Pizza ovens, solar arrays, polytunnels and NEIS

Thrilled to report that we appear to be on a bit of a roll

St James project

The structure of the pizza oven at St James is almost complete (just waiting on doors from the welding shop); then it’s a matter of filling in the gaps to the benches on either side, rendering / mortaring our little hearts out, and: job done.

Albums of the St James project can be found here, here and here

Power from the sun

It’s been a long process with a lot of course changes and a HUGE amount of learning, but our tiny solar array is finally up and working. What this means is that we no longer need to visit Cygnet to charge computers or phones, or buy perishables. We are stoked!

Our heartfelt thanks to Joe of Joe’s Greenhouses, Alan Marshall our lovely neighbour, Matthew at Eastern Shore Batteries, and Gerard (more than just a gun guitarist!). Thanks also to Dave Holland, who has given us a small, very good 12v DC fridge on long loan.

Polytunnel

Joe, as well as solar-empowering us, has also put up a 9m polytunnel at OzEarth HQ. It’s a thing of beauty:

You can find a whole album of the process here

NEIS

OzEarth now has a business plan: we hadn’t really thought a huge amount about it, but we got the opportunity to enter the New Enterprise Incentive Scheme, and being shepherded through the process of developing a business plan is part of the deal. Once complete, the business plan is assessed for quality, as well as believable and healthy financial projections, and if it adds up, you earn both a Certificate IV in Business Management and a place in the Scheme.

So we’ve done that, and OzEarth was accepted onto the scheme last Monday. For a year we get various kinds of mentoring and support – it’s really going to help get OzEarth off to a great start.

The flip side

It hasn’t all been plain sailing: rats ate our car, which was a bit of a shock, but again, we’ve been able to call on a neighbour for help, which makes us feel great about the resilience of our life up the Hill – so many cool resourceful people up this way!!