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/

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!

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/

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!

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Organic Expo featuring the Green Show is on in Melbourne this weekend, 25 – 26 July 2009.  Friday, July 24^th is trade only day.  The event alternates between Sydney and Melbourne annually, so if you happen to be in Melbourne, don’t miss it.

With over 150 organic & green exhibitors there will be so much going on:

• Kylie Kwong (Sat) and Tobie Puttock (Sun) will have cooking demos and talk about eating ethically and locally
• Tasting, sampling and buying organic wines, produce and green products
• Opportunity to talk to exhibitors, ask questions and learn from them
• Lots of fun activities for kids (under 14 free entry):

• Children can sow their own organic veggies to take home
• ‘I LIKE ORGANIC’ children’s competition­ – the prize is a beautiful Handcrafted Mahogany Hobby Horse
• Organic Kids Fun Zone:Farmyard Friends, Creepy Crawly Garden and Eco Art

• Great door prize: cool electric bike
• Live and interactive demonstrations, presentations and talks on Anti-aging the organic way, Nanotechnology, Additive Free Kids, The truth about cotton and many other interesting topics.

The Organic Expo is open to the public on:

Saturday 25th July 2009 - 10.00am – 6.00pm
Sunday 26th July 2009 - 10.00am – 5.00pm

Royal Exhibition Building, Carlton, Melbourne