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!

Year's End

Hello hello everyone and wow, here we are at the end of another year.

Just a couple of things that might be of interest:

We have plenty of copies of Sandor Katz's wonderful book The Art of Fermentation: An In-Depth Exploration of Essential Concepts and Processes from Around the World and copies of Adam Grubb and Annie Raser-Rowland's excellent Weed Forager's Handbook: A Guide to Edible and Medicinal Weeds in Australia. Please contact us to secure your copy.

Next year we are hoping to schedule films (maybe an oldie and a newie together with a nosh break in between) and workshops (plenty on the drawing board) more regularly. So stay tuned and please let us know if there is anything you'd like to see, do or learn.

This NYE the Daylesford Community Food Gardeners are celebrating community gardening and community recycling in Daylesford's annual parade. This year's theme is to come dressed fancy by the Daylesford Community Op Shop. It would be great to see a large bunch of people dressed wildly celebrating all that has been achieved this year, as a collective effort. Unfortunately the community op shop has closed (doh!) so you could always get out your most outrageous costume and camp things up! Trumpets, kazoos, horns, whistles, bells, bikes, skateboards, feet and loads of joy.
Meet at 7pm on December 31 outside the MS op shop in Duke St.

Also, If you have any friends or know of anyone new to town who has not yet subscribed to the HRN blog, please give them a gentle nudge.

Thanks for a great year everyone! We are looking forward to 2013 and taking our collective transition one step further.

Find it, fix it

One of our community gardeners has spent the last several weeks mapping all the free public food in our local commons.

Please feel free to download this gorgeous map and circulate it. And if on your wanderings you come across some plants that are not listed on the map, email your update here for the next version.

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Got a pair of jeans that have worn out in the knees? Does your favourite dress need the hem taken up?

Mark at Threadneedle Craft (next to Liquorland next to Coles) does an excellent job of repairing clothes. They are open 7 days from 10am - 5pm.

And just in case you have forgotten why:

Body Care & Bilums

There are two very exciting upcoming workshops that we thought you'd like to know about:

Make your own Skincare Products
Learn how to make your own skincare products from household items and garden produce. On the day you'll make a moisturiser or two as well as lip balms & body scrubs. Recipes will be given out and students can take home creams at an extra cost of $3.00/jar.

Daylesford Neighbourhood Centre
Saturday November 24
10.30am - 12.30pm
$25
Ph: 5348 3569 for bookings

Bilum Workshop with Vicki Kinai
Learn the technique used to make the iconic Papua New Guinean bilums withVicki Kinai.

Vicki is a fibre artist, Melanesian languages and cultural trainer, exhibitor, performer and teacher from Papua New Guinea. She conducts workshops in schools, communities and galleries in Melbourne.

Daylesford Neighbourhood Centre
Saturday December 1
1:00pm - 4:00pm
$25
Ph: 5309 2664 or email office@share.asn.au for bookings

Roots, Leaves & Seeds

Adam Grubb (VEG, Permablitz) and his girlfriend Annie Raser-Rowland have just released the excellent Weed Forager's Handbook: A Guide to Edible and Medicinal Weeds in Australia.

HRN is selling copies at the reduced rate of $18. Please email us to order your copy.

The book reveals how to distinguish a tasty sandwich-filler from its dangerous look-alike, which weeds are among the most nutritious vegetables ever tested, and how you cook with delicious nettles without fear of being stung

It will forever change your concept of where to go looking for lunch.

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Community gardener Brett Adamson has just returned from 6 months in Afghanistan with Médecins Sans Frontières. He is just about to head over to South Sudan for a 3 month mission and is seeking donations of organic seeds to help revitalise the local community food system and seed bank over there. To make your donation, please bring your seeds to the next Daylesford Community Food Garden working bee this Saturday Nov 10 at the Albert St garden between 10am and 12pm.

The working bee also coincides with the Daylesford Harvest Swap Meet, so don't forget to bring your excess garden produce to swap.

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Another community gardener Patrick Jones has just made a gorgeous little film about how (and why) he makes dandelion coffee:

*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.