World Environment Day (WED) 2010 is tomorrow, June 5th. Every year I mark it with a symbolic activity or deed.

This year I’ve joined 1 Million Women – A campaign of daughters, mothers, sisters and grandmothers – Committed to protecting our climate, our communities and our future, leading change for the better.  The goal is to inspire 1 million Australian women to take practical action on climate change by cutting 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂), the main greenhouse pollutant causing global warming.

For more info about WED and how you can take part visit the United Nations Environment Programme website

http://www.unep.org/wed/2010/english/

It’s Mother’s Day this Sunday, May the 9th.  If you are looking for thoughtful and eco friendly present ideas, you might find some in my last year’s post.  This post is about our recent loss.

On Easter Sunday my mother-in-law passed away very unexpectedly, at the age of 66.  It has been a difficult time for us as we couldn’t be there for her when it happened, we didn’t have the chance to say goodbye.  But especially hard will be for my husband this year’s Mother’s Day.

I know this isn’t quite a cheerful reading for such a special day.  But I would like you, if you are still with me, to think about Mother’s Day in a less commercialised way.  Think about what is important in life.  What memories will we take with us when the time comes for us to cross to the “other” side.  After all it is memories and emotions we cherish, not “things”.

Although I am aware of everything written below on any other day, this Sunday I’ll reflect on following:

• As a mum, this Mother’s Day I’ll remind myself how fortunate I am to be able to do the toughest job in the world, on duty 24/7 – being MUM!
• I’ll express my gratitude to have two great children and a loving husband.
• I’ll remind myself to cherish every day spent with my kids, no matter how frustrating some of those days might be.
• As a daughter, I’ll appreciate the fact that although living 16, 000 km away I still have my mum and her unconditional love.
• We’ll take time to light the candle and reflect on our late mum, mother-in-law and grandma’s life.

Our lives are filled with seemingly “important” everyday’s task and problems.  To-do lists are boring and without an end.  Wouldn’t it be great to have something like Call mum and tell her I appreciate all she has done for me between shopping and paying bills on it?  Or how about Write I love you note for kids lunches as a task on the to-do list?  If you’ve always wanted to say something important to your mum (or anyone else), to say sorry for something that happened long ago or to do something special for her, but never find the time or the right moment, do it now.  The other day, the next time you visit or the next year might be a bit too late…

As someone said,

Our life may be short, but the memory of a life well spent is eternal.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Make your Easter a bit greener and more sustainable by colouring the eggs naturally.  Brown Easter eggs are my favourite for two reasons:

1. the colour is natural and so simple to make,
2. brown is strong enough for our chickens’ brown eggs.

Here in Australia,  I rarely see white eggs.  Our chickens’ eggs range from cream to medium brown.  Singapore, our black chicken lays the lightest coloured eggs – she is very popular around Easter time .

How to Colour Easter Eggs Naturally

Here are step by step instructions with photos for colouring your Easter eggs naturally.

You need:

• hard boiled eggs
• old stockings, washed preferably , cut into several 15 cm (6 inches) pieces
• lots of brown onion skin (outer layer only)
• large pot
• herb leaves like parsley

Instructions:

1. Bring a large pot of water to boil together with the onion skin.  Boil for about 10 min.

2. Place a chosen leaf face down on the egg.

3. Tie a knot on one end of the stocking, carefully put the egg and tie the other end.

4. Stocking should be very tight to press the leaf so no colour gets under it.

5. Place the eggs into the pot with onion skin in it. The water doesn’t need to boil, but should be hot.

6. Leave the egg in the onion water for at least 5 min or longer depending on the colour of the egg and desired colour depth.  Check after a few minutes.

7. Once happy with the colour, take the egg out, cut the knot with the scissors, remove stocking and the leaf and let it dry.

8. Rub some oil to give the egg nice shine.

These eggs are safe for eating.  Happy colouring!

Do you have a natural egg colouring method you would like to share?  Please do so using the comment form below!

In a week time on Saturday 27 March 2010 at 8.30pm, millions of people from around the world will join together for Earth Hour™.

Turning off the lights says we care about planet Earth and we want others to care too.

Earth Hour History

Earth Hour started in Sydney, Australia in 2007. Approximately 2.2 million people and 2,100 businesses took part in the first year.

In 2008, Earth Hour involved between 50 and 100 million  people  in  370  cities  and  towns  around  the  world,  including  Chicago, Toronto, Copenhagen, Dublin, Atlanta and Bangkok took part.

An independent survey found that 58 per cent of people in Australian capital cities joined in by switching off their lights.

In 2009, the concept truly went global, with Earth Hour triggering people to “switch off” all over the world – from the Eiffel Tower in Paris to Times Square in New York. Millions of people in over 4,000 towns and municipalities in 88 countries took part.

2009 was also an important year for the UN climate negotiations. In December 2009, world leaders and climate negotiators gathered at UN climate talks in Copenhagen to agree to a deal to follow the Kyoto Protocol, which Australia ratified in 2007.  (Source http://www.earthhour.org.au/earth-hour-wwf/earth-hour-history)

What can you do

• Turn off the lights! For one hour on Saturday, 27 March 2010, 8.30 PM.
• Register your commitment. Go to www.earthhour.org.au for Australia or go to www.earthhour.org and choose your country.  Tracking the number of people participating helps show how many of us care.
• Get together on the night. Gather friends, family and neighbours to enjoy the hour of “lights out”.
• Spread the word.  Everyone does their little bit to spread the word trough Internet, Social Media, local newspaper, email, noticeboards…

For more ideas on how to take part go to http://www.earthhour.org.au/what-you-can-do

Seeing all the chocolate Easter bunnies and eggs immediately after Christmas made me instinctively block anything to do with Easter till recently.   Now that there are less than three weeks left, I can put my guard down.

My first post on the Easter theme is this simple floral centrepiece.  No, I’m not soooo organised this year, this photo is from previous Easter .

Instructions

You’ll need:

• container
• wet floral foam
• glass or jar
• grass with roots
• flowers, cut or potted
• coloured eggs

1. For a start, you need a container of any size and shape you like.  I chose a rectangular stainless steel box.
2. Soak a piece of wet floral foam in water and place it on one side.  If your container isn’t waterproof, put the foam into a plastic bag and secure sides with a rubber band leaving the top free.
3. In the other corner put a glass or jar for your flowers.
4. Take a bunch of grass together with roots from your garden, mondo grass from the nursery or any other living grass or plant you wish and place it on top of the floral foam.  Water it regularly.
5. Place the flowers in the glass or jar filled with water.  You can use potted flowers instead.  Tulips are my preferred Easter flowers.
6. To finish, place a few coloured Easter eggs on the grass.  And this cute wooden ladybird made a great finishing touch.

This gorgeous Easter centrepiece is really easy to make and will last for several weeks!

Seeing the photo above, some might ask:  what on earth are we doing here?  Making hay.  But why?  In an inner city backyard?  There are no big meadows or cows close by!

Well, we are using it as the chicken coop bedding for our pet chickens!  Instead of buying hay or wood shavings for the bedding, we tried to make some.  It works!

In our bid to live more sustainably in the city, making hay is one little step towards greener living.  It reduces waste and saves money.  It might seem insignificant, but all the little things do add up.

How to Make Hay

Hay is basically cut and dried grass.  It’s usually made on farms to feed stock during the winter or dry season, but also as bedding and/or food for pets.  Straw on the other hand is a byproduct from grain production like wheat.

Although you can’t make haystacks as above form suburban lawn (you’ll need taller grass and lots of it), grass clippings are excellent for making hay in smaller amount. The two most important things to check are:

1. Lawn shouldn’t be chemically treated: no weed killing solution or chemical fertiliser used.
2. The weather: do it on a sunny and wind free day.  As the saying goes: Make hay while the sun shines!

The first point is obvious and if you have kids playing on the grass area you probably don’t use chemicals anyway.  When asking the lawn moving guys to leave some grass clippings, I always remind them not to put any from the nature strip between the pavement and the road as it might contain dog’s poo or cigarette buts.

A perfect day for making hay is when it’s sunny and calm.  Spread the grass clippings in a thin layer on the ground, preferably on the concrete.  Turn it and mix it around a few times during the day.  It shouldn’t take more than half a day or so until it’s completely dry.  Before night time, gather it on a pile and store in a box or another container and leave in the dry place.

On a rainy day I don’t bother making hay, even in the sheltered area as it’s too humid.  I can’t choose the day as the grass is always cut on Tuesday.  Instead, I give a portion of freshly cut grass to our pet chickens to eat (only on the first day!) and the rest goes in the veggie garden as mulch.  The grass breaks down into organic matter enriching soil.   It is also beneficial to leave some clippings on the lawn.   Alternatively, toss it into the compost bin, but no thicker than 5-6 cm.

If you have rabbits or guinea pigs, you might like to try making hay for your pet as food.

Hay as Chicken Coop Bedding

Here you can see our pet chicken Sunflower, the boss, inspecting the fresh hay layer in the coop!

As said, we use hay as bedding for the chicken coop.  We have 3 backyard chickens and they use the coop only for sleeping. At daytime they are in their chicken run.   Fresh hay has a lovely smell, at least until the chickens go to sleep (yes, chickens poo during the sleep, too!) .  The coop is cleaned once or twice a week and the whole hay bedding and the chicken poo goes into the compost bin and makes great fertiliser for the veggie garden. Grass clipping recycling at its best!

Here are some ideas for recycling grass clippings:

• Make hay for pets’ bedding/food
• Feed it to the chickens (freshly cut only)
• Leave them on the lawn as a fertiliser
• Mulch the garden
• Incorporate into the soil in the garden
• Compost the grass clippings
• Put them into the green waste bin, anything but…
• Just don’t throw the grass clippings into the rubbish and add to the already full landfills.  Only…
• In one instance trow the grass clippings in the bin:  If the turf was treated with chemicals!  That grass has been killed long before it was cut!

Sustainable Living Festival- Melbourne is in full swing. The 2010 Festival will include 2 programs:  the Main Event at Federation Square (19-21 February 2010) and the Local Events Program (6-21 February 2010).

The Main Event at Federation Square in the heart of Melbourne will continue to celebrate the very best examples of ecological and social sustainability. The event will fuse interactive workshops, talks, demonstrations, artworks, exhibits, films and live performances. In recognition of the climate situation, the Main Event will be inspired by the theme: Get Ready for the Safe Climate Decade!

The Sustainable Living Festival showcases a huge range of exhibitors, talks, workshops, art, films and performances celebrating and inspiring sustainable communities.

For more info go to http://festival.slf.org.au/

It’s December the 23rd!  Where did all 22 days disappear all so suddenly?  It feels like yesterday when I filled the advent calendar for the kids and took the picture below to post on the 1st!

Nevertheless it was a VERY busy period.  Not only there were numerous Christmas parties, concerts, picnics, functions etc at school, kinder and work, but also I’m working on my new business Make Bread – Melbourne.  A busy but exciting month!

The Christmas Tree dilemma

Our Christmas tree hasn’t been decorated yet.  Today’s weather forecast is 36 C (Christmas in Australia!) and we’d rather spend the afternoon on the beach.  We’ll do it tomorrow on Christmas Eve as it was done traditionally in many European countries in the past.  As kids we were allowed to decorate the tree once all the preparations and baking was done.  It was seen as the icing on the cake.

This year my husband and I had a discussion about a real Christmas tree and the decision was made to pull the plastic one again.  Cutting a beautiful tree that costs $60+ and throwing it two weeks later isn’t something that appeals to us.

A few years ago, we bought a lovely potted Christmas tree as this is in my opinion the greenest option.  Once the Christmas passed, we took the tree outside and on one 43 C (109 F) day, it was completely scorched!  The poor tree ended up in the compost bin.  My grandpa would go to the forest and cut a Christmas tree in order to thin out overcrowded pines, then chopped it after Christmas and us it to smoke the meat during the winter.  But that was in Europe.  In Australia, it makes more sense to decorate a eucalyptus tree

So rather than destroy another tree this way or that, we’ll fake it yet another year.

Christmas Baking

Christmas baking is something I really enjoy.  However, this year I didn’t do a lot of it, just a few batches of cookies.  November was unusually hot, I was focused on Bread Making Classes and December came all too suddenly.  After so many years Down Under, summer Christmas surprised me again.

The above cookies are made using the same recipe: for the crescents I used almonds, the round ones are made with ground walnuts.  They are my old favourite -  quick, easy and could be prepared long before Christmas.   Here is the recipe:

• 280 g flour
• 200 g cold butter cut into cubes (or cooking margarine for dairy free option)
• 80 g sugar
• 100 g ground nuts (my favourite are hazelnuts)
• 1 egg white (for egg free cookies, add 2 tablespoons of water and/or vanilla essence)
• icing sugar mixed with vanilla sugar

1. Whiz flour, butter, sugar and nuts in the food processor.
2. Add egg white or water and pulse till the dough just comes together.
3. Tip onto lightly floured surface and knead quickly .
4. Rest in the fridge for about 1 hour.
5. Shape into crescents or your preferred shape and bake on the tray 15 – 20 min on 180 C.
6. While still warm, dip  into icing sugar.
7. Keep cookies in the airtight container.

I couldn’t resist but make these Choc-cherry cupcakes: cherry season coincides with Christmas and they are a part of the Australian Christmas tradition.

Forget Cherry Ripe!

This year I skipped making chocolate truffles or anything chocolate coated or decorated: in Melbourne we can have anything between 18 and 40+ degrees Celsius on Christmas.

Christmas Presents and Wrapping

Each year we try to buy less presents.   We’ve agreed with friends not to buy presents for each others kids.  For our children it will be something small (I can’t tell what as our son usually reads the posts).  Maybe I could post pics of our presents next year .  At my husband’s work Kris Kringle was scraped in favour to giving a donation to a charity.

I like to give homemade presents that are consumables like cookies, soaps, preserves etc. This year being so busy I’ve skipped this tradition and bought a few little presents for teachers.   For wrapping I used recycled copy paper and warping paper.  Instead of ribbons I used raffia and paper twine.

Handmade Christmas Cards and Tags

Making handmade Christmas cards and tags sure needs your time.  I really enjoy making them and I feel they are so special.  I tend to recycle cardboard, old Christmas cards and pressed plants to make them.

Here are my simple Christmas gift tags, made from pressed fern and recycled old cards:

This handmade Christmas card has been made using homemade glue and all natural parts. The bonus: when Christmas is over, toss it into the compost bin, its fully compostable!

Hope you’ve enjoyed a snapshot of Sustainable Eco’s Christmas!

To all our readers that celebrate Christmas now or in January we wish you a happy and safe festive season!  If you aren’t celebrating Christmas, we wish you a happy and prosperous New Year 2010!

We are taking our summer break and will be back refreshed in January.

This inspirational video was created by Make Bread.

Finally, after more than one year since applying for a plot in the local community garden, we’ve got one!  Coincidentally, we received the news on the day Sustainable Echo was celebrating its first birthday.  It felt like a real anniversary present for us.

A few years ago, the waiting period was much shorter as the turnout was quicker.  Nowadays, people are committing to their community garden plots.  Our application was timely because the waiting list grew longer and longer so much so that no applications are accepted for a year till June 2010.  Also, to accommodate the interest, all full plots that become available are split into two half plots.

Our small veggie patch at home is just not big enough for us.  We gave up more than a half of it to our three chickens and added a container garden.  However, in winter we can’t grow anything as it’s in the complete shade for months.  This community garden receives full sun year round and we are really excited to finally be able to grow our broccoli, cabbage and other winter veggies.

Join a Community garden near you

If you would like to grow more veggies, but have little or no garden space, see if there is a community garden near you.  Not only is this a best way of getting fresh organic veggies if you have no garden, but also there is a great sense of community. We’ve already met some wonderful people.

Some form of fee, like joining fee, annual fee or similar is offset very quickly once you start to harvest the produce.  Our joining and annual fee equals the amount we spend on fruit and veggies for a month.  Every year after there is only an annual fee – the amount we spend on one trip to the farmers market.  Plus, all the produce from our plot will be organic!

Our Two-stage vegetable planting project

As summer is approaching and we are experiencing unusually hot spring weather, we rolled our sleeves up.  As you can see above, we first needed to loosen the slightly compacted, but very good soil.  We inherited a cauliflower and a bunch of silverbeet (chard) on the right in the picture.  The pest ridden cauliflower was devoured by our chickens, but silverbeet is left so we can collect the seeds.

The picture below is stage one finished, taken after sunset.  We’ve planted cucumber, corn, sunflower, zucchini (courgette), eggplant (aubergine) and tomatoes (self-seeded and Roma).

The next evening stage two was finished.  We had to work late to avoid heat and give the plants a chance to soak up the moisture during the night.  We added beans (green and butter beans), spring onions, beetroots, peas, red capsicums and marigold (calendula) at each corner as it deters several garden pests:

This picture below was taken early next morning just before watering.  We’ve added some mulch to retain the moisture.  Due to years of drought watering is allowed only twice a week in the morning, other days we use rainwater and watering cans.

It takes only 7-8 minutes on the bike to the garden and 5 minutes from (it’s downhill on the way back ), nice and close so we can pop in very often.  All plants are still OK and hopefully will establish themselves before the hot Australian summer.