Monthly meetings held at the ‘Ku-ring-gai Centre for Seniors'
259 Pacific Highway Lindfield NSW 2070 on the third Monday
of the month (except Jan)  - all welcome

President's March 2014 Report - Cat Dorey

There are so many new and exciting things happening in permaculture world, but for me one of the  most exciting things is that we now have an Australian permaculture magazine – the first edition of  Pip is heading to mailboxes this month.

As Pip’s founder, Robyn Rosenfeldt says: “Pip is the magazine for our Australian permaculture community.” Pip is the place for people and groups to connect and share ideas, knowledge and experience and stay in touch with what is happening around Australia.” 

There will be articles on various aspects of permaculture as well as profiles on people, projects, gardens, farms, houses and businesses. There will be 'how to' guides, recipes, reviews, a directory containing permaculture related businesses, courses and people and a classifieds section. There is also a great website with articles and a blog here: http://www.pipmagazine.com.au/

One of the exciting things is that the publication of the first edition of the magazine was crowd-funded by 274 people in Aussie permaculture community, including some PSN members. Crowd-funding is such a great idea, in fact I’d say it’s a permaculture principle – sharing the surplus.  We hope to see PSN feature in Pip in future editions, and any writers and photographers out there should contact Robyn with their ideas.

Back on home turf, there is a lot going on at PSN, especially as we prepare for a series of events in the week leading up to International Permaculture Day on 4th read the article below and give some of your time and skills to help us make IPD 2014 awesome.

Finally, I’d like to say a huge glittery thank you to our Shows team leader, Belinda Bean, and everyone who helped make our float in the Sydney Mardi Gras so fabulous. As everyone said on the night, ‘Wow, if we can pull this together in just a month, imagine what we can do next year!”

16 Mar : PSN Hornsby Local Group at the Healthy Living Festival

The Hornsby group will be promoting PSN with a stall at the Healthy Living Festival this weekend on 16th March between 10am–4pm. It’s at Roselea Community Centre and ovals, 647–671 Pennant Hills Rd, Beecroft. You don’t have to be from Hornsby group to help at the stall – please contact Cecilia Bird at: bird_cm2000@yahoo.com.au if you can land a hand. It looks like a great event:
http:// www.hornsby.nsw.gov.au/my-lifestyle/events/healthy-living-festival-taster

 For further details click here.

17 Mar : PSN Monthly Meeting - Angus Stewart, regular on TV's Gardening Australia.

Discussing - The Benefits of worm farming to your soil.

For further details clock here.                 

04 May : International Permaculture Day

A main calendar event of the Permaculture community worldwide, is fast approaching! This is a celebration of all things Permaculture and a sharing of the solutions inherent in it to the wider community. To celebrate International Permaculture Day on Sunday 4 May, PSN will be joining forces with Local Councils to help spread the word about sustainability to local communities across the North Shore.

Expect a week-long local celebration of workshops and open gardens. Our discussions with North Sydney Council have enabled us to lock in the Coal Loader for Sustainability as a venue for one series of our events. We hope also to involve all those local groups that wish to in discussions with Councils across the Northern Beaches, Hornsby, Ryde/ Hunters Hill, Ku-Ring-Gai, Lane Cove and Willoughby.                        

To make this happen, we’d love the broader PSN family to get involved. We’re looking for ideas for workshops, expert presenters, open gardens and workshop assistants... If you’d like to get involved in what will be our biggest International Permaculture Day festival – and we’d love you to! – please contact Lucinda on lucinda.coates@mq.edu.auor, if you are a phone person, Susan on 0403 166510.

Click for further details

06 Apr : Wild Mushroom Picking & Preserving Tour

If you missed out on March's Wild Mushroom tour don't miss this one! 

For further details and registration click here.       

 Welcome to our newest PSN members for 2014 

Jessica A, 

Amy B.

Deb C.

Allison C.

Luke C.

Roselene C.

Stuart D.

Jocelyn K.

Chris L.

Katia L.

Hugh M.

Catherine P.

Cyrus P.

Eleanor P.

Ayla E.

Siew T.

Ben T.

Miguel Y.

Michelle Z.

Alex Z.

Julie Z.

Looking forward to seeing you all out and about in the wonderful Permaculture world!

  Ku-ring-gai Local Group Happenings

A record breaking 21 members and guests of the The Ku-ring-gai local group had a wonderful afternoon learning about the secrets of composting, including a tour of a hot composting machine, pests and problems associated with citrus and some advanced searching techniques on the google and youtube. Leone’s framed vertical gardens were a grand finale to the afternoon. The meeting was hosted by Leone and, as usual, we were able to keep our strength up with a great feasting and drinking.

Watch out for details of next month’s meeting when we shall be listening and talking about “Soil and plant nutrients”. In the meantime, please gather information and questions for discussion.

Diana Evans KRG Local Group Coordinator

PSN now has a Blog!

For all things PSN be sure to keep an eye on our great new Blog.

Catch up on the Mike Mobb's talk about "How to Sustain Suburbs" as well as Jake Cassar's "Bush Tucker" tour.

You can access the PSN blog from the home page, main menu. 

PSN Facebook Group!

Be sure to join the Permaculture Sydney North Facebook group.

Permaculture Sydney North is a group of over 500 people based in Sydney, with a huge array of skills in self reliance, energy & water conservation, qualified permaculture design and teaching. It's a great place to start for people who want to learn more about healthier, abundant and satisfied living.

This group is for sharing information about permaculture and sustainability, and for building our knowledge about practical sustainability.

 What's Happening with Living Skills

To start 2014 Living Skills program, twenty PSN members turned up in Kariong on a rainy February Saturday morning to enjoy the Bush Tucker Tour experience, despite overcast skies and frequent showers. 

Our guide Jake Cassar is a very knowledgeable plantsman, bushman and survival expert and he took us for a walk down Bambara Road at Kariong. He talked about the Aboriginal history and use of this area and pointed at plants which can be harvested for their fruit, leaves or grubs, while many of us took photos and copious notes. 

We ate from bushes and trees (bush currants were clear favourites) and during the bushwalk we collected a few grubs found by Jake inside wattle stalks. Once we reached a great "grandmother angophora" tree, we stopped there for a short break (including tree hugs!), then went to nearby rocks to barbecue the grubs, which were delicious, rich and nutty-flavoured! We went up these rocks to see the site of the famous Kariong glyphs - Egyptian hieroglyphs carved into rock faces. 

On our way back Jake continued talking about native food plants and checked how much we remembered. We didn't even realise 4 hours passed by the time of our arrival back at the meeting place!

This Bush Tucker Tour with Jake Cassar was fully booked in 10 days since being advertised and there is a lot of interest from the PSN members, so we may have another tour organised this year. 

Upcoming Living Skills events: next is a mushroom picking tour in March, but with 25 participants already registered there are no spaces left. For anyone willing to pick mushrooms who missed a place in the March tour, there will be another trip on April 6th. 

 More in International Permaculture Day (IPD) 2014

Less than two months to go for International Permaculture Day!  The official IPD site is waiting on some technical help and hopefully will soon be ready to take details of your: open garden, film festival, workshop/ demo, Permabee etc...  If you are still considering whether to open your garden... JUST DO IT!  The more gardens that are open, and choices for the public, the more successful the day will be and the more people will get to find out about Permaculture.  Check in with your Local Group co-ordinator and see what has been planned for you area and/ or think of something you would like to see, and make it happen, with the assistance of your local group and the wider PSN community!  And remember to advertise it - the IPD website has pro-formas for posters of all sizes and PSN will assist local groups by getting a whole bunch printed out - we just needs some details on there first!  Also remember to contact your local council to see if they can help advertise any of your events and contact the local newspapers; put posters up in local shops...  If you are stuck for what to do, or want to help, either during the lead-up or on the day, PLEASE contact Lucinda on vp@psn.com.au and we will suit people to tasks!  It would be really GREAT if everyone could spare just a couple of hours on the day (Sunday 4 May) to help out at other people's gardens - on the welcome table or just hanging about in the garden to help answer questions.

Do let me know if you would like to open your garden but think you might need a mini-bee first.  I know that the Hornsby group will be helping out at Cecilia's place for their April meet-up, and the next Garden Team permabee will be at Chris and Kathleen's place - both of these gardens will be open on IPD.  Why not join them?!           

Re-Use Roundabout Table

Re-Use Roundabout table: if you have Things you no longer need, or Stuff you think may be of use to others, please bring it along to the next PSN meeting at Lindfield, to the Re-Use Roundabout!  

There are only two rules: if you think you got a bargain (by taking useful Stuff from the table), please consider a small donation.  And if any Stuff you brought along has not gone by the time you please, please take it with you. 

Building Community       

One of the requests from members is to create a spirit of community among fellow permies.  One way we can do this is to get to know a bit more about each other.  Each member has a profile on the website.  We have recently updated the profile to include some questions to help us learn more about our members: eg what sort of things you would like from PSN.  Our request to you is: please update your profile to help that process!

“Do you have ideas on how PSN can best recruit and encourage members in their Permaculture journey?"

Click here to find out how to update your profile.

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Permaculture Sydney North
PO Box 1145 Chatswood NSW 2067
Tel:   1300 887 145
Contact email: editor@permaculturenorth.org.au

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