Read issue 5 as a flipbook

After reading Nick Rose’s book, Fair Food; Stories from a Movement Changing the World (UQP 2015), I knew it was going to be the theme for this issue. Fair Food is central to what so many of us…

When we bought our 1.2 hectares in Old Warburton, east of Melbourne, Victoria, our aim was to grow the majority of our vegetables and fruit, enabling us to eat fresh food in season and to preserve our requirements…

POLYFACES: A WORLD OF MANY CHOICES

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

Review by Robyn Rosenfeldt

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Cara Edwards rents a flat in the heart of Hobart and, despite not owning land or having much space, she has become an urban farmer, using her own small backyard and other pockets of land she has borrowed…

Outside the small village of Bethel, in the remote mountains of Lesotho, southern Africa, is a remarkable community. Surrounded by degraded land, characterised by heavily eroded washouts, is a verdant forest of food.

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Connecting with the earth and nature gives me a very different perspective on which to base my environmental endeavours. Feeling a deep connection with nature, and experiencing myself as part of our living, breathing planet – not separate…

BOTANICAL NAME: Phormium tenax

ORIGIN: New Zealand and Norfolk Island

DESCRIPTION: This clumping, evergreen, perennial plant has sword-like leaves to two metres…

“Biochar may represent the single most important initiative for humanity’s environmental future. The biochar approach provides a uniquely powerful solution, for it allows us to address food security, the fuel crisis, and the climate problem, and all in…

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

APC13 PERTH, WA: 2–5 OCTOBER 2016

The theme for the Perth (Swanleigh) convergence in…

An excerpt from Fair Food: Stories from a Movement Changing the World (edited by Nick Rose, UQP, 2015)

Food Connect works in the vein of the ‘small is beautiful’ philosophy…

PERMACULTURE HELPING VULNERABLE CHILDREN–EKUKHANYENI RELIEF PROJECT, JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA

The Ekukhanyeni Relief Project was started in 2003 to support vulnerable children in communities affected by severe poverty and HIV/ AIDS….

There are many ways to start a garden bed: no-dig to double-dig. Each suits different situations, people and budgets; how you do it is up to you. Double-digging – the biointensive growing technique – is excellent for anyone wanting to…

TOMATO PASSATA

Here is a product that you don’t have to buy but you can make yourself and simultaneously create connections and community. Nothing quite reminds you of summer than…

What would happen if we taught our children that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people planted crops, tilled them, irrigated them, stored and preserved surpluses, built houses and sewed their clothes? Would the sky fall in? And why would we…

Creating a truly local meal–where every part of the meal is produced locally–can be a challenge, but once you get into it, it is also quite addictive. It takes a bit of a mind shift – to look…

Many people speak of our current era as the time of the Great Turning, or the Great Transition. We are at a point in our journey as humanity where, as the philosopher Thomas Berry puts it, we must…

Josh Byrne, presenter on ABC TV’s Gardening Australia, and his wife Kellie Maher began construction of their remarkable 10-star rated house in Hilton, near Fremantle, in November 2012. Construction of two dwellings on a little over a ‘quarter-acre’…

IN YOUR PATCH

Myfanwy with carrots and beetroots she’s grown in her garden.

Send in a photo of youself with your harvest…

A fair food system begins with you. These three contributors walk their talk. They are actively raising public awareness of things you can do to make our food system fairer. Here are their top tips.

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Designer: Taj Scicluna, in collaboration with Linton Cummins

Client: Lordy Dannaoui

Location: Yarraville, Victoria

Over the last two decades I have explored permaculture as a set of thinking tools for the energy-descent future and outlined a nuanced and over-the-horizon view of the diverse ways in which that energy-descent future might unfold. Since…

Only three per cent of the earth’s water is fresh water; and only one per cent of this can be used for life, people included.

While the amount of water…

A bioregion is a geographic area with boundaries defined by natural features such as catchments, soil types, geographic features or vegetation types. Bioregions create a sense of place; where people can identify with their location; in which people…

Why does a tomato plucked straight off the bush in your own backyard taste so much better than one from the supermarket? Why does an egg laid moments ago by Henrietta just outside your kitchen window look, taste…

FIONA WEIR WALMSLEY – BUENA VISTA FARM

Describe your farm and what you do there.

Buena Vista Farm is a small family…

Rob Scott and his family of five own a 180 hectare organic farm in the Macedon Ranges, just outside of Melbourne, Victoria. The family has a huge passion for organic farming, permaculture, animal husbandry, alternative building and holistic…

There is something so absolutely delightful about seeing children play outside in nature, creating worlds and games together, using just the things they can find around them – branches, sticks, feathers, rocks, water – and being totally enthralled…

Australian settler geese (previously ‘pilgrim geese’) were developed for Australian conditions. They are hardy medium sized geese. Males are born white, and females grey.

The breed is becoming rare: it…

Common2us is made up of a small team of young farmers from Spain and Australia who are passionate and driven to produce fresh, local, sustainable organic food for their Sydney community. They focus on producing highest quality food for their…

Black nightshade (or blackberry nightshade) Solanum nigrum is a highly adaptable plant, and a common weed across Australia, from the south to the tropical north. The species can look quite different from region to region. It produces small…

The honey dripped off my sourdough toast and I licked it off my wrist. The honey is from bees pollinating the fruit trees in the orchard, and the flour is milled from grain from an organic farm, eighteen…

Words and photos by Steve and Kerryn Martin from The Lost Seed In most of Australia cucumber is a warm season crop; sow after frost. It likes well-drained soil, but don’t let it dry out. Can be sown…

Taj Scicluna is working to create a fertile and abundant world, where the earth’s resources are distributed fairly, with care and responsibility.

Her passions include beekeeping, primitive living skills, herbal…

The blackboards at every corner of this neighbourhood are a giveaway – there is something at work here, bigger than the sum of its parts. In this pocket of a suburb on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, a…