Native Foods: The Oldest Foods On Earth
In more than 230 years of occupation, European Australians turned their backs on the vast majority of foods the country’s Indigenous people have eaten for more than 50,000 years. We have ignored their sage and intricate management of the environment and overlaid an alien system…
Storing Carbon In Your Own Backyard
Regenerative agriculture is attracting a lot of attention as a way to reverse declining soil fertility while pulling carbon out of the atmosphere and stashing it back in the ground. Yet, restoring soil health is not just for farms. It is something we can do…
Strawbale Building: The Home That Hugs You
Shamus O’Reilly believes that strawbale is the best natural building material of them all. He recently finished building his own strawbale home for himself and his family. He also builds strawbale homes for other people through his construction company, SO’R Construction. He has repeatedly seen…
Sustainable Seafood Buying Guide
Seafood has traditionally been a nutritional powerhouse for humans, being high in protein, minerals and vitamins and low in saturated fats. It’s often touted as a food we should be eating to get our omega-3 fatty acids, lose weight or to give our children the…
The Art Of Homemade Pasta
Once you have made your own pasta at home, you will realise that homemade pasta is on a whole other level when it comes to quality and flavour. Not to mention you avoid the plastic and food miles associated with pasta in a packet.
Making pasta…
Repair Cafes: More Than Just Repairs
Imagine a world where we know and care for the life story of things and care about how items are used and re-used. The Repair Cafe movement is working to create such a world.
Just over 12 months ago, Daylesford’s Repair Cafe started with a community…
Climate Activism: Find Your Calling
Hands up if you’re feeling a bit helpless in the face of climate change? It seems our governments are doing little to help, our pleas for change are falling on deaf ears; and big business and greed seem to have more say than good people…
Zone 00 – Looking After The Self
Many of us spend a lot of time and energy caring for the environment and caring for others in our families and our communities. Sometimes we find that, while spending all this time and energy caring for everyone else, we forget to care for ourselves.
Inevitably…
Faraway Farmher: Nicky Harris
Conversation has been a powerful tool for bringing about change in the life of Nicky Harris. A conversation with a neighbour was how she discovered permaculture. Conversations, workshops and TAFE courses have all been part of Nicky’s journey to learning an incredible range of skills….
Make Your Own Macramé
Macramé is making a resurgence. For some people, this may invoke cringing memories of kitsch décor of the 1970s: knotted hanging baskets and wall hangings made from gaudy-looking jute and twine. Other people may smile in memory of a bygone era. However you remember macramé,…
Home-Based Living For The Climate Conscious
Modern life tends to pull us away from the simple routines of home. Many of us spend hours each week commuting to work, school and shops so we can come home to rest. But the process of doing this removes us from our local communities…
Women Sharing Permaculture In Kenya
Jane Amunga is a Kenyan grandmother, community leader and farmer. She lives in a mud house in the rural village of Kambiri in Kakamega, close to the only remaining equatorial rainforest in the country. But the rain is sparse. The soil on her tiny farm…
Setting Up A Drip Irrigation System
The impact of long-term drought in Australia means we need to be thinking about better ways to get water to our gardens with the least amount of waste and fuss. With sprayers, sprinklers and hoses, there is inevitably a fair bit of water that goes…
Kids’ Patch
Our Kids’ Patch winners for issue 15 are Ruby and Rory. Congratulations! You’ve both won a copy of Easy Peasy Gardening for Kids.
In the next issue, we are giving away a copy of Grow Do It, the CD and activity book by the Formidable Vegetable…
Permaculture Around The World
Nea Guinea is a non-profit one-acre permaculture farm in Athens that models permaculture practices and offers education programs. Based here is the Mediterranean Permaschool, which offers a range of permaculture education programs for the community, for youth; and also helps organise permaculture courses for refugee…
Pip Picks: Things We Like
Sleep in creature comfort with a breathable organic wool doona that is 100% natural and compostable. Enjoy the wool filling, sourced from sheep grown on Hollyburton Farm in Victoria, the organic, unbleached cotton casing and the 100% cotton or wool thread used to complete the…
Brains Trust
Questions answered by Matthew Evans of www.fatpig.farm and presenter of SBS sustainable seafood documentary, What’s the Catch.
When it says pole and line fishing on a tin of tuna, what does that mean exactly and is it sustainable? (Renee, Adelaide Hills SA)
This means the tuna is…
Noticeboard
Nominations are now open for the 2020 Pip Permie Awards. The awards will be presented at the Australasian Permaculture Convergence in Brisbane, in April 2020. There are two awards:
Best Permie Project: Open to projects which are current, create positive change and demonstrate the permaculture ethics…
Letters To The Editor
I was lucky enough to discover you through a friend, after she received a subscription to Pip Magazine for a Christmas present. Although initially jealous (she wasn’t much of a gardener), it has been miraculous to watch her transformation. Now she’s the keeper of flourishing…
Lilly Pilly/Riberry
The fruit of the lilly pilly tree is called riberry, although some call it lilly pilly. There are about 60 lilly pillies in Australia, most in the genus syzygium, and most have edible fruit. Some fruit is overly astringent or bland. The one we will…
Deep Litter In The Chook House
A chicken coop deep litter system is a compost heap inside your coop, where chook poo is deposited under where the chickens roost; or in the chicken run. Your chicken house should allow quite a bit of airflow. Closed housing risks building up ammonia levels…
Permaculture Plant: Globe Artichoke
Striking, hardy and delicious, globe artichokes fill many roles in any permaculture-savvy garden. Once established, they survive with minimal attention and create a silvery-green focal point in all food gardens. They make an excellent hedge or windbreak planted close together and provide a unique and…
In The Garden: March – June
March: Brussels sprouts (seedling tray), broad beans, beetroot, broccoli (seedling tray), cabbage (seedling tray), carrot, chives, coriander, daikon, endive, fennel, kale, kohlrabi, leeks, lettuce, mizuna, mustard greens, pak choy/ bok choy, radish, rocket, shallots (plant bulbs), silverbeet, turnips.
April: Brussels sprouts, broad beans, beetroot, broccoli, cabbage,…
Book Reviews
This is an important book for fishermen, ocean lovers, seafood eaters, environmentalists; in fact, everyone inhabiting the Earth. The oceans are in peril. Seafood stocks are decimated. Bren Smith offers a compelling solution for cleaning up the oceans, growing enough food for a burgeoning global…
Save Your Seeds: Beans
The ‘common bean’ Phaseolus vulgaris – phaseolus being Greek for bean and vulgaris Greek for common – covers both green beans (French beans) and dried beans such as pinto, navy, kidney and borlotti.
Origin
Although there are records of bean cultivation in Mexico in 4000 BCE, the…
Editorial
As I write this, fires are burning out of control around the country, lives have been lost, millions of animals have perished, thousands of homes have been razed to the ground and over 8 million hectares of land has burned.
As we hear more and more…