Kachana News
January 2004 News
1. Guest speakers:
Sam Bingham and Andrew Story have both consented to come and speak at our next Landscape Management Workshop September 2004. Once again it is an honour for us to be able to host on Kachana, and get to know personally people who have dedicated their working life to the search of the sort of knowledge that we need to survive beyond the ‘age of information over-load’.
2. Video:
Kachana Landscape Management Workshop 2003 with Dr. Elaine Ingham:
Paul Mock has not had an easy task. The workshop was not formatted for the making of a documentary movie, but so that people could have much time to ask questions and benefit from ‘one to one’ time with Dr Elaine Ingham. Wind in the trees and over the microphone, the rustling of leaves and people moving from place to place are not an excuse, but the reality of being out there in ‘nature’s classroom’. Paul, who has been here to Kachana several times and has heard Elaine speek on more than one occasion, was in a good position to piece together the content of the subject matter covered at the workshop. Given both technical and time constraints, I believe this first video to be very good revision-tool for anybody who attended the workshop and for anybody who has heard Elaine speek before. I do not consider it to be suitable for people who have not heard Elaine before, unless they are really interested in the subject matter. (We still have copies of the original films in digital format so one day we may piece together short topic-specific film-segments.)
The approximately four hour video is now available for purchase at Aus $ 65.00.
($ 75.00 includes handling and postage within Australia.)
Of that purchase sum:
- $10.00 go towards research conducted by Soilfoodweb Inc.
- $10.00 go to the Byrne Terry Ellenbrae Fund
- $10.00 go towards land-care work conducted on Kachana
3. Soil workshops:
Of the messages that came out of this last Kachana Workshop some stick out:
- Both the supply of agricultural food & fibre as well as the natural purification and supply of our water hinge on healthy soil; How healthy is our soil?
Are our biological foundations really strong enough to deal with ‘change’?
- There seems to be the potential to literally ‘super-charge’ beneficial effects of both ‘above ground macro-herds’ as well as ‘below ground micro-herds’ if our management can re-establish the type of symbiotic relationships that originally helped form the soils that are now eroding all over the planet.
- Nature does not need us humans for it’s survival, but we sure depend on nature to function well if we are to survive as a species on this planet.
Dr Elaine Ingham and Dr Arden Anderson are both spreading some vital information. Vital for the quality of life that awaits us in our last few years and vital for those who inherit what we leave behind.
I encourage you to pass on information about soil-workshops.