Category Featured

Aquaponics combines aquaculture and hydroponics to produce fish and plants in one integrated system, creating a symbiotic and mostly self-sustaining relationship.

Combining fish and plants isn’t a new concept, with its origins dating back several millennia. Asia’s rice paddy farming systems is an example. Aquaponics today borrows and combines methods primarily developed by the hydroponics aquaculture industries, along with new ideas from the innovative DIY online community.

HOW IT WORKS

The basic principle of synergy involved in aquaponics is the requirement of clean water to promote the healthy and fast growth of fish, and the need and ability of plants to use nutrients from the water to grow. One of the most critical aspects in this relationship between plants and fish is the diverse microbial community which transforms fish wastes into forms of nutrients more easily used by plants for growth.

Living a committed life of service to humanity and this beautiful planet is natural for Rosemary (Rowe) Morrow. She has been working and supporting people in areas of need for more than four decades through teaching permaculture in places where others don’t go. Without permaculture, the needs of people and the land would be less adequately met.

Her work has helped establish permaculture as a globally relevant, accessible and practical way for addressing pressing planetary problems. Rowe’s career in permaculture has been dedicated to helping people in the greatest need. She has journeyed to meet and learn from farmers and villagers in some of the most challenged places. She seeks to offer information that makes a difference in places affected by worsening climate change, and countries facing the impacts of financial crises.

Hibi Farm is nestled on a sprawling suburban block in a quiet court in Melbourne’s not-quite-inner north. You could be forgiven for forgetting you were in the middle of postwar-built suburbia and instead had been transported back in time to the Swiss Alps, Heidi-style.

Chickens peck around the goat pen, which sits at the back of the yard, beyond the extensive fruit and vegetable gardens. Michi Pusswald, a householder at Hibi Farm, scrapes out the straw bedding. His wife Angelica nuzzles Tessie, a bearded Toggenburg milking goat, leading her up onto the milking stand. Michi and Angelica are on the ‘goater’ shift this morning, and that means an early start.

Hibi Farm sits at the centre of the Hood; a loose collective of local households living the good life. Central to the operation of Hibi Farm is the goat co-operative. Milking the goats is a daily ritual undertaken by one of the 15-odd official ‘goaters’ rostered on. This milk is shared between their households and then further afield as currency in bartering arrangements with friends and neighbours.

Goats are entertaining, intelligent and productive animals and can offer a lot of inputs into a permaculture system.

Due to their varied palate, they can be very useful in managing woody and weedy vegetation, as well as blackberries. In fact, much of their feed can come from excess growth around the garden.

Having fresh milk on hand is also a strong motivator for many potential goat keepers, with homemade goats cheese being a delicacy. Goats can also be kept as a meat source, as well as for their manure, which adds fertility to soil. Unlike larger hooved animals, goats can be kept in urban areas, as long as they are taken out to forage daily.

Bill Mollison – the ‘father of permaculture’ – died on 24 September 2016. To imagine and then create a worldwide movement of remarkable resilience is an incredible feat. Permaculture books are printed in many languages, it’s taught and practised in almost every country of the world, and found on websites in at least 110 languages.

Bill didn’t do this alone – his mix of Aussie-gruffness, love for storytelling and massive charisma was just what was needed to create a vision, a design system, and a network of teachers and practitioners who have spread the concept globally.

Bill had a brilliant mind. He observed, he catalogued and used a systems approach to help weave seemingly disparate ideas into the most detailed tapestry. In this sense he was a true visionary. He was also challenging, angry and driven by a deep sense of injustice. He used to say, ‘First feel fear, then get angry, then go with your life into the fight’.

Australians eat a staggering number of chickens each year. An extreme minority are raised on pasture, with the vast majority confined in sheds. Even if you’re buying ‘free range’ or even organic chicken from a supermarket, chances are you’d be appalled at the conditions in which these chickens live and die.

So, what is an ethical solution for those who want a little bit of chicken meat in our diet? First of all, remember those wise words of Michael Pollan: ‘eat food, not too much, mostly plants’. You don’t need to eat meat every day. Think of quality, ethically- grown meat as a treat: buying ethically raised meat is going to cost you more. Either source your chicken directly from a small-scale farmer, who is raising the birds on pasture (best for the farmer), or through an ethically-driven meat provedore such as Feather and Bone, who can tell you about the farms and farmers they source their meat from. (See article page 56)

Keeping backyard chickens is a joy shared by many – the site of a flock of ladies scratching around your garden warms the soul (as long as it’s not your vegie garden). There are simple ways to keep your chickens healthy naturally: give them fresh water, clean housing and bedding, and high-quality feed. Allowing exercise through free-ranging, and providing a stressfree environment by not overcrowding, will encourage happy birds. Happy, healthy chickens will provide you with delicious eggs, meat and free labour in the garden for many years.

Housing And Hygiene

Poultry housing should be large enough to accommodate the number of chickens without stress. There are many theories about the amount of space needed for each bird but, as a general guide, allow around one square metre. A naturally light and airy chicken house will discourage nasty parasites from lurking in dark places.

Watching a chick hatch from an egg is an amazing process, and to be a part of raising your own flock of chickens is an exciting and rewarding experience.

There are many reasons why you might want to breed your own chickens: just for fun; to replace your laying flock; to produce roosters for harvest to the freezer; to make money; to protect and show rare breeds; or just small-scale backyard production.

To raise chicks to adulthood successfully you need some good basic knowledge and skills, and a safe place for your hen to sit and for chicks to be raised. Despite all your best efforts, things may still go wrong sometimes and the chicks won’t make it.

When Shani Graham and Tim Darby learned about peak oil and climate change, their first instincts were to leg it to the country. ‘I was keen to stay in the city, although I couldn’t see how we could make that happen,’ recalls Shani.

After much consideration, instead of fleeing the problem, they decided to channel their energies into running sustainability business ventures in urban settings. Tim and Shani set up an environmentally friendly B&B called the Painted Fish on Hulbert Street in South Fremantle. Soon after, they purchased a property down the street, retrofitting it to incorporate solar passive principles, making it more sustainable. They then began running Living Smart courses, behaviour change programs aimed at educating people to reduce their environmental impact.

Inspired by what they’d learned on Hulbert Street, as well as by David Holmgren’s work on retrofitting the suburbs, Tim and Shani embarked on a new experiment. They decided to reconfigure an existing building to significantly increase the density without increasing the built footprint. ‘I get really frustrated whenever I see large suburban blocks being subdivided into smaller blocks, creating more overbuilt houses, more separation and isolation, and replication of seldom-used resources (such as laundries),’ says Tim. ‘Most often infill is a bitter pill that compromises the social and structural amenity as it increases density.

Western societies have been enthralled by technology since the beginning of the industrial revolution. From mechanised looms to 3D printers, technology has lifted people out of poverty, increased life expectancy, freed us from menial work, reduced pain and suffering, and helped us to see the world in new and illuminating ways. However, technology is a two-edged sword, for it has also brought pollution, extinctions, an exploding human population, unemployment and, of course, the warming of our planet.

SLOW TECHNOLOGY

A permaculture approach to technology is more like the ‘slow food’ movement than the high-tech, cutting edge of modern industry. It is technology that works for us, not enslaving us to it. It is technology that connects us to our place and community. It is beautiful and enhances our lives. It is more like a long, slow lunch with friends than a drive-through takeaway.