The Inspiration Garden, Morningside , Brisbane

Yesterday I spent the morning in this wonderful garden set up by Andrew and Nancy Kent. 

I added an album on my Facebook page here!

  

Great story on the Inspiration garden at a growing venture: EDIBLE YARDS

And the blog for the Inspiration Garden.

Nancy was one of the speakers at the recent Biodiversity Dialogue events I held in conjunction with my February Exhibition. She gave a short talk on the project and how it is set up to include community and function over time.

Flyer for Biodiversity Dialogue event

Blog banner and contact details.
More here: BLOG

Nancy: left standing and right working: images Edible Yards

Text from EDIBLE YARDS POST:

The Inspiration Garden is a neighbourhood permaculture garden situated near the Seven Hills bushland, Brisbane. The Inspiration Garden began when Nancy and Andrew Kent decided to take a small step towards a more sustainable lifestyle by creating a place where all are welcome to make friends and learn about sustainable lifestyle and permaculture.

The garden is now well established with a great following of volunteers supporting, growing and developing the garden, with over 600 people paying a visit to the garden since it’s creation in October 2010.

Nancy Says “Our volunteering program is unique as each volunteer works one on one beside an experienced gardener. We tailor the volunteering session to the needs of the volunteer. There is always so much to do around the garden that there is a wide variety of activities to choose from. If it is raining we do indoor activities like seed saving and packaging.”

Nancy holds educational courses and workshop sessions which include organic gardening and soil creation, what weeds and pests are saying to us, sustainable eco gardening, how to grow food in pots, Awakening the Dreamer Symposiums, film evenings, neighbourhood garden cook ups and Inspiring the Heart reflection sessions.

All are invited to contact the gracious hosts of this venture to participate in workshops on offer or in volunteering and learning more about the project. Lateral thinkers that they are ... there are many ways community are able to benefit and contribute to the life if this project.

Our encouragement and support for such ventures is paid back in so many ways. I hope you find a chance to visit sometime if in this region. 

Thanks for a wonderful time Nancy and Andrew!

I'll be back soon!

Below: The Garden layout.   Read more at history link.

See you there!

Update on the Food Safety Modernisation Act

Anyone who visited a few days ago will probably have read the previous post on the Brisbane-based venture Food Connect which supplies local, sustainably produced food in the South East Queensland region. This excellent organisation links producers with the community, bringing greater connection to what's involved in the entire process from farm to table.'

I picked up a lead through this site that took me on a most circuitous journey to find out what was behind the story coming out of the US on Food Safety Legislation. Some may ask why bother knowing what's happening over there ... but in a global landscape the ripple effect does indeed make it smart to take notice of what's occurring elsewhere.... issues travel these days!

The claim circulating was suggesting The Food Safety Modernisation Act of 2009 would eliminate home gardens and put organic farmers out of business.

As I wondered further about this my thinking centred around why something this major had not come to my attention before ... surely if it were true everyone would be up in arms. With the film "Food Inc" coming to mind ... and the track record Transnationals have had in lobbying and pushing for problematic, even disastrous legislation to get through I was left with... surely not.. but maybe!

So I emailed a number of friends and bloggers who either live in the US or whose curiosity about such matters might have meant they would know of this story and consequently set my mind at rest.

Click here if you wish to read about the Food Inc film

What a wonderfully worthwhile call out. Responses filtered back... along with a few from people Id thought of contacting but hadn't got round to who happened to read the post. Some came as comments ... others as emails. I was so pleased to learn that this wasn't anything so sweeping and sinister as rumour would have it. Chinese whispers via social media had successfully resulted in misinformation.

We live with misinformation and distortion of stories on a daily basis. This is one story that needed to be clarified and put in perspective.

The circulating claim:  The Food Safety Modernisation Act of 2009 would eliminate home gardens and put organic farmers out of business obviously struck a lot of people as actually believable in the light of recent history.

Snopes.com said the claim was "mostly false" (interesting in itself) and went about outlining their take on the Bill closing with Myths and Facts and then referring readers to the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defence Fund ..... which mentions the possibility this bill would place undue financial and regulatory burdens on smaller farms and businesses that primarily engage in the local production and sale of food items.  (information supplied by Sharmon Davidson)

You can read the summary of the bill here at Govtrack.us  and the truly perservering types might like to read the complete bill here supplied by The Artist Within Us.  Thanks to all who contributed thoughts and links to sites worth reading! 

This entire exercise was very telling.

When it comes to Food legislation, safety, food security and the future people are becoming more and more distrustful and skeptical about what they're told...with increasing anxiety over all aspects of food production. Read most of the comments that have come in concerning this story and the signs are there.

Australia has elected to celebrate in 2012 the National Year of the Farmer and the objectives are;

• Establish closer ties between Australia's rural and urban communities.
• Celebrate the broad range and fine quality of the produce our farmers grow and harvest.
• Share how Australia is leading the world in farming techniques and innovation.
• Highlight the essential role of Australian agriculture to the maintenance of national and global food security.
• Promote the role our farmers play as environmental managers, creating and delivering sustainability through best practice management.
• Recognise farmers for feeding the nation and sustaining our vital agribusinesses.
• Communicate to all Australians the importance of farming and rural communities to our national economy and social fabric.
• Encourage Australians to reflect on the origins of the food they consume and the fibre they use every day and perpetuate the call to buy Australian produce.
• Focus on -- and prepare for -- the future of farming in Australia by creating awareness of career opportunities in agriculture and related areas.

There's a sense of urgency to this plan. I dont know when it was devised and how it gained momentum... but its clear that there is a need to massively overhaul the position we place our farmers in in the scheme of things.

an image of the contemporary industrialised food scenario

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!! ONE DOOR CLOSES....ANOTHER IS OPEN

What a year 2010 was! The year-long residency at the Brisbane Botanic Gardens has come to a close... sadly ... but happily this is just the beginning of the next chapter for the project Homage to the Seed.... begun tentatively last February.


I had no idea how many stories, people and initiatives I would touch down with through this project...but it has been extraordinary, precious and hugely uplifting to say the least. 


Its far too early to outline what 2011 will involve ... lets just say research on seeds, considerable reflection and also painting at the Paddington studio has continued to be a big part of daily life... with of course breaks for a recent trip to Melbourne, Xmas and time with friends and family. We've also been having the wettest and, for some, toughest festive season in years. Read a story just posted at my other blog!

New years image from the floods of Qld. See more at that story above!

People are still sending me links to wonderful Seed intitaves... so there are lots of posts waiting for me to put up as soon as I can!


If you wish to visit my latest web-link that I started new years eve for some whimsy click seed capsules and you will find my experiment with Tumblr which I am really enjoying... I love the fact that the archive is a storehouse for images I wish to return to, think more about or use in some way! I was a little rusty at first and have to tidy it up but it is SO convenient and I like the feel of it I must say.


From the archive:

Marian Bijlenga, collage from her book 'written weed'

uncertaintimes: thethirdmind: Materia Medica of Vegetable Origin

eyehavenoi:

Lotus Seeds (Hawaiian Sea)

Tumblr offers a fascinating world and a really viable respository for images, links and ideas.

Food bowl for a continent under water!

Last year Food Security emerged as an issue to take seriously in mainstream media. Events such as the Queensland floods point to the kind of phenomena being discussed as a reason we must rethink  the sustainability of the systems in place - food, water, soil, farming and food production... to cope with changes we are experiencing with climate.


...here's something else to think about in 2011... from National Geographic on population... their theme for the year!

I wish you all a wonderful 2011  and hope you will be back to visit, leave comments and links ... and that together we will find ways to be more creative about how we manage the resources of this planet for the best interests of all!


Abundant blessings to all!
Sophie

followers are also leaders....

In the blogosphere most blogs have followers - call them what you will.

When a new follower clicks on I like to go visit and see what they are bringing to their realm.  Over and over again I am inspired and for so many different reasons. I had a sensationally busy June and July and that's when I had new followers coming along for the ride both here and at my other blog and was finding it hard to keep track.

Can I say welcome to all who have signed on.... its great to be part of a expanding dialogue.

Today there was a new blogger on board and I was so thrilled to see he had posted a story that I also discovered last week and had not yet got round to posting on. He has more than one blog and is doing the most fascinating projects. This one here: The artist as family links with the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, as well as a residency in Newcastle previously and currently yet another engaging one.

FOOD FOREST - OUR CURRENT PROJECT

Artist as Family has been working on a public food forest in Sydney. We proposed this project after being invited by the Museum of Contemporary Art to make a new work for the exhibition In the Balance: Art for a Changing World. We have been documenting the developments of our Food Forest here as it transitions from artist's concept to community asset. This blog will also link to like-minded activities, thinkers, communities and cooperatives around the world who are making intense, creative and joyous transitions to more ecologically embedded ways of living.

Enjoy life, get active, fight the private-capital-pollution ideology that has caused ecological crises!

The other blog which I discovered first is called  Permapoesis and links you to other projects by this industrious artist Patrick Jones. Of course I was immediately drawn to this image...

Twelve Russian scientists famously chose to starve to death rather than eat the unique collection of seeds and plants they were protecting for humanity during the 900-day siege of Leningrad in the second world war. But the world's first global seed bank now faces destruction once more, to make way for a private housing estate.

Read on here.

This was the same story I found at Civil Eats last week:

Development Threatens One of World’s Oldest Fruit Seed Collections

• ENVIRONMENT
• FOOD ACCESS
• TAKE ACTION

August 9th, 2010  By Paula Crossfield

As droughts threaten the wheat harvest in Russia, resulting in a ban on exportsthere this year that is driving up prices abroad, something entirely different now threatens one of the world’s most extensive collection of fruits and berries at the Pavlovsk Experimental Station, a seed bank 19 miles southeast of St. Petersburg: development.
Perhaps one of the oldest in the world, the seed bank was started 84 years ago by Nikolai Vavilov, who died of starvation in one of Joseph Stalin’s labor camps in 1943. His seed bank was famously guarded by 12 scientists who eventually starved to death during the 900-day Siege of Leningrad, despite the fact that they were surrounded by edible seeds. Now, a court will decide on Wednesday if the “priceless” collection of 4,000 varieties from all over the world–which includes 1,000 types of strawberries, and 100 varieties each of raspberries, gooseberries and cherries–will be handed over to the Russian Housing Development Foundation to be cleared for housing. READ MORE

An interesting thought from Patrick's blog by Jiddu Krishnamurti to leave you with:
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."