Catching up

Because it’s been a while since the last update, here’s a glimpse at what’s been happening in our little part of the world.

Hello friends, it’s been a while! The light has changed here in lutruwita/Tasmania. The heady smell of overripe fruit is lingering outside our back door. The kitchen table is bursting with bowls of fruit and veggies, waiting for jars or pots. Our weekly schedule is falling into place as work and uni resume, so our long summer working-holiday days are mostly behind us, and here I am writing to you.

Because it’s been a while since the last update, here’s a glimpse at what’s been happening in our little part of the world:

Snippets from summertime: at working in the record store and up mountains, making music and jam, growing a garden and three young women!

HOME
It feels like we’re endlessly decluttering. We’ve lived in this small house for longer than anywhere (almost 17 years!), and it’s easy to accumulate things on op-shop trips, or as kids pass through different phases of life (and I include grown up 40-something kids in that last statement). We’re sharing with our community, selling a little to fund ballet classes and things that need fixing. Making sure things end up in the best places to keep them out of landfill.

Far from minimalists though, we’re really enjoying listening to music and watching films in physical formats again. I’ll talk more about why in a future letter because there’s a lot to say! Thankfully, there are no end of secondhand options for records, CDs and DVDs, and the technology to play them is still easy and affordable to come by - a neighbour just gave us an old DVD player as we’d previously given ours away! We just have to figure out how to best store things, and make sure to only choose forever favourites!

Waste-free life feels just like ‘life’ now. I’m only reminded of it when I observe a friend having a go at reducing their waste, or when someone asks us a question about “how do you…?” Usually the answers are simpler than they thought, so I’m intending to share some info about the very simple stuff again. Some recent local wins for us have included finding chook grain in paper bags, vegan parmesan, and local package-free dried noodles!

GARDEN
The garden has miraculously fed us, despite the worst growing season we’ve had yet. The soil in the veggie beds became hydrophobic so I’ve fixed that, but not before the plants had gone in, so they’ve been a bit slow to take off. Then a chicken worked out how to jump out of the chook run and dug up the beans, cucumbers and beetroots. THEN a pademelon ate all the brassicas and leafy greens, blackbirds and rats burst through netting to eat all the cherries and mulberries, possums ate half the plums, and rats have started on the tomatoes. It’s been a bit disheartening. BUT thanks to our perennial food garden, we have lots of apricot jam, apricot chutney and bottled apricots which I managed to preserve before the brown rot took over. Ugh. I can only put it down to busy days away from home, so some planning, slowing down, and early mornings outside are in order. Meanwhile, zucchinis and tomatoes are in constant supply, cucumbers are sporadic but always welcome. And one big sunflower and some cosmos that grew from dormant seeds from last year, are keeping things cheerful. Must plant more flowers!

HOME EDUCATION (and life after it)
Our littlest is still loving her school-free life. She’s focused on making music - learning guitar, piano, singing in a choir, writing songs, and sometimes working in the record store alongside me, where we dive into learning about amazing female musicians through history. The rest of her days are spent with friends, styling op-shopped outfits, adventuring in nature and hanging out with her dog. Which is just about perfect when you’re 13.

Our middle daughter has finished her home education, and for her grade 12 year has launched herself into studying at TAFE to be a chef. She’s keen to see what perspective she can bring to the food industry, having grown up in a waste-free household. And she’s excited to learn how to cook all the things! I’m excited to have another cook in the house and someone with better knife skills than me!

Our eldest daughter headed on her first overseas trip, last month. She visited Malaysia with her university, working on sustainability projects, planting mangroves, visiting rice paddies and waterfalls. The plastic waste was (as expected), confronting - especially seeing people burning it. She did manage to find a shop with bulk food bins full of noodles and prawn crackers, and some meals were cooked and presented in traditional packaging like banana leaves, which made her feel a little at ease while accepting the waste she was creating. The trip has given her some good insight and food for thought on cultural differences, similarities and obstacles to living sustainably. She’s thinking about what that means for her art, and how she can contribute with the knowledge and experience she has, in the broader community.

OUR WORK

We’re all taking turns working in the record store these days, and it’s lots of fun. People are definitely buying less with the rise in living costs, so we’re having to be creative. We’re enjoying exploring the stories behind women making great music and helping people find more of it. A customer visiting from Poland told us his son recommended us as “the most famous record store in the world right now” (if only!), so he had to visit. Every day we’re loving chats about feminism, cultural shifts, valuing secondhand things, memories and music. It’s mostly voluntary work, but it’s very rewarding.

Oberon’s also still working full-time protecting threatened species (especially plants) and ecosystems in Tasmania. The work he does is often a mix of heartbreaking, mundane and exhilarating and he seldom gets to talk publicly about it because he works for the government. Climate change is something he’s witnessing and documenting with every year, as is the slow-moving nature of positive change at that level. It’s work that is forever inspiring us to create change and take responsibility in our own lives, and encourage others to do the same, because systemic change happens when people demonstrate the need and desire for it, and show other ways things can be done.

Our book is almost 5 years old! I’ll be continuing to write and share ramblings and recipes here and getting the rest of the family to collaborate and share with me in different ways. As much as we’d have liked for our book to be the mic drop, with all the info people needed to get on with things, it feels like waste reduction is lower down on people’s radars than we’d like. And because we think it should be straight forward and simple to live sustainably on a planet that needs our care every day.

There’s more to say and expand on but I’ll save those thoughts for other days. Now, how about you? How are you going? What are your plans for the year ahead, or are they already well underway?

Much love,
Lauren.