Water Saving Tip

I hope someone finds this useful. I have discovered a way to save on water and wanted to share it here!

Some modern houses have a pipe connected to the water system that comes out of the wall outside. I have been placing the watering can underneath this pipe to capture any water that might trickle out and have discovered that over a day or two it fills up! This might seem like a small thing, but in the long run, it will make a difference to your water bill!

This project has not only made me think about ways I can make changes in my life that affect food sustainability - it has also crossed into other areas of sustainability. Who'd have thought? :)

Houston, we have lift off...

... Yes, we have lift off! And a problem.

In my previous post about my fair test on rocket I was fairly disappointed with its rate of growth. Things have certainly changed within one week! Though the results are a confronting for a few reasons.

The mainstream is almost three times as big as the organic. The control is doing fairly well considering all I give it is water. Sadly, the organic is looking quite small and undeveloped.

It has really made me think about the demands we make upon the earth. Perhaps rocket should be growing at the pace and rate of the organic plant? I don't have an agriculture background so I am oblivious to what should be happening. This process has made me realise just how uneducated I am about how my food is grown, but it's also challenged me to find out more.

Also, while I've always known that the appearance and size of produce is not a measure of its nutritional value or natural health, the fact that organic can look quite underwhelming for what you are paying really hit home.. I believe that is one of the key reasons mainstream farming methods are preferred over organic and continue to be supported by the majority of food buyers.

I can really see how this would be a valuable inquiry experience for my future students - they will be the ones who will determine the future of food sustainability. Surely, education is one of the most powerful keys to finding a solution to this problem.

Discovering chives, nasturtiums and wild strawberries

Since our presentation last week I have made a number of lovely discoveries!

I spent some time in my backyard yesterday afternoon pruning and clearing and cultivating the produce in our vege boxes. I was busy planting some of the organic beans and cherry tomatoes (the same ones we handed out at our presentation) when I came across chives and wild strawberries.

Well, I initially thought that the chives was grass (whoops!) and that the wild strawbs were weeds (double whoops!). I realised that the chives couldn't possibly be grass with the roots they had (and they smelled quite strong) and my husband came to the rescue of the wild strawbs.

And while he was helping me identify the strawbs, he introduced me to nasturtiums, which to my surprise, he informed me, are edible!  

So we ate some nasturtiums from our garden, while I cleared some space for our chives and staked our wild strawbs with the hopes that they'll produce fruit. 


I also had to lengthen the supporting trellis for my organic pea as it had grown too tall for the original trellis! Very excited to see that growth. I'm going to have conniptions when they start to flower and pea pods spring up!

I'm also so very glad that my personal connections with this project are continuing beyond the life of our assessment :)

Sharing is caring

As part of our project we need to share our findings with our cohort at uni. Today we'll be telling them all the things we have been doing and sharing our blog with them for the first time. It's exciting and a little bit nerve wracking!

Yesterday we made a decision about exactly what our solution to the issue of food sustainability is. We decided that the most important thing is for people to experience a connect with where and how food is grown. So part of the solution is just to share our blog with as many people as possible. The other part is for people to have the same experience that we have had, particularly about growing their own food.

So today we will be handing out little packs of seeds from the Jane St Community Garden at West End. They are packaged in brown paper so everything is recycled and biodegradable. It also has a link to our blog so everyone can find out more about our journey and more importantly, food sustainability.

We'll be encouraging our fellow students to comment on our learning through the blog and share their own journey and connections with growing their food.

Fingers crossed it all goes well!

To Fair Trade or not to Fair Trade? That is the question...

If I was to tell you that just by the choice of product you buy you could ensure:

• no child labour 
• provision of a fair price for all farmers for their produce
• better health care for people in developing countries
• increased infrastructure in developing countries
• farming practices are improved to better look after the environment
• conservation of certain endangered animals
• improved educational outcomes for children and young people

You'd choose that product, wouldn't you? I would. Fair Trade products do promise all of these things and yet, I don't always buy them.

I've known about Fair Trade for a while now but really just a surface knowledge. I didn't really understand, until I started looking into it, just how much of a difference I can make to the lives of people on the other side of the planet by my choice of chocolate, coffee and tea. I guess I wasn't always doing my shopping in places where you can get Fair trade products, which until recently has been in health food and other specialty shops.

But, Fair trade is becoming more and more popular. Big companies like Cadburys are starting to realise the importance of fair trade practices because more and more customers are asking for it. So really, it's up to us. If we think that it is important that farmers are treated fairly, we need to let big companies know by asking for and buying fair trade products.
This morning, I needed to buy coffee because my Dad was coming over for a Father's Day morning tea. Instead of heading to my favourite coffee house to buy my usual, I actually went in search of Fair Trade coffee. So I guess this process of investigation about sustainable food practices is changing my behaviour!

Oh, and the coffee was delicious! 

The Journey of Chocolate - just how far does our food travel?

When I was in Grade 4 I had one of the most disappointing moments of my young life. Every year Grade 4s at Laburnum Primary School went on a tour of the Cadbury's chocolate factory. My brother had been the year before and had brought home a bag full of free Cadbury's products and stories of free chocolate samples as the tour progressed. I had been watching Willy Wonka for a few years by this and couldn't wait to see the magic of a chocolate factory in action. But alas, for some reason, the Cadbury tours stopped that year. It may have been because the school realised how hard it is to manage 60 children full of sugar. it may have been because Cadbury decided to stop school groups going through their Melbourne factory that year. For whatever reason it was, I was bitterly disappointed and from that day forward have not really thought about how one of my favourite foods is made, or where it comes from.

I had no idea that the cocoa bean is grown on the cocoa tree and that it only grows in tropical parts of the world. I also had no idea that because of this, the majority of the world's cocoa is grown by small family producers in some of the world's poorest nations.

I had no idea that for chocolate to make it to the shop where I buy it, it has to travel 11,464.3 kilometres from where the cocoa bean is grown, to the factory where it is processed. Then another 6,549.11 kilometres from that factory to another one where the chocolate is made. Then another 1,787.89 kilometres to the city where I buy it. That is a total of 19,801.3 kilometres for a block of chocolate that costs $4.

So, by buying a block of chocolate am I contributing to global warming? Should I be looking to buy and eat only food that is grown in my local area? One couple did this and documented their journey on their website the 100 mile diet. It's an interesting experiment and perhaps one that would help more of us realise exactly how our food is grown and how far it travels to get to us.

Sharing a meal - how food can help community connection

I went out for dinner with a couple of friends last night. This used to be something I did regularly, but being a student and not earning money this year, has made it a rare occurrence.  Apart from eating some fantastic Greek food, my friends and I shared personal stories, talked about politics and mostly had a really good laugh. I came home feeling relaxed and connected to a world broader than this little computer and my uni work. It's made me think about how important food is in bringing people together.  A lot of cultural and special events are organised around food. If you look at major religions in the world, the majority of them have some rules or rituals that include food.

So food provides more than just sustenance. But do we still connect as much as we used to around food?
I don't know about others. but my partner and I are in the bad habit of often eating in front of the TV. I know,  it's not a great thing to do,  but it seems to be a time to catch up on current affairs and to zone out for a while. I wonder how many other families in the Western world eat in front of the TV. I guess TV dinners weren't invented for nothing!

Every now and then we make a conscious choice to leave the TV turned off. It's amazing how much more connected and calm we feel as we catch up on the current affairs of our own lives.
So how does this fit into food sustainability? It's something we're looking at in relation to culture and identity (that's related to SOSE in case you didn't notice!). That's why we have an In Our Kitchen page, to explore our connections to food and to share some of the yummy recipes we love to share with our friends and family.

Hungry Planet: What the World Eats

What does the average family eat each week?

Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio set out to answer this question and present their photographic study of families all around the world in a book called Hungry Planet: What the World Eats.

To look through the gallery in three parts follow these links:

Hungry Planet: What the World Eats Part I
Hungry Planet: What the World Eats Part II
Hungry Planet: What the World Eats Part III

As you look through the galleries ask yourself, what does this tell us about food sustainability and the connection of these people to the land they live on? Imagine the kinds of lives they lead and compare it to your own.

rocket is not rocketing

While Jess and Storm are having exciting and interesting experiences with their fair tests, my rocket is steadily growing away ... at an extremely slow and disappointing pace!

My yard isn't the ideal place to grow things though. We originally had a grassy open back yard but my parents didn't have much luck in growing things, after many attempts they admitted defeat and decided to pave and patio it all! We now have a select few plants that grow in the retaining walls that line our backyard and some pot plants.

Because of the lack of light in our backyard throughout the day I struggled to find a place that the plants would have enough sunlight and shade.They now reside on the side of the house (also fully paved) in their pots and look very displaced in our concrete backyard. 

I wonder if brown thumb is genetic.

It's important though, that in undertaking this fair test and in the experience of attempting to grow our own food we learn to work with the environment we have. Not everyone has the luxury of a backyard or a patch of ground to grow veges and herbs in. For our future students this will be a powerful lesson, we might not be able to do much with what we have, but we should do what we can.

Every little effort makes a difference.

It's up to us to see the value of that small contribution and pass it on to others. See this article on David Suzuki's website that outlines some ways you can make a difference too.

Organic, bio-dynamic and fairtrade. What's the difference and why does it matter?

Northey St City Farm has organic markets every Sunday.

All the stall holders are certified organic, but some of them have also suggest they are bio-dynamic or that their produce is grown to classical music. I bought some bio-dynamic eggs from one stall holder and it made me think about all the different terms that surround the notion of eating more sustainably. Or, I guess at least being more conscious about where the food we eat comes from and how it is grown and manufactured.


So what does it mean to be certified organic? What is bio-dynamic and why would food grown that way be better for us? How would bio-dynamic practices promote a better life for the chickens that lay the eggs?

We've started to unpack some of these terms on the Words section of our blog. If you are as confused as we were, check it out as a starting point.

My peas growing into their pods

One of the underpinning themes of our investigation is determining if engagement with the learning experience will foster a behaviour change. To this end we have decided to plot our mood levels when we water, weed or otherwise tend to our plants. Because what better way to foster change than to build a personal connect with what we're doing?

So each morning, I wander down to the garden beds  (in my slippers and PJs mind you), water each plant and make notes about their appearance. On Sundays and Wednesdays I measure their growth as well. Then I decide how I'm feeling based on this activity.

Upon reflection, I've noticed that my moods generally correlate with the 'important' things that are happening that day - uni assessment, field placement, tutoring, lazing around.

But the days I note a change in my plants (so, usually Sundays and Wednesdays), well I cannot contain my excitement! When I observed that the vines from my pea plants had started to curl around their stands, I rushed out and took some photos; I was that excited!

I've also found that I am talking about my peas. A lot. To my husband. To Jess and Shirin. To my family. To my friends outside of uni. I've started to make predictions in the back of mind about what will happen when I go out the next morning. I'm also secretly hoping for a particular plant to be the 'best'. And I cannot wait until pea pods start growing. Now *that* will be an exciting day! :)

Advancement or Decline?

An interesting article I came across, written earlier this year, about scientists altering the genetic makeup of tomatoes in the quest to prolong their self life for up to 45 days!

I wonder if the every day consumer will be made aware of this? And at what cost these scientific advances come to humanity.

Links to food websites with a conscience

Slow Food
Founding in 1989 is a non-profit member-funded organisation that champions the 'slow food' movement in response to the fast-paced, fast-food society that dominates modern life.

Slow food seeks to rekindle interest in modern day food choices by asking us to question the origins of our food, the quality of its taste, how our choices affect others locally, nationally and globally, and reviving local food traditions and practices.

Sustainable Table
Sustainable Table celebrates local sustainable food, educates consumers on food-related issues and works to build community through food.

Vegetarian Times
The world's largest online collection of vegetarian recipes.

The 100 Mile Diet
The 100 mile diet started as a one year experiment with just two individuals in the United States and has spread all over the world. Take the pledge, eat local and join the sustainable food revolution!

One Small Kitchen
One Small Kitchen is a journal of one woman's favourite recipes and musings about food. Real food, mostly vegetarian, in-season wholefoods done simply. Food that is made for delight and wellbeing. Food made to share, celebrate, heal and savour.

Organic vs Non-organic

I'm struggling a bit with the results of my fair test so far. I was really expecting that the organic lettuce would do just as well, if not better, than the non-organic one. But the one I have been feeding the chemical fertiliser is doing twice as well as the other two.

It looks healthier, greener, bigger and more appealing. If I was just going on looks to suggest which method of gardening was better - I'd have to go with the non-organic one. But that just doesn't feel right to me. The lettuce may look fantastic, but the fertiliser I've been putting on it to help it get there is not quite so appealing. It's bright blue! It looks like something you would find in the bottom of a plastic fish tank.   I can't imagine eating something that colour, but it's things like that that go into the food that I eat.

I have gone through stages of trying to eat only organic because I have read that it's better for me and I don't like the idea of putting chemicals in my body. But until I started this experiment, I didn't fully understand how the use of chemicals could actually make things that may not be good for you, look so good. It's amazing  how doing something yourself helps you to understand a concept.

That's why doing Inquiry-based activities are so good for kids' learning, I guess!

Sustainability choice creeps up on me

Today marks Day 15 of our Fair Test where we've each been growing a plant of choice (Jess is growing lettuce, Shirin is growing rocket and I'm growing peas) and testing which fertiliser (organic vs. non-organic) grows the best produce.

Today I went down to my garden bed and discovered something fabulous! I was so excited, I had to grab the camera to capture what I think represents 'nature as art'. The vines on my peas have started to wrap around their stands! This happened over night and I'm so excited by it. My plants are growing and doing what they need to survive by reaching out to something and holding on so tightly. So beautiful!

I couldn't help but take photos of the vines to share on our blog.

And then as I was focusing on the vines, I noticed the beautiful patterns than were emerging on the bigger leaves of the plant.

Exposure to readings for our Art class has really opened my eyes to creativity all around me - even in nature. And yes, I took some close up photos of the leaves as well ...

Look at the detail, isn't it amazing?! Literally splashes of colour.

And then you know what else happened? Well I couldn't stop taking photos there, I ended up walking around the garden and taking photos of everything I could find that interested me or that had depth of colour or line that I'd never really paid much attention to before.

In our back garden we have some mango trees and some garden boxes that we're growing a whole host of veges in. While in our front garden we've got rose beds and lavender bushes lining our verandah and side fence. When I was taking photos of the lavender it got me wondering how I can use the lavender in our home. A little side research project for me to look into because we do buy lavender products and how great would it be if I could use what we're growing in our garden instead? Adding my little contribution to making sustainable and environmental choices.

And there you have it - a personal connection to art, nature and making sustainable choices as a result of a fair test experiment. Who would have guessed? :)

Enriching learning through field trips

Read on our Field Trips tab about the day we visited Northey Street City Farm. The slideshow below has a selection of photos from our day in the sunshine.

We have been planting!

We are conducting a fair test to check the difference between organic and non-organic methods of growing food. For more info check out our Seedlings to Salad page.

Here are just a few photos of Jess planting lettuce with a little help from a furry friend.

The Speech that Silenced the People at the UN Earth Summit 1992 by Severn Suzuki

Children really do care about a sustainable future and can make a difference.

Beautiful word clouds

www.wordle.net

Welcome to our blog!

We've created our blog to document our learnings, findings and research about sustainable food.

Our key question framing our investigation is: How will an understanding of the issues surrounding food sustainability affect our every day food choices?

We're trying to find out what sustainable food is and how we can make better choices that will sustain our future. More so though, we want to find out what sustainable food means to us.

But who are we?

We are a group of three pre-service teachers from Brisbane who are undertaking an inquiry-based project about how we can empower ourselves (and our future students) to make sustainable food choices. Essentially this blog about our journey will inform a resource that we can each use in our future classrooms; but more so than that, it really is about our own learning experiences and how these will impact our day-to-day choices about food sustainability. If at all.

We hope you enjoy the journey as much as we do!