We have three silkies at the moment, just about to come into lay. They’re named Seraphina, Luciana and Ro (yep, we’re big Barbie movie fans around here!).

We had a rooster named Molly as well (I know, my defense is that you can’t tell their gender as day-old chicks!), but we had to get rid of [...]

If you live in the Kiama area, you have an opportunity tomorrow to swap up to 6 old lightbulbs or fluorescent tubes for brand new energy-efficient compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) for free. Just take your old bulbs to the Minnamurra Waste and Recycling Centre (the old Minnamurra tip) between 10am and 2pm tomorrow (Thursday 13 [...]

On Saturday, I took our two youngest girls to the Glengarry Cottage Gala Day.

They had talks and tours running throughout the day on stuff like permaculture gardening, composting, worm farming, etc. There were also some stalls, selling/displaying things like compost bins, worm farms, bags of compost, seedlings, etc. Sustainable Illawarra had a stall there as [...]

I just found out about this on the weekend, and am hoping to get there. Seedsavers groups are a great way to get organic, locally-adapted vegetable plants, as well as to meet like-minded people.

Illawarra Seedsavers Network: “Preserve The Future Of Our Food”

swapping seeds and planting material sharing gardening and seed saving tips locally adapted vegetable varieties organic gardening/permaculture meet [...]

Two of the most obvious things to look at when trying to live more sustainably are your usage of electricity and water. We had to record these in the first Super Challenge survey to set a baseline starting point, and I was actually pretty shocked at how much of each we use.

For the past quarter, [...]

I’ve always wanted to sit down and draw up a proper plan for our garden, but we never seem to find the time. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, like you’d expect from a professional landscaper. Just a quick sketch to help figure out what you can fit in, and where it’ll all go.

Here’s [...]

The Sustainable Illawarra event calendar for November 2008 is now available.

There are some very cool sounding workshops, including cheesemaking, gardening, backyard chook-keeping and water wise gardening. Hopefully I’ll be able to get to a few!

While we were at the Sustainable Illawarra Super Challenge launch last night, Ally (one of the Super Challenge coordinators) and her partner Richard were simultaneously appearing on Triple J’s Hack Half Hour on ABC2.

The topic of the show was Waste. You can find the episode here (it’s episode 7, 3 Nov 2008), or download the [...]

Last night was the official launch event of the Sustainable Illawarra Super Challenge, the programme that prompted the start of this blog.

It was a great turnout, with most of the 120 or so families participating in the Challenge represented. I was excited to see a few familiar faces – people I hadn’t seen for a [...]

Yesterday we had our Sydney Water “Love Your Garden” session. For $33, a qualified horticulturalist comes and inspects your garden and gives you advice on its watering needs.

Our horticulturalist (let’s call her Linda) arrived bang on time. She was very friendly and knowledgeable, and understood right away where we were coming from. I explained about [...]