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A Sustainable Lifestyle
| Like many Cantabrians, Andrea Gauland and her family enjoy the middle road between urban and rural living on a lifestyle block. It was through a lifestyle block internet forum that Andrea first heard about Waste Exchange, and she has been using the service now for three and a half years. Te Hua farm, Andrea’s block, is located in Oxford in North Canterbury. Quite a lot of things on the farm owe their place there to Waste Exchange, including fencing, rabbit runs and goat pens made from the wood of untreated timber pallets. |
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Cold frame for herbs
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| Large, thick polystyrene containers from a local pharmaceutical company came in handy for storing seed, as with lids in place they are rodent proof. Andrea’s son is also into recycling and reuse and uses the animal manure on the farm to make ‘compost tea’, a liquid fertiliser. Looking for containers to put it in they turned to the Exchange listings and found the ideal solution – five litre plastic containers which came with lids. The manure is collected and placed into a 1000 litre container (which was also sourced through Waste Exchange). It then ‘brews’ in sun, and produces a super concentrated fertiliser which Andrea’s son then sells at a local farmers’ market in Oxford. A five litre container can be diluted to make 20 litres of liquid fertiliser. |
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Milking stand
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| The company that supplies the containers has an ongoing supply of them available, some as large as 10 litres. Andrea cuts the top of these larger buckets and uses them as feed containers for the goats. “We are into sustainable farming” says Andrea, “so we try to locate second hand or recycled materials first. It’s great if we can reuse something, and that also means it doesn’t end up in landfill.” |
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Tomato buckets
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