Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Permablitz

Rachel just sent me this article from The Age about Permablitzing: permaculture meets Backyard Blitz. What a great idea! Volunteers use permaculture principles to transform a backyard to make the household more sustainable, reducing the need for heavily transported food, and building community in the process. I nominate Rachel and Alex to start a movement in Sydney.

8 comments:

Rachel said...

thanks for the plug and nomination. I would love to do this but i fear my finger is in too many pies already including motherhood, activism, work, a masters and (moving house... to glebe). and alex is in too many bands and some of these bands are even sending him OS all expenses paid...

but anyone else out there who wants to jump on board i'm happy to co-convene this with you....

byron smith said...

Sure - I was semi-tongue-in-cheek. Hadn't heard you guys are moving (nor of Al's OS gigs!) - we really do need to catch up.

Andrew + Jessica said...

in a similar way, the Jacob's Well community in Vancouver, cut through fences to redeem discarded blocks of land in a densly populated and socio-economic poorer Vancouver neighbourhood. While technically this was trespassing, they gained support from the owners of the discarded land, and have been offered the use of other discarded blocks to plant gardens. Now the gardens bring people together and help feed the community. See:

http://www.jacobswell.ca/?page_id=12

Rachel said...

I have heard really good things about Jacob's Well- would love to visit it one day. we have a cd OF A guy who lives there.

Gordon Cheng said...

Hi- this is actually Gordo's wife, Fiona, checking out some of the blogs he reads only to find permaculture mentioned. I'm a member of Permaculture North (as in northern suburbs of Sydney) and we do a similar thing with our members gardens and with school gardens. We meet once a month to hear a talk and then have teams that we join that relate to special interests within permaculture. Everyone's welcome!

byron smith said...

Fiona - I'd love to hear more about it. How many members does Permaculture North have?

Gordon Cheng said...

PN has about a hundred and something members now I think. Our president and mover and shaker teaches permaculture courses at Ryde TAFE and we get lots of people through that. I love that the people are really earthy, subversive and resourceful, and that they get as excited as I do about compost!Its also pretty neat that they are very anti-consumerist and think its a bit of a pity that I've come across so few Christians who are like that. The web site is www.permaculturenorth.org.au

byron smith said...

Fiona - thanks for the link - that sounds great! Peronsally, I think consumerism is probably the most prevalent (and therefore largely invisible) form of idolatry in our society. Why do you think Christians have often been so slow at noticing this?