The chook pooped on a book

I had to take my chook to work the other day. She is a beautiful girl and was needed for a photo shoot in the Grove Community Centre to promote the Less is More Festival. She was very well behaved and smiled when asked by the photographer.

However, she did poop. On a book. But we cleaned it up and the lovely staff at the library didn't seem to mind so much. And it resulted in a fantastic article on page 5 of the local paper - my chook and Lindsay Miles posing for the festival!

I absolutely love my job because I get to hang out with some amazing people and learn so much about living more sustainably. I spent all of Saturday at the Less is More Festival which was coordinated by Lindsay (an Earth Carers volunteer). With help from us in the office she gathered around 22 volunteer presenters and around 17 support volunteers to hold a day of rolling workshops and activities designed to help people live more sustainably and consciously. The festival is in its third year and 2014 was the best yet! I'm not sure if it was because we had some extra funding from Lotterywest for advertising or if people are just into it more, but there were hundreds and hundreds of people there. The nice thing about this year was that there were a lot of ordinary looking western suburbs folks who might not have been exposed to DIY toothpaste or composting much before. Lindsay specifically marketed the festival at everyone, not just our beloved hippies. I feel we really struck a chord with lots of people and we have been able to get the 'Full lives, empty bins' message out there.

I didn't take any photos on the day - I missed the chance to get one of Adam doing his fruit tree talk. He gave away a banana tree to a very happy chappy. And I did my usual on composting.

The festival was a lot of work, but its such a buzz to be able to share our passions with others and to get such a positive response from the community! My friend (and sometimes parallel blogger) Lindsay has popped some pics on her blog, so rather than duplicate here is the link to Treading My Own Path.

Renos a go go

We started doing some renovations in December and now that we're back things are really starting to happen. Our plan is to build a new room separate from the house out the back, with an outdoor bathroom, a big solar pergola and a wooden deck.

So far we have 6 big steel posts in, these are the supports for the pergola. The pergola slopes up to the north and will have solid tin in one area and clear sheeting in another. Underneath the clear sheeting we will have adjustable louvres to enable us to block or let in light depending on the time of year. Hopefully we will get lots of light coming into the house in winter to warm us up...

We have a pad for the new room and bathroom, it's polished concrete and looks quite nice.

Most of the timber for the walls is on now too. This is the new room looking south east. The room is about 3m by 5m and will be for visitors to stay in and for Quin when he gets older. It will have a kitchenette, with a sink, kettle and toaster. One of the steel posts is inside the room so we're hiding it inside a cupboard.

We have moved some jarrah door/windows from the main house to the new room and replaced them with aluminium framed doors and windows. We swapped them over because the jarrah frame has the wrong type of glass for north facing since it blocks all the warmth, but is perfect for a western aspect. The new windows in the house have Low E glass which is much better suited to a northern aspect. Eventually we may replace the floor boards out the back with a pad for thermal mass to store heat in winter.

This is the new room with jarrah door/windows. There are also banks of louvre windows in the corner and next to the kitchen area.

The post-hiding cupboard and kitchen area.

The outdoor bathroom will be beautiful (much nicer than the indoor one). We got cast iron slipper bath half price (it was a bit chipped during shipping but has been re-enameled), so that will be the centrepiece, plus we'll have a separate shower and it will all run into the relocated grey water system. The chooks can even watch us having a shower!

We'll keep you posted as work progresses.

Sporkless

Before we even made it through the gates our plastic free travel attempt was a fail. All my home made potions (toothpaste, hair treatments, coconut oil, essential oils etc) had to go in snap lock bags. This was super annoying, but in truth it's lucky because some did leak. I had my toothpaste and my dandruff potion in the same bag during the flight. Before touchdown I went to freshen up and brush my teeth. Something had leaked and I assumed it was my toothpaste, and so as not to waste any I scooped it up from the bottom of the bag. Of course it was my dandruff potion. Fail 1. Yuck. 

The rest of the journey was just as bad. I knew it would be. It was actually atrocious. All our food was wrapped in plastic, even the bread roll. Thinking we were doing the right thing we refrained from opening all the little packages hoping they would be saved for another traveller. In this process we realised that two of our three bamboo sporks were still at home in our kitchen draw. Fail 2. I was curious to know if our efforts to not open things were worth it, so I asked the staff. Alas EVERYTHING, opened or unopened, gets chucked after each meal. Sporkless and dejected we opened all of our meals, at least we were not wasting the food now. 

We also could not resist the lollies on take off and landing. Fail 3. 

We did have some wins though. Quincey turned down two Sponge Bob kids activity packs. I was very proud of him. He was impressed enough with unlimited access to screens. 

  

We also found it useful to ask staff to fill our stainless steel water bottles to avoid their plastic disposable ones. We refused the tea/coffee stirring pack - it occurred to me that you could BYO milk powder if you can stand the camping tea taste. This would avoid the tiny UHT milk packs. 

Our final fail was self imposed. We were tired, confused and exhausted. Hence the bottle of gin, complete with foam non breaky thing and an enormous snap lock bag. Things can only get better. 

Hello Qatar, goodbye Qatar

After a ten hour flight we we are about to touch down in Qatar. I don't even really know where Qatar is. I mean I've looked it up on a map - it's a gulf state, but that's all I know about it. Yet the pilot is welcoming us. Looking out over the city the lights look like some weird luminous mother board. I can't make out what the lights might be. Maybe they the are of mine sites or perhaps residential compounds. But what is more mysterious is the black space in between the lights. Maybe that is where Qatar's unique culture dwels, modest and timeless. Where the lights are sparse they could be stars. Hang on. Sink back in the seat. Breath. Stars are up, lights and land below. The truth is that this country is as unknown to me as the rest of the universe. I feel struck by this. Maybe it's because we are such seldom travellers I think it's strange to be so transient. Does all this travel we enjoy today really facilitate cultural exchange? Not for us and Qatar. Hello, goodbye. I like your shiny airport. 

Cargo bike article in ReNew magazine. I'm published!

The latest issue of ReNew Magazine features an article by me on cargo bikes. It's great to be able to share the cargo bike love! Here it is:

If you've got any comments or questions fire away.

End of year stats

Well, another year has come and gone. We'll be away for the next two months, so I thought I'd get this out before we left.

Gas and electricity use is up a tiny bit this year. I can't tell what the reason is, but it seems to be due to electricity use rather than gas. Since we've had solar hot water our gas use has dropped from 16kWh a day to between 8 and 9.5kWh.

The chooks are laying less, we're on course for 1,000 egss after 1,400 last year. One of our old Australorps died this year and the old girls are definitely laying less. It also seems that our Hi-lines are laying less. They are one year old now, so I'm a bit surprised at this.

Transport has been a winner this year. I've been riding the Fr8 to work three times a week most weeks. Our aim of halving our car kms from 2010 levels hasn't quite succeeded, but we're on course for 10,000kms this year which isn't too bad.

That's it for now. We're off to Europe to blow our carbon budget for the next few years! But this is the topic of another post...

Have a safe and sustainable Christmas.

Have reusables, will travel

So, we are off to visit family and friends in the UK and Europe in a few days. With blowing all that carbon (18.53 tonnes of carbon for which 111 trees need to be planted, to be precise), the least we can do is try to avoid some single use plastics while we are away.

I've been collecting and making a reusables for a while now but I've also made a few purchases to facilitate travel sans plastic. Most of which will fit in my snazzy new bum bag:

Among other things, I'll keep with me one emergency cloth pad, home made lip balm, a bamboo spork, my lucky Onya bag and a hanky.

Quin also has a new bum bag. He will carry with him his spork, bamboo straw (apparently essential), Onya water bottle, and a minifigure (also essential).

I'm banking on Ads to lug around our big water bottle, keep cups, containers, camera, map books and all the other heavy stuff. Bless him.

I've also given some thought to my toiletries. It's easy to have your home made stuff at home, but I do wonder how they will travel. Glass might break and my deodorant might melt! But I'll try anyway. I'm packing my home made hair treatment, toothpaste, washable make-up pads, deodorant, essential oils and a base oil and my toothbrush.  I've given up my contacts which came in disposable packaging and I'm contemplating going make-up free. I think it will work - we'll find out if our personal hygiene is up to scratch if people ask to move seats away from us on the plane!

Of course, there will be other regular bits like panadol, bandaids, colgate for Quincey etc, some things we can't avoid and I'm certain I will end up with bloody plastic straws at some stage, but we will give it our best shot - by the way, there are a few other good plastic free tips on the Plastic Free July website (just a little plug!)

So, we are just about ready to hit the road - wish us luck!