Happenings at HCC

It’s been pretty busy around HCC headquarters. Apart from the continual turning of the compost bays and running around collecting buckets I also had some very welcome guests over the last week.

Jen and Edwina from SEE-Change Canberra stopped by to get a tour of the compost heap ‘in action’. SEE-Change Canberra is a community organisation that is interested in improving the resilience of our urban ecosystem and shares valuable information on all things sustainability keeping in mind benefits for Society, the Environment and the Economy. It’s fantastic that the HCC has the support of SEE-Change. Jen and Edwina had lots of great ideas for the HCC to implement that could help even more community members get on board. To start with, I should borrow their bike trailer soon to see how that goes with buckets full of scraps, as the bike panniers can only hold so much at a time!

Jen watching me ‘unveil’ the compost
Edwina and I, with compost in background 🙂
demo time

And speaking of carrying large-ish volumes of compost, on the weekend I helped Anna from North Canberra Osteopathy donate some compost to the Hackett preschool. Anna’s eldest attends the preschool this year and she was motivated to help them bring their raised garden beds back to life. We took down as much of the chunky compost from HCC bay no. 4 as we could carry, and then dug it into the beds.

helping

Anna had constructed some ‘olla pots’ which hold a reservoir of water that slowly releases from pores in the terracotta, providing an easy way to keep the beds watered.

More helpers, and Anna with the olla pots

It was a very pleasant way to spend a late summer morning and great to see the compost being used in such a community-focused way. And I can’t wait to hear what the kids decide to grow in the beds! 🙂

smiles all round after a job well done (although baby C probably wants to get back to playing with the hose!)

Finally, an upcoming happening at HCC is the next open day! In the end I decided on Sunday the 24th of March, with morning tea on hand from 9 – 11 am. As per the open day last year if anyone would like to help by bringing along a plate that would be great. But if people email me on hackettcompost2602@gmail.com about attendance then I can make sure to have enough tea, coffee and snacks on hand. Hope to see lots of you then!

-Brook