Something I’ve been researching and working toward (with mixed success) for a long time has been in the media a lot recently…

After experiencing Cyclone Larry in 2006, I became more aware of the need to be prepared for a disaster. There were 13 of us cut off from civilisation in one house (our friends’ place). Compared to most we had it easy - solar power, independent water source, food in the cupboards and garden, wood stove and so on. But still, there were challenges.

Disaster-preparedness is no longer seen as a freaky survivalist behaviour. For more information on stockpiling food, see the sites below.

Emergency Pantry List

Food Lifeboat

Most local councils and/or state governments have disaster preparendness manuals or guides. Apart from food - consider power (cooking, lighting, heating etc), water, medical needs, hygiene requirements and more.

Autumn is harvest time. Embrace nature’s abundance.

Immersing children in the rhythm of the seasons assists their unfolding as spiritual beings in a physical world. Recognising rhythms – night and day, the seasons, lunar cycles, festivals and traditions – have become less important to us as humans. For our ancestors, these were the essence of life.

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This is a recipe I get asked for a lot. It’s our favourite jam here. So far I’ve made 2 batches this summer, with at least one more larger batch to come. I originally got my recipe from Greenharvest and adapted it.

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“So my challenge to you is to choose three items or actions that you currently have in your life that you’ll modify or give up completely.” from Rhonda’s Blog.

I couldn’t choose 3 from the top five personal waste items list, so have come up with my own challenges…
My gifts for 2008 and beyond are:

1. Remember my re-usable shopping bags, and to make or buy some vegie bags like Mummabare’s or these.
2. Less Garbage: Reduce the amount of packaged foods eaten - jars and tins mainly - so that we’re producing less ‘recycling’. We’re currently lasting a month between dump trips (we take our own refuse to the Waste Transfer Station), but perhaps we could last 5 or 6 weeks instead?

3. Standby Power: switch off appliances at the wall when not in use. I’ve tried to implement this at home, but we still have little LEDs scattered around the place most nights - so room to improve there!

I hope that some of you might choose three gifts for our planet too!

From the lovely Deb’s blog and now my turn to continue the thread of connection.

The first three people to comment on this post will receive a gift from me, sometime within the next 365 days.

Who knows when it will turn up, or what it will be, but rest assured, it will arrive.

All you have to do is promise to make the same declaration on your blog, and send out gifts to three of your lovely readers.

Easy Peasy.

As I’ve mentioned a few times, I started writing for Natural Child recently. If you go to http://www.naturalchildmagazine.com/ and click on the “Preview available now…” message with the butterfly and baby’s legs, you can then get to a page to download a 2MB PDF of the first issue of the magazine. Enjoy!

I feel like summer has just whizzed by. On the coast the summers seemed to last all year, but here the changes in seasons are more marked. Already the nights have been cooler… Just a few short weeks and Autumn will be upon us.

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