I was interviewed on Monday by a researcher from the University of Wollongong about my experiences with installing solar hot water at our old house. They’re looking into why people choose solar, how they choose the system and supplier, what their experience has been, etc.

Sitting in on the interview was an interesting guy from CSIRO [...]

We have a real problem here with wild birds eating our seedlings. They love broccoli, lettuce, beans, beetroot, silverbeet, corn – they even pulled out some of our onions and garlic!

Don’t get me wrong, I love the birds – satin bowerbirds and purple swamphens are the main offenders – I just wish they’d leave our gardens [...]

That’s the euphemism for those that don’t like to say “slaughtering and butchering chickens”!

I processed the last two roosters from our first batch of chicks today. We’re keeping the one female from the group to join our layer flock. This photo is from the start of June — I just realised I hadn’t taken any [...]

Some sad news, I’m afraid – two of the three chicks that Girlie hatched have disappeared.

We’d left Girlie and the chicks in the main chicken run, since they had a safe indoor area that the rooster can’t get into (the entrance is just small enough that he can’t/won’t go in). Things had been going well, [...]

We had a fantastic presentation today at the Jamberoo Community Growers meeting, by the people from Organic Crop Protectants. A big part of the talk was on organic fruit fly control, using their “eco-naturalure” male fruit fly trap and attractant/insecticide products. It looks like a great system to keep these frustrating pests down.

You simply bait [...]

The chicken tractor I built with my father a couple of years ago is still going strong. Since moving to Jamberoo we’ve been using it to build garden beds – we place it where we want the bed, leave it there for a few weeks until the grass has been cleared, then move it along [...]

We went to the Dapto Markets on Sunday morning to try to buy a few things we need around the yard. What an awesome place!

The markets are a great place to buy second hand clothes, toys, tools, etc for very good prices. Or if you’ve accumulated a whole bunch of that sort of stuff yourself, [...]

My mate Gavin has a post over at the Simple, Green, Frugal Co-Op about how he “thinks differently” from most of the people he knows. I can certainly relate to that!

Me, I can’t help thinking about all the unused bits of land I see when I drive around.

I see a park, and think “why don’t [...]

Thanks to the web site IfItWasMyHome.com, this map gives some perspective on the size of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in the Gulf Of Mexico (click to see full-size image).

I’ve centered the spill around Kiama (NSW, Australia) to show its sheer size in relation to the Illawarra region.

You can see that if the spill area [...]

I was fortunate enough to be invited to speak at the launch of Kiama Council’s new Kiamasphere web site on Thursday.

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’ll probably know that our sustainability journey really got going when my family joined the Sustainable Illawarra Super Challenge. It gave us the impetus to stop [...]