Chippo road gardeners Bianca, Serena and Eammon after transplanting the Tahitian Lime on Saturday 8 May 15

In Chippendale, Sydney, NSW, we residents and businesses garden in the streets.

We’ve just made a road garden plan to satisfy the local council’s desire for paperwork.

It’s written in plain English and we’ll change it as we go.

It’s here if you wish to read it.

Microbat nest boxes

Steve Fadel and his artisans from Paramount Properties – www.paramountpropertygroup.net….au – have built and given three microbat houses to me and our Chippendale environment.

Microbats can be as small as a knuckle on a human finger.  They eat mozzies – over a thousand a day!  They have been dying out as we cut down trees in our cities.  These new houses will provide a home and refuge for them in Chippendale.  This is what Tweed Shire Council says about microbats:

“Microbats make up one fifth of all Australian mammals, comprising over 60 species, in 6 families. Mostly roosting in colonies to maintain temperature and humidity, these endearing but little understood animals roost in caves, mine shafts, tree hollows, cracks in rocks and fence posts, in the walls and roofs of old

buildings, and sometimes even turn up in mailboxes. Microbats can be broadly divided into ‘cave-dwelling’ and ‘treedwelling’.

Over 50 percent of Australia’s microbats are ‘tree-dwelling’, which means they, like many mammals, are very dependent on tree hollows. Breeding normally take  place in autumn to winter, depending on the climate, with mothers usually giving birth to one and sometimes two babies, born around November to December, after a 12 week pregnancy. After birth, the young pup will attach itself to a nipple in the wing pit, staying there until old enough to be left in crèche at the roost, with the other pups. Here they remain warm and safe while the mothers are away feeding. On her return, the mother will call to her young which answers back. Young microbats begin to fly from around 5 to 6 weeks of age.

Some Microbats are so small that a full grown adult can weigh as little as 3 grams. Feeding mostly on

insects such as moths, beetles, and mosquitoes, a single Microbat can consume up to 40% of its own body weight per night – up to an incredible 500 insects per hour. As you can see, there is a distinct advantage to having a healthy population of these little critters around your house or farm.”

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You can download a pdf and drawings from the Council here: www.tv…

The photo of the nest boxes on my back deck shows their size in comparison to my hat.

Birds, birds, birds

A friend has a couple of trees with flowers that attract parrots.  They feed there day and night, gossiping, laughing, chortling, scurrying, eating upside-down (my favourite), coming and going.  How I love Aussie parrots for their song and colour, their beauty.  And there are both honey and native bees there, too, feeding on the tree’s feast.

This year I’ll plant a tree or two like this.

M

Dairy calves on Country Valley Dairy farm

There’s a new wave carrying hope with it at Sydney’s Bondi Beach.

Mayor Sally Betts of Waverley Council has initiated a project to turn food waste into compost in 24 hours and take it to a farm to grow soil.  As the soil grows it takes carbon pollution out of Earth’s air.

The project cuts cafe and council waste costs.

Using the compost cuts the farmer’s fertilizing costs and produces healthier cows and dairy products.

The story is  in this three minutes how-it’s-done video, The Bondi Gobbler.

Enjoy,

M

The drone being used to film installation of the composter

Today was a good day.

Waverley Council, wecompost and farmer John Fairley of Country Valley Dairy, along with Bondi businesses are working together to cut food waste, cut business costs and to grow soil on a farm.  wecompost is a joint project involving myself, Jess Miller and Closed Loop.

Our project to take carbon pollution out of Earth’s atmosphere started when we installed the big composter at Bondi Pavilion.

Food waste will be composted and taken to grow soil on a farm at Picton.

We stop new pollution by stopping the food waste going to landfill.

We take out existing pollution by growing soil with the compost.  When soil grows it takes carbon out of the air.

The new plants will also cool the dairy cows and make them more comfortable, and will reduce the farmer’s use of oil and gas based fertilizers and other costs.

We’ll also reduce costs for the cafes using the system.

Some days feel good deep inside and this is one of them.

More details soon.

May joy be with you,

Michael

PS – for the radio interview with Mayor Sally Betts and ABC Radio’s Linda Mottram please see the previous blog.

Anticipation builds here and among those who have bee hives made from the hive that came here four years ago.

In a few weeks we’ll harvest the honey from my hive.  Tim Heard, the designer of the hive, is coming from Brisbane to show me and some other hive owners how to harvest the honey.

I’ll have photos, a video and a ‘how to do it’ of the honey harvest on this blog soon after the honey harvest.

Am planning a little dish to go with the newly harvested honey . . . .

Bzzzzzz, sweet anticipation . . . . yummmm,

m

” . . . Iran’s population in 1979 when the Islamic Revolution occurred was 37 million; today it’s 75 million. Egypt’s was 40 million; today it’s 85 million. The stresses from more people, climate change and decades of environmental abuse in both countries can no longer be ignored or bought off.

On July 9, Iran’s former agriculture minister, Issa Kalantari, an adviser to Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, spoke to this reality in the Ghanoon newspaper: “Our main problem that threatens us, that is more dangerous than Israel, America or political fighting, is the issue of living in Iran,” said Kalantari. “It is that the Iranian plateau is becoming uninhabitable. … Groundwater has decreased and a negative water balance is widespread, and no one is thinking about this.”

He continued: “I am deeply worried about the future generations. … If this situation is not reformed, in 30 years Iran will be a ghost town. Even if there is precipitation in the desert, there will be no yield, because the area for groundwater will be dried and water will remain at ground level and evaporate.” Kalantari added: “All the bodies of natural water in Iran are drying up: Lake Urumieh, Bakhtegan, Tashak, Parishan and others.” Kalantari concluded that the “deserts in Iran are spreading, and I am warning you that South Alborz and East Zagros will be uninhabitable and people will have to migrate. But where? Easily I can say that of the 75 million people in Iran, 45 million will have uncertain circumstances. … If we start this very day to address this, it will take 12 to 15 years to balance.”

In Egypt, soil compaction and rising sea levels have already led to saltwater intrusion in the Nile Delta; overfishing and overdevelopment are threatening the Red Sea ecosystem, and unregulated and unsustainable agricultural practices in poorer districts, plus more extreme temperatures, are contributing to erosion and desertification. The World Bank estimates that environmental degradation is costing Egypt 5 percent of gross domestic product annually.”

To find out more, read Tom Friedman’s column, Mother Nature and the Middle Class, in the New York Times.

Kate Walsh, a Sydney real food seller and promoter, has pop up cooking classes this July.

Learn how to make real butter, sausages, tortillas, pickles, ricotta and other foods from the farmers and producers who make them for a living; from Feathers and Bone to Pepe of Pepe’s butter.

Information is here.

• The Narara Ecovillage Co-op is set up to build a world class ecovillage community to integrate social, ecological and economic sustainability.
• The site is the former Gosford Horticultural Institute – the photos show it has a mix of hills, fields, woods, houses and is a rural haven.
• Their website is the best reference to learn more about the aims and aspirations.
• They’re using a co-operative structure instead of a company because it more fully reflects their values as shown on their website.
• Members are the investors, the shareholders, the designers, the developers, the future residents. And it is the members who decide how to use the profits resulting from the project.
• people join the co-op by making a commitment to buy a lot (at some point), buying $20,000 in shares, and agreeing to do some volunteer hours for the co-op.
• When titles are available after the DA is approved, their shares will count towards their lot price.
• Choice of lots is mostly determined by the priority in time of purchase.
• The development will be in three phases, with Stage One house building to start around mid 2014.
• People pay an additional $30,000 to reserve a lot in Stage One, now about three quarters full.
• Members who want to be in Stages 2 or 3 need not pay any additional now, but will still be fully part of shaping the community.
• Average lot prices are expected to be around $250,000.
• Currently there are about 40 ‘memberships’ translating to about 80 members (singles, couples and families). The eventual population is expected to be between 3-400.
• For those that are wondering if this might be something that they want to pursue, there are two formal documents explaining the project and how to join the co-op: a Disclosure Statement (like a prospectus) and the Co-op Rules.

The project is being funded by those buying shares and is therefore an example of a village being developed by self-funding means.  It’s interesting that folks are prepared to buy into this project without knowing where their lot will be; that suggests to me that those buying are primarily buying ‘the dream’ and Lyndall agreed with me.

Let’s see if the project solves the urban heat island problem (which typically drive up subdivision temperatures by over 6 to 8 degrees), the typical up front costs for unsustainable road, water, sewage and energy infrastructure.

In my book, Sustainable House, there’s an example where I reduced developer charges from $27,500 to $7000 a lot in a Port Macquarie project in NSW by using sustainable road design and water, sewage and energy infrastructure.  Although that’s a bush fire problem area the roads are only 5 m wide thereby increasing lot yield and amenity.

Folks will be able to live there for energy and water bills less than $300 a year no matter how many people live in the house, just as I do in my house, Sydney’s Sustainable House.

And it will be interesting to see if the project matches the VicUrban (now, Places Victoria) Meridian project where low cost road design creates self-irrigating drains for over 12,000 fruit trees planted in the drains; details are in my book, Sustainable Food.

With large developers such as Investa (see, for example:  http://www.thefifthestate.com.au/archives/42612/) now publishing data on their journey to reduce energy and water use in their offices and shopping centres it would also be handy if all new projects seeking to be sustainable published data on costs, performance, living expenses, food sources and such.

Good luck to the Narara venturers,

M

Jason is based in South Africa’s Cape Town.  He sets up ‘green businesses’ to sustain natural resources, such as fisheries.

One of his new businesses is fly farming, turning waste into larvae, and a protein-rich, natural animal feed.

To get his ideas Drew reads and travels.  He believes that the world is running out of food.  He says, “Every day, 25,000 people die from starvation, yet as many die of obesity-related conditions. Nearly 1-billion wake up hungry as a result of environmental damage we have caused.”

Drew’s new business, Agri-Protein, is a venture he runs with his brother, David Drew, outside Stellenbosch. They’re recycling waste nutrients by fly farming and selling a product called Magmeal.  Agri-Protein’s website says:

“Aquaculture uses up to 2kg of marine caught fish to produce 1kg of farmed fish, of which we eat only 60%, the rest being waste nutrients. 25% of all marine catch is used in animal feed preparations; fish stocks globally are in rapid decline.

Drew says, “Chicken and fish eat flies. It’s their natural food. We’ve worked out a way to use the eggs of those flies. We hatch them into larvae fed on existing waste from slaughterhouses, dry the larvae, and make sustainable protein for animal feed, Magmeal, used in our industrial agricultural businesses.’

If viable, the fly larvae food can replace the fish meal that’s fed to fish and so make fish farming more sustainable.  That’s a wonderful goal and a great idea; good luck, David,

M