Category Regulars

We as humans have included chickens as part of household life for thousands of years. The earliest evidence of domestication is believed to date back to 5400BCE in China and evidence has been found dating back thousands of years across the world, in Iran, Pakistan, India, Africa, North and South America.

All chickens have descended from the red jungle fowl of South-East Asia and from there have been traded and transported across the globe and been embedded in civilisations throughout history.

Around 800BCE ancient Egyptians were artiõcially incubating eggs and at the same time, Romans were experimenting with dishes such as omelettes and stu§ed chickens and using farming practices to fatten birds for eating.

What has caused the humble chicken to be so ubiquitous throughout time? It hasn’t always been for their meat and eggs, chickens were often held in religious esteem where they were worshipped and often they were used as oracles and omens in times of war.

We have access to lots of coffee grounds. Just wondering about putting it around the fruit trees in the orchard which is also the chook run? Will they bother eating it and is it bad for them? Or will they be cackling and crowing all night?! [Cheryl, Brogo, NSW]

Chickens don’t tend to eat used coffee grounds. They hold little nutritional value for them and caffeine is not good for chickens. The chickens will however scratch around in the coffee grounds and may make a dust bath in it. Their scratching will help you spread the coffee around the garden. In the chook run, the mix of coffee grounds, manure, hay and food scraps makes a great base for compost; I rake this all up and put it directly into my compost bays. I love things getting pre-prepared like this as it makes composting easier. Composted coffee grounds give more direct benefit to your garden. [Morag]

BeeKeeper backpacks help reduce waste by using fabric remnants discarded by local factories that would otherwise be thrown into landfill. For every BeeKeeper backpack you buy, you will send one child in rural Cambodia to English class for one whole year. That is an incredible thing to be able to do for a child!

BeeKeeper’s eye-catching backpacks have these practical features:

To place your event here, email hello@pipmagazine.com.au

STUDY PERMACULTURE IN 2017 AT CQUNIVERSITY

Australia’s Graduate Certificate in Permaculture Design at CQUniversity provides practical responses to the growing global need to adapt sustainably to social and environmental changes.

The first of its kind in the world, the graduate certificate provides benefits such as the flexibility to study by distance education with residential schools hosted by industry partners offering practical learning experiences.

Applications are open in August for commencement in Term 1, 2017.

Visit www.cqu.edu.au to enrol. For more information, contact Dr Keri Chiveralls, at k.chiveralls@cqu.edu.au.

Unlike western gardening tools, the Aussie Ho Mi is an ergonomic hand-held hoe which uses a more comfortable and natural action and is based on a traditional Korean design.

This tool is lightweight and perfectly balanced. It rotates easily in the hand from the sharp pointed working edge, to the equally sharp wide edge. Dig, weed, cultivate, ridge, plant, scalp–this tool will do everything. Once you start to use it, you will find yourself hooked!

Handcrafted in Australia by artisan tool makers F.D Ryan, the Aussie Ho Mi is made from high carbon steel, heat-treated for maximum strength and sharpened to a knife edge. With care, your Ho Mi will last a lifetime.

Available on the Pip website.

Never Ending Food is a permaculture demonstration and education organisation working to help address malnutrition holistically, improve children’s access to healthy food and promote food sovereignty. It’s led by Stacia Nordin (a dietician) and Kristof Nordin (a social worker) who have been in Malawi since 1997.

Photos courtesy of projects

The Nordins moved to Malawi to help with HIV prevention through the US Peace Corps. They learned quickly that to address malnutrition they would need to improve the quality and diversity of food, and to do that they needed to improve soil fertility. That’s when they came across permaculture. They now help to teach permaculture across Malawi, supporting communities and schools to set up abundant and sustainable food systems. Their own house is a demonstration plot, where people can visit to learn about their approach. The Nordins believe that permaculture has great potential to benefit nutrition and health, increase income potential and make a significant difference to living conditions.

Given Malawi’s year-round growing season, access to water and large genetic base of local food crops, the local people have seen how permaculture can help to create abundant gardens with a diversity of food. And how permaculture farmers have, on average, better food security, a more diverse diet and higher crop yield than conventional farmers. By making simple and affordable improvements to family farms, Malawian families can increase their overall household food security significantly.

I was asked recently what brought me to the place I am in today: the editor of a permaculture magazine, living in the country on a property with an evolving permaculture design, teaching permaculture, growing food, eating well and trying to bring up my kids to understand and respect the planet.

It made me stop and think: haven’t I always been this way inclined? I’ve always felt a connection to nature, but I definitely wasn’t brought up as the daughter of activists or living on a commune: I grew up in middle class, suburban Melbourne.

So what caused me to choose the life I have right now? When did I start to have this affinity with the earth, and wanting to do the best for her? Was it annual camping trips immersed in nature? Was it watching my dad garden when I was a child, and growing my first carrots? Was it getting arrested for protesting against uranium mining? Was it the feeling of belonging I had among others who felt the same way? Was it setting up my own garden and growing my own food? Was it completing my permaculture design course?

Well, it was all of those things. It has been a slow evolution, a gradual opening up and a growing awareness of what effect my actions and choices have, not only on the planet but on other humans and society in general.

I’ve been learning constantly since I started Pip Magazine; with each issue I gain a greater awareness and

GROWN & GATHERED: TRADITIONAL LIVING MADE MODERN

by Matt and Lentil Purbrick (Pan Macmillan 2016).

Review by Robyn Rosenfeldt

This book is a visual feast of growing, gathering, nurturing, trading and eating. Lentil and Matt Purbrick take you on a journey through the seasons, sharing their experience of returning to nature and the lessons they have learned.

The ‘Grow’ chapter shows you how to grow vegetables and fruit in whatever space you have, using the most earth-friendly practices. ‘Gather’ explains how to forage for things like mushrooms, native greens and wild fruits. ‘Nurture’ provides guidance on raising your own animals, from chickens and bees to cows. ‘Eat’ features over 100 delicious, nourishing and creative wholefood recipes, giving you the skills to eat a natural wholefood diet; it covers everything from how to prepare and sprout grains in a traditional way, to making and maintaining

Thank you to all the parents that sent in photos of their kids in the garden and with home grown produce. Each month we publish the best photo in our enewsletter and we choose the best to appear here and win a prize.

To enter, send photos with name and age of child and address to maude@pipmagazine.com.au. The winner will receive the book Rockhopping by Trace Balla and an original drawing by the author.

Film directed by Lisa Heenan and Isaebella Doherty, created by Darren Doherty (Regrarians Media 2015),

Review by Robyn Rosenfeldt

‘This is not just a film about farming, it is a reminder to us that the food we eat is farmed by people on land, in soil’, Darren Doherty.

Polyfaces follows the life and work of Joel Salatin and his family, creating a new farming model that will, in the words of Salatin, ‘heal the land, people and culture, one bite at a time’. Set in the stunning Shenandoah Valley in northern Virginia USA, Polyface Farm uses no chemicals, and feeds over 6000 families and many restaurants and food outlets within a three hour ‘foodshed’ (distance from the farm).

The Doherty-Heenan family spent four years with the Salatins, documenting the food system they’ve created. They show that there is an alternative model to the current one: one that regenerates the land and builds community, and will be able to feed families for generations to come.