Things have been busy but our directors meeting went ahead today. Linda and I have these annually to discuss where we are going with the Choko Tree Farm and how we are going to get there, to analyse successes and failures and come up with new ideas for the next twelve months.
So today we reviewed the documentation we have in place on how we run the farm –
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Mission Statement – Still succinct, to the point and still relevant, so no change.
Vision Statement –We worked through the vision statement and apart from another couple of missed words (I don’t know how they got through last year!) we made a couple of minor changes –
- We took out the bit about getting meat from chooks, we both know it isn’t gonna happen!
- We added in the new ideas for this year of starting up a YouTube channel and setting up some e-books.
We were also going to remove the reference of growing fish for protein since the demise of our aquaponics system, but with the power supply going off grid I am going to review this and see if we can still integrate aquaponics somewhere.
Goals – We have goals for energy, water, waste, food, community, livelihood and time management, these were reviewed and considered to be still appropriate so no change required.
Documents for the two remaining sections of the document hierarchy – Strategies and techniques – I didn’t get near them last year, but I intend to complete them during the next 12 months.
Next we worked our way through what we had done and any new directions. By and large we had done pretty well and were able to tick off over a dozen items from our “to do” list. A big one was the street library and community bench, with a surprising number of people making use of them.
Last year we came up with two new things to work on –
1. Increasing water storage – while we have not got this in yet, plans are well established for a 5000 litre tank to go in next to the driveway in the front of the garage.
2 looking at going in with some friends to grow food on their land and then share the harvest. – This didn’t happen for a number of reasons and the lovely people we had organised are moving interstate in the New Year, so this one is on the back burner for now.
For this year the two big things we have targeted for the next 12 months (as well as the myriad of little projects and all of the work we are doing to keep the place running) are mentioned above, but for a bit more detail -
1. Develop a YouTube channel – I have been fooling about with taking and editing videos for a while and so now we are going to spread the love by taking a series of “how to” videos and placing them on a newly minted YouTube channel. Keep an eye out for it and subscribe once we get it up!
2. E-books – I did some work on developing up a series of e-books about sustainable living in the suburbs, but haven’t touched the stuff in probably 2 years. We have decided that it is time to get serious about getting them out there.
Also 2018 will be my last year as president for Permaculture Sydney West, so I will be casting around for where we want to head after that. It takes up a surprising amount of time so when it becomes time to pass the baton on at the end of next year I want to have a fair idea of what I will do with my extra time.
Log on to our YouTube channel and come along with us for the ride!
