A special lockdown production

by the Off-Grid Living Festival


TABLE OF CONTENTS
P4 – 5 Principles of passive solar
P7 – Art of making delicious olives
P9 – Fridge-less living
P11 – Keeping eggs fresh for 8 months
P13 – Composting Toilets
P16 – Consumption problem-the solution
P21 – Take back your power
P22 – Eldorado ‘Tiny House’ Ecovillage
P24 – DIY urban off-grid solar
P28 – History of living off-grid in Oz
P31 – My Mum the green thumb
P34 – Seed Balls
P36 – Food is fundamental
P37 – Veggie Garden Tart Recipe
P39- Important step in eco-parenting
P41 – Off-grid transport
P43 – Weaving the way
P46 – Staying off the medical grid
P48 – Flourish ratatouille recipe
A huge thank-you to all of our contributing writers. This magazine is made up
of contributions from Off-Grid Living Festival exhibitors and team members.
P50 – Beekeeping
P53 – Solar Buddy
P56 – Preparing for winter
P59 – Plastic Oceans
P62 – Sharpening edged hand tools
P66 – Barefoot and Pregnant
P69 – Story of SunLIT solar
P72 – Understanding PassiveHouse
P74 – My permaculture journey
P76 – Aquaponics or Vermiponics?
P78 – Sustainable Spirit
P81 – Their crisis, our opportunity
P84 – Why hire an off-grid architect?
P88 – Success-oriented mindset
P90 – A solution to tiny toilet needs
P91 – Changing and adapting
P93 – Frugal solutions
P96 – Essential Wisdom
P97 – What’s your intention
A GIFT TO OUR AUDIENCE
This magazine is a gift to our audience and a way to thank-you
for staying with us while the festival has been postponed due to
covid-19. We hope that this taste of the festival will provide you with
inspiration and entertainment while you are spending much time
at home. We hope it will also increase your excitement about com-
ing along to the festival next year and spark you to take small steps
towards a self-sufficient, sustainable lifestyle now.
Within the magazine we have also provide an option for you to give
back, to help support the future of the off-grid living festival. Having
to cancel this years festival so close to our event date saw some
financial hurdles, but we are keeping-on and staying very positive.
With a little help we can ensure the festival will continue on into the
distant future.
ACCEPTING DONATIONS FROM READERS
We know that times are tough for many people at the moment, so
if you can’t spare even a dollar that’s absolutely ok, please enjoy
reading this magazine for free. But if you do have the capacity to
share funds, please click the ‘DONATE’ link to send a donation of
your choice. All offerings are greatly appreciated from $1 - $10 or
more if you love what we do and want to see more.
CLICK HERE TO DONANTE
ARTICLE AUTHORS
All article were contributed by a collection of our amazing festival
exhibitors. This magazine is also a way for you to meet them, hear
some of their stories and see some of the inspirations and prod-
ucts on offer at the festival. Featured here are just 38 of the 200
exhibitors at the festival, and you can see that it is a diverse and
all inclusive environment, covering topics of off-grid, sustainabili-
ty, homesteading, traditional skills, technology, farming, health and
earth-care alike.
WANT MORE MAGAZINES? - SEND US FEEDBACK
We hope that you enjoy the publication and if you’d like to see more
magazines – please send us feedback to let us know.
Email: oglfestival@gmail.com
 OVER 200 EXHIBITORS - FULL WEEKEND OF WORKSHOPS - TALKS
DEMONSTRATIONS - CONVERSATIONS - FUN - FOOD - ENTERTAINMENT
It’s time to TAKE BACK YOUR POWER at Victoria’s biggest and best sustainability event. This is an event that connects past
and present, with a glimpse into the future. Lastest technologies meet traditional crafts in a diverse atmosphere set to inspire.

Learn More Book Tickets Who’s Coming

Visit our website Just $20 - 1 day or $30 weekend pass Over 200 amazing exhibitors

By Steve Oke - Eco:Logical Building Design
Designing an efficient off-grid home is an exciting challenge and it’s different
everytime based on the house site and my clients living needs. There is a lot of
cool technology, alternative materials, and unique design elements available to
inspire when designing a house – but there is something that you MUST get right
first - and that is passive solar design.
Your house orientation should be your number one priority to begin the design
phase, it will allow your house to adjust in temperature throughout the year, stay-
ing cool in summer by shading out the high moving sun and warm in winter by
absorbing the sun as it moves low through north-facing windows. By combining
this method with the right building materials many passive solar homes have no
need for electrical cooling and limited heating (sometimes just an ambient fire
on the coldest nights of the year). This is perfect for an off-grid home as your
electrical needs will be significantly lower, so the spend on solar and batteries will
also be much lower.
By using passive solar design we:
• Are designing with nature, before relying on technology or materials
• Create the most comfortable, light and healthy living environment
• Reduce reliance on external energy inputs to heat & cool.
• Adapt for the occupants needs and likes – morning sunny kitchen? Or verandah
that is always shady?
• Can work within any budget restraints
• Take advantage of the most practical capabilities of your house block
Note: A passive solar house does NOT need to look like a ‘modern’ or ‘eco’ house
– it can be any style you like.
So here I share with you the five key design strategies that
if I don’t implement I can’t sleep at night?....
5 Principles of Passive Solar Design
1. House Orientation
We need sunshine entering the house in Winter as our primary heating
source. To achieve this the longest face of the house needs to face ‘North’
– or at least between 30 degrees North-East and 10 degrees West. The sec-
ond thing we do is put the largest amount of glass/windows on the North
side of the house (facing the sun). This allows plenty of winter sun entering
the house but also allows us to use eaves or pergolas on the North to pro-
vide summer shade over the windows at just the right angle and length.
In summer, the sun is low in the sky to the East and West so we need few
windows on these sides, or else VERY wide shading. If you have a great view
to the west, I like to put a covered outdoor living area there. Failing that,
external blinds or glass treatments are a ‘tech’ fix – but I like to use good
design first. If you do nothing else, orient your house to face North. It costs
nothing too!
2. Insulate
Easy right? Yes it is. Following on from the first principle, which gets a source of
winter heating into your house, and keeps the sun out during summer, the sec-
ond two principles - retain ‘warmth’ in winter, and ‘coolth’ in summer. The devil is
in the detail however, and this is what you need to know:
• In a cold winter climate like NE VIctoria, you should ideally have R7.0+ in the
roof, R4.0+ in the walls, R4.0+ under the floor if your house is on stumps, or slab
edge insulation and sometimes under-slab insulation if your house is on a con-
crete slab.
• There must be no GAPS in the insulation – between the roof & wall, around
windows & doors, and between insulation batts are common places for gaps.
It’s like leaving the fridge door open a little – your fridge won’t work so well and
neither will your house!
• Windows are a major source of heat loss/gain – and half the heat goes through
the frame. Remember that the best double-glazed glass unit in a cheap alu-
minium frame is partly a wasted effort. Windows are one component that does
cost more, however it is worth investing if you can. On the houses I work on, the
owners often reduce house size and premium materials and fittings, and invest
the savings into good windows and sustainable technologies.
Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020
 Once we have these key principles in place, we can start talking
3. Thermal Mass ‘tech’ – airtight membranes and heat recovery ventilation units;
solar; heat pumps; induction cooking; water tanks; there is
This stores heat energy in your house – the mass heats up slowly during the day, and re- plenty to discuss!
leases its warmth overnight. Shaded thermal mass stays cool much longer than the air
around it, which is just perfect in summer. That hot day when the power goes out, if you
lay close to a shaded, insulated, concrete slab floor or earth wall, with hot air kept out of
the house, you can easily feel comfortable. This ‘free running’ situation should not be over-
looked.

Concrete slabs, earth, stone or brick walls, and water, all provide thermal mass.

4. Cross Flow ventilation

This is another strategy for surviving summer heat. The house is closed during the heat of
the day, and opened up at night to let hot air out and cool air in. Not rocket science, and
costs nothing to do. As a design element, we need to position openings to catch the breeze,
and close enough to other openings that the breeze makes it all the way through.

5. Gap Sealing
I love this one, because any house can be improved on almost any budget. For a new build,
we use tight sealing doors and windows and ensure there are no gaps in the wall and roof
construction. But for an existing house, you can gap seal all your windows, doors, floor
boards, weather boards, etc – a huge improvement in ‘leakage’ with very low cost.

Insulation - slab edge insulation and oversized wall frame for thick batts

Orientation - wide shade to the East
In reality, these passive design principles are for me, deeply in-
grained; meaning I can focus on adapting the design to the site
and to the owner’s needs, ambitions, and budget. Underlying
every sustainable, site adapted, and inspiring house is rock-sol-
id passive solar design. Hopefully this list gets you thinking
‘right’ as you start
Steve Oke
your own design process!
Eco:Logical Building Design
ecologicalbuildingdesign.com.au
No gaps and high performance windows Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020
www.countrysolar.com.au
Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020
 By Gamila MacRury
The art of making delicious olives
Have you ever tried an olive straight off the tree only to spit it out in horror? What you taste is the com-
pounds that give extra virgin olive oil its natural bitterness and a number of its health benefits; however
they also make unprocessed olives inedible.

There are as many variations for making your olives delicious

Whenever you preserve food, as there are villages across the Mediterranean. Which simply
regardless of what it is, you have 2 options: means there is no right way or wrong way, only
the method that creates the style you love.
1. Kill all pathogens and ensure that nothing can enter the food
until it’s ready to be consumed, e.g. pasteurisation and canning.
2. Create an environment which is inhospitable to bugs,
for example jams are high sugar, pickles are low ph, soy
sauce is high salt.

I prefer to use option 2. It gives your food much better flavour

and if the food has undergone any fermentation during the
process of preserving, it’s good for your gut as well.

To make your olive delicious and nutrition olives,

there are 2 stages -
1. De-bittering
2. Preserving
De-bittering can be achieved by washing your olives daily, typical-
ly every day for 2 weeks. This will remove the bitterness, but it does
nothing for preserving your olives and I find you wash a lot of the
flavour and oleuropein compounds out of the olives.

With fermentation preserving, you merge the de-bittering and pre-

serving into one step. The principle is simple, place your olives in
salty water, keep them covered, and wait!

Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020

 Bringing the beautiful
You can cut them or crack them, this allows the brine to
penetrate the skin more quickly, which speeds up the

to your kitchen
de-bittering process, however it is just as effective to do
nothing more than top the brine up regularly and wait pa-
tiently.

Like sourdough bread, if you keep it warm, the fermenta-

tion will happen faster, but the flavour won’t be as devel-
oped. If you cool it down and go slow, the more flavour
you’ll achieve. With olives it’s the same.

Most important instructions:

•,Clean container, ideally with a narrow opening.
• Rinse olives, if necessary, and place in container.
• Fill with cold water, and then pour the water out into a
measuring jug, this allows you to determine how much
salt you need to add.
• Create a brine mixture of between 8-10% salt. E.g. 80g to
1L of water; We are a family farm, who
pride ourselves on creating
• Pour brine over olives until they are completely covered, beautiful products, using only
and use something non-porous to keep your olives under the finest ingredients:
the brine. intense high county sunshine,
• Place somewhere dark and temperature appropriate. crisp clean mountain air, and
• Check and top up brine weekly for first 6 weeks, then ancient granite soils.

check monthly. www.gamila.com.au

• And finally, depending on what temperature you’ve stored
them at, taste them after 6 months and hopefully you’ll
be proud and in love with your latest creations.

Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020


Fridge-less Living
Fridge-less living and fun aren’t words many people would put together,
but for me, that is exactly what it is.
I always get one of two reactions when people find out I don’t have a
fridge. It’s either ‘Wow, that’s great; you’re so clever!’ or ‘Are you crazy?!’
I don’t think you need to be clever or crazy. Just enjoy embracing a new
challenge that brings endless learning and a positive outcome for the
Earth and yourself. Simply put, it’s a lifestyle choice. Having said that, I
didn’t wake up one morning and decide to get rid of my fridge.
I had started playing about with more vegan based recipes to save mon-
ey. I am not a vegan; I enjoy eating meat, but meat is expensive. At the
time I had a small campervan that we’d take on overnight trips, exploring
and camping, so I needed to get a bit more creative with ways to store
and use food without the use of a fridge. Little did I know at the time that
I was training myself to live without a fridge full time.
As my experimentation with different meals continued, I realised that all
I needed was a heat source and a bit of imagination. There is so much
focus on being creative with the appearance of food these days. Being
on a tight budget, my creativity was in minimal waste, whilst creating a
nutritious meal. Foods that had started to spoil could be mixed through
sauces such as curry and pasta. There is no ‘ugly’ or ‘odd’ fruit and vegeta-
bles in our house. A bruise or rubbery end can be removed and into the pot
it goes.
Making the most of what we had, I started to realise my 500L fridge was
never full, so to save on running costs, I downsized to a bar fridge. I contin-
ued with the bar fridge for a year or so. I was continually learning about how
things used to be done in the ‘old days’ and loving it. It wasn’t long until I re-
alised that the only things going in the bar fridge were cheese, leftovers, deli
meats occasionally, and milk.
I was already trying to create a simple and joyous life, reduce my carbon
footprint, and save money, so when I started looking around my home to
see what else I could do to reduce and simplify, I realised one of the things
always using electricity was the bar fridge. The cost of living is always on the
rise, I was eager to further reduce our carbon footprint, but I didn’t want to
compromise my family’s nourishment.
The more I thought about it, the more I realised it could be done. I started
to spend even more time with our food – in the kitchen and in the garden –
learning how to best utilise it. The last thing I wanted was to be throwing out
wasted food. I was already pretty good at reducing food wastage, but if I
didn’t have a fridge at all, what was I to do with leftovers when we had them?
I cautiously started leaving covered leftovers out on the bench overnight and
reheated for breakfast. I don’t recommend doing this with high risk foods;
Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020
food poisoning at home is very real and can kill. It’s very important to learn about
safe food handling. Know what temperature food should be reheated to as well.
If in doubt throw it out, or, if you have a dog like mine, she will happily take care
of leftovers. Dogs have to eat too, and they’re quite in tune to whether a dish will
make the sick.

And then there was the fresh fruit and vegetable box. Making the most of the week-
ly fresh veggie box from a local farm was also a high priority, especially the items
that spoiled fast without a fridge. I used these vegetables – chard, kale and salad
leaves – first. Any not used are extended by sitting in a jar of water, like one does
with flowers. Fresh herbs are stored hung up as they are great fresh or dried. Once
dried I store them in a jar creating my own mixed herb combinations. I found har-
dier vegetables often stored in the fridge such as zucchini and capsicum do quite
well in the basket for the week, sometimes two weeks, especially in winter. I live in a
double brick cottage in central Victoria so the house is could during winter. Garlic,
onions and potatoes are stored in a cool dark cupboard.

We also grow some of our own vegetables to keep the food bill down and ensure
we have the freshest food possible. This is where eating to the seasons comes in
handy. While many households find a recipe and then go and buy the ingredients,
I look at the ingredients I have on hand and make up a recipe.

I’m often asked about meat and dairy items. A vegan-based diet does make frid-
geless living much easier as meat and dairy are the higher risk foods if not refriger-
ated. I cook and eat meat & dairy, but they are a treat, as I only buy them when in
town, which isn’t very often. I think of the shops as a communal fridge holding these
items for me until I need them. I always have a good stock of base pantry items
that won’t spoil – lentils, split peas, chickpeas, rice, flour, to name a few – many
dried foods store easily and just need re-hydrating. I keep some beef jerky too and
am currently researching hard cheeses that can be stored on the bench top.

It took four years (including the time I didn’t realise I was training for it) to prepare
and be ready for the big fridge switch off and I am still continuing to learn and em-
brace new ways of living without a fridge. I have a passion for history and merging
the ways of old with the new. Modern appliances are helpful and convenient, but
everything has its place. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Taking
the time to embrace a slower and more connected way of living has brought a
calmness and joy into our home.

Samantha Luckhurst Bohemian Gatherer

www.bohemiangatherer.com
Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020
Trick to keeping eggs
fresh for up to 8 months.
With recent events leading to a huge uptake in home chickens for eggs, we thought
it would be a great time to let you all know how you can keep your eggs fresh for
longer. Many people make the mistake of getting too many chickens in the begin-
ning and can’t keep up with eating their eggs - no matter how many cakes they
bake.
Eggs are one thing that many off-gridders have in abundance, and know well that
there is an ebb and flow to production - having too many in Spring, and then not
enough in Winter. Dealing with storing eggs can vary throughout the seasons. This
is an ‘all seasons’ method that will ensure no eggs ever go to waste.
It’s an old homesteading trick called “Water Glassing Eggs” and is a way to pre-
serve fresh eggs in a lime and water solution for up to 8 months. Useful when:
> You have no fridge or limited fridge space (tiny house living etc.)
> Want to keep eggs from the end of the good laying season (end of Spring) into
winter. As the temperature gets colder your chooks will slow down production
and some breeds will take a break from laying all together, right when you want
to bake your frosty winter butt off and use lots of eggs.
> Or you accidentally get too many chooks and can’t keep up with eating the eggs.
WHAT YOU’LL NEED
• HYDRATE LIME - SLAKED LIME - PICKLING LIME (all the same thing)
• Clean FOOD SAFE BUCKET, CROCK POT or GLASS CONTAINER with a lid.
• WATER - Filtered, spring or rainwater
• GLOVES - optional but recommended
• EGGS - home-grown only, see below
RATIO of LIME to WATER
29 grams of hydrated lime : 1 litre of water
Scale up or down to suit how many eggs you’re wanting to preserve.
METHOD
• Add the lime and water to your bucket and stir until well-mixed
• Gently place your eggs in the solution
• Store in a safe and shaded location
Inspiration for article and photos above from Creative_Vibe_Tribe.
See more beautiful homesteading insights here:
www.instagram.com/creative_vibe_tribe
TIPS AND TRICKS
1. Do not pre-wash eggs or use store bought eggs - they’ll
have been washed thoroughly and the lime will soak through the shells.
Fresh home-grown eggs have a natural protective coating (egg bloom)
that seals the shells pores and will keep the lime out for approximately 8
months before it starts to dwindle. Just leave out any eggs that became
particularly dirty in the lay-box and use them fresh, rather than preserving.
2. Be sure to wear gloves. Lime has a high PH and may cause skin irritation.
3. Hydrated lime is available from all hardware stores and is used in the
building industry for rendering etc. If you buy it this way you might like to
share among friends with chickens, or plan a space to store it for years of
use. You can also source small bags of ‘preserving’ lime from various spe-
cialty stores at a higher price. Or if you have any friends who are builders
or renders you could ask if they’ve got some lying around.
4. As the months go by you’ll notice your eggs do become more runny -
this is not a problem. This is natural and happens as eggs age, but they’ll
still be in good eating condition. Also the longer you store them, the more
they’ll take on the taste of the brine. 8 months is the recommended limit.
Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020
 The Adventures of
Lisa & Brooklyn

While we don’thave our own properties yet, we’ve been finding

inspiration and education by volunteering on amazing farms &
homesteads around Australia. You don’t have to own your own farm
to experience the beauty of life off-grid. We hope our photos will
inspire you to go see what’s out there and get your hands dirty.

Photo journal by Lisa Savchuk & Brooklyn Mabbott

Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020
 Why We Love Composting Toilets No Splashback! Self-Sufficiency
(And You Should, Too!) Not much needs to be said When you use a composting
If you’re thinking about installing a composting toilet, you’re about this one. We’ll just toilet efficiently, you’ll be cre-
probably wondering to yourself “is this the right choice?” and “is leave this here. ating the world best gardening
it worth it?” and also probably “will our visitors think product – compost! You can
we’re weirdos”? add the waste from their com-
posting toilets to an already
We understand these concerns. It’s perfectly natural to have established compost pile to
questions and concerns about something that’s not ‘main- continue the composting pro-
stream’, so we thought we would put together a great big list of cess or it can go straight onto
reasons why we love composting toilets – and you should too! fruit trees or other (non-vege)
plants and trees.

Save bucket loads No toilet brushes

of water! or blocked pipes

Let’s face it, we live on the driest
(inhabited) continent on earth,
so saving water is something we
should all be passionate about.
Your average Aussie family will
flush roughly one swimming
pool’s worth of perfectly good
drinking water down the toilet
every year. Imagine if one in ten
families SAVED that water – how
much of the precious commodity
would we save every year? – an
outrageous amount!
One of the easiest ways to
cut back on water use is to
install a composting toilet
in your home!
Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020
Probably one of the grossest
things in your home is your toi-
let brush. Luckily you won’t need
to have one next to your com-
post toilet, because of the de-
sign most waste will go straight
down into the chamber, so
there’s nowhere for anything to
get stuck.
And if you’ve ever had a toilet
that get’s blocked you know
what a nightmare it can be to
get it sorted. With a compost-
ing toilet, all that hassle goes
away. A simple concept and
design means less moving
parts for things to go wrong.
Getting away
from the system
This starts getting into the
whole off-grid lifestyle thing.
The great thing about com- Low Impact
posting toilets is that you start Living
taking a little bit of ownership
over yours and your families
By thinking about your impact
waste. This takes you off the
on the environment and taking
system for plumbed in wa-
control of your own waste dis-
ter-based toilets and puts the
posal and saving water to boot,
responsibility back on you.
this can give you an interesting
perspective on life, how to live
and how we should be treating
Mother Earth.
www.ecoflo.com.au
 TOILET SOLUTIONS FOR OFF GRID LIVING
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• Split composting toilet system with porcelain
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• Compost mixers accelerate the composting process
& increases the useable space.
• High quality - units that are built to last
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• Compost mixers with the crank handle accelerate the
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 Consumption is part of the problem, and how this is empowering
We humans need to radically reduce our carbon emissions.
We need to do better than that. We need to become carbon
positive, to interact with soils, plants and animals in a re-
generative way that promotes life, and draws carbon back
from the atmosphere into soils, biomass, built structures,
and oceans.
Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020
Since 1988, 100 companies have ‘produced’ 71% of the world’s emissions.
These are companies that mine fossil fuels. So to save our climate and
our place on the planet, we need to stop these companies, right?
Well yes, we do need to massively reduce the mining and use of fossil fu-
els, but right now fossil fuel energy is a big part of how we feed and more
or less meet the needs of 7.8 billion people on the planet. If we somehow
did manage to stop the mining of fossil fuels, soonish, then our industrial
agriculture, our long distance food distribution systems, and our whole
energy dependent globalised industrial economy would also stop, soon-
ish. There is a good chance that we might walk or ride our bikes to the
shop, but there wouldn’t be enough there. Damn.
It doesn’t feel very good to consider the collapse of our in-
dustrial economy without having a food system to replace it.
How could this rapid reduction in fossil fuel use even happen?
I’ll go out on a limb here and say there’s a fair chance that calling for
governments to enforce the changes we need, won’t work. It certainly
hasn’t worked so far, and even when a government tries to do some-
thing, often that kind of top down enforcement doesn’t work out in the
way it was intended.
Covid-19 restrictions rapidly reduced consumption and carbon emissions
by taking cars off the road and people out of shops. There has been a
marked increase in food gardening and home productivity. Unfortunate-
ly addictive consumption behaviours have also lead to a boom in inter-
net shopping, for what? Do we not all have enough clothes and general
stuff? It would be great if all the internet shopping was for self-reliance
items, but I suspect not.
Putting all our hopes in the idea that profit maximising, ethics free cor-
porations might start acting ethically probably won’t work, either. And
unless we have become radically self-reliant, our own individual or family
spending/consumption is almost certainly paying for lots of fossil fuel
energy use, and so is supporting these corporations to keep doing what
they are doing.
Consumption is part of the problem, and how this is empowering
Unless we become radically self-reliant…. what is that little phrase?
Aren’t we too small to make a difference? Does it really matter what we
do in our little patch, don’t we need to change the whole world? Aren’t
we dependent consumers who have to rely on corporations and govern-
ments to meet our needs?

Well, yes, we have been socialised to be dependent consumers. The

economy actually depends on us to be dependent consumers. But we
don’t have to be that. Do we really want to tie our family’s well-being to
an industrial economy that is destroying our climate and biosphere?
We can clamour for others to make changes, but the most efficient
changes we can make are over things that we have at least some con-
trol over. What we work at, how we spend our money, what we feed our-
selves and our families, and how we manage whatever spaces that are
under our care, these are things that we can change effectively.

These kind of small scale local changes are generally the best kind of
changes. One-size-fits-all top down solutions can never be varied enough
to suit all the different people, all the different circumstances, all the de-
tailed local landscapes and ecologies and cultures that we need to work
with. We need top down thinking, and bottom up change. Think globally,
act locally. When we work at our own self-reliance we can enjoy the dig-
nity of being self-directed, with most decisions made by the people who
are actually doing the tasks.

How important is the way we produce food, to ourselves, to our climate

and biosphere? Fresh, nutrient dense food is of course super important
to our own and our family’s health. When we grow this kind of food for
ourselves we also get exercise, nature interaction, meditation, increased
resilience and food security, and we reduce our expenses.
We vote for the food system we want three times a day.
The Consuming Australia report found that food contributes to 28% of What kind of system and practices have you been voting
greenhouses gas emissions for the average Australian household. A lot for? Growing food for ourselves, where we live, is good
of these emissions relate to industrial scale farming, long distance food for us and good for the planet.
transport, packaging, storage, and the food waste that comes with all
this.
Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020
 Consumption is part of the problem, and how this is empowering
The same Consuming Australia report found that goods and services
account for 29% of average household emissions. Stuff. Retail thera-
py. Taking advantage of international exchange rates and poorer living
conditions elsewhere to access seemingly cheap goods that all too soon
end up in landfill.

Permaculture has been described as ‘revolution disguised as gardening’.

Of course permaculture is a wholistic set of thinking tools, and is about
much more than just gardening. Making the shift from dependent con-
sumers to active producers is empowering, liberating, and is a collective
strategy that can create the world we want.

Murrnong
Permaculture
Farm

WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT PERMACULTURE?

David convenes the Murrnong Permaculture Design Course,
which happens over seven weekends each year, from
November to May.

SEE FULL DETAILS AT: www.murrnong.com

Words by David Arnold - Murrnong, May 2020
Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020 Illustrations by Brenna Quinlan
 $1
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Wild Earth Vessels
KATRINA
LUCY
ANDERSON

www.katrinalucyanderson.com
www.instagram.com/KatrinaLucyAnderson
 By Katrina Anderson

TAKE BACK YOUR POWER Wild Earth Vessels & Therapeutic Art Services

I love this festival. The Off Grid living Festival. I especially love their
phrase ‘take back your power’ as it encompasses so much of what off
grid means to me. It’s a bit punk, DIY, work it out, break the rules,
have fun, be challenged, question the norm. If you don’t like things
like mains powers, go against it and create your own system. Power
is just one element of the off-grid philosophy, but it’s an important
one and it’s taken me a while to totally unplug from mains power and
sometimes it rears it’s fearful head, but I’m on my way.

At the moment I live in a self-built home, grow much of my own food

and do what I love - making ceramic art bowls and offer therapeutic
art services. We have full solar power which is feeding into mains
power, so much so that we don’t have a power bill. It took a while
to get here but we’re finally accruing credit. I know it’s not totally
off grid, but for now, I’m actually happy to be feeding into the grid.
Subtly influencing the dirty coal power with sunny sunshine power.
We’re looking into joining Indigo Power next which offers a sustain-
able alternative to grid use with community energy options.
Initially I was totally hooked into ‘the system’. When I left school I
was going to get a degree, find a great job, go travelling, then buy a
house, meet a great fella, start a family and live happily ever after -
sounds familiar? Of course, this story does work out for some people,
with varying degrees of happiness. But as it turned out, I’m just not
one of those people, and it took me a long time to realise that my path
would be the path less taken.
The truth fully dawned on me when I saw an interview with an Amer-
ican artist/musician. I’d been struggling with questions like ‘why
can’t I just DO it (mainstream life)’, am I avoiding something? They
can all do it, why can’t I? I was really internalising it all and could
only see that there must be something wrong with me. It didn’t even
occur to me to question beyond that.
The interviewer asked the artist how he got into music and art and
expressing the way he did. The artist just said ‘I was a security guard
but I wasn’t very good at it’. I know
it’s a simple sentence but it just hit
me - I’m not good at doing main-
stream life, and simple things
like plugging into mains power don’t make me feel good.
Once the idea hit me, it freed up my mind and I started exploring other
ways of living and being. Once the huge block was gone it didn’t take
long before I found my place, my passion, my tribe. I felt joy creeping,
sneaking, quietly revealing herself to me. I started to feel a long-lost
spark come alive inside and a bit of fear, as it was so unknown to me.
But the joy took over and I followed it to here and now. It has been a
process of taking back my power.
It just started with questioning ‘is this right for me, does this
feel right?’. If your answer is no, start creating and exploring
new ways of living and find your path.
www.katrinalucyanderson.com
www.instagram.com/KatrinaLucyAnderson
The El Dorado Eco Village is nestled in the foot-
hills of the Alpine Ranges, in North East Victoria,
and is set to be Australia’s first Tiny House Village.
The village will become home to around 100
people; as families, couples and singles take on
the opportunity to create their very own slice of
paradise within the parkland. Enjoying the many
benefits of ecovillage life including food, water and
energy security, community connection, financial
freedom, sustainability support & education and
easy access to nature.
Whether you’re looking to downsize your home,
enjoy a tree-change, live a low-cost (mort-
gage-free) life, find a more sustainable way of
living, or connect with community, the El Dorado
Eco Village has something for you, no matter what
your age or life stage.
TINY HOUSES
A range of specialised tiny homes will provide the
perfect habitat to support a community orientat-
ed, dynamic and self-sufficient lifestyle.
Residents will have the opportunity to design their
own, beautifully appointed eco-home and select
their preferred site within the village.
Now taking expressions of interest for 2021 release
Homes will feature renewable energy systems,
environmentally friendly building materials,
effiecient temperature control, eco-appliances,
and be fully self-contained. Villagers can select
from a range of Shepherds Hut designs or cus-
tomise a high quality Tiny Home (by Tiny Homes
Australia). Single, couple and family sizes avail-
able.
An onsite solar farm will support the power needs
of every home, with the village to be a net exporter
of energy back to a shared community grid.
COMMUNITY LIVING
Our aspiration is to pioneer a village environment
that fosters a forward way of thinking, with the
objective of minimising our environmental impact
and staying true to the principles of sustainability.
At the core of this will be ‘community’ - as
villagers combine their collective qualities, skills,
knowledge, time, energy and ideas to create an
active and social environment to enjoy together.
Eco Village life offers a unique opportunity for
residents to choose their level of independence,
whilst feeling connected within a supportive and
engaging community.
LOCATION
El Dorado is a place where wild foods are picked
and preserved, happy locals enjoy the surrounding
national park, bush walks, watering holes and rail-
trails. North-East Victoria is surrounded by beauty,
whether it be the King Valley wineries, high country
snowfields, farmlands, Murray River or the historic
townships, there’s something to discover in all
directions.
Plus all the essential service of Wangaratta and
Albury/Wodonga are just a short drive away.
ECO VILLAGE FACILITIES
• Village green - Bbq, wood-fire pizza oven, kids
playground, picnic areas, gathering spaces and
open greens.
• Indoor communal hub
• Collective tool shed/workshop
• Vegetable gardens & poultry paddocks
• Local farm-share available at nearby acreage
• Laundry and washing facilities
• Access to additional shower and toilet facilities
• Fresh potable water for exclusive village use.
• Renewable energy systems
• Within walking distance to Eldorado central village
- general store, friendly pub/bistro, bakery, post
office, park and school bus stop.
• Home-school collective
• Diverse schedule of social and sustainable activities,
groups and workshops.
Learn more and register today:
www.eldoradoecovillage.com.au

As off-grid technology becomes more afford-
able, accessible and mainstream it’s easy to
just hand the job over to an electrician, flick
the switch and think nothing of it. But to be tru-
ly self-sufficient and sustainable it’s really im-
portant to approach your electrical use from
a personal point of view – think about how
much each appliance, light or device uses,
decided where you can make reductions, be
conscious of turning things off, and know how
to maintain your system in the event of a mis-
hap or even a crisis where you can’t access
help from an electrician.
The thought of learning about electricity and
setting it up with your own two hands can be
quite overwhelming at the very beginning.
I think as a culture we’ve been taught to be
afraid of electricity (and plumbing for that
matter, but we’ll get to that later), make a start
from the beginning and grasp the basics first.
Then try putting together a simple system
that powers just 2-4 lights and charges your
devices and grow your knowledge and skills
from there.
By Campbell James
DIY Urban Off Grid Solar
Why DIY Urban Off Grid?
If you want to be part of the clean energy revolution
and experience true independence from the grid and
do it yourself for less than 10% of a $10k solar array/bat-
tery storage system, creating your own solar powered
“pico-grid” would be a great start for your simple home
system and education. Suitable for keeping the lights
on and charging your devices with zero carbon foot-
print.
Whether you’re starting out off-grid or slowly converting
your grid-dependent home to become off-grid in por-
tions, this system would work for you.
SOLAVERDI SOLABANK 2
What does a DIY solar pico-grid look like?
The pico-grid will take a portion of your electrical system off-grid, leaving the heavy
consumers such as ovens and large refrigerators that need to be fed with a bigger/
expensive system or mains power behind. Components of a pico-grid are typically
a “12V” solar panel, 12V battery, 4 x 12V lights (such as downlights), a solar regula-
tor, battery management system and switching system. Solaverdi’s Solabank com-
bines these last 3 components so you only need to add a solar panel & battery and
connect your 12V lights. Alternatively, you can buy the individual components and
assemble them along with the rest of the system.
With all components at 12V, and adequate fusing, especially at the battery terminal,
it is a safe system for the DIY’er (though knowing positive from negative is import-
ant).
Your battery needs to be large enough to get you late into winter nights. We found a
minimum of 35Ah Lead Acid was typically required to support around 4 lights, which
is typically enough for living areas or a tiny home, without excess battery aging. Al-
ternatively, a 20Ah Lithium-Ferric-Phosphate (LiFePO4) addresses the aging and is
more economic in the longer term. The actual size you will need will depend on how
many lights you have, their wattage and how often they’re turned on.
Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020
With a larger battery you can ride out a few dark days where your
demand is greater than your generation capacity. Alternatively,
you can survive, those dark days with a smaller battery, if you are
prepared to cheat a little and draw some auxiliary power from a
12V plug pack, if the battery gets too low.
If you are just experimenting you may be able to find an old car or
mobility scooter battery you can upcycle, though the remaining
capacity is likely to be highly variable. Make sure it is close to 12V
before you start, as lead acid batteries do not recover well from
having been left flat and are more frustration than benefit.
You will typically want a 100 to 160W, “12V” solar panel, such as is
commonly used in the camping industry. The aim should be to
generate sufficient power in mid-winter when there is the least
available sun and greatest need for power. As such, panels should
ideally face north and angled at 45 to 60 degrees for the southern
states of Australia, and secured against gale force winds. If you
can’t achieve this practically the upside is that on cloudy days the
light is spread fairly evenly so any orientation with a good view
of the sky will capture some useful energy. You can expect about
5Ah on a cloudy winter’s day from a 120W panel – enough to run
two 5W lights for about 6 hours and charge a phone without de-
pleting the battery. Be cautious of partial shading of the panel
which can be just as bad as full shade!
OK, so you’ve caught the sun (the only source of power delivered
daily to the planet) and managed to bank it for later in your bat-
tery. Now there is the lights and other 12V loads such as chargers
you want to power devices from your investment.
12V LED down lights have become common in homes and can be
relatively easily swapped from their mains-12V transformer out-
put (safe) to your new pico-grid. Other 12V lights exist, particular-
ly in the caravan market that you can utilise, but always bear in
mind to avoid touching any mains voltage wiring unless you are
suitably qualified. Efficiency of LED lights various quite significantly
– look for ones in the 1 to 7 W range depending on your needs.
While 12V wiring is safe, for such applications it is worth consider-
ing using 2 core mains rated, twin-ax to ensure you have plenty of
isolation.
You won’t be able to use the existing light switches (which should
be switched off) as they remain at mains voltage on the feed side.
Wireless switching avoids the challenge of wiring from your 12V to
a new switch as well as reducing voltage drop from the extra wir-
ing length to a switch.
It is good to have a 12V car jack outlet which you can charge var-
ious items - such as the 12V laptop adapter powering the com-
puter used to write this article and the USB adapter supporting a
mobile hotspot. You may also be able to power a small TV or Wi-Fi
router, but be cautious that a little usage over a long time may
deprive you of your lights when you need them as well as wear-
ing out a Lead Acid battery faster with deeper cycles. This can be
addressed by scaling everything up slowly or alternatively run-
ning parallel and independent systems each with their own bud-
get – ideal for the teenager’s room. Though I actually think many
of the next generation would love the idea of clean, sustainable,
independent energy and might look at the poles and wires in their
street as “old school”.
Enjoy taking one
step off the grid and
doing your bit for a
sustainable future!
www.solaverdi.com Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020
 R & R Wagons
Bring all your whimsical dreams to life.
From a little Hobbit house at the bottom of the garden to a
full size towable Gypsy Wagon, R & R Wagons can build it for
you. We take great pride in all our work and work closely with
clients to deliver exactly what they desire. All of our trailers
are purpose built and are fully registered. Just hook it up and
drive to your dream location.

Our Wagons and Cabins are perfect as an Airbnb, great for

Wineries & Caravan Parks, or adding character and charm
to your backyard. We are happy for you to take on some of
the project yourself, from painting to internal fitouts or we
can do the lot and deliver a fully finished, built just for you.
We are located just out of Ballarat but happy to deliver
Australia wide.
Next Off-Grid Living Festival
10th -11th April 2021
 HISTORY OF LIVING OFF-GRID IN AUSTRALIA
Most of us are by now very familiar with the term
‘off-grid’ as it describes the decision for individuals,
families and communities to live outside the elec-
tricity infrastructure (or ‘grid’) servicing the area. Al-
though the expression only emerged in the past 2
decades, the concept is define-tely not new. Broadly
speaking, contemporary interpretations of ‘off-grid’
represent living in environments disengaged from
the services, institutions and lifestyles of mainstream
society. In 2015 I set off to uncover the environmen-
tal, social and political history of this move, and trace
the yearning behind it to bring out the stories of
generations who have wanted to remove themselves
from urban life and move to remote or semi-rural
areas for self-sufficiency reasons. When I first spoke
of my research, people would usually say ‘what do
you mean “off-grid?” Everyone was off-grid back in
the day.’ But then they would usually relay a story of
someone they know who did it in a different part of
the country, and at a different time period. I could
have written a whole book, and hopefully I will.
My research took me back a lot further than I had
imagined. I found out that as far back as the 1890s,
there was a move to go ‘back-to-the-land’ with
many of the same urges and sentiments we see and
understand today. Looking at going ‘off-grid’ as the
modern outpouring of a back-to-the-land move-
ment through different historical periods, there is a
recurring call for people to take up smallholdings,
grow food on a small-scale basis, and seek out in-
dependence from mainstream systems. Groups
have included political reformers, suffragists, anar-
chists, counter-culture hippies, and religious purists
to name a few. I was looking to chart the range of
ordinary urban people looking to be self-conscious
about their lives and to shape it with less attention
to economic livelihood and more attention to living
itself.
Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020
1890-2020
By Dr Rachel Goldlust
In this article I want to trace a brief history as an
overview of where my research took me. By no
means have I established ‘THE’ definitive history of
off-grid living, and the stories I uncovered were just
a sliver of what’s been happening across the country
over the generations. My research, though mostly
focussing on settler experiences, is definitely missing
the voices of the Indigenous Australians, who have
always known how to live intimately with nature and
knew far more about self-sufficient living than has
been generally attributed, and whose return to the
land has been defined by white Australian law and
policy. Notwithstanding the problem of definition, I
chose to look at people who had deliberately made
the choice to move from the cities to the country
for reasons of self-sufficiency, regardless of how ‘off-
grid’ they may have been according to our modern
understanding.
Cover of the Alternative Technology Australia book
by Alan Hutchinson, Mick Harris and the ATA
I discovered that the story begins in the late 19th
century when urban reformers across North Ameri-
ca, England, Europe and Australia started to identify
a decline in societal values and standards, sparked by
economic insecurity and rapid social change. With
growing anxiety around “dirty and corrupt” cities, a
transported image of the English “rural idyll” became
a ready source of inspiration for new Australian mi-
grants and settlers. As most people were starting to
look towards the big cities as the pinnacle of progress
and modernity, there were some who started to look
out for a vital alternative and find a different way to
connect with the soil, and the self.
The early 1890s saw the call for a program of Village
Settlements in almost every colony across the country.
As the long financial boom began to wane in the late
1880s (preceding the 1892 Depression) land specu-
lation had begun to retract, with pressure on colo-
nial governments to re-distribute proximate pastoral
lands into small acreage settlement. On the fringes
of almost every major city, came plans to break up
the control of pastoral lands into smaller blocks of
between 2 and 20 acres, and up to 65 acres in some
places, and we can still see the legacy of this policy in
many regions throughout Australia today. While many
of these settlers were just looking for relief from ur-
ban poverty, I found some were using the opportunity
to make broader political points about the future of
industrial society and promote a Thoreauvian way of
life based around simplicity and harmony with one’s
surrounds.
I discovered the anarchist-socialist David Andrade
from the early 1890s who established a progres-
sive “bookery” in Melbourne, the earliest vegetarian
restaurant and even published a book about how ur-
ban dwellers could be ‘liberated’ from bondage if they
took up his plan to move to a communal settlement
in northern Victoria. Around the same time, suffragist
Mary Sanger-Evans started to agitate for single, di-
vorced and widowed women to have the opportunity
to farm for their own livelihoods.
Sanger Evans passed the hat around the upper ech-
elons of Sydney society and managed to set up the Looking to rise above the unwholesome city and
Women’s Co-operative Silk Growing and Industri- the distractions of modern life, they shared his
al Association that took over a 44-acre farm near idea of an ‘authentic’ self and established Whit-
Wyee, on the New South Wales central coast. Soon lands as a holy site of pilgrimage. One report-
after, a similar venture began in Melbourne. This er lauded the male ‘monks’ in overalls, working
one was organised by the first female professional shirts and shorts who ‘chanted Matins, Lauds and
horticulturist and garden designer Ina Higgins, with Prime, milked cows, cut wood and lit fires.’
the support of her mate the famous suffrage leader
Vida Goldstein. Following a large public meeting in
March 1915 at the Melbourne Town Hall, the Wom-
en’s Rural Industries Co-operative obtained a lease
to twelve acres in Mordialloc on the fringe of Mel-
bourne. Growing wheat and vegetable crops, flow-
ers, horses and poultry, after 18 months it support-
ed three women living and working full time on the
farm and was heralded in the newspapers as women
‘who actually do things!’

With a number of rural communities across the

country in rapid decline, the First World War rein-
vigorated the back-to-the-land impulse. During the
1930s a ‘lure of the pastoral’ found popular resur- The cover of David A. Andrade, The Melbourne Ri- Photograph of children playing in front of homestead at the silk farm. Papers

gence through the nation-wide ‘Country Life Move-

ots and How Harry Holdfast and His Friends Eman- of Rev. Jonathan Evans and Mary Sanger Evans, nee Creed, 1869-1925, MLMSS
cipated the Workers: A Realistic Novel (Melbourne: 4637. Mitchell Library, New South Wales.
ment’. Within this push, aspiring political activist Bob Andrade & Company, 1892).

Santamaria helped launch the National Catholic Ru-

ral Movement in 1938. Santamaria advocated for a
form of ‘cottage Catholicism’ that would bring the
‘countryside back to Christ’. They believed that in
order to find the ‘true’ source of one’s religious be-
ing, one had to embrace ‘honest, wholesome toil.’
Out of this emerged the agricultural community of
Whitlands in the highlands of Victoria near the base
of Mount Buffalo. First established in 1941, by the
end of the war, its charismatic leader Ray Triado had
attracted dozens of young urban Catholics, both
men and women, away from their comfortable city
lives.
Around the same time, farmer Elyne Mitchell (the author of the Silver Brumby) published Soil
and Civilisation in 1946 to explain to Australians the importance of the connection between
human and ecosystem health. Her sentiment echoed a growing movement of farmers from
the mid-1940s across southern Australia that had joined together through the Living Soil
Association in Tasmania, Australian Organic Farming and Gardening Society of NSW and the
Victorian Compost Society. Drawing on the work of British organic pioneers such as Lord Al-
bert Howard, they argued that all organic wastes, such as plant matter and animal manure,
must be returned to the soil to decay and replenish soil humus.
Challenging the dominant vision of agricultural progress, particularly the use of artificial fer-
tilisers and chemical pesticides, the organic growers looked to the model of the small-family
farm for salvation. Michael J Roads was one of these early proponents, a small farmer who
had moved from England to Tasmania in 1963 with his family.
Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020
 After a few years farming cattle, Roads started to recognise problems of greed, the rapid commer-
cialisation of life, alongside a spiral of harmful farming practices, was affecting both individuals and
society as a whole. In 1970 he published A Guide to Organic Living in Australia in which he tells his
own story of spiritual transformation through farming where he began to revere the power of na-
ture, and the virtues of living in balance and harmony with one’s food, and the soils. A predecessor
to the philosophies of Bill Mollison and David Holmgren that became Permaculture, Roads set out
a guide to organic living that looked at the individuals responsibility to produce nutritious healthy
food as the basis for wider changes to be made between humans and the environment in which
they live. Feeding into ideas that later motivated the counter-cultural movement, growing food
organically for self-sufficiency became a critical means to rebel and achieve social change.

Following the convergence that occurred at the 1973 Nimbin Aquarius Festival, self-sufficiency be-
came central to the next generation’s political and social doctrine. From this point on, going back-
to-the-land saw personal self-sufficiency as a means of survival, but it also became a new platform
for broader political, social and environmental reform. Starting in the 1970s, but really getting
moving in the 80s, Alternative Technology became key to this vision and Australia was often on the
forefront of developing technologies in solar and wind. By the 1990s, people started embracing
the passive solar house, a range of alternative building practices and materials, and getting more
involved in alternative lifestyles, transport and food systems.

Today, living off-grid is a very diverse movement that is growing in popularity and diversity as
more people start to look away from the cities, and often large mortgages and debt, and look to
live more simply from what they can build, grow and make for themselves. The off-grid story is
far longer, and more diverse, than many would give it credit for. That people have looked to go
‘off-grid’ for generations means there is something essential in this move, and the lessons we learn
from history will help us move forward in a more accountable way as people continue to want to
live ethically, harmoniously and sustainably in these uncertain times.

Advertisement in the Self-Sufficiency Society newsletter, 1984

SEE RACHEL PRESENTING ON STAGE AT THE

NEXT OFF-GRID LIVING FESTIVAL OR
GET IN TOUCH WITH HER VIA EMAIL.

Dr Rachel Goldlust
Mud bricks drying in the sun, Eltham, Vic. 1947. Picture of Jill Redwood’s second cottage on her property in Goongerrah, Victoria
Photo courtesy of Tony Knox. (photo supplied by author) Emaill: Goldlust.R@students.ltu.edu.au
Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020
 My Mum the Green Thumb
Its interesting to look back on how this all
started...
Some 20+ years ago we made the move
to Myrtleford, escaping the flat agricultural
areas of the Goulburn valley to the rolling
hills and alpine mountains. The move was
prompted by my father being successful
with a promotion within the Ambulance
service after working in the role as a care-
taker and him himself falling in love with
the uniqueness of the alpine region.
I’m not sure if we will ever be considered
“locals” as they say your only a local if your
born and breed here but my parents sur-
ly have assimilated to the lifestyle – both
immigrated as children, dad from England,
and mum as an infant from Germany.
My parents after moving to Myrtleford
dreamt of finding a patch of earth to make
their own, falling in love with a 25acre block,
5mins drive from Myrtleford and backing
onto the Mt buffalo national park. It was
the perfect block as it looked down onto
the valley of the township and faced North,
which was a key for their dream home to
fulfil the passive solar eco-design they has
conceived together.
Speaking of conceived, they also had 3
children, twin daughter’s and a son -
By Jayne Graham
each of us children became a supporting
worker in the build process of their castle
on the hill.
Rammed Earth, using the earth which had
been cleared from the house site – now
displaying the terracotta colours of the
soil, double glazed windows to improve
Next came the watering, growth and
energy efficiency; an amazing curved roof,
repotting cycle that saw my father, Ga-
and solar panels including solar hot water reth, design raised platforms for the
allowing the house to remain grid inde- Maple collection to be placed on, once
pendent. again reinforcing the idea that every
marriage requires a partnership and
Whilst my father worked as a paramedic the ability to help each other with mad
servicing the community and complet- schemes.
ing much of the heavy lifting tasks on the
property, my mother set about making the Mum always found peace within her
house become a home. Creating a vege- garden, and when we were all teenag-
table garden, hobby orchard and gardens ers I recall her often saying -“I’m going
around the house. Often my father would to my garden, my plants don’t answer
assist her and enabled her to be within her back”. Let just say Mum displays her
grey hairs as a crown of honour, she
element.
raised 3 head strong, stubborn children
to adulthood.
And so the little grassroots enterprise “Trees
& Greens” was born. As you have probably
realised by now, my mum is blessed with
the condition known as a “green thumb”.
The conditions extent first became really
apparent when our family collective was
enlisted with planting some 300+ Japa-
nese Maples (Sango Kaku variety), the seed
of which were harvested from the two ma-
ples that feature in our front garden.
Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020
 “To plant a
To further her passion and probably to changes over time this will make a positive
maintain her sanity, Dad also built her 2 cumulative impact on the world around us.
shade houses and even allowed her into
the ever so sacred shed where she has Over the years I have watched mum’s pas-
space to tend to “potting up” and other
plant related activities. I think someone
must have told dad “happy wife, happy
sion grow, much like the garden she has
planted. However I would describe her as
down to earth and humble, never claiming
garden is to
life” and from my observations this rings
true.
to be an expert but always happy to offer
support, guidance and impart passion on
anyone who stops by her market stall.
believe in
Mum researched companion planting,
vegetable garden bed rotation, fruit tree
positioning, native plants, bee and butter-
Reflecting on this I don’t think people are
born with “Green thumbs”, I think it is de-
tomorrow”.
fly attracting plants and so much more, veloped by the inner dreams of those who
not only for her own garden but so she want to make the world a better place.
can guide others. She encourages peo- To quote Audrey Hepburn.....
ple who visit her stall to partake in her pot
recycling initiative, and happily accepts
used plant pots as part of her
eco-responsible practices,
understanding that if each
of us make small

Pictured here: Graham family

Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020
off-grid, rammed earth house

Seed Balls
By Carmel Excell
Seed balls have been used for centuries as a means
of sowing seeds. The Japanese farmer and philos-
opher Masanobu Fukuoka used them to reclaim
desertified land (land degraded by poor farming
practices) in rural Japan. In alternative agriculture
Fukuoka is very well known. Fukuoka wrote about
his use of seed balls in his books “One Straw Rev-
olution” and “Sowing Seeds in the Desert”. He used
the seed ball method to sow all his crops including
rice and wheat, coating each seed in compost and
clay prior to distributing them in his fields and pad-
dies. His yields were dramatically increased using
this method.
The benefits of using seed balls to plant are many
and varied, and include the fact that you lay them
on top of the soil rather than planting them in, so
no digging is required. The clay protects the balls
until there is enough rain (or water from a hose or
irrigation system) to penetrate the balls and stim-
ulate the seed to germinate. The seed is protected
from rodents and foraging animals, and for added
protection they can be coated in cayenne pepper or
chilli powder before they are dried. The seed will sit
dormant until the weather conditions are correct for
germination. They are not likely to be blown away in
high winds so suit exposed sites. Did I mention that
you can just throw them in the garden or sit them
on top of the soil in a pot? The balls can be used to
plant on sloping sites as they can be tossed onto
the site - you can even use a slingshot to scatter
them around! Imagine the fun a group of kids (or
big kids for that matter) could have in the name of
native regeneration. I can see groups of Scouts out
in National Parks scattering seed balls as directed
by Landcare.
Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020
In Kenya there is an ongoing program of Jungle re-
generation with indigenous trees and grasses, us-
ing seed balls. The balls are made by hand, giving
employment, then they are spread throughout spe-
cific areas by a number of different methods. The
program works with schools to encourage and ed-
ucate young people in their environment. I believe
sling shots are used in this part of the program.
The sling shots are made specially with the top of
a plastic soft drink bottle (with the lid still in place)
where a number of balls can be placed and shot
off at the same time. The balls are also scattered
using drones, helicopters and planes to reach less
accessible and steep terrain. The program began
in September 2016 and since that time over 7 mil-
lion seed balls have been spread. Charcoal is used
in Kenya as the binding agent rather than clay. The
balls are also available for purchase to other East
African countries for revegetation programs which
provides further funds for the program.
Seed balls can be made from compost and Papier
Mache or compost and clay. I use the compost and
clay method myself.
Children love making seed balls (who doesn’t like
a nice messy and very tactile activity). After dry-
ing the balls, the spreading of them is another fun
activity with children. They can then monitor the
changes in the balls over a period of time.
My production of seed balls is on a much larger
scale but still involves each ball being hand made.
I start my process with clay that comes from my
property so requires a bit of digging out. Certified
organic premium compost is my choice for the
compost component. The clay then goes into a
concrete mixer (never used for any other purpose)
along with compost and water and it mixes for sev-
eral minutes until I have deemed it has reached the
ideal consistency. The mixture is then poured into
a very large metal bowl and kneaded by hand to
remove any small lumps. Once lumps are removed
the seeds are embedded and the balls rolled. In
summer drying happens in the sun and takes just
a couple of hours. In winter the process occurs in a
Dehydrator at a very low temperature for 3 hours.
Overall seed balls are easy and fun to make and
can be very cost effective, especially if you grow
and gather your own seeds. The germination rate
from seed balls in my experience is excellent. I have
always liked planting from seed but have not al-
ways had great success with germination until I
started using seed balls.
Email Seed Balls Australia - cexcell1@icloud.com
www.countrysolar.com.au

www.kingvalleybbq.com.au
 Food is Fundamental
By Jade Miles, Blackbarn Farm

As news of the global pandemic reached Australia a sudden panic led to a

huge buying up and stashing of loo paper, which was confusing to watch
from our perspective. It’s actually food sovereignty that we should all be
racing to the finish line for – pandemic or otherwise. To be fair, in the weeks
that followed we also saw a global rush on seeds, seedlings, chickens, fruit
trees and any other means of self-sufficiency, so perhaps we should have
faith in the human race being more connected to their primal needs than
we would have imagined just a few months ago.

At Black Barn Farm we’re really excited by the sudden interest in all things
‘home based’ with the focus on food, simple living, creation of daily rituals Although situations of calamity are disempowering in many ways,
and an acceptance that less really could be more. Growing and celebrat- there are indeed silver linings, and one of these is our deep primal
ing seasonal food was once something our forebears all took part in be- desire to be reconnected with the most fundamental of things -
cause they understood how precarious it was. However, our connection food. Every human eats and as an eater we have the ability to make
to food has decreased dramatically since the start of the industrial food a difference simply by asking a few more questions, re-connecting
system. Where our food comes from, it’s nutritional value, how it was grown to our food and ultimately making an effort to see it as a resource to
and by who, are not questions we are encouraged to ask by the industrial, be celebrated. If this pandemic is shouting anything from the roof-
multi-national, packaged food corporations who dominate shelf space in tops it’s that we need to find a way to embrace simplicity, and the
supermarkets and luckily for them, most of us don’t question this discon- best way to do this is to get your hands dirty and GROW food - after
nection. Instead we prefer to trust the labels, ignore the boundless pack- all, it’s fundamental! When you grow your own food you rebuild eat-
aging and choose convenience and price over provenance and seasonal- ing habits and this mirrors the seasonal cycles. This is how humans
ity. Sadly the result is that food is no longer something we celebrate rather evolved to eat, and it provides an exceptional way for our bodies to
it’s become a low cost commodity that we happily waste and don’t value. secure the diverse nutrients we need at that particular time of year.
Regardless of what you grow and how much, there are a few meals
Long supply chains make our farmers faceless price takers, rather than that can adapt to suit whatever you’ve got ready for picking.
celebrated champions. And while it might enable cheap food now, they
are slowly breaking and walking away from the land, leaving multi-nation-
als to fill the gap with more monoculture, more focus on maximising yield
and more mechanisation. The impact of this on rural Australia is devasta-
tion, as smaller, family-scale farmers are no longer viable. Without a rea-
son to be on the land, they move away from their communities, taking with
them school enrolments, volunteer capacity, sports teams, community
groups and rural vibrancy in general. The impact on our urban populations
is inevitably loss of food sovereignty and food literacy- an entrenched dis-
connection from food, where it comes from, what season it grows in, how
to grow it, how to cook with it and how to preserve it.
Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020
 Vegg
ie Ga
rden
Ingredients Tart
• 8 eggs - quick whisked.

• 3 cups of diced, salted and browned off seasonal veggies

- pick from the garden; zucchini, tomatoes, fresh herbs,
silverbeet, kale, corn, spring onion, peas, beans.

Use whatever you’ve got but if you use pumpkin, potato or

carrot, you will need to give them a longer brown off in the
pan before throwing them in the baking dish.

• A few dollops of homemade pesto

• Handful of cheese - a great way to use up the last of the

feta or leftover cheese from a cheese platters if you’ve
My favourite of these is a seasonal grab-n-go veggie tart. had guests.
It changes depending on what we have in the patch but we
always have eggs and with little more than a quick dice of Directions Mix it all together and pop in a baking dish.
a few freshly picked ingredients it can be whipped up for Cook for 25 minutes in a 180 degree oven.
lunch or dinner with just 10 minutes prep and 25 minutes in
the oven. Best served with chutney (pear is our fav at the
moment!) it’s just perfect.

At Black Barn Farm we offer a whole series of

workshops and events to help build your homesteading
(or futuresteading as we prefer to call it) knowledge.

We also propagate and sell a large range of heritage

apple trees for sale on-line and will be hosting grafting
workshops and demos at the next Off-Grid
Living Festival

www.blackbarnfarm.com.au
Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020
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 An important step in eco-parenting By Rahni Larin
Self isolation has shown me the greatest benefit of reusable cloth nappies and wipes is
actually self sufficiency. I am grateful that with all the panic buying going on I won’t run
out of nappies or wipes and I don’t need to risk going to the shops.

I have used modern cloth nappies and cloth wipes on my daughter for 2 years. She only
wears one nappy at night now so my 3 week old son is using her old nappies. One of the
many great things about reusable nappies is they are great value. Once I have used them
on my two children, they’ll still be good to be used on at least one more child.

Modern cloth nappies will save you around $4500 per child but that’s not why I’m so pas-
sionate about them. Making the switch to reusable nappies has a positive impact on the
environment and that is why I use them. According to www.sustainability.vic.gov.au 800
million disposable nappies end up in landfills each year in Australia. That’s enough waste to
fill the MCG three times! Disposable nappies are predominately made from plastic and they
take more than 400 years to break down.

After financial savings and the benefit to the environment a third reason to make the switch
is to avoid toxic chemicals. Disposable nappies contain chemicals such as
phthalates and dioxin which can negatively impact a child’s hormone balance.
There are many misconceptions out there about cloth nappies. I hear people say they are too hard to use, too much work, messy
and too expensive. None of these are true. Modern cloth nappies have come a long way and are actually very easy to use.
They don’t use pins like they did in the olden days. They have rows of snap buttons which make them adjustable in size so
they fit from 3 to 15 kilos. To wash you simply put them on a long cotton wash and hang to dry. They can go in the
dryer if needed in winter.
Another issue I hear raised is that the initial cost for a set of nappies is too much. This doesn’t
have to be the case and is the main reason I started my small business, Charlotte’s World
Modern Cloth Nappies (named after my daughter as I hope for a bright future for her).
I provide parents an affordable, quality option because my main aim is to help people
reduce waste. We only have one planet. You could even start with just one nappy. If you only
used one nappy each day you would stop 365 disposable nappies going into landfill each year.

For more information please visit www.charlottesworldmcn.com and for instructional videos
please visit my Facebook page. I am always more than happy to answer any questions you
may have about modern cloth nappies so feel free to send me a message. Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May
 is best – particularly when it comes to the environment. And that it’s often just
planning (and maybe a little naive optimism) that facilitates change. So, when
we found an electric cargo bicycle for sale in Melbourne, we spent weeks
imagining how it might enable us to realise our pedal-powered life.

The box on the front – 80cm long, with a 100kg-plus carrying capacity –
would fit more than half our weekly vegetable harvest for our micro-market
and vegie box scheme. With a second electric bike and trailer, we could carry
just as much as our car would.

The battery, with a range of up to about 50km (depending on which level of

assist we use), would well and truly get us up and down the hills, to and from the
garden, even with a big load of vegies. And with a second battery, that range
would be doubled, so our bulk food run to Albury was on the cards – if we could
charge the battery a little when we got there! By combining electric bikes and

Off-Grid Transport
the public transport options available to us (buses and trains), we could get
anywhere, provided we planned well and had the time. So we bought the bike
and borrowed a second e-bike and trailer, and it has changed everything for us.
By Lauren Salathiel - Happy Underground, Yackandandah
Our travel plans are dictated by the weather - if it’s raining outside, we recon-
This time last year, my husband and I were setting out from Yackandandah sider our trip or wait until a break in the cloud to head out. Our trips are better
towards Queensland on two bicycles. planned and we never leave the house - or return to it - without a load of some
kind, whether it means taking buckets of compost and coffee grinds from a
The 2000-odd kilometre trip took us over mountains, through storms, down local cafe to the market garden and
highways and across gravel roads, and by the end of it, we promised ourselves returning with vegies, or lugging ve-
we’d not get back in our car once we got home. We felt a car was no longer gie crates back to the garden after
compatible with the frugal, simple and ecologically responsible lives we’d tried a market and returning home with
to create for ourselves. It was to be the pedal-powered, non-fossil-fuelled life for a weather-beaten plank of timber -
us. fallen beside the road from some-
one’s truck - for a woodworking
A month later, despite our best efforts, we were back in the car – driving the project!
100km roundtrip to work twice a week. Buying bulk dry goods from Albury. Vis-
iting family members around Victoria. We started a market garden, Happy Un- Our journeys are also more leisure-
derground, on borrowed land five kilometres out of town, and just found it too ly, mainly because there’s so much
easy to bundle our vegie harvests, compost buckets, tools and even the wheel- to take in while riding. Birds over-
barrow into the back of our car. head, cows lining up to be milked at
a dairy in the distance,
It wasn’t that our resolve was shaken, as much as it was that the convenience of
an echidna scratching
a car in a region that has a distinct lack of well-timed public transport was just
in the dirt just beyond
too great to ignore.

But we were aware that, like most processes involving significant change, the
first step is to confront the reality that what is convenient isn’t necessarily what HAPPY UNDERGROUND
the roadside. We can feel the change in the seasons - a t-shirt has quickly be-
come several layers of jumpers and a beanie under the helmet!

We’re finding new ways to fulfil needs locally that we might have otherwise
travelled out of town for. There’s no real need to travel further than our bikes
can take us. And I will admit that on the odd occassion we’ve puffed out our
chests in pride at the thought that we are almost fully self-sufficient when it
comes to transport. By charging our bikes via our home solar system while the
sun is shining, we know that everything we need to get ourselves from A to B
is completely within our control and beyond the grip of fossil-fuel companies!

When I say “almost”, I mean that the car is still sitting outside our house. When I
last climbed into it, there were thick cobwebs in the driver’s side footwell. It can
only mean one thing…it’s days are numbered.

You can find Happy Underground at

www.facebook.com/happyunderground
or on Instagram - @happyunderground
We’re very excited to have indigenous weaver, Adrienne
Kneebone, on the workshops line-up for next years Off-Grid Living
Festival. Today we’re pleased to present a little glimpse into her
journey in becoming a weaver……

Weaving the Way By Adrienne Kneebone

In years gone by I was fortunate enough to be able to travel

to the Northern Territory. In the early 90’s I explored freely
the amazing vast hot beauty of the North, (how bittersweet
is hindsight!), falling in love with an incredible culture - a con-
nection to country I had all my childhood been yearning for.
Having a Cherokee First Nation lineage my DNA welcomed a
tribal lifestyle as the Top End so warmly enticed.
Adapting to basket work was intuitive and a
beautiful way to integrate this new lifestyle
and new country.
I was welcomed into the NT with open arms by a commu-
nal group living gently along the Finniss River in Rum Jungle
NT. Building tree houses, baskets weaving with pandanus and
fishing for black brim was what was happening and it was
like walking into a Utopian Paradise. The new sounds that re-
placed the distraction of city life were gentle flowing water,
feet brushing though grass and the slapping and squatting of
March flies! Permanent residents in the Top End enjoy a con-
sistent balmy temperature, stunning sunsets and an addiction
to the slightest breeze or smell of rain. The colours of the Top
End steer any creative being into dreaming big and making
art, bright art that speaks from the heart!
Pandanus Tree
FOR THE LOVE OF FIBRE
My first love in weaving was the Pandanus Tree - the colours,
the feel, the texture … even the flavour attracted me to this
beautiful tree. It lead me to wanting to learn the basketry pro-
cess – the stripping and splitting of leaves, the digging up of
coloured roots, and boil pots of dye. After a long and exciting
journey learning as much as I could, I spent many years exper-
imenting with technique and developing my own styles while I
raised a young family out bush.
THE PANDANAS PROJECT
The next part of my journey was – collaboration. I first met
Sarah Bindingal Ashley and Vera & Rita Cameron in 2008 when
I started working with Djilpin Arts Aboriginal Art Co-orporation.
Our journey of getting to know each other took 6 months of
gallery hoping, bush trips to get pandanus and many hours of
laughing! I found over the years that weaving not only enhanc-
es our connection to nature, but also to each other and there’s
a certain magic that is created in weaving circles.

Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020

 My new collaboration led to The Pandanus Project, which
was our way to create new weavings, new ways of telling sto-
Adrienne Kneebone ries and new products for the Djilpin Art Gallery. Through this
project the woven pandanus Mukuy was created. “Mukuy” or
“Buhi-mandi” translated into Kriol as “devil-devil”. They are
sprit creatures, but unlike the playful Mimi spirits, these are
considered dangerous.

The Mukuys made guest appearances across the globe. We

exhibited in Melbourne, Darwin , Katherine and Jogjarkarta.
See below - they are presented here in a simulation at Mona.
It was beautiful to see Sarah’s creation so well received!

WHAT NOW?
Now that I’m nestled into the Mountains of the Upper Yar-
ra Valley, I’ve learnt to adapt to twining with Dianella leaf.
I’ve been teaching basket workshop most weekends at Ceres
Environment Park , RMIT and at my Home Studio’s and of
course at the upcoming Off-Grid Living Festival. Right now
these workshops are on hold during lockdown and I’m going
to adapt!

I have partnered with Weteachme and Zoom to teach weav-

ing classes world wide. Jump on board they are a great way
to connect and recoup.

ONLINE WEAVING CLASSES: www.adriennekneebone.weteachme.com

Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020

Inspiring and empowering people to make informed decisions regarding food choices www.flourishln.com.au
 When Chris was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, he went down the typical
Staying Off the Medical-Grid western medicine route, but soon learned that other than horrible drugs with
horrible side effects, there wasn’t much else it could offer, and this was not how
he wanted to tackle his health crisis.
One of the areas we focus on at the Off-Grid Living Festival
is Health & Wellbeing. Your body is your most important re- Determined to help, Kathy went back to university and studied nutritional med-
source and taking personal health into your own hands can be icine. In the past she’d used nutrition to place her fibromyalgia into remission,
a really powerful tool if you want to be self-sufficient, maintain and believed in the power of nutrition as a healing modality.
enough daily energy for all of the physical requirements in off-
grid life and also enjoy your elderly years with vitality. After many years of helping Chris with his MS, he was then inspired and went
back to university to also become a Medicinal Nutritionist. They are both re-
Understanding your body and how it can best serve you, can search nerds and spend their time finding nutritional solutions for patients who
be life-changing and there’s so many amazing people willing have more often than not, been to see a multitude of different health profes-
to share their experience and knowledge. Today we’re pleased sionals, only to be left wanting answers.
to introduce two wonderful individuals who have been work-
ing towards going ‘off the medical grid’ since 2003 - Kathy and As their experience grew, they realised that pharmaceutical supplements were
Chris Ashton - founders of Flourish Live Naturally. not the best option for curing health problems or maintaining long-term good
health. They found instead that the answers lay in 100% whole food, plant-
based health blends and began work on creating the own range that encom-
passed all that they’d learned. When they looked at disease processes, it be-
came obvious that treatment needed to be driven in three key areas - what
n Flourish calls the ‘triad of health’....
1. Decrease Inflammatio
The driver of almost all dis-ease processes. Mother natures best anti-inflammatories are turmeric, ginger,
rosemary and cloves, so they used those as the basis of their anti-inflammatory blend, and this is always
step 1. No use working on a healthy gut, if inflammation is present. The latest research says that if the gut is
inflamed the gut microbes go to sleep and don’t function as they should, so reducing inflammation through-
out the body, should be your no. 1 priority.

But what is inflammation and how do you know if you are chronically inflamed? The cardinal signs of in-
flammation are redness, pain, swelling, reduced range of movement and heat. Now you may not think this
applies to you, however, ask yourself, do I have any aches and pains, stiffness, puffiness, feeling hot, gut
issues? All these are signs of inflammation.

Caused by everyday activities and aging, inflammation is necessary for healing, however chronic inflamma-
tion, often undetected on blood screenings, is not and prevents healing occurring. In fact it is a driver of all
disease processes.

The Flourish turmeric blend is fabulous at decreasing everyday common inflammation along with inflam-
mation from arthritis, gut issues or headaches.
Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020

2. Gut Healing
Once we take away in-
flammation you can build a healthy gut population. Interestingly, if
you have a painful gut, or your bowel motions are sticky, mucosae or
fluffy, these are signs of inflammation. This causes the gut microbes
to go to sleep, so your gut doesn’t function as well as it should.
The key to a healthy gut is reduced inflammation and diversity. You
need a wide diverse population of gut microbes, not just a few. Your
gut should have between 1200-1500 different species for optimal gut
health.
Unfortunately most probiotics out there are at best 10-20 different
strains. If your diet consists of lots of different vegetables, especially
the ones that are not your favourites then your diversity expands
leading to better gut health. For optimal diversity, eating 28 different
fruits and vegetables daily is the gold standard.
3. Liver Health
Your livers does 500 dif-
ferent functions. Everything you eat, breath in or put on your skin goes to
the liver for cleansing and/or organisation. Clinically we are seeing more
and more fatty livers, which is having an impact of people’s sleep, energy,
ability to lose weight, foggy brains, thyroid health and mood. Good health
and healthy longevity relies on a healthy liver.
If you don’t wake in the morning feeling refreshed and ready to start the
day, if you wake between 1 – 3 o’clock in the morning, if you feel sluggish,
suffer from headaches, and feel heavy, then Kathy and Chris would say
your liver is in need of some help.
Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020
Recently they had a patient who had a blood test and her
doctor told her she had severe fatty liver, one of her test re-
sults was 100 points above where it should have been, fast
forward 3 months and 3 tubs of the Flourish Detox blend
and her liver enzymes were back in range. Her headaches
stopped and she was feeling 10 years younger.
Such is the power of these health blends.
The Flourish approach is simple but extremely effective –
giving the body what it needs from nature to heal.
If you would like some answers to your particular health
concern, or want to know which of the products is best for
you, don’t hesitate to contact them directly.
Kathy and Chris love to do events like ‘off the grid’ so they
can talk to many people and help them with their particular
health journeys. So just because they are not able to meet
you face to face, doesn’t mean they can’t help you.
Go forth and flourish
Kathy & Chris Ashton (BHSc Nut Med)
1300 121 248
www.flourishln.com.au
 Flourish Ingredients to cook
1 x brown onion
Ratatouille 3 x cloves of garlic
1 x medium eggplant
Research shows that the more diversity in our 1 x medium zucchini
diets, the healthier your gut microbiome, and 1 x small yellow pepper
as a result - the healthier your immune sys- 1 x small red pepper
tem will become. 3 x stalks of celery
½ a sweet potato
This recipe brings together 17 different plant- 1 x small piece of pumpkin
based foods together in a delicious one-pot 5 x small white potatoes cut into quarters
meal. You should aim for 28 different vege- 1 x teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
tables and fruit in any given day for optimal 1 x tablespoon fresh parsley
gut health – that’s a lot, so recipes like this can 2 x organic tins of diced tomatoes
be very helpful. 1 cup of stock
1 small jar of pitted kalamatta olives - rinsed
Feel free to add or subtract vegetables, but
it is a wonderful way to hide vegetables that Straight to plate Cheesy Polenta
you are not too keen on (or the kids aren’t too 1 x large fresh portabella mushroom
keen on!). By adding the ones you don’t nor- 1 large slice of cheesy polenta 1 litre of vegetable stock
mally eat you will be helping to grow a wider 1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
½ avocado
diversity within your gut microbe populations. 1 teaspoon garlic powder
2 teaspoons of mixed herbs
Method 1 packet of instant gluten free polenta mix.
• Dice all the vegetables into bite-sized pieces.
• Into a non-stick pan, place the onion, eggplant, Method
celery & garlic. Cook until the onion has begun • Bring stock to a rolling boil, add the nutri-
to change colour. tional yeast, garlic powder and herbs.
• Add all the other ingredients except the olives. • Boil for another minute or two.
• Simmer until all the veggies are soft and the • Remove from the heat and add ½ packet of
spuds are cooked through. instant gluten free polenta.
• At the end, take off the heat and add the olives • Stir until smooth and thick.
• Using a shallow oven tray, lined with parch-
ment paper, spread the polenta out. Do this
To plate: whilst the mixture is still hot.
Place a slice of the polenta, top with a raw • Allow it to cool in the refrigerator for about 2
mushroom, place the hot cooked veggies in hours.
and over the mushroom and finish with sliced • Once firm, slice into squares.
avocado. • To reheat, place in the toaster, fry pan or
grill and cook for about 5 – 6 minutes.
Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020 By Kathy Ashton
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How to Get Started in
Beekeeping By Debbie Rodda
People have all sorts of reasons for wanting to keep
bees. From my experience the best place to start is to
be as sure as you can that this is something you re-
ally do want to do. Particularly before you spend any
money! It should also be mentioned here at the start
that there is a gulf of difference between ‘owning a
bee hive’ and actually learning to look after a colony
or colonies of bees. I’ve found that it is the latter that
will give you the ongoing enjoyment and satisfaction.
The first may well end in tears, and a box of dead or
absconded bees. But with some initial advice and as-
sistant, backed-up by a true passion to keep bees -
you should be in for success.
Bees, like any livestock, need to be looked after. You
have a responsibility, not only to your own bees but to
those hives in your area to ‘do the right thing’. This in-
cludes regular inspections for pests/disease and gen-
eral health & wellbeing of the colony, and taking any
action required. Keeping proper records of inspections
is a part of this. You do need time to keep bees, partic-
ularly in the busy spring/summer season. Things have
to be done to their time scale not yours.
There are penalties for neglected hives
Beekeeping on a commercial scale or as a back-
yard hobbyist comes under Government Regula-
tion. Firstly you need to be registered through the
Vic Dept of Ag for Victoria, or Dept of Primary In-
dustry in NSW. The Australian Honey Bee Industry
Biosecurity Code of Practice comes into effect on
July 1st. This code needs to be adhered to whether
you are a Hobby Beekeeper or a Commercial Apia-
rist. You can find a copy at www.honebee.org.au. It’s
in this Code of Practice that you can find out about
your record keeping requirements. Both of these
State run organizations have excellent free informa-
tion on Beekeeping via PDF’s on their prospective
websites.
I would also recommend that you find your closest And if you feel the need to buy a book, I would start
Beekeeping Club and get along to their meetings if with the “Australian Beekeeping Manual” by Rob-
possible as they have a resource for information,
help with questions, beginner beekeeping courses,
ert Owen. By the time you get to do some inspec-
tions you will know what you’re looking at and the
mentors, bee sales etc. Their monthly meetings will experience should be more useful in making your
usually include the requirements of hive manage- decision regarding beekeeping i.e. yes, no or may-
ment through the different seasons plus other inter- be. If you decide Beekeeping is for you here is a
esting sessions for your learning. This site is handy little more information….
for ‘who and where’ in the many areas of ‘beekeep-
ing’ in Australia. www.aussieapiaristsonline.net/index.html When do I purchase bees?
Late Spring, Summer and early Autumn are the usu-
There is no need to race out and buy an arm load al times to purchase a hive of bees depending on
of books at this stage. All the info you need to famil- the season.
iarize yourself with keeping bee hives is available at
the websites and links I have mentioned. Informa- Basic Tools I would recommend up front:
tion like: the three different bees that make a colony These items below come out under $340 as a rough guide.
and their roles in the hive, bee diseases, lifecycle of • Hive Tool
the honey bee, photos and descriptions of the differ- • Beeco Smoker
ent stages of brood in the hive, what capped honey
• Frame Gripper…
looks like and of course good beekeeping practic- • Bee Brush
es. The following link is to a copy of ‘The Australian • Frame Holder
Beekeeping Guide’ which is an excellent resource • Bee Suit/Jacket & Gloves
and will include all of the above subjects and much
(Important to have a good Beekeeping Suit or Jacket with face
more. www.agrifutures.com.au/wp-content/uploads/publica- covering hood. You work your bees during the warm to hot months
tions/14-098.pdf of the year so ‘ventilated’ gear is appreciated in our climate.)
Use the winter time to read as much of the information
on the sites above as you can manage and also use
this time to organize someone to do inspections with
in early spring. The bee colonies will build up numbers
late winter in readiness of the expected forth coming
nectar flow in spring. Once this is happening and con-
ditions meet their needs their next instinct then is to
swarm (a natural way of continuing the species) so
this is a busy time for beekeepers with a lot of regular
hive inspections and manipulation to try and stop this
from occurring. Therefore a lot of inspections will be
happening that you might be able to get involved in.
Having your head over a box of flying, buzzing and
maybe stinging insects is quite different to watching
someone else do it on video from the comfort of your
lounge room or from glossy photos in a book.
Purchasing Bees bacterium can sit dormant for 40 years or so in old
Bees can be purchased as a package with a sep- beekeeping gear. A hive of bees that get it have to
arate queen in a cage, or as a small hive called a be destroyed. Hive gear can be irradiated in Mel-
Nucleus Hive (usually about 5 frames of bees in a bourne which will kill the bacterium if you did want
core-flute box with brood and laying queen) or a full to buy a job lot of second hand gear. It’s not expen-
8 or 10 frame hive of bees (sometimes sold with hive sive to have this done. Just time consuming packing
or you collect in your own hive box). it up and getting it down there. If only having one to
a few hives I suggest you start with new gear.
I do not like ‘package bees’ so don’t recommend
them but of course that is up to you. Price can vary Extracting Honey
depending on what you buy from $150- $350 (and If you just have one or two hives, it is possible to
more in city areas). A word of warning - only buy remove comb from frames and crush & strain your
from a recommended source unless you know of a
honey. You can purchase a fruit or honey press for
well-run apiary. Owning a lot of bee hives does not
the job. The down side of this is that your bees have
necessarily make a beekeeper with good manage- to build new comb every time you extract honey.
ment habits ie. Disease inspection practices. Or you can uncap the frame and leave in a warm
room for honey to drain from frames. Not suitable
Then there is the cost of a few more boxes by the for more than a few frames really.
end of the season and of course your honey ex-
tracting gear. Then there are mechanical drum extractors. They
come in 2 frame, up to large commercial size. The
Hive Boxes usual size for a hobby beekeeper is the 2, 3 or 4
Can be made of Wood, Polystyrene or even plas- frame extractors and they can be manual or elec-
tic, it’s your choice. The mainstream hive is a Lang- tric. With these types of extractors you uncap the
stroth size box which can come in different depths. If honey frames using an uncapping knife and sit
you go outside the norm then best to talk to people them in the machines drum and spin the honey out.
that have them already to be sure it’s going to work The sticky frames can then be put straight back on
for you. I recommend new beekeepers to start with the hive to be cleaned up and re filled if the nectar
the norm, until you have learned some beekeeping flow is still going. There is also the option of the Flow
skills. BEWARE of second hand equipment. Ameri- Hive which have become popular in recent times but
can Foul Brood (AFB) which is a very nasty virulent just be aware you need a Flow Box on each hive for
honey extraction.
Save the Bees
I haven’t mentioned the phrase “Save the Bees”
as yet but feel I should. Here in Australia we have
plenty of healthy bee populations both in managed
hives and as feral bees in the bush. We need to be
aware of their importance to our lives, and do what
we can to make a difference. Without them and oth-
er pollinators, our grocery stores would look pret-
ty grim, not to mention no coffee!! Doing the small
things on mass make a big difference, like planting
flowers and trees that they feed on wherever we
can. Planting and careful management of our euca-
lyptus forests is more needful for our bee and polli-
nator population here in Australia than becoming a
beekeeper.
To Summarize:
• Beekeeping is not for everyone….nor does it have to be.
• For those who desire to step into the world of hobby
beekeeping there is great reward in learning to manage
them successfully.
• There are regulations now that have been put in place.
They are there to protect bees and beekeepers alike and
they need to be adhered to.
• You get stung, a lot sometimes, but you learn to mini-
mize it if it bothers you, and you do get used to it.
• Knowing nothing about beekeeping (and having a
Grandfather that kept bees doesn’t count) and suddenly
having a beehive to look after is a big challenge. It’s the
start of a very steep learning curve. I found it tough when
I first started on my own. But then I found there were
people around that were happy to help and that made a
huge difference to my being able to enjoy the hobby (in
between the stressy bits). So find a mentor or two.
• Beekeeping is about problem solving and continually
relearning what you thought you had already learned.
They have you scratching your head on a regular ba-
sis, just when you thought you were getting a handle on
things!! But, this is all part of the charm, the ‘something’
that gets under your skin (beside their stinger).
• Bees are pretty awesome! You never learn it all, but if
you are willing and have their well-being at heart they will
continue to teach you and share the amazing intricacies
that make up their life of a humming colony of bees……
and give you some honey for your toast!
Debzzz Beekeeping Paradise
….a passion not easily explained!
SHOP - CLASSES - MENTORING
www.debzzzbeekeepingparadise.com
 Have you ever considered living with no power or no lights? How different would
your life be? If you can, I encourage you to try and switch-off completely for just
24 hours. Or for a more basic challenge, try going 2 days with no electric light-
ing. It’s amazing to see, and feel, just how reliant we all are on energy and what a
huge difference electricity makes to our standard of living.

ENERGY POVERTY is a seriously unrecognised problem world-wide, it condemns 1.4 billion people
to complete darkness once the sun sets, keeping them trapped in a poverty cycle, and account-
ing for more deaths per year than Aids and Malaria combined, due to the health implications of
burning toxic forms of biomass inside their homes, which is also emitting deadly fumes and un-
sustainable levels of CO2.

SolarBuddy are a global charity organisation driven by the goal of actively putting an end to En-
ergy Poverty, by educating and empowering current and future generations. We work in-line with
the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) with a number of great programs
that engage our global community.

At the heart of our organisation, we address the cause of Energy Poverty, not the symptom, though our
innovative portable solar lights. We engage with our global community to raise awareness; as global cit-
izens assemble the lights themselves to be donated to people living in energy poverty all over the world.
These small, seemingly simple lights make an incredible difference to the lives of those receiving them.
It enables them to study after dark, safely, and provides them with the opportunity to reach their full
potential. Our lights also decrease the adverse health effects living in Energy Poverty has on families by
reducing reliance on burning harmful sources of energy in their homes. This reduced reliance also posi-
tively impacts the environment; over the 10 year life of just one SolarBuddy light, 155 CO2e kgs are offset.
In just four years, we have gifted over 118,000 lights to children living in Energy Poverty in over 21 countries.

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use the change the world”
Nelson Mandela.

Education is fundamental to our organisation and this is reflected through all of our programs that en-
gage people across a number of spheres including, schools, festivals and corporates; which ultimately
aim to unite individuals to become global citizens, working toward the common goal of making the
world a more sustainable and equitable place for all those who inhabit it.

Our Education program sees Australian school children engage in an ACARA aligned, STEM based
activity during which they learn about Energy Poverty, the UN SDGs, innovation and sustainable tech-
nologies - inspiring them to be future leaders and to make a positive change in the world. A highlight
is that they get to assemble their own SolarBuddy light and pen a letter to the child receiving their light
- these letters often mean the world to the children receiving them, knowing that people across the
globe genuinely care about them.
Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020
 We also have amazing customisable programs for fes-
tivals, events and businesses that you can write to us
about or check out online. We’ll also be at the next Off-
Grid Living Festival if you’d like to chat, or assemble your
own light to donate to the energy poverty cause.

Education and Innovation in Isolation

During the testing and unusual times of social distanc-
ing and isolation, we felt compelled to provide innovative
solutions that would allow us to continue to make sure
our global community feel inspired, valued and connect-
ed. We also saw the necessity in ensuring that some of
the world’s most vulnerable citizens don’t go left unseen
during the pandemic, and so two brand new programs
were born; SolarBuddy’s Solve the 17 Global Innovation Solve The 17 Global Innovation Challenge
Challenge, and FamilyPack!
SolarBuddy’s Solve The 17 Global Innovation Challenge is paving the way
in virtual team building with a purpose. The Solve the 17 Global Innova-
FamilyPack tion Challenge has been curated by a highly skilled team of educators,
FamilyPack is a hands on, STEM based educational activity
innovators and designers to deliver to professionals a highly engaging,
that sees families learn about Energy Poverty, the United
interactive educational program that focuses on solving real world
Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) and
issues first hand.
sustainable technologies, as they assemble their own So-
larBuddy light and pen a personal letter to a child who will
SolarBuddy’s Solve The 17 Global Innovation Challenge is a solutions fo-
be gifted their light, all from the safety of their homes.
cused program that has been designed in response to the United Na-
tions Sustainable Development Goals. In 2015 the United Nations imple-
We have already received an incredible response to the
mented 17 Sustainable Development Goals as a call to action, with three
program, with more than 1,800 lights having already been
overarching goals; to end extreme poverty,
distributed to Australian families which will then be gifted
fight inequality and injustice and tackle
on to children living in Energy Poverty. Our incredible part-
climate change.
ners from the Origin Foundation immediately jumped on
board and have purchased more than 300 FamilyPacks.
We’re open for conversations
“It is important to show people that right now especially, and would love to chat.
we can still help make a difference to the lives of others.
I hope that the current situation distils a greater sense of If you would like to get in touch
please reach out to us at
community and coming together to help those less for- enquiries@solarbuddy.org
tunate. I’m really pleased that the Origin Energy Founda-
tion has remained committed to such important causes Or see more about our pro-
during these uncertain times” - Su Wei Tan , Origin Foun- grams and story online at:
dation. www.solarbuddy.org

Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020

 $1
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 Preparing For Winter
By Mariane Riffart, Botanic Alps
As time has gone on and people have acquired more forms of ‘man-made
heating and comfort’ the rituals of the seasons are becoming lost. If anything,
the events of this year have taught us to slow down, spend time homesteading,
concentrate on our health and happiness and rely on ourselves for everything
we need.
Autumn should be a time to enjoy the beauty of nature and the stunning weath-
er, but also to start slowing down and preparing for the coming winter. From a
practical point of view collecting wood, preserving food and maintenance of
leaks, holes and drafts to keep warm should be at the top of many peoples list
– particularly those who live an off-grid/self-sufficient lifestyles. But what about
from a health point of view? How many of you are preparing remedies for health
and well-being?
We all know that during winter we can become more susceptible to illness. One
great way to prepare your body for this, whether you live in a fully off grid system
or an apartment in the city, is through self-care practices and remedy prepara-
tion – an art that has been lost but can perhaps be revived with growing interest
and enthusiasm. The best place to start is with growing, collecting, harvesting
or sharing natural herbs. Herbs can play an integral role in your overall health
and well-being, and when used in the right combinations they can help with a
variety of illness. Aromatic plants are also wonderfully versatile in that they can
be used in cooking, infused or through the crème de la crème (and my personal
favourite), through the essential oils.
And let’s not forget that it is a great way to share quality time with children and
loved ones, made that much more pertinent as we all hunker down together
during this time.
For me personally this process brings back strong childhood memories growing
up in a beautiful little village in the southeast of France where my mother and I
would use the turning of the seasons as a chance to come together and create
a vision of the flavours and smells that we wanted to create. Then it would be off
to collect and prepare the ingredients before blending and cooking them in our
small kitchen with the aromas permeating the entire house. To this day these
smells evoke such happy memories so strongly that I get transported straight
back to those precious moments.
These are easy to do recipes and can be made with natural essential oils and in-
gredients – but I do encourage you to start thinking about growing and creating
your own. As a beginner it can be as simple as adding beeswax, oil and essential
oils or you can make it as complex and be as creative as you want by making your
own herbal infusions.
Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020
DIY Immune Salve
This recipe makes a generous 250g of salve, but you can divide
it by two to try the recipe first or multiply it once you are satis-
fied with the result. I always recommend starting with smaller
batches to avoid waste.
Ingredients
Materials • Beeswax: 30grs
• A small pot • Shea butter or Mango butter: 30grs
• St/steel or Pyrex glass bowl
• Carrier oil such as sweet almond,
• Metal spoon apricot kernel or sunflower oil: 185grs
• Jars or tins • Essential oils such as Eucalyptus,
• Stove top. Fragonia, White Cypress, Eucalyptus
Peppermint, Niaouli, Black Spruce:
Directions 3 grs or approximately 60 drops
• Begin melting beeswax and butter over
low heat using a double boiler.
• When melted slowly add carrier oils until whole is melted and mixed.
• Remove from heat and add the essential oils. Poor into jars or tins while hot.
Tips and tricks: It is very easy to source local beeswax by having a chat to local
honey producers. Remember beeswax is hard to clean so ensure you wipe off all
equipment and utensils while the beeswax is hot and then wash with hot water.
If you don’t want to use Shea or Mango butter you might be able
to replace it with coconut oil or Cacao butter. The first one will
create a softer salve so you might want to add more
beeswax. The second one will create a harder balm
so you might want to reduce the amount of beeswax.
Both of them can have very strong fragrances that
might give your finale product an undesirable overall smell.
I use Organic Fairtrade Shea butter from Ghana called
“Deluxe Shea Butter”. This company is supporting local
communities by empowering individuals and creating fair
employment conditions. Not to mention that the quality of the
butter is divine!
Finally, you can replace the carrier oils with some infused oils
such as peppermint, rosemary, lavender…. You could research
how to make your own herbal solar infused oil.
For those that are more adventurous, the following is a way to
turn your herbs into therapeutic herbal remedies. Perhaps you
can start a little co-op with your neighbours and friends so that
you can all be involved and increase the variety of herbs grown.
 DIY Autumn Solid Perfume
This recipe makes 100g of solid perfume.
Materials Ingredients
• A small pot
• Beeswax: 15grs
• St/steel or Pyrex glass bowl
• Shea butter or Mango butter: 15grs
• Metal spoon
• Carrier oil such as sweet almond,
• Jars or tins
apricot kernel or sunflower oil: 67 grs
• Stove top.
• Essential oils such as Sweet Orange,
Lavender, Cedarwood, Frankincense,
Directions Mandarin, Vetiver.
Simple prepare as per im- 3 grams or approximately
mune salve instructions above. 60 drops

At Botanic Alps we also offer a few great products to use this

autumn/ winter or to help you handcraft your own salves,
including:

• Euca Rub
• Buffalo Balm
• Lavender & Calendula Lip Balm
• Autumn Botanicals Perfume
• Winter Botanicals Perfume
• Frankincense & Sweet Orange Restoring Bath Soak
• Peppermint & White Cacao Body Butter
• Argan & Honey Myrtle Hydrating Hand Cream
• Australian Native essential oils such as
Eucalyptus, Fragonia, White Cypress, Tea Tree, Niaouli
• Over 50 Organic essential oils distilled in small batches
in the South of France.

It is important to note that essential oils are very potent concentrated

aromatic compounds that we must use with respect. If you are not
sure how to use them or if it is safe for you to use them always consult
a qualified aromatherapist. If you are interested in knowing more
about our products please visit our online store, come see us at our
shop in Bright, Victoria or at the 2021 Off-Grid Living Festival.
Botanic Alps opened in March 2020
Shop 20A Wills Street, Bright 3741 VIC
www.brightbotanicalps.com.au
Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020
 REF USE
Plastic Oceans Australasia’s objective is to instil the four R’s into peo-
ple’s daily life; Refuse, Reduce, Reuse and as a last resort Recycle
their plastic.

REDUCE
Some easy ways to get started include:
• Concentrate and consider when making a purchase and only
choose plastic-free items and unpackaged items.
• Always BYO bags wheneven you’re shopping
Plastic Oceans • Only use a refillable water bottle and have a filter at home so you

REUSE
Australasia is based in never have to buy bottled water
Melbourne and aims to • BYO reusable container and cutlery when eating out. And say ‘no
work throughout
Australasia to change
thank-you if a takeaway provider is using ‘all plastic containers’ to
the way we deal with make them aware they should make the change too.

RECYCLE
plastic waste by • Share your knowledge and passion with others.
challenging society’s • Watch the film A Plastic Ocean, now available on Netflix. Or
perception that this organise a group viewing to help raise awareness of the global
indestructible
substance can be
issues by showing how damaging plastic is on our health &
treated as ‘disposable’. the environment.

Learn More

Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020

Plastic Oceans Australasia (POA) is an environmental charity dedicated *Please note* In response to the
to changing the world’s attitude towards plastic within a generation. COVID-19 pandemic, POA have al-
lowed significant flexibility in the lo-
Working with community groups, businesses and individuals, POA of- cation of where your project may
fers long-term programs for all ages with step-by-step instructions to be implemented. We understand
reduce people’s plastic-footprint and encourage others to live sustain- many students are not physical-
ably - without plastic. ly at school and may not return
until Term 3. We would like to see
students use these early stages to
SCHOOL STUDENTS COMPETITION: plan and prepare for a project they
will implement in their school when
The POA inaugural “Turn the Tide” movie competition for Australian and they do go back. Please speak with
New Zealand secondary schools is one example of how they’re working us if you need any guidance or
with community groups to stem the tide on plastic. The competition invites suggestions.
students to share with the world their amazing projects and initiatives in
reducing plastics at their schools. The competition is designed to encourage teamwork, leadership and time
management skills, as well as learning about the impacts of plastic on the
TO ENTER - Schools need to fill out an expression of interest form before environment and human health. Team members have the chance to win a
17th July 2020. Then students work in a team to plan, or continue working trip over the Tasman as well as having their film showcased around Aus-
on, a plastic reduction initiative. Participants then create a five-minute film tralia and New Zealand. Prizes are thanks to Sup Bro Paddle in New Zea-
about their single use plastic reduction journey at their school. Film entries land and The Abyss Project in Australia.
closing November 30, 2020.
For more information, go to
Students will work over 3-6 months to:
• Analyse the plastic waste habits of their school www.plasticoceans.org.au/turn-the-tide
• Research alternatives to single use plastics
Or email us at: info@plasticoceans.org.au
• Plan, design and execute a plastic-reduction
project at their school
• Produce a 5 minute or less film illustrating
their journey

Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020

 blackbarnfarm.com.au

www.wisewomanundies.com.au
LISTEN NOW: futuresteading.com.au

How to Sharpen Edged Hand Tools
By Eli Beke - Wedge and Edge Wood Craft
Throughout history humans have improved
their lives through the use of tools in so many
ways, making our lives oveall much more
comfortable. Many tools are created simply
to ‘make more tools’. Like a sharp knife or chis-
el to carve a spoon.
In making tools we are often removing ‘ma-
terial’ from a ‘blank’ to make a ‘part’ that will
perform a ‘function’. A tool or art piece may
be assembled as a single object or combined
with other worked pieces to accomplish the
final form. The process of working a material
will be most pleasurable, satisfying and safe
when the tools used to complete the work are
as sharp as they need to be. This is especially
the case with tools used and powered by the
hand, such as axes, knives and chisels.
When is a tool sharp?
A tool is sharp when it is ‘not blunt’. A tool is
sharp when the two intersecting faces of the
edge come to the finest point they can be.
Gaining an appreciation for how a sharp tool
cuts vs a blunt tool will allow you to know when
you need to replenish and sharpen the edge.
You can work out the difference between a
sharp tool and a blunt one via a few methods.
LOOK: When the tool is sharp it has a minute
surface area at the edge and when it is blunt-
ed that surface area increases as the edge
becomes craggy and rounded over. Hence
if you hold the tool with light glancing off the
blade and there is light observable reflect-
ing off, then the edge it is blunt.
FEEL: Feeling the sharpness of the edge
by placing it perpendicularly against your
downward pointing thumbnail, then rais-
ing the spine of the blade up, the sharper a
tool is the closer the angle will be to vertical
when it slips down under its own weight.
TEST: Being able to slice the end grail of pine
is often used as a benchmark of sharpness.
Or for cooking knives, easily slicing through
a tomato with no tearing of the skin.
Tools used in tool sharpening
To sharpen a tool the metal that forms ei-
ther side of the edge is abraded away by
a progressively finer abrading tool. This tool
can be a metal file or a graded abrasive,
the “fine-ness” of the abrasive is graded in
what is termed “grit” which is the number
of particles that make up the abrasive that
will fit within one linear inch when lined up
end to end, it follows that the higher the
grit the smaller the particles and finer the
abrasive, abrasives used in sharpening
tools can range from 150 to 10,000 grit and
can be made from natural sources such
as specific types of rock quarried from the
earth or human made from minerals that
are processed to obtain desirable proper-
ties such as silicon carbide.
The quarried rock is then shaped into an
appropriate form or in the case of abrasive
sands, mixed with a binder and moulded
to shape, both of these are termed sharp-
ening stones.
A sharpening stone can be a bench stone
or a slip stone, a bench stone is secured or
placed on a bench and the tool is moved
across the stone to abrade the metal away
and sharpen the edge. While the tool can
also be made static and the slip stone is
moved across the edge of the tool.
An abrasive powder can also be bound
together with a wax or oily substance for
making it useful as a buffing compound
that allows it to be deposited on a leather
or wood surface for use as a strop. Since
these stropping / buffing / polishing com-
pounds are quite fine, they can only be
used at the final stage of sharpening, or
whilst you are using a tool and wish to re-
plenish its edge to avoid going back to a
bench stone too soon.
Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020
Whilst using a tool on a sharpening stone
there is a cutting lubricant that is either oil
based or water applied to the stone to carry
away the spent, rounded over abrasive par-
ticles, and the metal removed from the tool
as you sharpen it. This prevents the pores of
the stone from being clogged and the stone
being glazed.
The minimum tool kit you need to sharpen,
maintain and edge wood working tool is:
• Combination silicon carbide bench stone
with a rough and fine side on two sides of the
stone.
• Stone cutting lubricant such as olive oil for
carborundum
• Buffing compound or polishing paste, to use
with a strop of pine, MDF or leather glued to
wood
And to sharpen garden tools such as shov-
els, hoes, and axes for cutting firewood met-
al files will be acceptable:
• 200mm flat file, with a rough or bastard cut
tooth profile
• 200mm flat file with or fine or smooth cut
tooth profile.
How to sharpen a tool using
sharpening stones
Good Sharpening starts and ends with
good observation. Each edged tool has un-
dergone thousands of hours of use to work
out what geometry of the edge is best to
accomplish its purpose.
When you are sharpening a tool it is important
to maintain this geometry by not wobbling it
about or tilting it away or forward. This is ac-
complished by observing your movements
as you sharpen the tool and observing the
effects of your work on the tool and its edge.
1. Setup your bench stone with rough side
facing up on a table or bench surface with
a rag underneath it to stop it sliding around
and capture the slurry.
2. Lubricate the stone with a bit of olive oil, if
it is an oil stone, or water if it’s a water stone.
3. Place the tool on the stone surface and
rock it forward until you see the oil squeeze
out from between the edge of the tool and
the stone.
4. Keeping the angle of the tool relative to
the stone the same, rub it over the surface
of the stone, about 4-10 strokes.
5. Observe the edge of the tool that you
are sharpening, the action of the stone will
put scratches in the tool face and those
scratches need to go all the way to the
edge to ensure you are actually sharpen-
ing the edge. When the scratches extend
all the way to the edge, a burr will form that
can be felt, when a burr rises up it is time to
work the other side of the edge.
Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020
6. Work the other side of the edge on the
sharpening stone until a small burr forms
on the opposite side to before.
7. Switch to alternating strokes of both sides
of the edge over the stone.
8. When the burr is no longer observable the
tool is as sharp as it can get from the grit of
the stone being used and it is time to move
to a finer grit.
9. Complete steps 2-8 ascending through
the grits that you have.
10. When you have used your finest grit of
stone it’s time to ‘strop’ the tool (straight-
en and polish the blade). Stropping is only
done by pulling the edge away from the
strop, to stop the tool from cutting into the
strop and damaging it.
11. Place the strop on the work surface and
charge it with some polishing compound
by rubbing it into the strop. Work both side
of the edge alternating from one side to the
other, making sure to maintain the geome-
try of the edge and avoid rounding it over.
Sharpening a garden tool using a file
A metal file will remove material from the
faces that make up an edge. A metal file is
normally used with both hands, one at the
handle and one at the end of the tool. It can
be good to rub chalk into the file to prevent
the file surface from becoming clogged
with metal filings.
1. Mount your tool in a vice, clamp it to a work
surface or hold it in your lap such that you
can use two hands to stroke a file across it
2. Observe the edge, and geometry of the
edge.
3. Present the rough file to one side of the
edge and stroke it down, relieving pres-
sure and not drawing the file back over
the tool as that will blunt the file
4. When a burr raises up, switch to filing
the other side of the edge
5. Complete steps 2-4 using a fine file
If you found this article interesting but
it left you longing to try out these skills
with some real life guidance, I run regu-
lar workshops around Victoria in spoon
carving. These workshops include the key
elements of tool care and tool sharpen-
ing. I will also be at the next Off-Grid Living
Festival with info, products and hands-on
workshops.
Eli Beke - Wedge and Edge
Eli is a woodworker who specialises in green
wood working, producing articles for use in
the home. He also teaches great workshops
for people to become confident working
green wood.
www.linktr.ee/bekeeli
Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020
 Residential hot water

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when you convert to an energy efficient CO2 heat pump
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peak solar PV production will store 3kW of energy as hot water.
This 3kWh/day could be sold at the Feed-In Tariff (FIT) of 12c/kWh,
“costing” 36c/day or $131 per year in foregone revenue.
The magic of heat pump technology is that thermal energy output
is a significant multiple of the input electrical energy. This feature
makes heat pumps incredibly energy efficient and perfect for
applications such as water heating.

For an obligation free quote:

Ring Jürgen 0436 220 220 or
Email contact@t2zero.com.au
t2zero.com.au
 Barefoot and Pregnant
Over time I’ve learnt that convenience isn’t the key to a
happy life – simplicity is!
When our family went off-grid, we literally started with NO POWER. This
was a few years before our kids came along, which made it much easier
to live simply. We set ourselves up on a beautiful bush-block in North-
East Victoria, first in an old caravan, and then into a massive 28ft a tipi
with only the basics – dirt floor, central fire pit, bed and somewhere to
hang clothes, and we converted the old caravan into a kitchen and in-
door dining space for when the weather turned.
Power-wise, we made it work by charging our devices in the car during occasional
trips into town, lit-up the nights with candles, torches and the open fire (or simply
went to bed early). We cooked on gas or fire, kept food in an esky and showered
with water heated in a kettle then poured into a canvas shower-bag hoisted over
a branch. It was great, and we really enjoyed the adventure and novelty of it all.
But when I became pregnant, we decided that we needed a few more creature
comforts before baby number one joined us. But I did spend the entire pregnancy
in the tipi, which was rather uncomfortable at times. Within the 9 months we added
a ‘shouse’ (shed-house) to our shelter situation, which my husband gruelingly built
throughout our wettest and coldest winter we’ve ever had, while I tucked-in by the
fire in the tipi, checking on his progress each day and dreaming of having a couch
to put my feet up, a real bedhead to lean up against and read a book and a kitchen
I could visit for snacks at any time. Getting up for midnight snacks for a pregnant
woman are out of the question when your under 3 layers of blankets in a tipi on a
-1°C winter night.

Once in the new shelter we soon found that with a baby on board we needed more
functional lighting at night, and with the help of a neighbouring ‘DIY solar enthusi-
ast’, we were able to create our first source of off-grid power. With little funds we
managed to get together one solar panel, a car battery, a controller, DIY wiring, a
switch system and a strip of DC LED lights (no inverter required). This was a signifi-
cant improvement to our life and made the days longer and more productive with
light through the night – not to mention easier to care for a wet or crying baby at
2am.

As time went by we added just one more solar panel, upgraded to a marine grade
battery, which holds charge for much longer periods, and an inverter so that we
could use the system for other AC items too – mostly charging devices and a blender
thingo for making my own baby food. Once we got to this stage, we realised we really
didn’t need any more power than that. We didn’t need a fancy toaster, electric kettle,
microwave or even a fridge. We did still have to put the generator on to vacuum the
floor however, which soon became annoying, so we upgraded to a cordless vacuum
that we simply charge when we’ve got the power turned on.

The beauty of our simple system and particular in having no fridge is that we can
turn the power off completely when were not using it, so most of the day the sun is
charging up the battery and nothing is draining it, so it’s fully charged for when we
really need the power at night. Occasionally we’ll have a few very cloudy, rainy days in
a row and we go without power, but this only happen a couple of times a year and it’s
nice to just light the fire and relax, playing with the kids and enjoying a warm cuppa
into the night.

One thing people always ask is, “how are you off-grid with the internet?” Generally, in
a tone that sounds like - haha! I’ve caught you out now “off-gridder”. But actually this
is very easy to achieve. At first we had a satellite that connected to our Telstra Tough
phones (the only phone that you could do this with at the time) and we could hotspot
the internet from the phone to the computer. And now that our town has a good tow-
er, we simply use the internet allowance on our phone plan and again hotspot to any
other device - simple.
It’s a great experiment to purposely remove all of your possessions
and resources (power in particular) to see what things you really
want and/or need in life. Personally, I think most of us have too much
stuff and too many comforts, and now too much entertainment
as well. When you take it all away and just bring back the simple
things, your appreciation is heightened and joy for life flows easily.
You have room for more enjoyable things in life – not to mention
less need for money, which frees up your time significantly. The tiny
house movement has been a great one for displaying the joy of a
‘simple, minimalist lifestyle’ to the public. and I’m excited to see this
style of living taking off all around Australia (as a bush block isn’t
available or achievable for everyone).

I challenge you to take a look around your house, your posses-

sions and your lifestyle, and think about what could be given
away, paired back or not purchased in the future. How can you
achieve more simplicity in your life?
Next Off-Grid Living Festival
10th -11th April 2021
 The Story of SunLIT Solar
By founder Malcolm Oldis
Of all places, Coober Pedy was the birthplace of SunLIT Solar. For those who
have never been there, words cannot describe it. You simply have to go and see
it for yourself.
In a fit of madness my family decided to drive from Melbourne to Perth for a
Christmas holiday. My two daughters, both in their early teens were excited and
loved outdoor adventures. On our return trip, half way across the Nullarbor, they
shouted “Dad, can we go to Coober Pedy?” Like, just turn left at Port Augusta
and keep driving toward the centre of Australia - Dads find it hard to say no to
this kind of pressure (adventure!). So we took a quick detour from Wirulla via
Kingoonya and through the Gawler Ranges, turned back onto the Sturt highway
and we arrived in Coober Pedy late that afternoon. It was mid-summer but we
were being chased the whole way by thunderstorms!
After looking around for awhile I was amazed to see that, except for a few nut-
ters living out in the sticks, there was hardly a solar panel to be seen. Electricity
was expensive and a lot of folks lived underground. It did not take long for my
mind to go into ‘inventor’ mode. Whilst we only spent one day there I found
Coober Pedy fascinating and intriguing at the same time. I was determined to
go back soon and felt certain, with my background as a qualified electrician,
product development manager, product engineer and Electronics hacker, that I
could do something really innovative out there.
Four months later I returned with my sister, some solar panels, batteries and oth-
er equipment - the ‘bright’ idea of a ‘smart solar sunlight system’. As it turned
out, my sister was instrumental in the success of what became the SunLIT sky-
light. Upon departure, my wife was sure all kinds of scheming and plotting might
take place along the trip. We laughed at that, but she knows us well and the
scheming and plotting started before we got out of our driveway. The car was
filled with a bunch of electronic stuff - wires, plugs and other items which con-
nected LED lights to one of the solar panels that we brought along. We even-
tually arrived late in the day to our hotel, and, it was raining....again. The solar
panel on top of the trailer was covered in water and straps all over it, and it was
approaching dusk, but I was determined to see how my creation performed. I
felt it was going to be disappointing and a bit tricky to demonstrate the idea
in this weather. When I first connected the two lights that I had, I was stunned
at the how brightly they lit up, in incredibly poor light conditions. I was immedi-
ately convinced that the concept was sound - but not with what I had cobbled
together on that day, more work was needed but I was feeling inspired by the
Underground house, Coober Pedy
test run - and the name SunLIT was born on that day. The main street of Coober
Pedy, is Hutchison St. And was named after an early settler who first discovered
opals in the region. I have named my range of skylights as Hutchison. The irony
is that I have yet to sell one in Coober Pedy! That has to, and will, change. What
happened since is story of forty plus years, and a well-known one to any other
independent inventor or creator who wants to commercialise a unique product.
At the time the concept was obvious to me. The more I thought about it the bet-
ter it looked. The advantages just kept stacking up. The dollars looked good vs
traditional skylights and it was very doable with my experience and knowledge.
The usual challenges and realities became apparent, as the concept congealed
into a legitimate product. The key question was -what else is out there? If this is
such a great idea who else is thinking about this? I have found two competitors.
One is attached to a big conglomerate and the other seems to be a smaller or-
ganisation. I think I have the edge on them both in terms of what SunLIT offers.
So why have an electronic skylight?
If you understand what a skylight is, then the idea is straightforward. You have
a dark place in your house/office/wherever, and you want it lit up all day and
without any running costs. I see this as a kind of lifestyle choice. The sun comes
up, the area gets lighter, and then darker as the sun goes down. No complica-
tions, just bringing sunlight inside! Great idea. Everyone I speak to either has one
or wants one!
So, why NOT a traditional skylight?
Well, this can be partially answered by someone who already owns a traditional
skylight:
• They are prone to leaking and roof repairs are expensive!
• They tend to collect leaves, moths, dust, other insects that decide this is their
final resting place . They then look a bit second rate. The problem is that all this
annoyance is on the inside, and often hard to get at.
• They let heat IN during the summer and let heat OUT during the winter. Not
good thermally.
• They allow UV in, which can cause some fading. Not any worse than a window
though.
• And now, they are not installed in fire prone locations. You need to refer to
building zones for restricted areas.
• A traditional skylight has limitations where they can be located due to roof
type, and building construction. They can frequently be worked around, but at
a cost.
• Not as DIY friendly
• Needs large cut-outs in the roof and ceiling. Cannot be relocated.
• Does not offer any change in lighting options.
The opposite of the above is true for a SunLIT skylight.
A SunLIT Hutchison skylight has small holes in the roof and ceiling, which is far
less likely to leak, does not have any thermal problems, remains clean, can be
mounted anywhere, is DIY friendly and is OK in fire prone regions.
The difference is clear.
So what are the unique advantages?
• You can have several Huitchison skylights running off one PEP Generator
• The PEP Geneator can be mounted anywhere externally. It can be 100 meters
away from the skylight! More if you want.
• They can be mounted on walls, in pantries, under cupboards, in multistorey
buildings. Even underground like in Coober Pedy, or wherever you want! A
Hutchison skylight can be physically small but emit as much light as a larger
skylight.
• An expandable system - can be expanded to light your whole house!!
There are two unique attributes that are available with a SUnLIT skylight:
• Firstly, because the SunLIT Hutchison skylight is electrical, we have a special
PEP that can use power from the utility so that it can run during the night like a
normal light!
• Secondly, we can also add a battery pack that can store energy during the
day light hours and re-use it at night. By popular demand, this feature is being
designed and can be retrofitted to existing SunLIT installations.
• Yes folks. A complete DIY lighting system for your house!!
B r i n g i n g S u n l i g h t
What is a PEP?
PEP is the heart of the SunLIT skylight
system. Without the PEP we would not
have the product that is now SunLIT.
In simple terms, a PEP translates the in-
coming energy from the Solar generator
and adjusts the voltage and current lev-
els for the Hutchison skylight. This has
to be done in the most efficient manner
possible so that maximum energy is extracted from the solar generator. Photons
are converted into electrons in the generator, arrive at the PEP and it re-writes the
electron energy suitable for the Hutchison and passes them on where they are con-
verted into Photons again. Hence the acronym PEP. Photons to electrons and back
to photons.
It is tempting to just connect a solar panel to a LED. This can work but it means that
the maximum current to drive the LED must be greater or equal to the solar panel
output. This means a tiny solar panel which can only work in maximum sunlight. Sun-
LIT uses a massive solar generator, usually around 250 watts which means a Hutchi-
son will be at full brightness even in poor light conditions. The PEP does all the work.
However, there is much more to a PEP. Pep generators vary, but most importantly, so
do the Hutchison skylights. A PEP can turn almost any LED light into a Hutchison. That
is the power of PEP. It can automatically adjust to maximise the incoming energy even
in poor light conditions. Not only that but several different Hutchison skylights (each
with their own PEP) can be running off the same solar generator. There are several
PEP types but they each perform the same magical task. 
Future developments.
SunLIT now has a solid base with which to move into
the next generation of products. Rest assured there is
much to look forward to There will be many functional
additions to enhance the SunLIT experience. Eventu-
ally we want to provide a total lighting experience for
home or office. Existing installations
can be seamlessly merged
with future developments.
Just stay posted!
I n s i d e ! www.sunlitsolar.com.au
 Solar PV is now more
affordable than ever
Bulk buy prices everyday
Making the switch to solar energy could be the best decision you make
this year. According to Solar Vic, a typical household can save up to
$890 per year. Not only are you reducing your energy bills and saving money,
you’re giving back to the community by helping reduce local emissions.
In these uncertain times, solar power is energy you can depend on.
Start saving now with our affordable price packages below.

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• 3.0kW Growatt or Sungrow inverter or $2,111 after Solar Panel Rebate ($1,888)
• Standard installation or $3,999 if ineligible for Solar Panel Rebate

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t2zero.com.au t2zero.com.au
*Conditions apply. The Solar Homes Program is means tested – please refer https://www.solar.vic.gov.au/solar-panel-rebate website for details. Solar Homes Fact Sheet and Solar
Panel Rebate Fact Sheet are downloadable from this link. “Pricing from” refers to the upfront cost of the system where customers qualify for the $1,888 Solar Panel rebate + take out
a matching $1,888 zero interest loan to be repaid over 4 years (48 months) at approximately $40/month. The pricing for Solar PV is for STC Zone 3 only (ie this does NOT include
Metro Melbourne or Geelong).
 Understanding PassiveHouse cific building, on your specific site – they cannot, and will not ever
be universally achieved by following the generalised and blunt
construction standards. We need a sharper tool than that.
Written by Dean Hoggart - Homeworks Design

Passive House certification is a convenient and defendable tool

that ensures your building performs well, meeting these

Healthy. Comfortable. performance criteria:

Economical. PassiveHouse.
At the beginning of the magazine we looked at the 5 principles of
Passive Solar House Design, PassiveHouse also looks at these prin-
ciples but takes this to the next level as a certification system.
PassiveHouse certification is a rigorous, science-based, voluntary
design and build performance standard that far exceeds the NCC
requirements for comfort, health and efficiency. It’s been proven in
Europe for decades but is now growing in popularity in Australia.
Most people take it for granted that their new home or renovation
will be comfortable, healthy and efficient. However, if they design
and build to only meet minimum National Construction Code (NCC)
standards, chances are they’ll be disappointed.
• Internal air temperature of 20-25°C, all day, every day, and
without drafts - That’s T-shirt weather all year!
• Fresh, filtered air supplied 24/7 throughout your home/school/
workplace
- No dust, no pollen, no allergens. It’s like having all the
windows open, all the time, but without the wind and
temperature impacts
• Energy consumption for heating and cooling is extremely low
(<10W/m2 load or 15 kWh/m2/year consumption)
- That’s up to 90% less than a normal Australian building,
resulting in substantial cost savings to the tune of several
thousand per year.
Images: Passive House under construction - By Ovens and King Builders,
Design by local architect, documentation by Detail Green

Let’s get a little nerdy here and speak of building performance. For
now, let’s put aside looks, finishes, styles and taste, as these things
are subjective and individual, and have nothing to do with build-
ing performance or the PassiveHouse standard. When we speak of
performance, we mean the air quality, the comfort, and the energy
consumption required to maintain these standards – the things that
we generally expect our newly designed and built homes to pro-
vide for us, without specifically having to ask for them. These ba-
sic performance requirements can only be ensured with intentional,
thoughtful design and careful performance modelling of your spe-
With heating/cooling energy consumption cut so low (and still maintaining a
comfortable and healthy indoor environment), it is not too difficult to achieve
a Zero Energy building, or go entirely off-grid.

But any Building Designer or Architect can design a comfortable, healthy

and efficient building, right? And there are loads of environmentally con-
scious designers out there.
Why bother with the PassiveHouse certification specifically?
For most people it is about the rigorous modelling and independent certification – it’s
about proof and confidence in the building performance, that your new home (or other
building) will be as comfortable, healthy and efficient as your designer/builder promis-
es you. Finishes, fixtures, colours, tiles, furniture, etc are all things that can be changed
without too much drama if they don’t look right. But if the building fabric – the structure,
orientation, shading, insulation, windows, doors, ventilation – are not designed and built
right the first time to ensure performance, then chances are you are stuck with poor
performance. Its often uncomfortably expensive to fix these things later on.

To achieve the performance we crave, our buildings need to be effectively separated

from the highly variable external environment by:
• Ensuring a high degree of airtightness Images: Passive House under construction - By Ovens and King Builders,
• Installing sufficient thermal insulation Design by local architect, documentation by Detail Green
• Installing a Mechanical Ventilation system with Heat Recovery
• Installing high performance windows
• Preventing thermal bridges
• While still incorporating passive solar design principles to minimise
summer heat gain, and maximise winter heat gain.

If these physical building design and construction measures are undertaken, and a
knowledgeable PassiveHouse expert has modelled the effectiveness of these measures
on your specific project, and it has been PassiveHouse Certified, then your building will
perform well and you can breathe easy. After this is achieved, then careful consideration
should be given to the aesthetic, emotional and textural basis of your home, to make
it look and feel they way you want, resting easy with the knowledge that regardless of
whether your taste changes, your home will still perform.

As a consumer looking to spend a life changing

amount of money on a home that you expect to
be healthy, comfortable and efficient, its often
comforting to rely on the rigorous mathematical
modelling and independent verification of your
home’s performance that comes with Passive- www.ovensandkingbuilders.com.au
House certification.

www.homeworksdesign.com.au
 It’s all connected
my journey with permaculture
By Natasha Stafford, Beingreen Permaculture
I was inspired to learn more about permaculture after borrowing a video
of the documentary “In Fear of Falling Fruit” from the Fitzroy Council Library
in inner city Melbourne in the mid ’90s under the suggestion of my partner
Ashley.

From the confines of a dark one bedroom flat surrounded by concrete in

a cold Melbourne winter, we watched Bill Mollison crawl beneath tropical
fruit trees in a warm and luxurious, seemingly abundant land of subtropi-
cal permaculture. Suddenly there was nowhere else on earth I wanted to
be.

Days after arriving in subtropical Northern NSW I decided to jump in with

both feet and completed my first Permaculture Design Course with Robyn
Francis in her first years of establishing Djanbung Gardens, in Nimbin. Here
I learned an overview of permaculture, with a mystical earth faith focus.
Robyn follows the traditional Celtic seasonal rites and rituals, interpreted
in a distinctly Australian way. Djanbung has a very local focus, and is an
integral part of the multifaceted place that is Nimbin.

I was entranced by the concept of connectivity in permaculture - and this

is the prime part of permaculture which continues to keep me going. Soil,
water, plants, animals all intrinsically connected.
A psychedelic undercurrent of subconscious and
conscious patterning which we only needed
to stop, to look and to see. Suddenly the truth
of the world was revealed, and it
all made perfect
sense.

www.beingreenpermaculture.weebly.com
Years passed and my own life focus changed, and became one of in-
ward energy towards my own family. My foundational interest in main-
taining connection expressed itself in birthing my first three children at
home, and switching their education to one given at home as well. My
personal faith took a different turn, and through the new insights and
learning came the introduction to a whole new community of people.
Just over in the next valley from Nimbin but in a distinctly different world,
lies a farm run along permaculture principles, but following the guide-
lines of Islam. Geoff and his Jordanian wife Nadia run a very dynamic
international hub, the Permaculture Research Institute. Geoff focuses
on the bigger picture, and is a specialist in earthworks and broada-
cre permaculture which he takes further afield to the Middle East and
the Americas. I completed my second PDC here, and found Geoff’s per-
spective was a very fitting ‘yang’ to Robyn Francis’ ‘yin’. I felt I now had a
more balanced view of permaculture.
In my own life I now had four children, and a growing responsibility with
homeschooling. I used the knowledge I had gained in permaculture to
inspire activities for my children, to educate them in the basic princi-
ples. An activity where a farm in miniature is degraded by ‘Mr D Struc-
tion’ and rejuvenated by ‘Mr Ree Juvenation’ in a hands on process was
particularly popular with my then primary school aged older two chil-
dren. I realised informing children of an alternative way of viewing the
land was vital for changing society’s treatment of the environment.
When I found an opportunity I completed a Teaching Permaculture
course with the Lawtons, navigating swollen creeks and rivers during
a flood to travel to The Channon from where
I lived in Lismore. The very possible chance I
would not be able to return at the end of the
day to my family highlighted the fact that I felt
this knowledge was so important to gain - no
matter what the situation. The subtropical
landscape shapes all those who live in it with
its constant unpredictable weather and a local
council struggling to maintain basic infrastruc-
ture. Tropical people live in the moment, and
are often thrown back on their own resources to
maintain their lives.
The passing of my husband’s last surviving par-
ent enabled us to move to our own house for
the very first time when our fifth child was young. We entered a far more
conservative society in Southern NSW. Here were people of establishment
and repute, reaffirming conventional values in a wealthy town focussed on
progress. My hunger for connection found sustenance in the local homes-
chool community, as I now had four children of school age to teach. My fo-
cus changed from being solely family focussed, to extending to other fam-
ilies homeschooling. I found myself organising and facilitating workshops
and activities for that community.
I ventured out further to find others with an environmental and community
focus, and found Claire Greenhalgh and Sharon Potocnik of The Sustainable
Activity Centre in Wodonga. Here were people attempting to bring an or-
ganic, dynamic and supportive community into what is a rather staid soci-
ety. I found a place where I could possibly teach the wider community about
what I had learned.
I started out by teaching very young children, as our sixth child had arrived
and was still a toddler. From this, I was encouraged and supported to teach
older children, and then adults, about the principles of permaculture. I am
keen to teach children the connection between concepts that I found so
inspiring when I first attended a course. To see a child’s eyes light up when
they realise the spiral of water turning down the sink is the same as the spi-
ral forming the cyclone, I am happy.
My passion is to keep teaching, and I now offer a full range of children’s ed-
ucation which can be included in the mainstream curriculum. My focus is
hands on learning and fun. I have learned over
many years that children are inspired and re-
member concepts when they are enjoying
the process. I also provide a local service de-
signing properties along permaculture lines.
My journey has taught me the importance of
connection. We cannot escape our connec-
tion with the earth, and cannot lose our con-
nection with each other. The ties strength-
en us and mean we cannot ignore the wider
world. I am looking forward to learning all that
‘down south’ can teach me, as permaculture
is a concept adaptable by its very nature, to
anywhere on our earth.
beingreenpermaculture.weebly.com
 Mark Trickett
Tradional Hand Spinner
Mark has so much skill and knowlegde to
offer, he is just one of the many amazing
craftspeople to be offering free
workshops at the next Off-Grid Living.
(Full workshops program to be released
at the end of this year)
Aquaponics or Vermiponics?
Some food for thought! - By Jeff Laird, Uneek ECOponics
Vermiponics - a food growing technique that combines hydro-
ponics with vermiculture by utilizing diluted wormbin leachate
(“worm tea”) as the nutrient solution as opposed to the use of
fish waste (as used in aquaponics).
A little over four yeas ago I started on a “feel good”, semi-retirement venture. “I’ll
be the local eco-warrior; watching my very own, all natural, mini eco-system
turn fish waste into free, organically grown food for the family; maybe turn a
dollar or two as a bonus”. What more could I ask for, I’ll sit back and marvel at my
pristine fish pond brimming with plate size fish ready for the taking, and harvest
crops from my many “back-strain” free, table height veggie patches. I’ll make it
with a few recycled bits and pieces; re-circulate the water with a small pump.....that
can’t be too hard, or costly, right?
Surely it can’t get better than that?
Fast forward a couple of years, and a few thousand dollars later, not to mention
running costs. I learned a viable aquaponic system needs a constant critical mass
of fish, pretty similar to a battery hen house type fish tank (not pretty), the fish
food costs around $6/kg (equating to around $10/kg for the “free” fish). The worst
part was that 80% of the work and cost involved food and management of the
livestock, when they were less than 20% of production!
It took me around three years to see the madness; this was supposed to be easy
and cheap, if it wasn’t for capital invested, I would have scrapped the lot! But luckily
I didn’t and kept on trying with new ideas.
My “eureka!” moment was staring me in the face; I had a worm farm to supple-
ment the aquaponic nutrient shortfall, all that was needed was to up-scale the ver-
miculture, and down-size the aquaculture; saving 80% of the workload, I reduced
water flow rate by over 95% (with equal running cost saving), kitchen and garden
waste is now the stock feed; and “voilà!” the running cost is near zero for 20% of the
workload! I still have fish now, just a few to keep the mozzies at bay, I’ve considered
tadpoles as the livestock (cheaper still), but think I’d risk having the company of
the odd snake looking for a “fredo frog” snack!
What’ll you need for a vermiponics setup?
First you’ll need a compost bin and a worm farm (see Hardware stores, or visit
Compost Community at the festival or online). Next you’ll need a sump tank (we
use half a 200 litre plastic barrel) to house the pump/s. Then you’ll need one or
more grow beds; I’ve tried many options, one common choice is an IBC, I didn’t re-
ally like it that much, I made a couple of large fibreglass tanks, that too didn’t go all
that well (but I learnt a lot), I then (with the lot of help from a friend) made a small
fibreglass “balcony” grow bed, nice and compact, a perfect “starter” grow bed. But
now I mainly use re-cycled 200 litre steel drums (line them with fibreglass and they’ll
last forever), they’re a dime a dozen, and easily converted into two ½ square metre
grow beds, but you’ll need a few to get a viable crop. I’m making a new bed from a
re-purposed fibreglass trailer (who needs a trailer now we’re in lockdown), it gives us
2 square metres of grow area, with the benefit of being able to re-locate the bed to
suite the season!
The key to a vermiponic system is water re-circulation, largely a “copy and paste”
from aquaponics with an important twist; we developed a “sequential” watering sys-
tem, switching the flow from one bed to the next, one after the other for optimum
water control, to keep the water volume required to a minimum! If you want to have
fish (keep them to a minimum), add a fish tank to the equation; the fish tank over-
flows to the sump tank, from there water is pumped sequentially to each grow bed
over and over!
The biggest saving with vermiponics is the pump run time; all that’s needed is enough
circulation to flush the worm castings into the water flow, and distribute the nutrients
to the grow beds. The flood and drain in the grow beds aerates the media (we use a
traditional wicking bed grow mix) expelling air out of the media as it fills, then draw-
ing air back in as it drains, while “wet-
ting” the soil with nutrient rich water;
don’t overdo it, just enough to feed
and water the plants (the worms
don’t mind an occasional drenching,
but don’t drown them), once a day
for a couple of sequential circuits is
enough, unless the weather is very
hot, when you’d to run it two or three
times a day!
Click here for $45 ECOponics
workshop with Jeff
Tomato
Love

Photo journal by Lisa Savchuk & Brooklyn Mabbott

Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020
Sustainable Spirit
By Sahaj Dumpleton, Globalise Love
What’s that, you ask?
Well, sustainable spirit is all about caring for your CORE Spirit in a way that it will
survive, be nourished and grow through all the variations, challenges and highs
in life.
Living off-grid is hard work, particularly in the setup stage. It’s important that you
MAKE TIME to keep in touch and to nourish your own heart/soul/spirit (however
you perceive that). At 74, I’ve lived more than half my life simply and off-grid, so
I speak with much experience about the need to keep in touch with yourself and
to enjoy discovering yourself deeply. If this is not a journey you are yet on then
I hope that the following will give you a small insight into where you can start.
reason why. Or perhaps it’s a complete disconnect that makes people
feel unqualified to talk on the issue. I say, let’s have the conversation
and welcome love into our spirit. It’s no good just hoping or praying that
one day, we’ll wake up living in a peace, love and good vibes world. It will
only come about with us practicing that way, in small ways in our daily
life. If we don’t do it, it’s not going to happen.
I love Logic. I logic Love.
Put all your faith, your religion, your agnosticism, your atheism, your
apathy, your cynicism, your philosophies …….put them all to one side
for the moment.
I offer you the Logic of Love. May it sustain your Spirit………..

One scenario.
The mood is not good. The baby’s crying, the other kids are arguing with each
other uncharacteristically while they get ready for school. Your partner’s loading
the truck and is due at work. He’s frustrated with waiting for the kids because he
has to drop them off before going to work. The chooks need to be let out and
the cow/goat is overdue for milking. YOU?….you are frazzled. Trying to keep it
together, where are YOU in all this? Are you a part of the chaos or are you able
to stay in touch with your CORE SPIRIT and guide the situation toward harmony,
calmness and fairness for all. If your connection with your CORE SPIRIT is lost
when life becomes challenging, then all your mantras, yoga positions, prayers,
etc., amount to nothing. This applies whether your still in a city corporate situa-
tion, cleaning toilets or about to pour the slab for your first house/shed.

I suggest, that growing your Sustainable Spirit is an essential part of

growing a sustainable lifestyle.

SELFCARE IS NOT ‘SELFISH’

For many, many years I had a huge problem with the idea of SELF LOVE - way
too narcissistic for me. But, I’ve come to understand, that if it’s in your heart to
serve others with Universal Love, it’s not possible to do that well, without Love
in your heart for YourSelf. Love YourSelf and you will naturally and sustainably
Love others.

Strangely, LOVE is a topic that many people feel uncomfortable talking about
and exploring. Love is a very powerful energy, and I guess that could be one

Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020

 LOVE IS LOGICAL.
Love itself is not logical. But the idea of living in Love with one another…
Logic of Love everybody and at all times….is logical. Love dwells in the heart. You can
reassure your intellect by understanding that it makes sense, (it’s logical), to
Truth move through our daily situations in Love. Out of Loving thought, speech, action
Truth is available only to the
lover will come the best decisions and actions for all life in all situations.
Not to the logician.
drop the mind We can but practice.
Truth opens itself only when you
To meet daily, each situation and each person, in Love. With practice comes re-
And listen from the heart.
truth and one can fined ability. To deal with each situation in Love will, logically, bring about a Loving
One can go on thinking about outcome for all concerned. Take this to its Logical conclusion. Everyone living in
ht about truth
Create great systems of thoug Love (practising a Loving attitude) at all times will mean humanity and all living
t to know truth.
But to think about truth is no creatures will live in the Love, peace and harmony the majority of us wish for.
ion of thinking
It is an experience, not a quest
different approach.
And experience needs a totally This is not an airy-fairy dream proposition. Naïve perhaps?...Yes! But given our
n trained
And for centuries we have bee peculiar human consciousness, capacity to reflect and discriminate AND to expe-
In logic, not in love -- rience love in our hearts, we have the possibility to create a loving existence. We
th.
That’s why we go on missing tru can practice to create a truly Loving existence, in the same way we have created
(Author Unknown) the present global existence….one which appears to be an odd jumble of Univer-
sal Love, passionate love, kindness, gentleness, fear, hatred, anger, frustration,
jealousy, greed ……. all mixed together in some kind of odd brew.

When I talk to people about the cruelty inflicted, one human to another, they
generally despair and say “it’s just human nature”. Human nature has created
the current circumstances of our existence on Planet Earth. Even if you believe in
some high power, we have done the groundwork (perhaps not very well, so far.)
We can change our “human nature”. We do have this peculiar capacity.
From my naïve perspective, it’s perfectly simple. The more often, more and more
of us practice living in Love on a daily basis, then the
fewer humans there will be practicing cruelty, violence,
If you’re drawn to greed, intimidation, oppression.
my message, you’re
welcome to contact This practice of Love will inevitably, and logically, lead to
me, Sahaj, through a Peaceful Planet.
my website:
REMEMBER…..Love is in the Heart. Logic is in the brain.
The intellect just needs the absurd re-assurance that the
heart is behaving logically.
www.globaliselove.com
Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020

Their Crisis, Our Opportunity:
Off-grid Living Comes Home
By Kegan Daly - Of The Earth: Building Permaculture Landscapes
“Only a crisis -actual or perceived- produces
real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions
that are taken depend on the ideas that are ly-
ing around. That, I believe, is our basic function:
to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep
them alive and available until the politically impos-
sible becomes the politically inevitable.”
Milton Friedman
For many of us the urge to go ‘off-grid’ begins with
a desire for simpler, home-based lives to develop
self-reliance and reconnect with our families, com-
munity and surrounding environment. To do this we
need to work less within the monetary economy and
avoid the traps of the mortgage and debt treadmill.
Underlying these practical considerations we usual-
ly find very good ethical reasons to disconnect from
‘the grid’. The system our society has developed to
produce energy, food, housing, health care, educa-
tion and a variety of other essential items, has been
shown to undermine the survival of civilisation and
life as we’ve learnt to appreciate it.
60 years of modern scientific observation
and analysis has conclusively shown that
our economic system is incompatible with
the flourishing of life on earth.
This realisation has inspired alternative social move-
ments and practises to challenge and overcome the
predictably grim future scenarios of a world already
facing continent-ravaging bushfires, disappearing
permafrost, mass species extinction and ecosystem
collapse.
The COVID-19 crisis has revealed the fragility of
this global economic grid, the ineffectual structure
of government and corrupt political leadership. The national retreat into the home also saw a sur-
Supply-chains of goods are stretched. Stocks of prising trend: seeds, seedlings, food plants, compost
essential items are low. Social services of all types
are hollowed out. Governments trying to engage
and chickens began to be in short supply from nurs-
eries and landscape stores all around the country.
the community to manage the crisis aren’t trusted. Suppliers, such as Diggers, have now caught up with
Democratic institutions have been sidelined. Feder- demand.
al and state government responses have consist-
ed of reluctantly funding a welfare system they’ve
been running down for a generation, giving bailouts It was as if the government had rerun it’s
Victory Garden campaign of WWII for a new
to corporations who sack workers while delivering
generation of gardeners.
bonuses to their CEO’s and installing a Government
Pandemic Advisory Group led by the fossil fuel and
But this wasn’t the case. Without any overarching
mining industry. While governments and the cor-
campaign, people began to garden food voluntarily,
porate world attempt to rig the crisis response, it’s
clear that they weren’t prepared, even though a cri- understanding that even though Australia is one of
the most secure food nations on the planet, having
sis such as this has been predicted by scientists. If
fresh, quality food close by is essential.
they weren’t prepared for this crisis, they’re surely
not prepared for a climate and ecological crisis pre-
With people now working and studying from home,
dicted by decades of data and supported by events
or under/unemployed, we’re reconnecting with life
unfolding before our eyes. Provided with an oppor-
as people once knew it, or perhaps as we’ve al-
tunity to create a society that is caring for the vul-
ways wanted it to be. Our families and neighbours
nerable, nurturing of the young and giving to those
who are in need, they’ve chosen to fund corporate
interests who’d rather see us all go back to the daily
grind of business-as-usual that created the condi-
tions for a global pandemic to arise in the first place.
But there’s another, positive story playing out...and if
you’re reading this article, you are a part of it.
At the grassroots of daily life, ordinary people did
what people do in times of crisis: they reached out
to one another to see if anyone needed help. This
intuitive response to help those in need was demon-
strated with the establishment of mutual aid groups
all over Australia, and was self-organised and with-
out the assistance of government. While the media
focussed on people fighting over toilet paper, thou-
sands and thousands more were sharing hand-san-
itiser, medical supplies and food with those most at
risk of contracting COVID-19. These essential items
were shared based on need rather than who had
easy access or the most money.
are now our closest acquaintances. The pace of
life has slowed. City skies are beginning to clear of
permanent pollution haze. Nearby parks and ovals
are (safely) crowded with people exercising, playing
and walking dogs in unprecedented numbers.
At the risk of a complete economic collapse and so-
cietal breakdown that could see a health crisis turn
into a political crisis, governments have now institut-
ed a form of job guarantee, doubled unemployment
assistance and halted mortgages, commercial rents
and evictions. This renewed government investment
and economic intervention bucks a four decade
trend towards neo-liberal public policy geared to
deregulate industry and outsource/privatise pub-
lic services. With the private sector unable to sup-
port the community in times of crisis, public opinion
has realised the undesirability of relationships that
tie our survival to work and income. These binding
relationships sees workers, students and the most
vulnerable suffer whenever there’s a downturn in
business confidence and profits.
Before the current COVID-19 crisis and recent gov-
ernment policy interventions, there’d been renewed
debates around old ideas such as a Universal Ba-
sic Income (UBI) and the repackaged, Green New
Deal, which amplified people’s desire to spend pub-
lic funds on public care and future crisis planning.
We’re now rediscovering that governments do have
the capacity and power to roll out complex policy
with the assistance of unions, NGO’s, the community
services sector and the full support of the Austra-
lian public, whose voluntary cooperation with phys-
ical distancing measures has seen the virus all but
disappear (for now). Our willingness to voluntarily
isolate ourselves in our homes and neighbourhoods
demonstrates our common decency to consider the
health of the most vulnerable when presented with
coherent advice by the medical and scientific com-
munity. The power of the slogan, ‘We’re all in this
together’, and the sense of social solidarity has nev-
er been more palpable, even though we’re unable to
realise it’s full potential due to physical distancing.
But... and this is the catch... while this crisis has re-
newed our appreciation for funding social services
and public institutions, we’ve never had leaders and
politicians who’ve been more short-sighted and
resistant to crisis planning, scientific evidence and
public scrutiny. Australia, UK and USA have elect-
ed leaders and governments whose track record
in these areas are atrocious. The federal govern-
ment’s response to the bushfires was underwhelm-
ing at best, and criminally negligent at worst. The
collective response to the climate crisis has been
the same. Undermining of the CSIRO in Australia,
the scrapping of the Pandemic Response Group by
Trump in the USA and the aggressive sidelining of
scientific evidence has begun to define our era as
one of being ‘post-truth’.
While governments, public institutions and commu-
nities are focussed, as one, on this health crisis, what
will happen when this crisis ends and another be-
gins? Will the fallout be a younger generation lad-
ened with debt, a system in crisis, without a plan for
the climate emergency ahead, having learnt noth-
ing from the experience we’re now going through?
With community engagement over this health and
social crisis so high, now is the opportunity we as
off-gridders, permaculturalists and conscious citi-
zens, have been building towards for more than a
generation. The ethics, practises, technologies and
methods of organising that have been advocated in
the mainstream by sustainable living pioneers since
the 1970’s are now more important than ever. What’s
different now though is there’s an intuitive realisa-
tion at the community level, that we need to put our
house in order. We can no longer neglect our local
neighbourhoods for the sake of stock market num-
bers on computer screens, that have no connection
to our health or the health of the people and planet
we love.
The return to the home, the heart of any economy,
has reawakened a neglected fact: that our health
and happiness ultimately depends on wheth-
er our home life nurtures our well-being. This
is even more critical during a time of crisis, when
essential resources such as food, water and ener-
gy may be in short supply. The more we have to
travel long distances for food (that’s already trav-
elled long distances!) and rely on external sources
to power, heat and water our homes, the less ca-
pable we are of surviving and thriving when cen-
tralised grid systems and authorities are unable to
assist. Retrofitting our homes to capture more wa-
ter, be more energy efficient, reducing our energy
demands through behavioural changes, connecting
with other households to share skills and resources
will all become daily realities of the 21st century so-
ciety.
The demand for knowledge and expertise in food
gardening has brought the local food system and
food security to the centre stage. Horticulturalists,
permaculturalists and edible garden growers and
experts have been rolling out online education and
consultation services to meet the increasing de-
mand. Seed saving, establishing vegetable beds,
compost-building, produce-sharing and
accessing public land for food production are now
being appreciated for their ability to increase com-
munity resilience and self-reliance. Developing hubs
of community connection to share these skills and
resources will become more relevant the further we
crash into the climate crisis. Community gardens,
farmers markets, social centres, neighbourhood
meet ups to share skills and produce. All these spac-
es and places of meeting can now be used to grow
community power and resilience. Accessing public,
commercial and residential land in cities, suburbs
and regional areas for community gardens, mar-
ket gardening and commercial food production will
be imperative if we’re to avoid increasingly fragile
supply chains between farm and table. This is espe-
cially so in suburbs which have poor food security
currently due to a glut in fast food and large super-
market chains. There’s no replacement for having
healthy food planted firmly in our backyard, front
yard and surrounding open-spaces.
ufacturing, retrofitting households, first-aid and
medical care, foraging, how to facilitate communi-
ty-building etc.
Such a crisis will need all of us to be first respond-
ers to help the vulnerable and others in our neigh-
bourhoods. Requiring all levels of government to
divest political power,decision-making on policy
and resource allocation must be a prerequisite for
future responses to crisis. The instinctive response
by our current political system to entrench cor-
porate interests and apply band-aid solutions to
perennial social problems of job insecurity and
social inequity, should give us pause to consider
whose interests they’re acting in. While this crisis is
fresh in our minds, the time is ripe to begin the dis-
cussions about how we can empower ourselves
and our communities for a democratic renewal
that’s long overdue.
Now it’s time to begin organising in our
homes, neighbourhoods and councils, to de-
velop skills and institutions that allow us to
build community resilience in the face of cri-
sis.
The centralised grids of political and economic
power are weakening. People are realising that the
ultimate power for survival rests in their hands. To
garden, to build, to care and to hold those dearest
to us. With the wealth of experience in the practi-
calities of living off-the-grid in rural, regional and
urban areas, we can now begin sharing important
skills and knowledge whose time has come. With
increasing purpose we must take this moment for-
ward to continue sharing and planning with eager
citizens who now see the logic of caring for people
and the planet from the ground up.

With our collective consciousness now fully aware Through the social solidarity shown by our readi-
of what a sudden crisis can look like and how our ness to practise physical distancing and demand-
homes and neighbourhoods provide us with front- ing our political system respond using tried and
line support, we’ll need to reinvent community insti- tested forms of social support, we’ve been able to
tutions around the essentials of food security, mu- weather this crisis. We’ve proven we can depend
tual aid and government service delivery. A form of on one another.
community-control based on local citizen’s assem-
blies that are responsive and responsible to us, the
community, will allow for direct participation from
those who are most in need, most vulnerable and
most likely to be the people who’ll do the heavy lift-
ing in a time of crisis. In this current state of emer-
gency, nurses, carers, teachers, supermarket atten-
dants, delivery drivers, etc. have been the essential
workers that’ve kept society from collapsing.

The future crises predicted by scientists and other

experts will be all encompassing and require a so-
ciety-wide mobilisation of expertise, skills and hu-
man ingenuity. Building local institutional capacity
will need to be about skill-sharing and upskilling in
household food production, repairs and basic man-
www.oftheearth.net
 Why you should hire an architect
to help you go off grid?
By Tim Smith - Registered Architect & Builder
“A designer is an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective econo-
mist, and evolutionary strategist.” - Buckminster Fuller
Building or renovating a home to be off grid or just more sustainable can be very
difficult for a typical client. There are so many moving parts and it can be tricky to
manage a project if you don’t have the expertise or knowledge. This is why hiring an
architect could be the most critical step in your off grid home.
Experts in Passive Design
Architects are formally trained with at least 5 years of university education. All good
architects have a thorough understanding of passive design principles. Architects are
also informed around material choices and can balance embodied and operational
energy considerations with your aesthetic style and function.
Big Picture Thinking
Architects are trained to see the larger context of how your home will work now and
into the future. They create environments that are comfortable to be in, socially and
environmentally
responsible, functional
for the people who will use them,
and flexible enough to adapt with changing family/occupant
dynamics over time. Good architecture is a great long-term investment.
Eye for Detail
Once the “big picture” concept has been developed, a good architect will
work with their client to craft the intimate details that makes a client feel
at home. This is especially evident in spaces like kitchens where archi-
tects finesse minute details (handles, cabinet operation, power locations)
to suit their client’s lifestyles. These details can be discussed, explored
and tested before tradesmen are on site and give you ample time to
consider exactly how you want your home to feel and function.
Creative Problem Solving
Almost all projects will have some constraints imposed upon them from
the site, council or budget. A good architect will work on creative solutions
to those constraints that maximise their clients return. Imaginative use of
materials and space can create an exhilarating home environment.
Keep the budget in check
Early architect involvement in your project can ensure that your brief and
your budget are not misaligned. During the process architects should
continue to update their client and let them know if their vision has ex-
ceeded their budget.
Keep the contractor in check
By the time your project gets on site the architect will know every detail
and understand why those design decisions have been made. By retain-
ing their services to oversee the construction they can ensure that the
contractor completes the work in line with your vision and requirements.
At BRD Studio, we believe architecture and construction are
intrinsically linked. In collaboration with our clients and their
sites, our designs demonstrate our creativity, holistic
approach and understanding of materials.

Every project is unique and requires a thorough

understanding of people, place and their
ongoing relationship. We seek to create
outcomes that enrich the lives of our
clients and their environment.

Dividing our time between the

design studio and worksite
allows us to craft solutions
with purpose and
meaning.

KV HOUSE - KANGAROO VALLEY, NSW

OFF GRID FAMILY HOME

OWNER BUILDER CLIENT
BUSHFIRE RESISTANT

At BRD Studio we pride ourselves on

creating long lasting connections with
our clients, their homes and their land.
Not only can we provide architectur-
al services, but we are also licensed
builders in both NSW and Victoria.

Please contact us at
hello@brdstudio.com.au
to discuss any project big or small. www.brdstudio.com.au
Next Off-Grid Living Festival
10th -11th April 2021
Entrepreneurial Thinking - Developing a success-oriented mindset
If you’ve got a vision that includes starting or growing your unique business or creating change in your life or community -
nerves, fear and hesitance are just three things that may just get in your way - big time.

When people make the shift to an off-grid or self-sufficient lifestyle this is often paired with many LIFE CHANGES and NEW PROJECTS. If
you’re in this situtation you maybe considering how to make money indepentantly, starting a small home business or earning funds
from doing what you love. The advice below applies to anyone looking at a change in lifestyle or starting a new business or project.
So, what do the masters do? How did they overcome these limiting emo-
ut and tions to become market leaders? We’re not saying become a market leader,
1 - Seek o ce c h allenge but maybe we could pick up a few tips that get you on your way to success.
emb ra works Whether success means making money, growing food, starting a community
S!’ and then E
who says ‘Y azing how
Be the one done. It’s am
project or imbracing your passions. Here are five things you can do to smash
g e t it time
out ho w to
rn in a sh o rt space of through negative thoughts and develop a success-oriented mindset:
ill lea n’t is not
much you w th e c hallenge. Ca
e d a t ying
AND succe ry . Y o u know the sa
b u la Turn
in your voca a n ’t , th e n you can’t”?
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“if you say y n d when you sa
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this on its
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T re a t fa ilure as a
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e n e d to m ntry. r n in g e x
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told st didn’t get the
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ost-it notes
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. My u n c o n sc do with of a mistake
second wind ons to win b e ca u se
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Embracing th e o p p o rt unity the firs at
involves bein pur-
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’s ju st
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a ke to open the
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Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020

3 - Embrace creativity 4 - Surround yourself with
5 - Stand in y
Those who are creative need not fear the
the right people our Power
Trust who you are. Standing
competition, because they will always be Jim Rohn, a famous 20th century entrepre- can hold the key in your Power
one step ahead. Use your creative talents to neur said that we are the average of the to your success.
act prosperity, be Think and
innovate in your business and community. five people we spend the most time with. open with yourse
well as to others lf as
Without creativity, we stagnate. If circum- Within nature the number is seven. Take a . Make wise choi
the answers whe ces - find
stances are adverse, what can you create look at the five people you surround your- rever they might
be.
to turn things around? I worked in a pivot- self with? Are they inspirational or toxic? Enjoy and encour
al role for a market leader in its niche for age - feel the en
resourceful - ad ergy. Be
ten years and I didn’t consider the compe- Surrounding yourself with positive role apt and change
stuck in old way . Don’t get
tition a threat. I never really thought about models and friends is vital for your own s. The more you
these, the more focus on
the competition. On reflection, I was either mindset. Wouldn’t you rather be with you will attract th
es and successe e resourc-
young and fearless or, more likely, what we inspiring people than nay-sayers? Look s you are lookin
and your busine g for. Try it
did was always ahead of the curve – and within the groups easily accessible to you ss and commun
to reflect your dr ity will start
creative! We delivered conferences and – family, friends, business colleagues, local eams.
workshops across the UK and Europe and networks and community groups and even
witnessed some amazing developments of online to meet more inspiring people. Plan
the time, by creating events that brought to grow your mind, not limit your potential.
people together to hear, learn and explore
new things.

Listen to these words from Napoleon Hill

in your mind:

“The mind that is driven by the urge of

necessity, or out of love to create, devel-
ops more rapidly than does the mind that
is never stimulated to greater action than Entrepreneurial Thinking is our men-
that which is necessary for existence. The toring program to assist aspiring en-
imaginative faculty of the human mind is trepreneurs to achieve their goals by
the greatest piece of machinery ever cre- approaching challenges and opportu-
ated.” nities from a different perspective. To
find out how we can help you unlock
your entrepreneurial potential, book a
time to talk to us now -

http://bit.ly/tcebooking or call
Pat Grosse Pat on 03 9005 5889.
The Community Entrepreneur
www.thecommunityentrepreneur.com
Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020

A Solution to your
Tiny Toilet Needs!
The bathroom is often the biggest challenge
when building a tiny house. With space at a
premium, clever, innovative and compact
products are needed in the designing pro-
cess. Also, the requirement to be mobile is a
factor to be taken into consideration.
The handling of waste and its’ disposal is a
very hot topic in the tiny house world.
Some people still want a traditional flushing
toilet, but this involves a sewage or septic con-
nection as well as plumbing for water.
An easier and popular solution, is the use of a
waterless composting toilet. However, with this
comes to mind the bucket type systems, which
can be quite odorous. There is also the thought
of having to look at the remains sitting in the
bucket.
In all, this is by far the best
solution for your tiny house.
More detail can be found at
www.naturehead.com.au
or call Greg on 1800 70 7076
Introducing the “Natures Head“ waterless
composting toilet! With this toilet, many of
these fears have been laid to rest. The design
requires NO water for flushing. There is NO
plumbing required (however you can divert
the urine out to a small trench if the Nature’s
Head is located in a permanent position).
As far as odour goes, there is none! This sur-
prises many first-time users. “How can this be?”
is often the comment. The fact that the urine
and faecal matter are separated, by the clever
design of a urine diverter in the bowl, ensures
the system works efficiently. The result, NO
SMELL, wonderful! The flap that closes off the
composting chamber from view makes certain
there is nothing to see. The compost chamber
works well because there is an agitator which
mixes the waste through the coir-peat, aerat-
ing the mix. There is no need to add any fur-
ther mulch after each use. This chamber only
needs to be emptied after about 80 uses and
that is easy. Just empty into a bio-degradable
or compostable bag and drop into a rubbish
bin.
The small footprint of the unit works in well with
the low space availability in the tiny house and
installation is a breeze. The unit comes with all
fittings required and power requirements are
low. The ventilation fan only uses 12 volt and
0.125 watt, but if your tiny house is set up for
240V power a small power adapter is all that
is needed.
Off Grid Living and Business - The Lessons of the last six months

Our story is about changing and adapting -

a Permaculture principle By Kay Saarinen

Our permaculture farm & business has endured in the last 6 months - drought, fire, minor floods and
now we are all dealing with this virus. If you could put the last 6 months into a new amusement ride at
dreamworld, you would have a winner of a rollercoaster. The challenge for us is to turn that winner of
a ride, with its massive ups and downs, into positive experiences, lessons and assets for us, our farm
and business.

Let us introduce ourselves, we are Kay, Gregg and Gemma Saarinen. For the last 18 years we have
built from scratch our straw bale home, farm and our business on our 6 acre permaculture sustain-
able farm in the foothills of the Bega valley, Wyndham. We are 100% off grid, eco & sustainable. Gen-
erating & storing our own solar power & water, for our house and lab, and an abundance of food. We
use pure organic principles to grow a range of herbs which we use to manufacture by hand for our
eco ‘seed to skin’ skincare products - Saarinen organics.

We added orchards, chickens, ducks and guinea pig runs, have sheep, had milking goats, and grew
organic veggies for market, our late November frost decided for us that this is not the right place to
grow veggies commercially – at which point we changed - we adapted.

Gregg went back to carpentry in the local area, specializing in alternative methods I turned our vegie
patch into a herbal patch (more frost resistant plants) with the intent to sell to co-ops in bulk. After
my first harvest I realised the return was grim so…. I changed - I adapted.

Following my passion, I found my purpose. I was studying naturopathy and herb culture when our
daughter Gemma was born, she had eczema. At the time I was studying the topical component and
made my first ointment from calendula and this moment was the birth of Saarinen Organics. Fast
forward to now and we have a very successful, award-winning business, with both of us now here on
our farm, working on our business full-time.

PERMACULTURE - to be able to adapt and change

In our planning stage we thought hard about drought, fire and floods. And on the 1st of February this
year a fire ripped through our area, we were told on numerous occasions that our property was not
defendable, so we evacuated 7 times before the fire hit. I am happy to say that most of our property
and home survived. In fact our property had the least damage on our side of the road – sadly 8 other
homes burnt.
 WHY? Could have been luck, could have been the specific conditions – or perhaps good planning. In the early stages we
researched what shrubs were fire retardants, we looked at what were the most vulnerable sides of our property, we planted
heavily on those sides and all our buildings (luckily it was the west side) were mainly walled, little windows, no raised floors.
The fire burnt the surrounding properties, though when the fire came through our place the trees slowed it down (we also
worked hard to get rid of leaves and sticks, and any other fuel on the ground) and trickled in, burning up to just 1 metre from
the house. We lost tanks, irrigation, plants, orchard netting and fences, but no buildings which we have 5 of, all left, unattend-
ed, to defend themselves.

DROUGHT FLOOD SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS

We put in a bore that is pumped using Even though we boarder a We also set our business up to adapt and
solar up to a tank that gravity feeds creek we made sure we were change if a crisis happened and we couldn’t
the whole property. We put in a wa- well above the flood line of the do face to face markets, i.e. digital ready. And
terless composting toilet, drip irriga- 50 year flood mark (which we it’s been fantastic to adapt and change from
tion, recycled grey water system. did hit a few years back). our normal income of markets when the virus
hit. To make an income from a sustainable
TIPS business successfully, the clue in the heading
1 - Market research “sustainable”.
Where do you want to sell - local markets - online - shop - wholesale etc
It must resonate with you for it to be sustainable.

2 - What to make and sell

Take a look around where you would like to sell, find the gaps, try not to do what others are
doing, remember to create a sustainable business you’ll need to stand out.
When we were selling vegies I noticed that most stalls concentrated on 1 element for ex-
ample - Garlic - sold fresh, jarred, minced, dried. Or Tomatoes - fresh, dried, sauced, chut-
neys etc
3 - Value add and be versatile
So for example you can grow the best tomatoes, no-one else is doing it and you can sell at
farmers markets. Diversify within your niche’ - there will be seconds and excess stock, and
you can’t post fresh tomatoes in the mail - so what about sun-drying them. Now they are
light, preserved, easily posted and a solution to the waste.

www.saarinenorganics.com
VIRUS
We are now back home and using this time to heal our property from the fires, we are
back manufacturing, and are 100% making an income from the digital platforms we had
in place. Our low cost of living with solar power, slow combustion for heating and cooking
will get us through this hell of year okay, thanks to permaculture, eco, sustainable living
and the ability to change and adapt.
Frugal Solutions for a Sustainable Home
Frugal solutions for sustainable living can be implemented by a
homeowner, renter, business or organisation, and the best solutions
can come from a process of considering what are your needs, and
what can your site or building provide.
Many of us pursue an off-grid lifestyle to reduce reliance on sys-
tems and services, such as grid power and mains water, and the
best way to do this is to reduce our use. If we can do this, then when
we investigate how to provide electricity and water on-site and off-
grid, we have reduced the demand on an off-grid system, the cost
for setting it up and also maintaining that system. We have also re-
duced the income we need to generate to pay for it, which can help
lessen our ties to the global economic system to earn that income.
Providing for our needs
To be able to assess where we can make simple and cost-effective
choices, we should start by considering what our basic needs are.
Identifying our needs can help to separate and prioritise those that
are essential to our survival from those that are a luxury or just
nice to have. This will assist with making design choices or where
to spend money, such as prioritising solar passive design to reduce
reliance on mechanical heating & cooling.
Once you understand your needs, a thorough site analysis will help
identify if those needs can be met and how. A site analysis would
include, for example, studying where the sun and wind comes from
throughout the year, and what are the obstacles or constraints
around your site that heighten or limit the the effects of these, such
as trees and neighbouring dwellings. Discovering where the sun can
enter a house will show where to best capture it in winter to warm
inside, or where to block it out in summer to keep the house staying
cooler. In a new house design this will show you where to place your
windows and how to size your eaves. In an existing house, you can
see which windows would benefit from heavy curtains, or where to
build or plant some external summer shade.
Passive solar design provides an easy and cost-effective way to create
a comfortable & energy efficient home that can be done with minimal
construction costs. To employ passive design techniques that address
your specific needs and utilise existing conditions, requires expertise
and knowledge. You can either skill up on this yourself, or consult an
expert to assist with your new design, assess an existing design or ex-
isting building.
Sustainable design and energy efficiency experts can help provide a
range of solutions to suit your budget and project, or you can search
for information on this topic. A great place to start is:
www.yourhome.gov.au
Lowering reliance on energy and water supplies
Reducing energy & water use can be the most frugal solution towards
building a sustainable home, because it can save you money, and
doesn’t always have to cost money to set up. Reducing usage frugally
might come down to choosing to make a behavioural change over
having convenience.
This could simply be getting into the habit of putting on another jump-
er or blanket, or grabbing a hot water bottle to stay warm, rather than
pressing a button to switch
on a heater, even if that
heater is energy efficient
and has low running costs
– it’s still using plenty of en-
ergy. This is an example of
choosing a low-cost, simple
solution over a more com-
plex option that relies on
mechanical systems, gener-
ated power and external in-
puts (money, maintenance,
grid connection & technical knowledge). It also does require some
Re-Architecture provide consultations and
adaptation on a personal level, such as ascertaining if you are
architectural design expertise for existing
able to stay comfortable and be functional in your home at 18 de-
homeowners, renters & businesses, or if
grees rather than 24 degrees. A benefit of this is that you are able you are looking to build new or renovate.
to build resilience by tolerating more variation in temperature.

Increasing tolerance can be done gradually, turning the heating

www.rearchitecture.com.au
thermostat down a degree or 2 every couple of days. A good
temperature range to aim for, that can still be comfortable de-
pending on the type and amount of clothing you wear, is 18-20
degrees in winter and 26-28 in summer. This of course depends on
climate, the relative humidity and your personal circumstances,
such as if you are more an active or stationary person. Take note
of what is comfortable for you (check a temperature gauge near
you throughout the day), what are the conditions outside (outdoor
temperature, rain or shine), and also discuss this with the other
members of your household. Perhaps try changing the tempera-
ture a couple of degrees and record how everyone feels. Once
you have an understanding of your own comfort levels, you can
adapt to what the conditions are each day.

Other personal habits that can help reduce usage are turning off
heating or cooling an hour or so before going to bed (also assists
your body to cool down or warm up so you don’t feel the need to
run heating or cooling overnight), or pausing before putting heat-
ing on in the morning, open up the curtains and ask, ‘can the sun
do the work instead today’.

Of course shouldn’t need to freeze or get heat stress, but you can
work tolerance up to combine with other solutions to make your
house more comfortable for you.

An added benefit of adjusting your home heating & cooling ther-

mostat is helping to build your resilience and tolerance when go-
ing outside on hotter and colder days. The temperature differ-
ence is less and which can put less stress on the body.

By Sarah Rickard -Re-Architecture

Essential Wisdom
Our beautiful home and business.
By Jo Wilson
Our “Essential Wisdom” journey started when we bought an old hos-
pital, complete with operating theatre, at The Rock – a small village
south of Wagga Wagga. When we arrived we found that a large per-
centage of the older population were born in our house - a daunting
thought. I started my business by making soap, using the operating
theatre as my ‘making room’. It is a lovely space where people came Essential Wisdom
to deliver new life and it really was the birth of a new venture for me. Call Jo 0407 271 904 or browse the range
As I make the herbal salves, teas and all things herbal, I feel a sense
of a new healing and a new life for this space.

I found this to be a truly beautiful undertaking and it didn’t take me

long to realised that a store-bought soap would never compare to a
hand-made soap, made with the most beautiful oils and butters. The
Toyota ad of “Oh what a feeling” could well have been written about
hand-made soaps. I then branched out and learnt how to make
creams for the face and body using only 1% chemical input which
acts as a preservative to keep you safe.

And then came the herbs! I cannot tell you how many hours of study
have gone into learning the actions of herbs, the intricacies of our
body and the interaction of the two. The range never seems to end
– teas, elixirs, syrups, salves, shrubs, ointments soaps and bath tea
bags even bath bombs. The essential oils that plants give us excites
or soothes our senses, can rev us up or calm us down. Added to
soaps and creams, inhalers or used as perfumes – there are count-
less ways to feel good and healthy all from a plant.
The best part of this journey is in teaching others to appreciate our
common garden variety herbs and what people call weeds. After my
course people never look at nettles and dandelions the same way.
Halfway through the day I can see the dawning of an ‘ah-ha’ mo-
ment when students realise that this is very simple, safe and do-able.
Instead of running to the pharmacist for a chemical fix for a sore
throat, you can go out to the garden and pick some sage and thyme,
put it in natural honey and take a teaspoon of it, or make a nourish-
ing tea and sip it slowly. These herbs are not just for pizza toppings or
chicken stuffing – they are incredibly beneficial and diverse.
I hold courses in Spring and Autumn when nettles abound and the herbs are jump-
ing out of the ground. I have been very blessed to form a connection to the herbs
and the elder trees that grow around me, and harvest has been abundant. And yes,
I talk to the plants, ask their permission before I harvest, and give them a gift as
well, in way of an energetic thank you.
The wonderment of our plant world always excites me. How utterly stupendous
that trees talk to each other - and many people never get to know that or sadly
never believe it (I encourage you to research this topic).
It is exciting that a Festival such as the Off-Grid
Living Festival brings like-minded people
together where there is no eye rolling or thoughts CLASSES
of weirdness to be seen, and the array of I look forward to seeing
topics is diverse and approached with you all at the event in
enthusiasm. Where you can listen to passionate
2021 and please feel free
people talk about their ideas and areas of
focus, ask questions and gain knowledge. to contact me about my
classes via email -
essentialwisdom@bigpond.com

What’s your intention?
By Rachael Gadd
The past few months have certainly slowed us
down - bushfires, coronavirus lockdown, school-
ing the kids at home. In some ways, they’ve
taken us back to basics. What a great time for
reflection. Our kitchen table discussions have
been going something like this:
In Australia people earn money. These peo-
ple make decisions every day about how their
money is spent. On the other side, businesses
compete to offer these people choices. People
make their purchasing choices based on a va-
riety of factors - like packaging, quality, value,
environmental impact, or social benefit. These
choices then drive and influence the businesses
decisions - they shape the how, the why and the
what when it comes to supplying products.
What do you want to change in the
world? How does your spending make
a difference?
So, when the time comes, please shop with inten-
tion. Take a #roadtripforgood to help business-
es in North East Victoria and the High Country
get back on their feet after the double whammy
of bush fires and virus lockdowns. Check out So-
cial Traders www.socialtraders.com.au for more
examples of social enterprises that you can sup-
port and engage with.
As trade wars ramp-up, now is the perfect time
to start supporting local companies and buying
Australian Made. We can’t be sure what’s go-
ing to happen next, so why not start support-
ing home-grown businesses now. It will not only
enable them to survive through this lockdown,
but perhaps give them the funds needed to start
producing the items that we may not be able to
get from overseas as the world changes.
If you would like to learn more about how to
grow as social enterprise, the Beechworth based
Australian Centre for Rural Enterprise (ACRE) is
a great place to start.
Our social enterprise - The Rustic Bus
We express gratitude to all the people that
have supported The Rustic Bus through our
successful crowdfunding campaign in 2019
and to let you know we’re well on the way to
having the bus ready to stay in by the end of
2020.
A holiday in The Rustic Bus is an intentional
choice. Get off grid, comfortably - in a be-
spoke bus conversion at beautiful locations
in North East Victoria. It’s about prioritising a
memorable and beneficial experience over
spending on yet more objects.
Choosing social benefit - While you’re having a
great holiday you are also supporting a social
enterprise that gives back to the community in
which it operates. A percentage of profits goes
towards providing vulnerable local families
with holidays they desperately need.
We also support other social enterpris-
es through our intentional purchasing poli-
cy. We believe buying from social enterprise
represents the greatest untapped potential in
generating positive, sustainable social impact.
That’s why we love to source products from
other social enterprises.
To follow The Rustic Bus journey and go into
the prize draw to win a one week stay in the
bus in 2021, go to our website
www.therusticbus.com.au and sign up to our
mailing list. We send out useful emails only,
once every month. We’re looking forward to
meeting you.
Off-Grid Living Festival Magazine May 2020
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