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23.01.2022 Brenna Quinlan is without question a bona fide Soil Sister. She is vibrant, talented and doesn’t mince her words (in the most fabulous way). She is amongst it, knee-deep in it, leading her life through community action wholeheartedly and is an illustrator, educator, permaculturalist and an activist. Her unique and thought-provoking art is equal parts cute and hard-hitting. And that is where the power lies in it. It has featured with such organisations as Australian Red Cross,... Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Program, Plan International, Milkwood Permaculture, the Bob Brown Foundation, the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance just to name a few. Wearing her educator hat, she has taught alongside some of the biggest names in permaculture including Rosemary Morrow, Formidable Vegetable, Dan Palmer, Hannah Moloney and co-founder of Permaculture David Holmgren. She also lives at the famous Mellidora in Daylesford, home of David Holmgren and Su Dennet, and until recently the crew from Milkwood. Keep powering on Sister, we adore what you do...you fabulous shiny star.
23.01.2022 Check us out in new Junkies Magazine Australia
20.01.2022 This week we honour a very well known Soil Sister. A women who hopefully doesn't need a lot of introduction to many of you...... Stephanie Alexander. Food and education goes hand in hand with her name since setting up the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation in 2004. Her team are dedicated to delivering schools based ciriculum to kids on healthy eating through onsite gardens at around 2,000 schools and unis Aust wide. As well as her owning and cooking at her variou...s highly acclaimed restaurants, she is also the author of many loved cooking books, The Cook's Companion being a staple in many home kitchens around the country as well as inspiring many chefs. We concur with her words Sharing food and wine with family and friends is very important to me...In the end, I still believe there is no greater joy than sharing food, conversation and laughter around a table. She really has impacted many lives in terms of her never ending love of food.
19.01.2022 The Bish, topping up the potato bags with our special blend compost Revitalise.
17.01.2022 This week we honour a local Ballarat Soil Sister.... Colleen Filippa is the Founder of Fifteen Trees (est 2009), a social enterprise company that encourages other companies (and individuals) to support community tree planting projects. Colleen is a champion of environmental issues and has enlisted the help of businesses to take on ownership of greening the planet. ... A genius idea. We know she works tirelessly in this domain, and we salute her for her conviction to the cause. Mother Earth also thanks you Colleen!
12.01.2022 We are going old school this Friday to highlight a real trailblazer in the hort industry, Edna Walling We can’t even imagine what Edna would have been up against in the days where she was a woman in a very non-traditional role of garden designer in the 1920s onwards. But with true tenacity she went on to sculpt a career for herself becoming very in demand, and is recognised as one of Australia’s most influential landscape designers. She was also a photographer, conservationis...t, writer and feminist. Studying at Burnley where so many others in the industry made their beginnings, after emigrating from England via NZ, a young Edna set up her own business after a short tenure doing gardening jobs. That would have been a humungous and profound move for a woman back then. On top of that she bought her own home by herself, back when that would have been quite outrageous. She went on to design gardens in most states in Australia, many still semi intact today and very treasured. Along with her love of low stone walls, paths and wide pergolas, Edna also later drew inspo from the Australian bush and embraced boulders, rocky outcrops and indigenous plants. She also created 'garden rooms', especially useful in small suburban gardens, to give a far larger appearance than the space was. But what we loved the most was reading about stories of her building homes with her own bare hands out of rocks she dug out of sometimes unforgiving land. She wrote several books in the 1940s and by the 50s was a real advocate for roadside vegetation, and controversially for the period, began emphasising a greater respect for Australian climates and landscape, rather than Anglo-centric designs. By the late 60s she moved from Melbourne to Buderim, QLD where reluctant retirement from ill health saw her passionately writing prolifically, including newspaper correspondence on environmental issues dear to her heart. Enda passed in 1973. Edna, you were a powerhouse, and you were fierce! And you did things your way. We love that about you. Thank you for forcing open doors to future fellow Soil Sisters.
10.01.2022 Today we honour a Soil Sister (local to us) : La Vergne Lehmann who is the Executive Officer of the Grampians Central West Waste & Resource Recovery Group (GCWWRRG) based in Ballarat & Horsham and covers a wide area of Victoria. GCWWRRG works with 12 local government authorities in western Victoria on collaborative procurement, statutory planning, strategic planning, optimising service delivery, community engagement and education and industry engagement. At present the focu...s of the organisation’s activities are recycling, circular economy, waste to energy, e-waste, single use plastics and litter, just to name a few. Phew - that's a lot. She is passionate about genuine community engagement and ensuring that people get a better understanding of how our waste system works. We are lucky to have her working so tirelessly for our Planet, our health and wellbeing, for our betterment and that of future generations. Thank you for all you do for Mother Earth, La Vergne.
06.01.2022 Sweet peas at Munash Organics demo garden
05.01.2022 This week we pay respect to one part of a trio of Dynamo Permies/Educators Kirsten Bradley of Milkwood. Kirsten along with partner Nick and son Ashar do so much to get the message out their about leading a wholesome, self-sufficient lifestyle with considered actions. They have also just released their online Permaculture course (check out https://courses.milkwood.net/permacultureliving and sign up by 19 Oct), so the timing is A1.... In their own words : "Milkwood is dedicated to teaching and sharing permaculture skills, for living like it matters. Online, in-person, in print whatever form it takes to get you inspired and making a better world, we want to help you learn. We are a small family; Kirsten Bradley, Nick Ritar and Ashar Fox. We live at Melliodora in southern Australia a beautiful permaculture smallholding designed by David Holmgren, co-originator of permaculture. {N.B. The family have just relocated to Cygnet in Tasmania}. We are also a larger crew of educators, facilitators and doers, and together we teach everything from permaculture design to market gardening, natural building and mushroom cultivation, to help create resilient and abundant households and communities, wherever we can. We do this by providing free online resources & offering world-class training skills that give you the confidence to create permanently sustainable systems. Students leave our courses ready and able to design & implement a better future for their families, farms and communities. Our courses are run in NSW & Victoria." Keep flying the flag Kirsten, we love what you do.
05.01.2022 Clare visited us lately to show us how to do krauting. She explains the salt ratio to cabbage here...
04.01.2022 Passionate multi-award winning educator, writer, presenter, and film maker Morag Gamble is the founder of Permaculture Education Institute and has garnered a well-deserved impressive reputation when it comes to teaching food production and other permaculture principles. She lives, breathes and works a lifestyle immersed in permaculture life, having designed and built her off-grid eco family home in Maley QLD, with her husband and three children. Morag professes that I love t...his way of living and I love bringing my children up in this environment. They are Nature Kids and they are learning vital skills for resilience, compassion and future problem solving through our ecological unschooling approach. Offering a bunch of accessible classes online, she offers a wealth of knowledge and has taught in over 20 countries. She is also an urban permaculture pioneer and cofounder of the Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network. We are dizzy just thinking about what she’s achieved. And we are very pleased to award her an honorary lifelong spot at our Soil Sisters table.
04.01.2022 To be honest, when we first investigated what Granny Skills do we kinda thought we’d had it sussed. Bunch of fab people honouring what knowledge our Grandparents can pass down to us online. Woah, we didn’t see all of this coming Established by Rebecca Sullivan, who has her Masters in Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development from Royal Agricultural College in Gloucestershire UK, she has also been involved in many a wonderful projects and organisations overseas such as th...e Women’s Institute, Slow Food and the UN. Rebecca moved back to Australia after various overseas living jaunts, and wanted to bring all of the social, environmental and sustainable food issues she had worked on (and is most passionate about), as well as her love for cooking and admiration for her elders into one melting pot, thus, Granny Skills was born. Whilst still in trial phase The Granny Skills in Schools program is placing women into schools to teach cooking and crafts, not only enriching our youths lives, but also working on positive ageing in our elderly community. But then we read this and went WOW that’s next level!! Currently the Granny Skills Movement is working on ways to launch the Granny & Grandpa Skills Clubs. We want to work with nursing homes to open the doors to the public once a week for the community to come and learn skills in the shed and the garden and well as things like knitting a cooking with the residents. This initiative is all a part of the Granny Skills Program which recently placed Nana’s Into Schools to teach basic home economics such as cooking and crocheting in both Victoria and South Australia. The trial was a huge success and is now being worked on as a tool kit for aged care facilities and schools to combat mental health and positive ageing. Advocates for removing isolation for older people, they are teaming up grannies with younger people who, for whatever reason, are also feeling isolated. With the growing number of people who live alone at all adult ages, we think that’s a really cool thing! Not only is it preserving skills of yesterday for today, but also easing loneliness and social isolation. CLEVER. Keep up the really great and really important work Rebecca! You are inspiring with your own work (workshops, cook, teacher, TV presenter, curator, author) let alone what you are achieving via Granny Skills. Soil Sisters everywhere praise you!
01.01.2022 Maree Lowes grew up in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales, and has preformed live as dirtgirl in dirtgirlworld in concerts and events for ten years. Maree portrays dirtgirl as young Aussie whose love of being outside, growing healthy food and leading a simple, yet rewarding lifestyle which really resonates with kids and families both here in Australia and internationally. It’s timely to shine a light on her as the multi award winning program is about to switch gears as t...he show is now seeking a new dirtgirl along with her sidekick scrapboy in a national callout for contenders to apply for the position. Citing it was time to move on with new hosts for the program after having dedicated such a big chunk of her life to the show. Maree has an extensive background in arts, drama and music, commencing her studies at the Clarence Valley Conservatorium, for which she won both Junior and Senior scholarships for dramatic art. Further acting studies at the 16th Street Actors Studio and the Actors Centre in New York were interspersed with completing her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology & Indigenous Studies at Newcastle University and filming the first series of dirtgirlworld for mememe productions in 2009. She has performed theatre roles with the Clarence Valley Conservatorium, the Australian Theatre for Young People, in Miramar Production’s film Waiting for the Turning of the Earth, and is in demand as a versatile voiceover artist. She never fails to engage young audiences with her characterisation of the animated character they know and love so well. And has taken on such a vital role of educating youngsters and their adult carers about the importance of taking care of our planet.
