Very little can be done about government policy destroying the world - it seems we're in for a close one. And if a close one fails, then I'm looking at survival for me and my community. Which means building that community.
What I can do apart from appealing to my LNP member of Parliament is keep growing my garden. This week I'm planning one metre plots over the winter. I'll probably be planting them in the next week too. I'm using one magic Square grow your own food on one square metre by Lolo who Bane who be in South Australia, so it's written by an Australian for Australian gardens. And I have all the seeds necessary for the coming season. I just need to work out where I'm growing everything.
eta: two weeks later
I just received a 4 m cubed pile of woodchips on the front lawn. The guy said it was 'leafmulch' but it's actually 'chipmulch' with very little leaves. Someone's already come by and taken a bite of it, I can see the furrows where they've scraped it up.
So, the next problem is what to do with 4 cubic m of woodchips, and I am reading up like crazy. There's only so many compost piles you can make with woodchips, which aren't apparently a particularly good bacterial compost anyway - they work better fungally, because fungi do a better job of breaking down high-lignin/high-tannin materials.
There's a whole thread on this at Permies.com, and additionally a movie of nearly 2 hours Back To Eden, which should be interesting because I think that it was made and produced by Christians.
Also very much worth looking into: the work of a guy by the name of Jean Pain who not only made woodchip heaps, but also heated water in them and all kinds of other things! And now I'm trying to work out where I could build this large a compost heap, with which to take showers in! (Actually, more effective for us in the moment would probably be heating the house in winter by running an air pipe through the heap to gain heat, then sending the output into a high vent in the house which would then heat the room, sinking to the floor as it cooled and pulling more warm air into the place. It's certainly a thought!
One place where I should definitely heap up those leaves and woodchips is the passionfruit bed. At least a couple of wheelbarrows - maybe a few more. So long as the chooks don't get out, we should be okay. A pity I can't run the water from the laundry out to it. I mean, we probably could, but I don't have the piping just yet...
I've planted out the Plum-Stone bed at ground level, and the Apple-Crepe bed using a metal frame half-filled with half-mulched woodchips from last time, and half-filled with free soil collected from the artwork Absorption by Asad Raza.
This week, I'll be planting out the front vegie bed
Things To Do During The upcoming Permabee
Food Forest along front fence
Citrus, Macadamias, Avocados, and others.
Banana circle
May need to make one of the composts in the middle of this.
Laundry greywater?
Need to talk with the sister about this; whether she's willing to have the option of using more natural products for washing things, and then passing the water out to the garden.
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