A is for Apples

A is for apples, because today we bit into our first apple of the season! The Akane apple (sometimes called ‘Tokyo Rose’) is one of our early season apples and this year we have a bumper crop. After a long wait it is so satisfying to be eating home grown apples. Not long after we moved into our house we started planting out a small orchard. This included six applies from Woodbridge Fruit Trees. To be honest when we planted them I felt like I had spent a lot of money on six funny looking sticks that looked more dead than alive. Seven years on those funny sticks give us spring time blossom followed by beautiful sweet apples from summer through Autumn. I am always amazed at just how long apples can be kept in cold store and still sold as ‘fresh’ apples.  See  https://apal.org.au/storing-apples/ . I can only imagine how much energy is used across Australia keeping apples in cold storage, just so they are available all year round. Personally I love the anticipation of c...

It’s a New Year, and the Brown family have a new blog. Over the course of 2019 we are going to provide an A, B, C with a broad sustainability focus. We are a family of three (Mum, Dad and a kindy kid) living in the outer eastern suburbs of Melbourne. We have a small house (two bedrooms) on small(ish) block of around 525m2. We’ve always been environmentally aware, but over the last couple of years we have started shifting from awareness to reducing our impact. Many of the changes we have made have been small positive shifts in behaviour that we believe most households could make minimal effort. Some of the changes we are making include: Becoming more aware of all the things we consume, and buying less ‘stuff’. When household items need replacing we research sustainable alternatives - to make the best choice within our household budget. Growing more food (and making more compost - more on the awesome Bokashi bin later this month). A focus on refusing and reusing - not just recycli...