I’m a big fan of US farmer Joel Salatin. He’s the man behind Polyface Farm, “a family owned, multi-generational, pasture-based, beyond organic, local-market farm and informational outreach in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley”.

You might recognise him from the recent films Food, Inc and Fresh, and from Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

One of my favourite articles by Joel [...]

There has been a bit of a storm in a teacup lately in the Australian press, claiming that all those people who “bought into the hype” and installed solar panels on their homes will now have to pay tax on the income they receive for any electricity generated.

Of course it’s very easy for the media [...]

I don’t normally talk much about climate change.

I don’t enjoy debating with people over whether the climate is really changing or not, or whether humans bear any responsibility for the change, or even whether the change will be a bad thing. It’s a polarising subject, and I don’t want to put people off my sustainability [...]

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/h2oalchemist/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The proper disposal of ewaste (electronic waste – old TVs, stereos, computers, faxes, printers, etc) is becoming a significant issue. These products contain toxic materials such as lead, cadmium, beryllium and brominated flame retardents.

People are upgrading to flat-screen TVs in record numbers, leaving them with huge unwanted CRT TVs [...]

This is a post I wrote a while ago on my personal blog, but I think it’s really appropriate here. Plus I still don’t have much time to post anything new yet.

Don’t you hate it when you know you’ve seen something in a video (say, Bill Mollison talking about planting in guilds), but you can’t [...]

A little while ago I mentioned that I was interviewed for a podcast by Tim Denshire-Key.

Tim is a student from RMIT who has been travelling around Australia, checking out sustainability initiatives and interviewing people. He’s finally back home and working his way through the 50+ interviews he recorded. What a huge job!

Well, my turn has [...]

The “Kev’s Patch” campaign is gaining momentum! I’ve teamed up with a couple of other bloggers (Gavin from The Greening of Gavin and Julie from Go Greener Australia) to set up a new site promoting the initiative – the Kev’s Patch blog.

I love that header image above that Julie did for us!

If you think it’s [...]

In our never-ending quest for more gardening space, I’m thinking of building some raised beds on top of the concrete in our backyard. A 2-foot-deep bed around the edge of the area wouldn’t impact our usable space much (we already have pots etc all around the edges), but would give us a fair bit of [...]

Yesterday I met up with Tim Denshire-Key at Wollongong University, and he interviewed me about our participation in the Sustainable Illawarra Super Challenge and our efforts to become more sustainable in an ordinary suburban house. He’ll use the audio in an upcoming podcast.

Tim is studying Industrial Design at RMIT in Melbourne, and is currently undertaking [...]

Tonight we had a couple of kangaroo mini-roasts for dinner, bought from our local Woolworths supermarket.

I’ve eaten kangaroo many times before, and like it just as much as beef. Megan has never been quite so keen, simply because it’s kangaroo. However, we both enjoyed this pre-packaged roast. It was quick and easy to cook, and [...]