Let’s Talk Compost! Celebrating International Compost Awareness Week

🌍 🐝 World Bee Day is almost here – May 20th! It's a celebration of the vital role bees and pollinators play in keeping our planet healthy.  But before we roll out the red carpet for the bees, there’s another event I’m super excited to talk about… 

International Compost Awareness Week!  Yes, compost – glorious, earthy, life-giving compost!

Now, I know people fall somewhere on a big scale when it comes to composting – from the compost-curious, to the bokashi-bin trendsetters, all the way to the fully compost-obsessed. I'm very much at the extreme end of this scale.  I LOVE composting. Truly.  My compost bins, worm farms, and even chickens are like little cookie monsters, gobbling up my organic scraps and turning waste into the beautiful compost that helps my plants to grow!

So, what is International Compost Awareness Week?

🗓️ International Compost Awareness Week Australia (ICAW) is a week of events, education, and action focused on promoting the importance of composting.  It’s all about turning our organic “waste” into a valuable resource, reducing carbon pollution, and helping our soil thrive.  Because healthier soil = healthier planet. Simple as that!

Hot compost at our farm

My Composting Methods: From Worms to Chooks to HOT Compost!

If you’re new to composting or curious about how others do it, here’s a snapshot of my composting setup:

🪱 Worm Farm

My red wigglers are little legends. They munch their way through banana skins (banana bread is a staple in our house!), veggie scraps, and other soft organic materials. In return? Gorgeous worm castings and worm wee that is liquid gold for my fruit trees.

♻️ Compost Bins

Over the years, I’ve experimented with all shapes and sizes. My favourite are the dome-shaped compost bins that sit directly on the ground. I’ve usually got a few going at once – it’s a little compost rotation station!

🔥 Hot Compost

Yes, there’s such a thing as hot compost! At the farm, we have the space to create big compost piles by layering carbon and nitrogen-rich materials (think food scraps, straw, manure, even roo poo, leaves etc). When done right, the pile heats up and breaks down fast!

🚽 Compost Toilet (Yes, really!)

Several years ago (I think this was during covid lock downs) I read the most wonderful book by a gentleman, Joseph Jenkins - called - wait for it - The Human Manure Handbook - shit in a nutshell. Inspired by the book we installed a compost toilet at the farm and we haven’t looked back since!

🐔 Chickens

My chooks are composting heroes! They gobble up scraps and process them into nutrient-rich manure overnight!  I collect it with their wonderful eggs and add it to the compost.  It’s like adding baking powder to a cake: it takes the compost to the next level!

My composting heros - the chooks!

What Do I Compost?

Almost everything organic! This includes:

• Fruit and veggie scraps, tea and coffee grounds, leftovers, cardboard, paper towels… the list goes on and on!

• Hair from our Aussie Bulldogs (yes, really – they shed like woolly mammoths!)

• Garden clippings and leaves

• A beeswax by-product called slumgum 🐝  It is the impure residue that remains after beeswax is extracted from honeycombs
  

In a nutshell - if it can break down naturally, it’s going into my compost.

Even Tess, our Aussie Bulldog helps to make the garden grow - dog hair goes into the compost!

Why Compost?

Here are some powerful reasons to start composting today:

Healthier Soil = Healthier Planet

Compost feeds the soil, which supports healthy microbes. These microbes help sequester carbon and improve plant growth.

Reduces Greenhouse Gases

Organic waste in landfill breaks down without oxygen, releasing methane – a potent greenhouse gas. Composting keeps things aerobic and climate-friendly!

Increases Water Retention

It helps soil hold onto water, which means healthier plants and less need for watering.  During our recent drought at the farm, compost enabled me to plant seedlings that would not have otherwise grown

💚 It Just Feels Good

There’s something deeply satisfying about transforming waste into something life-giving.   A year after tossing scraps into the compost bin, I’m digging them back into the earth to grow something new. 

Ready to Get Started?

If you’re new to composting, start simple:

• Try a worm farm if you’ve got a small space.

• Go for a dome compost bin if you have a backyard.

And remember – Rome wasn't built in a day! It usually takes 6–12 months and sometimes even longer for compost to fully break down, but it’s worth the wait.

Get Involved this Compost Awareness Week!

Visit the ICAW website for more resources and info. If you’s like to learn more about compost and sustainability in your community, school or workplace, I’d love to come and share some compost inspiration with you.  Please send me a message!

Happy International Compost Awareness Week!

Sing, Dance and Learn with the Friends with Honey Musical Kids Show Album

World Bee Day 20th May 2025

Have you ever wondered what would happen if bees disappeared from the planet? It’s a question I often ask children when I run my bee education programs - and thanks to animated classics like The Bee Movie, a lot of kids already know the answer: a world without bees would be in serious trouble!

But this simple question opens the door to a much deeper conversation about the incredible ecosystem services that bees - and many other pollinators - provide. It's the perfect springboard for nurturing a lifelong appreciation for the biodiversity buzzing all around us.

A Real Threat: Why Pollinators Need Our Help

While it’s fun to imagine bees wearing tiny sneakers and flying off on adventures with their human friends, the truth is a lot less cheerful.  Pollinators face very real threats, and sadly, many of them come from human activities:

• Clearing vital habitats

• Overusing pesticides and chemicals

• Pollution that harms delicate ecosystems

• Climate change impacting seasons, flowering times, and habitats

• Large-scale farming and monocultures that leave little room for wild pollinators
  

The ripple effects of losing our pollinators would be massive - not just for bees, but for all of us.

Why Bees Matter More Than You Think

Bees are critical to global food security. In fact, one in every three bites of food we eat relies on pollination by bees and other pollinators, including birds, butterflies, flies, moths, wasps, beetles and bats.  No bees = fewer fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds.... and a world much hungrier, less biodiverse and colourful.

World Bee Day is a chance for us to celebrate our pollinators, raise awareness, take action to protect them and have fun along the way!.

World Bee Day 2025 - Friends with Honey Bee Education Programs - Fun and Engaging!

Why May 20th?

You might wonder: why celebrate World Bee Day in May when it’s autumn here in Australia and many of our local pollinators are nesting down for winter?

The date was chosen because in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s spring - the busiest time for bees and many other insect pollinators!  May 20 also honours the birthday of Anton Janša, a pioneer of modern beekeeping from Slovenia.

World Bee Day is still a relatively new event. It was the brilliant idea of Slovenian beekeeper Boštjan Noč. In 2014, while driving to work, he was listening to a program about various "World Days" and had a lightbulb moment: "Why isn’t there a World Bee Day? Bees are so important to humanity!"  Thanks to his efforts, the UN officially proclaimed World Bee Day on December 20, 2017 - a wonderful reminder of what one person's idea can achieve!

How You Can Help Pollinators This World Bee Day

The planet is at a crossroads. If we act now, there’s still hope. Every action, no matter how small, counts.

Here are some simple ways you can be a pollinator hero:

• Learn and Share: You’re already doing this by reading this blog! Learning about pollinators is the first step towards protecting them.  The more we know, the more motivated we are to take action.

• Be Kind to Nature: Avoid using harmful chemicals and pesticides. Think about your personal impact on pollution and waste.  Small changes at home can ripple out into big changes for the planet.

• Plant for Pollinators:  Whether you have a backyard, a balcony, or a windowsill, you can grow plants that bees and other pollinators love!  Even better - plant locally native plants that support the wildlife in your area.  If you don't have space at home, join a local community garden or ‘Friends of’ group - they’re wonderful places to learn, connect, and give back.

• Support Wild Spaces: Pollinators need wilderness! From rewilding a small patch and leaving your garden a little 'messy', to supporting larger conservation efforts, protecting natural habitats is vital.

And remember - while World Bee Day is special, the bees need us every day of the year, not just once a year. So, try and make every day a little more bee-friendly!

Want to Celebrate World Bee Day 20th May 2025 with Us?

If you're keen to learn more, there are some wonderful events happening for World Bee Day — check them out here:  www.worldbeeday.org.au

And if you'd love to bring a Friends with Honey Bee Education Program to your school, kinder, community group, or workplace, I’d love to chat!

Bee-Inspired Music: Friends with Honey Musical Kids Show

At Friends With Honey, we believe that learning should always be fun and engaging - and that’s exactly what inspired us to create the Friends With Honey Musical Kids Show Album!

After all, you can’t have a party without music!

This World Bee Day, why not crank up the tunes and and buzz along to our songs as you celebrate our amazing pollinators?

Friends With Honey Musical Kids Show Album

Looking Beyond the Surface: How to Read a Landscape and Work With It

When we look at a landscape, it’s easy to focus on what’s right in front of us - the dry grass, the dusty soil the dry dam, maybe a couple of brave weeds clinging to life. But every patch of land holds so many more stories than what meets the eye.

Take our little patch of land in Amphitheatre, for instance.  Right now, it’s bone dry thanks to a long stretch of drought. But underneath that parched surface? Life is buzzing and crawling  - quite literally!  Our farm sits within a “Dry Grassy Forest” ecosystem.  It’s a name thought up by humans, but it helps us understand how everything fits together - the plants, the soil, the beetles, the spiders, the birds, and yes, the bees.

But I’ve been thinking: What used to be here? What lived and thrived on this land before fences went up and invasive species like rabbits and goats moved in? And maybe more importantly, what could this land look like in the future?

Our farm sits within a “Dry Grassy Forest” ecosystem

Using Tools Like NatureKit to Travel Through Time

One of my favourite tools for exploring these questions and learning how to read a landscape is a free online platform called NatureKit. It’s basically a treasure map for biodiversity nerds like me!  Using it, I can zoom in on our farm and discover what plants and animals used to live here — before colonisation, before agriculture, before roads.

NatureKit shows something called Ecological Vegetation Classes (EVCs) - a fancy way of saying “this is what nature looked like here.” It even lists the species that would have grown in the canopy, understorey, and ground layer — plus the typical weeds to watch out for.

This info is gold if you’re trying to restore or rewild a patch of land. Because when we understand what should be growing in a space, we can work with nature, not against it.  

Pelargonium rodneyanum is a small, perennial herb that is very resilient and endemic in our area

Not All Native Plants Are Locally Native

You’ve probably heard people say, “plant natives!” - and that’s great advice.  But did you know not all native plants are locally native?  A plant might be Australian, but not adapted to your specific patch of earth.

That’s why I always encourage people to ask: “Is this plant locally native?” Plants that are endemic (which means they only grow in a specific geographic area) are often perfectly tuned to the local soil, climate, and insects - which makes them super resilient and low-maintenance.

Climate Change & Poleward MIgration

Of course, the climate is changing, and that’s forcing plants and animals to change too. Species are slowly moving toward the poles in search of suitable habitat - something known as poleward migration. It’s like a slow-motion shuffle, as species try to find the conditions they need to survive.

But that also means we need to plant with care. Even native species can become invasive if they’re plonked into the wrong spot and start taking over. That’s why it’s so important to look at the landscape - and really look.

Drought Conditions - the dams are empty!

Let Nature Be Your Guide

One of my favourite things? Seeing nature take the lead. This year we’ve had some beautiful surprises: eucalyptus, gravillia and acacia seedlings popping up all on their own. That’s nature thriving.  And when I do my own plantings, I always try to listen to what the land is telling me.

Exploring local reserves and even roadsides is another great way to get inspired. Every park, every creekline, every overgrown verge is like a window into what could be growing on your patch.

Want to Learn More about How to Read a Landscape and Work With It

If you're curious about how to use NatureKit and other amazing biodiversity tools, I run hands-on workshops to help people connect with their local ecosystems, decode their landscapes, and plant with purpose.

Check out the Workshops tab on our website or drop us a line.