school for daily living skills.” Denise is now living in Takao and plans to stay there until the centre and school are able to run successfully and sustainably without her there.


Denise has been coming to Daylesford during the past year to train doulas or birth attendants. Minna Graham, Maggie von Glesch and Jacinta Saunders are all doulas travelling over to work with Denise in the centre. Selena McVeigh and Joe Arrow are horticulturists joining the volunteer team to help plan and implement a food and medicine garden at the health centre and also plan to set up a seed bank.


The fundraiser is being organised to collect donations of needed items that can be taken over by the volunteer team in their backpacks. Items needed include packets of gauze squares, cotton wool, disposable gloves, rubber gloves, wound dressings, any basic bandages, tennis balls for schools, colouring pencils and pens, wooden toys, books for children, and used childrens back packs filled with  pencils, pens and paper, string balls, toothbrushes for children, B&B soaps, undies girl sizes 3-14 any woman’s sizes, baby singlets, non-hybrid seeds. Any cash donations are very welcome! $2 would buy a village family a chicken, $45 would sponsor a midwives wages for a month, $25 would sponsor a midwife to attend a conference. Donations can be either collected at the fundraiser or deposited straight into the Relief Fund. ANZ Surry Hills, NSW a/c name LifeOptions Inc. – Cambodia Relief Fund BSB 012487 a/c # 250001495.

The fundraiser is being held at the Hepburn Springs Reserve Playground at 2pm on Sunday 14th November. There will be lots of empty backpacks there ready to be filled with donations. The girls have a luggage allowance of 160kg. If the weather is rainy the backup venue will be the Palais. We look forward to seeing you there!

For further information on this project please check out www.lifeoptions.asia"

Reminder: Film night 11/11; Ideas for the ESAC EDAP?? (Environmental Sustainability Advisory Committee Energy Descent Action Plan); SHARE Sustainable Building Expo

Don't forget to call us on 5348 3636 or email, to book for next week's dinner at Conti, Thursday 11 November. Dinner is at 7pm, the film, Design for Life - Permaculture - The Food Forest Story is at 8pm (no booking required for the film only).

If you haven't heard yet, Su is our HRN representative on the new Council Environmental Sustainability Advisory Committee (ESAC). Part of the mandate for this committee is to create an Energy Descent Action Plan for our Shire. Please talk to Su if you have any ideas to contribute. She will keep us informed on the committee's progress as well. Keep up the good work Su!

An upcoming Sustainable Hepburn Association (SHARE) event reminder as well, in case you aren't on the SHARE email list. Find out more about SHARE at share.asn.au.

WHAT: Sustainable Building Expo
WHEN:  10:30am – 4pm Saturday 13th November 2010
WHERE: Daylesford Town Hall
As a way of helping people to reduce their energy use and to promote local green businesses, SHARE is holding a Sustainable Building Expo on Saturday 13th November.   Our aim is to set up a market place in the Daylesford Town Hall where people can learn and ask questions of experts about all aspects of sustainable building for either a new house, an extension or retrofitting an existing home.  We want to de-mystify green building.

We are asking stallholders to provide clear information about how their product/area of expertise can help people to live comfortably with a much smaller carbon footprint.  We have invited our local Town Planners, Architects, Builders, Plumbers, Electricians, Energy Assessors as well as suppliers of photovoltaics, solar hot water, low volatile organic compound finishes, black/grey water treatment plants, energy efficient lighting/appliances, double glazing and other suppliers of green building products. Gary Thomas of Spade to Blade will be selling delicious organic food and drinks.

Entry: $5 adults, SHARE members and all kids free. (Sign up for membership on the day if you like!)

Dinner and film night: Design For Life - Permaculture - The Food Forest Story, Thursday 11 November

Our next film night will be Thursday 11 November, 8pm at Conti, with a 'sustainable eating out' dinner beforehand at 7pm, for just $15. Please book for dinner on 5348 3636 or email us. The film of the day will be Design For Life - Permaculture - The Food Forest Story, just arrived from the aforementioned Food Forest in South Australia. (Due to recent arrival, replacing the previously advertised Oiling of America, apologies for late changes.)

Join us for this documentary about Annemarie and Graham Brookman's journey on their way to creating The Food Forest, "one of the World's iconic permaculture properties and one of Australia's most awarded organic farms."

Some photos of our last Conti dinner to inspire you to join us as well...

Chatting before dinner, a great chance to make new friends and build our community

Alexis explains the amazing feast he has prepared for us from local and wild foods

And look at the spread!

Serving up - yum!

See you on your bike at Critical Mass! 5pm Friday 29 October at the Daylesford Primary School zebra crossing. (That's tomorrow!) :-)

Future planning for your diary and in your garden

We're having another food survey meeting this coming Monday 25/10. Anyone interested in helping with the project, contact us for details.

Other dates for your calendar...

Reminders:
- Hepburn Hollow community fire prep working bee, 10am-1pm, this Sunday 24 October: Come along and enjoy the company of neighbours and friends while we work together to clear up and reduce fire hazard. Learn some great methods you can apply elsewhere too while you're at it (like your place!). Bring a picnic or something to share at the end if you have time to stick around.
- Critical Mass, 5pm, Friday 29 October: Meet at the zebra crossing outside Daylesford Primary School.

Just to note for now, to be confirmed, details to follow:
- 11/11 Dinner at Conti and film: The Oiling of America (about edible oil, not peak oil)
- 9/12 Final HRN event for 2010: Community dinner

Also we're getting ready already (!) for next year with some workshops and networking in the works... So keep these things in mind when you're in your garden in the coming months:
- Preserving workshops: How to preserve your excess produce so you can eat your yummy fruit and veg between seasons. Keep in mind to keep any produce you don't eat or give away to preserve together with friends, learn ways to preserve and share the work at the same time!
- Seed saving and sharing group: Check out your plants as they grow and keep some aside to save the seeds. Take note of how they fare in different conditions, any special flavours or helpful traits to treasure for the next season and share around. And you can even start now if you have anything currently going to seed! Check out some general info about Seed Savers networks here. Let us know if you have any great ideas. Stay tuned for more information...

Also, if you need any clothes altered or mended, the Hepburn Post Office has an alteration and mending service. Useful local service to know about!

Reminder: CSA working bee; Bushfire prep working bee; Critical Mass bike riding fun!

So many enjoyable community outdoor activities coming up in this glorious Spring time weather.

A reminder about the CSA (Community Support Agriculture) working bee at Rod May's farm, May's Road, Blampied, this Sunday 17th October, 10am-1pm. Bring gloves and some food to share afterwards if you can stick around. See the photo sent out a couple of weeks ago from a previous working bee here. Contact Su on 5348 3636 or email for more info and car pooling. Click on the Vegie box tab of the blog site for more info about CSA and vegie boxes.

Another fun community working bee coming up is the bushfire clear up the following Sunday, 24th October, 10am-1pm at the Hepburn Hollow, end of Fifteenth Street. Come and help clear up some crown land in Hepburn, to help make our community a safer place during bushfire seasons. Wear good work shoes, bring gloves and your favourite tools. We'll have the HRN rake hoes to use as well. Don't forget the rake hoes are available for loan if you are working on clearing up your place or surrounding areas with your neighbours. See a photo of a previous Hepburn Hollow working bee here. Contact Maureen for more info on 5348 2592 or email.

And lastly, Daylesford's second Critical Mass will be held on the last Friday of this month - 29th October. Meet at the Daylesford Primary School zebra crossing at 5pm for a ride through the main street of Daylesford, to raise awareness of bikes on the road and enjoy riding together! See some photos of the first Critical Mass in Daylesford here or here. Join the facebook group if you're a facebook person.

Here's Meg, who inspired a big group of us to jump on our bikes last month! Yay Meg! :-)

Film night: Bullshit; Edible Wild Plants tour; CSA working bee

Our next film night will be Thursday 14 October at the Savoia. Film at 7:30, dinner available from 6pm, call the Savoia on 5348 2314 for dinner bookings, you know the drill. :-)

We're showing the film Bullshit, a documentary about:

Vandana Shiva, Indian environmental activist and nuclear physicist, who was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 1993. It's a film on globalisation and patenting, on genetic engineering, bio-piracy, indigenous knowledge.

See the poster for more details (click the link). It should be a very interesting film!

News from others is that Alexis is leading another Wild Edible Plants tour, next Monday 11th October from 11am to 1pm, followed by an organic lunch, which is included in the $25 cost. Contact 0409 955 897 by Sunday for bookings.

There will be a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) working bee at Rod May's farm in Blampied on Sunday 17th October from 10am to 1pm. Email us for more information. Come and help kick off vegie box season!

Upcoming event reminders, some interesting links and event reports

Some reminders about upcoming HRN (and other) events, to put in your diary now. Events beyond the bushfire prep workshop are TBC, details will follow...

- Today! Friday 24 September, 5pm: The very first Critical mass in the main street of Daylesford. Ride your bike and meet at the Daylesford Primary School zebra crossing to help raise awareness of bikes on the road!
- Wednesday 29 September: Food survey meeting, email us for more details. Come along to find out how you can help with our Food survey project, get to know your local community food producers and strengthen our local food network, all at the same time!
- Saturday 2 October, 10am: Bushfire preparation workshop with David Holmgren, Spring Creek Gully.
- Thursday 14 October: Film night - Bullshit
- Thursday 11 November: Film night - The Oiling of America
- Thursday 9 December: Community meal, final event for 2010

Here is a link we've been waiting for a (relatively) quiet moment to send out, to ABS Quick Stats for the Daylesford Urban Area. The statistics here give a bit of a picture of our local area relative to the rest of Australia, which is very interesting in terms of thinking about how we are placed as a community and what we need to do to relocalise and build our resilience.

On that topic, I (Liz) must say I was quite inspired by attending the Holmgren Design Services "Advanced Permaculture Principles and Planning Tools" course on the weekend, particularly by the Community Resilience Mapping of Hepburn exercise, during which most course participants assessed Hepburn to be relatively well off in terms of future energy descent scenario capacity... It was also amazing to learn more about how to read our landscape and find out so much more about our local area, and also to consider permaculture design principles and ethics in a deeper way. What a (gold?) minefield of things we all have to think about now! I highly recommend the course for future reference for next time it is run... Ask me about it any time.

Course participants viewing our local area from a vantage point on Elevated Plains. Photo by Liz Wade.

Also on a related topic, we were recently sent a link to a Dateline report on concerns in the United States about the earth's future and the different ways people are responding, ranging from reserving space in an underground survival shelter to transitioning to a sustainable life post-carbon. Could be worth a watch...


The recent HRN Bio-fertiliser workshop with Eugenio Gras was also fantastic. A number of people from near and further afield learned how to make a fermented liquid fertiliser for our gardens and fields, and so much more. Eugenio was an engaging presenter and the hands-on workshop helped us understand the process of making bio-fertiliser and also lime sulphur, and all that they can do for our soil and plants. For those who couldn't make it along, you can check out Eugenio's presentations and instructions for making bio-fertiliser, lime sulphur, and more, here.

Last night's film, Food Inc., was quite sobering for all who attended I'd say... Makes me glad to live right here, where we have local food available for us to eat that is not all entangled in the multi-national corporate system... Thank goodness for local farmers, CSA vegie box schemes, bulk food coops, all the local folk who grow their own, harvest swaps, seed and seedling sharing and other wonderful things we are so very lucky to have right here.

Locals and a visiting WWOOFer at a working bee at Rod May's farm in Blampied. Photo by David Holmgren.

Be part of the solution and help us with our food survey project to help find out more about, and to strengthen, our local food network, and to build food security for the future. Yeah! (Starting with that meeting I was talking about next Wednesday!)

Bushfire preparation workshop Sat 2 October, Film: Food Inc Thurs 23 September

HRN ran four fire preparation workshops in 2009. Many of those who attended had felt quite devastated by the bushfires of February 2009 and the workshop helped them to overcome fear and worry, and to develop a sense of empowerment. Not only did they learn how to make their properties and adjacent bush-land more fire safe, but they also had a very enjoyable time in the local park-land and developed their skills with rake-hoes, slash-hooks, etc. (These tools are in a HRN tool library available for loan - see the Tool Library tab of the blogsite.)

HRN will run another Bushfire Preparation Workshop this year, at Spring Gully, Hepburn on Saturday 2^nd October from 10am to 1pm. Click the link above to see the poster. Cost is $15pp (children free, repeat workshops also free if you have been before). Bring lunch to share and wear work boots, work pants (even two pairs of pants) etc. Bookings: email hrn@internode.on.net or call 5348 3636. 

And while we're on the topic of Bushfire...

If you haven't read it before, you can download David Holmgren's discussion paper "Bushfire Resilient Communities & Landscapes" from the Holmgren Design Services website home page (near the bottom of the page).

There are also a few bushfire related videos available for viewing on the Writings page - David speaking at the Sustainable Living Festival in February this year on the same topic - Bushfire Resilient Communities and Landscapes, in two parts. And the video mentioned in a previous post of David explaining fire-management and revegetation strategies at Spring Creek Gully, particularly relevant as that is where the upcoming workshop will be held!

Lastly, don't forget our upcoming film night. We're showing Food Inc, 7:30pm, next Thursday 23rd September at the Savoia.

Food related Film night and HRN Project, and don't forget the Bio-fertiliser workshop this Saturday!

Please remember that all blue text sections below (and in all blog posts) are links that you can click for more information...

First up, a reminder about the Bio-fertiliser workshop with Eugenio Gras this Saturday. It's a unique opportunity to learn a fantastic method for improving the fertility of your soil. Check out the last blog post and the two links above for more info. Email us or call 5348 3636 to book in.

And now, onto the favourite HRN topic... Food! Two food related items...

Next film night is Thursday 23rd September and the film will be Food Inc, showing at the Savoia Hotel in Hepburn Springs. Film at 7:30, dinner available from 6pm, call the Savoia to book for dinner on 5348 2314.

In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on America’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of the government's regulatory agencies. America’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and their environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, herbicide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won't go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. Widespread obesity reigns, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults. Food, Inc. reveals surprising—and often shocking truths—about what we eat, how it's produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.

Although this film is American, the issues are much the same for Australia.

And continuing on the topic of food, we are still working on our Food survey project and we have some new helpers making calls to farmers - thanks heaps! We are still looking for more interested people to help with the calls however. You can make the calls with us here, or from home, depending on your preference. It's a great way to get to know your local community and the wonderful people who grow food in our area.

We will have a meeting for all people involved in the project, or interested in being involved, probably on Wednesday 29th September in the evening (date and time TBC). Please contact us by email, or phone 5348 3636 to register your interest in helping out, whether you can make this meeting or not.