Spend your Saturday morning learning a new permaculture skill.

Our weekly Sustainable Living Workshops offer a huge variety of fun (and occasionally life-changing) ways to spend a Saturday.  From backyard gardening tips to bee keeping to bicycle building, each session introduces a new way to make your Brisbane lifestyle a little more sustainable and interesting.

Workshops in the coming months include:

• Bamboo construction
• Establishing a vegetable garden
• Organic Herbs
• Solar cooking

Saturday February 18,  9am – 12pm
(Repeated March 17 and April 21)

with Rachel Hannam

In our increasingly stressful and complex world, it is vital to continually deepen our understanding of violence and its antidote, compassion.

As the name implies, nonviolent communication (or NVC) emphasises compassion as the motivation for our words and actions rather than fear, guilt, shame, blame, coercion, threat or justification for punishment. In other words, it is about getting what you want for reasons you will not regret later. The techniques of NVC allow you to make conscious choices about how you will respond, whether you get what you want, or not. NVC guides us to reflect on our own daily reactions and behaviour, and to reframe how we express ourselves and how we receive others by focusing awareness on observations, feelings, need, and requests.

This half-day workshop will provide an overview of the NVC model, an introduction to the skills involved and include some personal practice. The workshop presenter is a qualified psychologist who uses NVC in her work with executives and employees, which includes training, coaching and dispute resolution.

Cost: $50 ($35 concession)

To book your place, simply call (07) 3857 8775 or email info@nscf.org.au

This year’s first Permaculture Design Course (PDC) starts on Thursday February 16th!  Don’t miss this life-changing opportunity to become a local permaculture expert!

This exciting program gives you knowledge and skills for designing productive gardens and properties, growing your own food, applying appropriate technologies, using resources wisely, designing animal and plant systems to minimise your workload, rebuilding community values, and generally reducing your impact on our precious environment.

The Permaculture Design Course gives a strong overview of permaculture principles and practice, with an emphasis on design. At Northey Street, we also include significant hands-on practical experience.

Learn more, download our 2012 Permaculture Courses Brochure or contact us on (07) 3857 8775 or via info@nscf.org.au

 
In December last year we celebrated the opening of our new school garden, the “SEED Garden”. The S.E.E.D. (Sustainable Environmental Education & Diversity) Garden will provide visiting schools and children with invaluable hands-on gardening experiences in a vibrant garden purpose built just for them.

In 2012 this garden will become an integral part of our existing School Tours & Activities program which engages students in enjoyable and educational gardening, earth art, cob-oven cooking and permaculture related activities. Close to 1000 school children take part in the program throughout the year. (more…)

In this ongoing series, we’ll be sharing some of our past and present moments in the spotlight.

Got your own press clippings or TV appearances to share?  We’d love to hear from you!

This year we are offering four Permaculture Design Courses.  The first PDC starts on February 16th.

Book before next Tuesday 17th January and get the $50 early bird discount (or $40 concession) off the course fee!

Learn more, or download our 2012 Permaculture Courses Brochure.

It’s a brand new year and one by one, the wheels are back in motion.

• Market day is back in its usual time slot, with our Organic Markets and the Chai Cafe running on Sunday mornings.
• The Edible Landscapes Nursery is now open again.
• The farm office and its usual programs will be back in action this Tuesday the 10th of January.
• Village Life will return the following Sunday morning on the 15th of January.

And don’t forget to let us know which planned 2012 Sustainable Living Workshops grab your interest!

For the next two weeks, to make your weekly organic produce shopping more convenient around the Christmas break, our Sunday Organic Markets will be moved to Saturday.

• Saturday 24 December (Christmas Eve)
• Saturday 31 December (New Year’s Eve)

We will return to our normally scheduled Sunday markets the following week, on the 8th of January.