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.

Grass clippings from lawn mowing are excellent for making hay. 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 pet’s bedding/food
• Feed it to the chickens (freshly cut only)
• Leave them on the lawn
• 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!

In my previous post on butter, Butter vs. Margarine, I wrote about why butter is a better option.  As I mentioned at the end, there is one thing about butter that isn’t so handy: it’s solid and hard to spread directly out of the fridge!

Types of butter

Butter is mostly made form cows’ milk.  In the past, cream was collected from the raw milk and then churned.  This was and still is the best butter, also known as raw cultured butter.

Cultured butter in the shops isn’t made the old-fashioned way.  It’s rather made with pasteurised cream and cultures are added to finished butter.

Unsalted (also called continental) butter is made as above without bacterial cultures added.  Salted butter as the name says, has salt added.

Organic butter is made with organic cream without any additives.

The best choice would be homemade organic raw cultured butter. However, unless you have your own cows or access to organic raw milk, it’s hard to get it in the shops.

How to make your own butter

As said above, to make butter from scratch you need raw milk (lots of it!).  Alternatively, you can by cream and make your own.

Use cream with the highest fat percentage, 35% plus.  Pour it into a deep bowl and using a mixer beat until stiff.  Continue beating until some liquid starts to separate and cream turns yellow.   It will take some time.  When butter forms, press it together to expel liquid, put in a container and refrigerate.

In my opinion, this method isn’t worth the time and money.  When you calculate the cost of cream + time, butter is cheaper.  Though it is good to know the method in an emergency:  you need butter for a cake let’s say, the shop is closed or too far to drive but you have some cream in the fridge!

Soft Butter Spread Recipe

I’ve seen in the shops some butter spreads claiming to be spreadable.  They have oils added or water content increased.  So I decided to try it at home hoping that butter and oil won’t separate– it worked!  Butter naturally contains lecithin.  Lecithin is emulsifier – a substance that binds water and oil.   The first time I made soft butter spread was about 2 years ago.  Since then I’ve played with different oils and ingredients.

For the basic recipe you need a quantity of softened butter and oil of your choice (try to use good quality cold pressed extra virgin oil).  Also, I like to add water – it makes the spread a bit brittle, but there is less calories.

• 250g softened butter (or 2 sticks of butter for our US readers, that equals to 227g)
• ¼ cup oil
• ¼ cup water

Put all ingredients in a bowl and mix using a handheld stick blender, mixer, food processor or a whisker until all the ingredients are blended together.  The spread will be shiny but turn dull when refrigerated.   This recipe yields about 370g butter spread.

One of my experiments was to mix yoghurt instead of oil – to make a sort of soft cultured butter spread.  The result was interesting: instead of combining together, it started to separate a bit and to form little pockets of liquids, as when you make butter from cream!  Nevertheless, the taste was really good.

Note:

• You can omit water and add ½ cup oil only
• On the photo, it looks like 1 cup of liquids added, but the level increased when butter was added
• Water doesn’t only produce the best result, but it’s possible to make it as well
• Use this recipe as a guide only: increase or decrease the liquids to have firmer or softer spread
• While butter spread is still soft you can add herbs, garlic or other flavourings.

Nutritional Values of butter and butter spread

Here are nutritional values of each, butter and butter spread compared, per 100g using macadamia oil and above quantities:

You can see the change in decreased energy and saturated fat fields.

I predominantly make soft butter spread to have a spreadable butter in the morning, rather than out of worry about the saturated fat or calorie counting.  Long before we found about nutritional panels and kilojoules, people knew that  foods rich in calories shouldn’t be eaten by kilos.

My favourite soft butter spread is the one made with extra virgin olive oil and with yoghurt.  Our kids like milder tasting oils like macadamia.

Please share with us your thoughts about soft butter spread!

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/

Summer school holiday is over.  The school started on Monday and  kinder is back to full hours next week.  For me it means back to lunchboxes, school -kinder-home triangle, but also back to writing in peace and quiet .

Sandwiches are on the menu again.  But, what to put on the bread: butter or margarine?

The butter vs. margarine debate is always a hot one.  For our family it is butter that’s winning.  Having said that, we don’t consume a lot of it and butter is not automatically in every sandwich and on the table every day.  Instead it might be avocado, tahini (ground sesame paste), sour cream or just a lot of veggies as a base.  I cook with butter, too.

Why butter is a healthier option

Butter has earned a lot of negative press due to being high in saturated fat.  The same happened to coconut oil.  In fact, coconut oil has anti-viral and many other healing properties.  And butter?  Well, it seems we have gone full circle and began to realize some positive facts about butter.  Here are just some of them:

• Butter is completely natural
• Butter is rich in natural vitamin A, also good source of vitamins D, E, K
• Also contains mineral selenium, an anti-oxidant, iodine and lecithin
• Linoleic, lauric and butyric acids play important roles in our body and butter contains them all
• And yes, it contains cholesterol – a very important ingredient for brain development, cell elasticity and healthy intestines.   Children especially need it in the diet!

Here are just some of the health benefits of eating butter.  If you aren’t convinced so far, please do some research on the topic.

Why margarine should be avoid

What is margarine and what is in it?  Margarine spread is oil in the base, mostly processed, fully or partly hydrogenised (chemical process) to solidify it into the spreadable form.  It contains not so healthy polyunsaturated fat and bad trans-fatty acids, the latter formed during the process.

In addition, most margarine spreads contain preservatives, usually preservative 220, artificial colours and flavours.  Before you eat it again, read the ingredients!

In the past decades, as the consumption of butter and other saturated fat decreased in favour of low fat diet, margarine and highly processed oils consumption – cholesterol, cancer and heart problems increased.

Danger of Polyunsaturated Highly Processed Oils

Vegetable oils are healthier option?  Well, vegetable oils aren’t all made equal.  On the healthy side there are cold pressed extra virgin oils, on the other highly processed oils containing high percentage of polyunsaturated oils.  Polyunsaturated oils are very unstable when exposed to heat, oxygen and moisture and become rancid.  Rancid oils contain free radicals that cause damage to cells, DNA, etc.

About 30% of calories in the modern age diet come from polyunsaturated oils.  Instead it should be only a few percents.  So watch for the amount of polyunsaturated fats, especially in processed and fast foods.  Processed oils are cheaper and widely used in the food industry. For frying, coconut oil, butter and animal fats are better option.

One Unpractical Thing about butter

There is only one thing about butter that isn’t handy:  it’s too hard to spread directly from the fridge.  But there is a way to overcome that: soft butter spread.  Stay tuned, the recipe is coming in the next post, as well as types of butter available and how to make your own butter.

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.

9 – 15 November 2009 is National Recycling Week (Australia) founded by Planet Ark in 1996.  This post is Sustainable Echo’s contribution to NRW.  It’s about finding another use for something otherwise destined for the dump: the coconut shell.

Recently I bought a whole coconut to make some coconut cookies.  Packaged shredded coconut sold in shops usually contains preservatives I try to avoid.  Opening and shredding a coconut is more work but it was worthwhile the effort.  The taste was great!  One half of the flesh was shredded finely for the cookies, the other half made into flakes and dried for homemade muesli.

How to open a coconut

There are several methods on how to crack open a coconut, but this was the simplest for me:

1. Using a screwdriver, corkscrew or a metal skewer make holes in two out of three coconut “eyes”
2. Drain the coconut water
3. Wrap the coconut in a towel
4. With a hammer tap around the coconut’s “equator” till the coconut opens.  If you need straight lines, use a hand saw.
5. To release the flesh insert a butter knife between the flesh and the shell and break off small chunks
6. Shred or slice  using a greater, V-slicer or similar

To store for later use, bake in oven on low temperature until dry to touch but still white.

What to do with coconut shells?

Coconut cookies have long disappeared, homemade muesli was delicious.  The two halves of the coconut shells were left outside to dry.  But, what to do with them?  In different countries different things are manufactured from them, eg. buttons, musical instruments, baskets, bird feeders, jewelry even briquettes for BBQ.

We had a brainstorming session the other day and the kids came up with these brilliant ideas:  one half become a basket for egg collection, the other a pot holder!  Both very simple to make.

The basked needed two holes drilled and a short length of ribbon (actually a fabric off-cut).  Done.  See the picture above.

The plant holder was even easier as it required only one hole to be drilled and screwed to the fence.  Fill with the soil and plant a seedling.

For the plant holder we used the coconut shell half with the “eyes” for the drainage:

This is our way of reusing things around the house.  Do you have a tip on reusing coconut shells or any other reuse tip for everyday items usually destined for the rubbish tip?  Please share in the comments below.

One year has passed since we had our first blog entry published!  Time is flying by so quickly, but somehow we feel Sustainable Echo has been part of our family’s life for years.  In a way it is true:  we’ve turned towards sustainable living much earlier, just didn’t write about it then.

We would like to thank you, our readers for following our story, tips and recipes and for coming back.  There are many exciting and informative posts coming soon.  Till then, here are the 10 most popular articles form the past year:

Top 10 Articles form the Past year

1. Garden Slugs: Organic and Natural Slug Control
2. How to Make Playdough within Minutes
3. 12 Ways to Use Up Old Bread
4. Pet Chickens: Keeping Chickens in the City
5. Bicarb Soda: Natural Body Deodorant
6. How to Make Basil Pesto Sauce
7. Simple Sustainable Living in the City – III
8. Endless Supply of Buttermilk–How to Make Buttermilk
9. What Does Frozen Raspberry Yogurt have in Common with Bushfires?
10. Homemade Buttermilk Pancakes – Easy Pancake Recipe

We would like to hear from you: any suggestions, critics, opinions  are welcomed!  Please use the form below!

Engaging kids in the organic gardening from an early age has many benefits: it teaches them about nature, sustainability, environment, patience, to appreciate food, etc.  When they are older, gardening will become second nature to them.  By doing it themselves and watching the plants grow, kids learn faster than any other way.  Above all, gardening with kids is heaps of  fun.

Our garden isn’t really big.  We gave up more than half of it to our chickens and started container gardening.  Kids love it because it is more accessible than our veggie patch.  Two most exciting moments for them are when the plants sprout from the seeds and harvest.  From my experience, children are more likely to eat veggies they’ve grown (see the pictures and comments below).

Last weekend we pulled the last beetroot: time to eat cool weather veggies that are remaining and make space for summer crop:

Our chickens got the leaves (young leaves can be tossed into salad) and we had a simple yet very delicious salad of grated fresh beetroot, carrot and Granny Smith apple only seasoned with a bit of lemon juice.  Colourful and yum!

We’ve planted a few sprouting spuds a couple months ago and here we’ve dug up the most delicious new potatoes.  I boiled them and the kids ate them all before they could make it to the plates!

Beautiful pink colour!

Snow peas are also ready for harvest.  I was surprised how quickly they grow.  While picking,  our daughter ate a few raw.  After a brisk boil,  they’ve been eaten in a minute, our son declaring them as delicious!  He wasn’t keen to try snow peas before

Whether you have a huge garden or a few pots on the window sill, get your kids into growing their own plants.  It’s a fun activity, gets the kids outside and let them be responsible for what they’ve planted, from watering to harvest!