Healesville Autumnfest 2010

Healesville Organic Farmers’ Market presents

Autumnfest, 2010

Saturday March 20th, 8 am to 2pm

@ the Healesville Railway Precinct

Our annual festival to welcome the arrival of autumn also celebrates the Market’s sixth birthday. Over the past 6 years, stallholders have battled rain, hail, wind, scorching temperatures and the stress and fear that came with Black Saturday. No matter what nature’s challenge, your loyal stallholders still keep coming week after week. Thank you to all our customers for your support through purchases and friendship. Without you the market could not keep going.

The Healesville Autumnfest grew out of the Healesville Organic Farmers’ market. It embraces the philosophy that human beings need to feel connected to the earth in their daily lives. The autumn festival is a way of reminding us that the seasons shape our lives and our activities. The date for the Autumnfest is the closest Saturday to the Autumn equinox.

Bring your friends and tell your neighbours. As with past Autumnfest celebrations, the usual stallholders will be joined by plenty of extra stalls. There will be a variety of entertainment, informative displays, art and craft demonstrations and stalls selling good tucker for one and all. Some stalls will focus on domestic animals such as goats, pigs and chooks and will provide information about these animals.

Food stalls will include crepes, organic pork sausages, chai tea, Mexican hot chocolate and more. Forget breakfast at home. Come along and eat with your friends at the market. Afterwards you could shed those calories by walking the Healesville Labyrinth which is in the adjacent park and history buffs can check out the Healesville Tourist Railway.

Entry is free and you could make a day of it by visiting other attractions in the Healesville area in the afternoon.

A project of Yarra Valley Permaculture Group

Permaculture Resources & Courses

If you are interested in finding out more about permaculture consider joining a group (there could well be an active group in your area). For details of groups and events see the Permaculture Melbourne website (www.permaculturemelbourne.org.au) or search the web for a group in your area


Most groups offer informative newsletters, a chance to network with people who are happy to share their skills, visits to properties to see what others are doing, and access to a host of free or low cost workshops on topics like grafting and pruning.
The best way to “get into permaculture” is to do a Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) course. Now is the perfect time to check out what’s available because there are many courses getting under way in the near future.
If you would like to do an “Introduction to Permaculture” or a Permaculture Design certificate (PDC) course we particularly recommend those run by:-

• Graeme George PH 5962 5070 Courses in the Yarra Valley, Croydon Hills & Brunswick Email: earthcarepc@virtual.net.au

• Peter Allen (http://www.petethepermie.com/) Courses in the Dandenong Ranges & Eltham PH 0418665 880

• Cam Wilson http://www.forestedgepermaculture.com/ Course at Heathmont
Many people do not realise that Permaculture is much more than organic gardening. It is actually a design system that can be applied by anyone whether they live in the suburbs or the country. Permaculture designs take the total picture into account, including food systems, water supply, energy use, building design, fire defence, waste minimisation, maintaining environments, diversity, urban solutions and much more. After the course, you will be in a position to draw up a design for your own property from scratch, or if infrastructure is in place, “retro-design” the property to make it work better. Some of the courses are subsidised and offer excellent value for money.

There are many websites with information about permaculture and sustainable living. Here is a selection that we recommend:-

• http://www.seedinternational.com.au/pc_principles.html Great site for information regarding permaculture concepts

• http://www.petethepermie.com/ Pete runs a whole range of courses & sells fruit trees & shrubs. He has a wealth of knowledge about fruiting plants, which he is happy to share.

• http://www.permaculturemelbourne.org.au/ Information about permaculture & groups around Melbourne

• http://communityharvestproject.org.au/ Great for information about events relating to local food production from backyards to larger operations

• http://www.holmgren.com.au/ David Holmgren is a co-originators of permaculture and his website contains information and publications relating to the subject

• http://belindas-simple-life.blogspot.com/ Belinda lives in the Dandenong Ranges and produces an informative blog which covers a wide range of topics

• http://greeningofgavin.blogspot.com/ A suburban journey towards sustainability that started after Gavin’s green “epiphany” (a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into reality). Gavin’s blog is very readable and informative. He is passionate in his beliefs, and entertaining in his delivery. Once you start reading you will find it hard to resist joining his blog as a “follower” and checking in on his journey

Tenderbreak is in the News

Tenderbreak is in the news again. Earth Garden Magazine has published an article about our Fire Bunker in its latest edition (Summer 2009), which is available at newsagents now. The latest issue also contains articles about aquaponics, quince trees, a DIY electric bike conversion and much more. EG comes out quarterly and has a focus on articles relating to sustainable lifestyles.

The inaugural summer edition of Yarra Valley & Ranges magazine also contains an article about our place. Celeste, who took the photos, manages to make the place look very classy. This new publication promotes the unique food and wine, people, places, gardens and art and culture of our region (The Yarra Valley and surrounding area). If you cannot find it at your newsagent their website is http://clpublishing.com.au/ .

Insulation Rebate Program

At the moment the Federal Government is offering a subsidy to existing home owners to help them insulate their roof space. The program has been so popular that the government has scaled back the amount offered from $1500 to $1200 and it may be dropped altogether when allocated funds run out. The scale back means that in most cases the rebate will not completely cover the cost of insulation, but for a medium sized house it will only involve a small outlay.

If your house lacks adequate insulation we reckon it would be worth checking out this program. Details can be found at http://www.sustainability.vic.gov.au/www/html/1517-home-page.asp.

Our daughter Kathy and husband Steve did just this in November, and are very happy with the result. They now have R3.5 insulation throughout their house and have already noticed the difference on hot summer days. They are looking forward to seeing how much difference it makes to winter temperatures.

We do not usually advertise businesses, but we were so impressed with the service offered by Janelle Murphy and her partner that we are happy to recommend them. They are a small business and we found them to be very ethical, knowledgeable and to offer good service and value for money. Their company is called Australian 5-Star and is based in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne (email australian5star@hotmail.com).

Janelle is also an accredited and very helpful energy rater (she does 5 star energy ratings of building plans) and is an accredited Home Sustainability Assessor. This latter qualification enables her to evaluate the energy use of a home and is aimed at providing home owners with ideas on how they can reduce their energy and water bills, increase the comfort of their home and help reduce damaging carbon pollution. The assessments can also be used to obtain a no interest “green loan” for sustainability measures. See http://www.environment.gov.au/greenloans/assessments/index.html for more information.

Tenderbreak Permaculture Tours

After a short break over summer we are recommencing tours of Tenderbreak Permaculture Farm. Over 1000 people have attended one of our events. Some have even been twice. Bookings are required for the tour on:-

Sunday, MARCH 7th

It runs from 1:30pm to 4:30pm and includes afternoon tea.
Our tours are suitable for anyone with an interest in permaculture, organic gardening, passive solar house design, tank water, mudbrick building, property design and layout, chooks and ducks, solar power, grey water systems and sustainable living. In fact our tours are a bit like doing a mini Introduction to Permaculture Course.
Part of the tour looks at defensive strategies against bushfires. The fires of Black Saturday burnt most of our 96 acres, but we were able to save our house and most of our infrastructure. We can now give an account of what aspects of our fire plan worked well and what needs to be improved.

Although our property is a large bush block, we provide information and ideas that are suitable for both rural and suburban dwellers. The size of the groups is limited to ensure there is plenty of scope for questions and discussion.
Other dates are available for group bookings.
Contact us for more details or for bookings at tenderbreak@bigpond.com

2009 The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

Personally we are glad to see the end of 2009. It started off badly with horrifically dry conditions which put our gardens, the bushland and us, under great stress ....... and then came Black Saturday. Although we came through it relatively unscathed, the damage done to Victoria and Victorians that day, left its scars on us. Even now almost one year on, reflection about what happened can bring on lumps in the throat, tears to the eyes and an overwhelming feeling of sadness. Each summer for quite a while, (if not forever) we are going to be very much on edge during high risk days.

The year continued badly on the personal front, with the deterioration in health of Andrew’s Dad. Just when we thought he had stabilised, he went downhill and passed away on Boxing Day. Although we knew he was at risk, it still came as a shock.

The year has not been all bad though. We have had many enjoyable experiences, met many, many wonderful people and have learnt much about ourselves and aspects of the journey we are on.

On the people front, we have met hundreds of wonderful people on the “Permaculture in Action” tours we run, and at our stall at Healesville Organic Farmer’s Market. We also greatly enjoyed the company of Emily and Tim and Shelly who stayed with us for extended periods during the year. (See earlier posts). The highlight for Andrew was his surprise 60th Birthday party. We also enjoyed setting up and hosting Sally’s Yarra Valley Open Studio in September.

On the gardening front our fruit trees are one year older and bearing more fruit, we expanded several of our veggie growing areas and built our wonderful hothouse. Our animal flocks have increased in number. We searched high and low for a source of Khaki Campbell ducks, and found a breeder (by chance) within 5 minutes of our house. Our drake is very happy with his four wives. We have also added 4 bantams to our collection of chooks.

We are now looking forward to the new year and the positives which will come with it. Hopefully we will get our next construction project moving, do some more work on the house and of course we have plans to plant more fruit trees and bushes.

Roll on 1010 - we are looking forward to carving 10/10/10 in a mudbrick when that date comes around.

Our New Hothouse

For many years we have been intending to build a hot house. Up till now we have made do with plastic bags and bottles over seed trays and we have kept vulnerable plants in the house during cold spells. But now we can look after our more sensitive plants in style- in our brand new hot house. Well it’s new in that it has just been erected, but in fact it is actually quite old as it is made from reused materials that we have gathered from a variety of sources.

The hardest part was levelling the site. It didn’t look much work when it was staked out, but it took 2 full days to cut the area level, and drag over logs to make a retaining wall for where the ground has been built up. The photo shows our Heather and our friend Ilya helping us do the lifting of the wall frames.

The walls came from an old poultry farm and have sheet metal on their lower half and wire netting fabric on their upper half. We used old recycled timber to build the frame for the roof, and the doorway. Covering the whole lot is solar weave plastic.

We have chosen this type of structure because we had most of the materials on hand. It also enables us to make the hothouse rabbit and snake proof (the hot conditions could be very attractive to our reptile friends). Having the metal part at ground level is advantageous because this is the area most vulnerable to damage from tools, mowers etc.

We’ve connected the plastic in such a way as to be able to roll up the sides so we can moderate temperatures as the weather warms up. In summer we will take the plastic right off so plants can keep growing without being “cooked”. This should also extend the life of the plastic.

The hothouse is quite big, measuring 3.6m x 7.2m and enables us to use it for a variety of purposes. We are using half of it for growing plants in the ground and the other half for growing our own seedlings and cuttings. Two old discarded portable BBQ’s put out for roadside collection have made good potting benches. Half of the floor is paved with old pavers (free) from a nursery that was putting down asphalt instead. These provide some thermal mass which should moderate temperatures on cold nights.

In the earthen area we have planted 6 tomatoes, 8 basil plants, 8 egg plants, 6 bell peppers, 6 long sweet yellow capsicums 2 German pickling cucumbers and one perennial chilli. We have also planted a cool climate banana and half a dozen lemon grasses.

The whole design was a bit of an experiment and has required many minor adjustments as the project has proceeded, but seems to be working well now. It even withstood gale force type winds that blew through Victoria in early spring.

Who knows, we may even set up a couple of deck chairs and enjoy the warmth ourselves on some of those freezing Victorian winter days.