Blog
Listening to the Wise Woman’s call: healing for jarrah trees
Interweaving stories from her life and career as an activist and Green’s Member of the WA Parliament, “Shades of Green” walks us through the present state of our jarrah forests, presenting complex environmental issues in ways I easily absorbed and understood.
Meeting Martin Foot, a modern day Michelangelo
While hoarding hundreds queue in Florence to see works of Renaissance masters, we're in quiet Pietra Santa, meeting Martin Foot. He is a master sculptor of "Michelangelo's marble" in modern times, though I doubt he'd describe himself that way. With a distinctly...
How to hunt a truffle in France (and it’s not what you think)
Truffles in Manjimup are hunted with the help of a specially trained canine. Sometimes they don't make the cut: it's true, dogs sometimes flunk out of truffle school. There are tales too, of truffle pigs "helping out" with harvest in Europe, sometimes taking out...
Highlights from Girls’ Trip, helping girls connect, have fun and grow
[Girls Trip] helps encourage creativity, and a broader range of thinking for parents and daughters. It raises confidence in both as well. - Linda Russell, mother What do you long for, for a girl you care about? That she has confidence to speak up, and show up, in...
WA artist Lori Pensini a national finalist with her “stellar violets” portrait featuring Lucinda
| by Sonia Kohlbacher | A Western Australian artist known for her breathtaking portraits of women and stunning landscape portrayals has been shorted-listed for one of the most prestigious women’s art prizes in Australia. Lori Pensini’s delicate portrait of...
Fervor Fever | Pop Up Truffle Degustation in a secret garden
Truffle season in Manjimup has begun as the last colours of autumn fall to the ground. There’s a kindness in sporadic winter sunlight, relief in the rain. A fire in the corner crackles and pops. Our wheelbarrow is full of promised wood, and us? We’re sweeping the...
how to move a heritage electric trolleybus you can’t drive within 48 hours
It started with a 5pm text from Drakey, who runs Middlesex Mill just down the road. “Hi. Just noticed this old tram bus on Grays. Thought you might be interested. Problem is the auction ends in 2 hours!” I couldn't help myself, of course. It was a beautiful old thing,...
Recipe: The Ultimate Garlic Paste
Lara McCall of the amazing Burnside Organic Farm changed my life for the better the day she shared this recipe with me. Our fridge bulges with jars of this paste. Make enough to last a year, harvest your garlic, save some to plant, some to roast whole, make paste with...
The Weedy One: Diego’s Fantastic Foraging Feast
Bundanon's Spring Festival – “Siteworks 2015” On a Saturday in September we celebrated Spring with a bunch of art-lovers at Bundanon's Siteworks 2015. The properties at Bundanon, and Riversdale were gifted to the Australian people by Arthur and Yvonne Boyd in 1993....
Inviting women to bring our creative gifts home in the Wheatbelt, with the Liebe Group
''It was a cold, blustery day when we arrived, only to be warmed through to the cockles by the Metcalf family’s boundless hospitality. Deb and Simon Metcalf are long time farmers in Wongan Hills. Wongan means whispering, and atop the beautiful Mt O’Brien, the wind did...
Library Love Songs
My caring local librarian sent home an unsolicited book for me the other day: Inspired by Light & Land: Designers and Makers in Western Australia 1829-1969. Why yes, I am inspired by just that, Life and Land, I thought smiling to myself as I thumbed through the...
How the first train carriages came to spark placemaking
Forget travel to exotic climes. The glorious winter sun is streaming in the carriage windows, adorned with views of Stellar Violets garden, and thousands of apple trees giving over to slumber. Bright red steel baggage racks give bold architectural lines to the...
Dreaming of aborous glory: Planting Trees for Mum on Mothers Day in 2015
Travelling and gardens don't marry well. Maybe this is why recognising my inheritance of Mum's passion for gardening took time to make itself known. I wandered gardens in faraway places, even had a cry in a meadow at Kew, because it was beautiful, and she had loved...
Dr Chan’s Feeling Good Ferments
Introducing Miin, and her husband Niel. If a box of Cadbury favourites were filled with people, mine would have these two in it. They're living near Melbourne, running a business called Dr Chan's Feeling Good Ferments. If you asked me to name a small business run...
The Spice Road Pop-Up
We were up at dawn in the mini-market garden, selecting and picking our best carrots, beetroots, potatoes, silverbeet, tomatoes, zucchini, corn, beans and more. Having so much produce in our first season was a marvel. That we were able to “select” at all, a...
Time for Gut Healing: When Eton Mess Brings Untold Distress
Where dwells benevolent belly love and digestion as silky smooth as a babe’s behind? I’m not there yet, but I’m on the way, a far cry from the bedridden mess I was Christmas night. I confess, I’m so glad of heart to be far from the distress in the sand dunes that was...
Put your foot down | Biochar makes compost faster
What is Biochar? Biochar, or biological charcoal is an organic soil conditioner. It’s a carbon rich product made by putting any kind of plant material into a slow burning, oxygen-deprived environment. Carbon Sequestration Viewed through a certain lens, the greatest...
The Inaugural Right to Food Coalition
We attended the inaugural Right to Food Coalition in Casula, NSW, this week, and met a bunch of passionate people who are very aware of the need for access to food for everyone in Australia. The latest Australian Council of Social Services (ACOSS) report quoted at the...
2014 WAVE Electric Vehicle Festival, Stuttgart
Coming face to face with a stuffed horse was not what I had expected at Europe's biggest gathering of electric vehicle enthusiasts. We were in Germany, and likely to see a world record broken, when over 500 electric vehicles gathered together in Stuttgart. Having just...
Ecological gardens of France ~ Terre Vivante
To celebrate their 20th Anniversary, Terre Vivante, an educational garden farm in France held a special open day. Terre Vivante means "living earth", and I'd wanted to visit ever since one of their lovely little preserving books fell into my hands. There was no public...
Hidden gardens of France that inspired Stellar Violets ~ Jardin Bourian
In the wilds of south-west France we find ourselves in the dappled shade of giant oak and ash trees, at the beautiful Jardin Bourian - a community and demonstration organic garden near Dégagnac. We met one of the Jardin Bourian founders, Jocelyne Bécé, at Jacky...
Meeting Jacky Dupéty & making soil with Ramial Chipped Wood
On a research trip in Europe we met with a french farmer named Jacky Dupéty, living in le Lot in south-west France. He creates living soils using an agro-forestry technique called Ramial Chipped Wood (RCW), or in french, le Bois Raméal Fragmenté (BRF). What does...
Meeting Dr Reckin & making “Terra Preta” fertile soil
How to make Terra Preta soil, or "From silica alone to 73 elements" with Dr Jürgen Renkin. For some reason I expect to meet a tall, serious, imposing German man. We open the gate and descend into a verdant, diverse food garden. Jürgen is there by the front door...
Electric Dream Come True: 100% Electric Farm Ute
Living in Electric Dreams: How it feels having built a 100% Electric Farm Ute To start off, there’s a fun little button between the seats that you flick to green or red. Green means forward, red is reverse. I feel so Marty McFly / Back to the Future every time I do...
Mündraub: Berlin’s wild foragers
We found Magda and Mundraüb months before arriving in Berlin, just by searching for biochar leads in Germany. Mundraüb means something like 'scrumping' in German, and their mission is mapping wild foods and abandoned fruit trees, whilst encouraging us all to see the...
Terra Preta Sanitation, In which we learn of The World Toilet Prize
Fearlessly, finally, blogging on from here in Berlin, Germany, where I’m positively flushed with what we might call, the latest Tales from the Toiletten. Just before leaving for our study tour in Europe, I spoke at the 20th Anniversary Natural Resource Management...
making Mothers’ Day meaningful with Trees for Mum – 2014
My mum died from cancer when I was 18 years old. Overnight she slipped away, and our family of five became a family of four. After all the waiting, it was over, and there was nothing to do but slowly start to find our way through the dark. I remember the first...
How to make kale chips
A gift surely from the heavens, is kale chips. As a kid I loved BBQ flavoured samboy chips as a Friday afternoon treat. I was only allowed one “treat” a week and totally would’ve gorged more given the chance, thankfully my Mum kept consumption of junk on a very tight...
New Year musings with a magnolia planting, and John O’Donahue
“I’ve been squeezed dry,” I told a friend in Sydney yesterday as I hugged him hello. I was invited to his garden on a whim to plant an “80 million year old” magnolia stellata, and celebrate with a glass of champagne. The original Granny Smith orchard once grew where...
High Satiety: how to take blue corn tortillas from garden to gay culinary abandon
Mexican Corn Tortillas from garden to gob! To combat early spring chills, I’ve been getting hot under the collar over making Mexican tortillas from scratch. And I don’t mean just buying the "masa harina" flour – this is about processing it from whole, locally-grown...
how to make Gozlemes
The deliciousness of Turkish Gozlemes is something every person should experience, in my mind. Kids love 'em too. SERVES 4 We use organic and biodynamic ingredients where possible, and avoid products with unnatural, unnecessary additives. Always read labels if unsure....
Making Mothers’ Day meaningful planting Trees For Mums on Stellar Violets verge in 2013
On Sunday, Stellar Violets and friends celebrated and honoured mums, planting persimmons and walnuts alongside Middlesex road. Best Mothers' Day I've had in a long time. A beautiful morning brought a wonderful turnout of friends and families, some coming and going as...
Kombucha tea: pass it on
Browsing a second hand store in Albany last year, I picked up a little book at random and flicked through the pages. A hand written note dropped out, titled, "Recipe for Kombucha Tea". Fascinated, I read on, finding that to make this curious beverage, one would need...
Vacola preserving: weekend workshop
'There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.' Ralph Waldo Emerson. He couldn't have been more wrong. Crunchy pears, slightly soft pears, and pears preserved in myriad ways, pears please me in ways many fruits can't, giving me almost...
How to make compost in six easy steps
Compost is key to thriving fertile gardens and farms. It helps grow nutrient-rich fresh organic food that'll make your whole person sing! Once you have the ingredients and you’re ready to start, it’s simple, like making a cake. If possible, grab a couple of friends to...
Preserving journey: into the wild (fermentation) we go
Modern day preserving methods often require using a lot of sugar. And let's be honest, it produces some special results in the form of jams, chutneys and bottled fruits to enjoy year round. Most methods using sugar demand cooking at high temperatures, which can kill...
The Heroine’s Journey by Maureen Murdock
Stumbled across an author called Maureen Murdock this afternoon. I wasn’t a paragraph into the synopsis about her book The Heroine’s Journeywhen I burst into tears. The book and the author’s name hit home straight up, as Maureen is my Mum's name. And the idea of...
Community cider making day
We've spent the past two Saturdays a-merry-making cider; and it was easily the most fun we've had all year. Friends are helping us make things happen at Stellar Violets. Local winemaker Dave called up and said he was keen to turn his hand to cider and vinegar. He had...
How to hunt wild asparagus corms
Yesterday, a friend invited us "out the Perup" to dig up some asparagus corms. Due east of Manjimup, the Perup is where people can learn more about, and help look after rare, biodiverse flora and fauna (check out the Perup Nature's Gues House). There's also a lovely...
The last Tomato Sauce recipe you’ll ever need, in memory of Dorothy
Lighting the way to emancipation from shop-bought tomato sauce, we share this fabulous family recipe, in memory of late Dorothy Ipsen. You’ll never need another.
Solar Barn: A Study in Self Sufficiency with The Kiwi Family Robinson
Johann David Wyss’ The Swiss Family Robinson (1981) is a favourite book from my childhood. Shipwrecked on a deserted island, the intrepid family are forced to quickly devise ways to meet their basic needs; one of which was to tame an ostrich to help them travel! As...
A visit to Kynjarmen Farm New Zealand
We're halfway into a week at Kynjarmen Farm, in the Waikato, a central region on the north island of New Zealand. It's the home of Stellar Violets founding members, Jen and Mark Eyers. Jen is mother of four grown boys. Skills and essential survival attributes that got...
World energy and finance expert Nicole Foss in Manjimup, hosted by Stellar Violets
March kicked off a treat when we hosted Canadian energy and finance speaker Nicole Foss for our very first event in Manjimup. She's been and long gone. But we're still here, and the future of our communities is still ahead for us to bring into being. So perhaps this...
How to dry apricots
Easy steps my sister and I followed for sun-drying apricots. 1. Scrub up at least two old flyscreens. We got some on the cheap at the dump. I mean, refuse site. The endorphins are really doing their thing, even at this early stage. 2. Get some tree-ripe fruit....
A brief, beautiful time with Manjimup’s beekeeping couple, Curly and Jean
Curly flipped a latch and slid open the shadecloth door. Breathing in with pleasure, I looked around. The air was richly scented with beeswax. Old hand-made frames and brood boxes were stacked to the side, some with loose wires needing repair. There were also some...