IBIS: Education and Food Systems

I'm working at an outdoor education camp called Ibis which is located on the Banksia Peninsula.

In my free time I'm working with a colleague to develop some food gardens around the site.
Some of our work so far has included installing a milk crate worm farm, a hot compost pile system and more recently a hot compost plastic barrel system. These waste systems are allowing us to break down massive amounts of food waste quickly, ready for garden use. (The last system took four weeks).

We have also installed a number of gardens, and looking to further extend this system.

Tonight we drove out and collected a ute of horse manure, which was instantly deployed into a new raised garden bed system.

This project is part of a broader vision to integrate food growing systems into the camp curriculum which we believe would really bolster the programe and teach these students great life skills.

OWNER BUILDING: SOME RESOURCES

I completed an Owner Building Course today and now feeling armed with much of the knowledge and know how about how to most effectively administer a building site.

I Strongly recommended that anyone interest in pursing this path do an owner builders course as there is a lot to learn about all the legalities of manging a building project.


My course was through Owner Building Solutions www.ownerbuilding.com.au.


Other useful contacts for straw bale and environmental house design and resources include:


WEB:


1. www.yourhome.gov.au: amazing gov site on environmental house design
2. www.strawbale.com.au: For great straw Bale specific building advice and services
3. www.ausbale.org: The ultimate online straw bale resource for Australia
4. www.arec.com.au: Amazing and highly recommended straw bale building courses

BOOKS:

1. Earth Garden: Natural Home Builders

2. Straw Bale Building: Plan, Design and Build with Straw: Magwood, C. & Mack, P. 2000

A NEWHAVEN ODESSEY

While we wait for our draghtsman to finish the preliminary house drawings ("early this week"),

I volunteered to hangout at the Yr 9 Environmental Center (Newhaven College, where Leesh is working).

Leesh and another work colleague are in the process of collaborating with the students to develop a permaculture design with the intention of integrating chooks, veges, food forest, native edibles, and poly tunnel into a working permaculture system.

While this is under way I'm helping out where ever I can, and this week we got into fixing the horribly abused and disused chaos of the compost area. It still needs some love but at least now we have one working bin with a nice hot compost brewing away.

Leesh will enlist some students to turn this once a week and to monitor the heat, who knows it might even make a nice science project?.

Left Bin: One hot compost!

!

A BURIAL FIT FOR A WALLABY!

On my morning walk this morning Leesh and I found a fresh road kill wallaby, a sight,

not too uncommon for the Islanders (Unfortunately)

Although saddened by this horrible sight I was also excited. I hate seeing road kill just as much as the next nature loving greenie but as a budding permacultualist, who is always on the lookout for resources a fresh wallaby presents an abundant supply of nitrogen (essential for a hot compost).

I proceeded to put my day on hold and instantly started stock piling all the essential ingredients for a hot compost system. It was a rush against time as I knew the longer I took the more the wallaby would begin to smell!.

The key with the hot compost is to heap a carefully balanced combination nitrogen and carbon into a pile, which should then 'cook' at about 70 degrees.

I already had two straw bales (carbon) ready to go so that was easy, the next scavenger hunt items were: seaweed (nitrogen), this is found at low tide about 50m from my front door,

horse poo (nitrogen) from a local farm, and fresh grass clippings (nitrogen / carbon) which I took from a vacant house lot.

Armed and ready to go I set up a stock pile on our block and then got into the action of building the hot compost. It's essential to wet the pile but we don't have water on the block so I had to 'borrow' some from our next door neighbors (weekender's).

The theory is that the pile will heat up and break down all contents including wallaby super efficiently.

In my opinion the perfect burial for a hapless wallaby!,

Cheers,

Aj

A BLANK SLATE

Our Blank Slate!

So here we are, this is my first of many entries as I attempt to chart our progress

in designing and creating a fully integrated suburban permaculture system.

This will include such elements as a solar passive straw bale house, a food forest, intensive veggie gardens, a native food trail, a greenhouse and chooks all on 600m2 of land based on Phillip Island

It is anticipated that this project will take about 2 years to get it to a point where all the elements are functioning.

This will then become a focal point for modeling and initiating other permaculture projects in the Bass Coast Shire.

This blog will be a space to share this project with as many people as possible and to hopefully enlist some helpers!.

Cheers

Aj