Our "Big Idea"

When DJ first arrived at Avoca we were unsure what avenue we were going to go down when decorating. We were given beef and we wanted to include DJ's name and personality into the artwork.When we started researching we were surprised and a little ashamed at how much food went to waste in todays society.
We spoke about how things had changed since our parent's and grandparent's time. A lot of our elders were bought up on farms, they didn't have a supermarket to pop down to to get food. In their day they killed and butchered their own beasts, they couldn't afford to be fussy about what they ate so nothing went to waste.
They had creative ways to use all of the beast, they tanned the hide to use for clothing and other things.
We have demonstrated the nothing goes to waste concept in our art work by labelling the different cuts of beef. We also included some receipes that have unusual cuts of meat in them that used to be used in past times.



On the other side of DJ we focused on sustainable farming. We have included pictures of renewable resources like wind farms and solar power.

Australian farmers feeding australia and the world

Meet Art4A Young Farming Champion Jasmine Nixon who loves agriculture an...

Meet Art4A Young Farming Champion Jasmine Nixon who loves agriculture an...

Young Eco Champion Megan Rowlatt tells the farmscape conservation story

Aussie Farmers, the unsung heroes

Farmers are more important than most people realise. Most Australians live within 80km from the coast and in cities. This means that the cities are crowded and busy. People just have to go to the supermarket to get whatever they want, they don’t realise where the food has come from or what it takes to provide the things that they need.
We don’t think that people in the city realise the importance of farms. They don’t know that each farmer produces enough food to feed 600 people! Farmers feed and clothe Australian communities and they also give what they grow to other countries because they can’t grow their own.
It takes a lot to sustainably feed and clothe our communities for a day, from the moment we get out of bed we are using things and eating things that have been made by Australian farmers, things like cotton sheets, milk, breakfast cereal, bread, vegetables and even our shoes have come from a farm somewhere!
Regional towns and centres are important to farmers because that is where they get their supplies from. They will be affected by changes to farming practices because if farmers replace workers with machines there won’t be as many jobs and people will move away. If people do not buy from Australian farmers then they will leave the farm and we won’t have as many farmers to provide things we need. To be sustainable we need to support local farmers.

Natural Resource Management

Natural Resource Management
Natural resource management is working towards not depleting our natural resources like trees, natural gas and fossil fuels. Biodiversity is the variety of life in the world and it too needs to be looked after.
A few weeks ago we had a visit from Megan Rowlett, a young eco champion. She showed us some examples of natural resource management and spoke about the best outcomes for our environment. We learnt that natural resource management is used on farms and in rainforests. They plant trees and remove weeds. They also plant more native trees to prevent salinity and to provide homes for native wild life.
It is so important to get it right because the resources we now need to be preserved for future generations to come. If we don’t manage our natural resources properly we will run out of non-renewable resources like wood, natural gas, coal and other fossil fuels.

Waste, why so much?

Australia is a very lucky country; we are lucky that most of us have plenty to eat and somewhere safe and warm to sleep. Did you know that most Australian food banks don’t have enough to feed the people that come to them for help? Food banks provide food for 88 000 meals each day and they don’t have enough to give. We found that very sad especially when we did some research into how much food gets wasted in our homes.
Australians spend billions of dollars on food each year, fruit and vegetables have to pass a beauty test before they are put on the shelf, if they don’t look perfect they get chucked out.
When you go shopping, don’t buy too much food that you don’t need. Always check your fridge, freezer and pantry just in case the food you are going to buy is already there. Australians waste 4 million tonnes of food each year! The food that gets chucked out has to go somewhere. When it gets dumped it rots and sends methane gas out into the atmosphere adding to the gasses in the Ozone Layer.
We think that food wastage occurs because people are too picky with their food, just because there is a tiny mark or bruise on it or it smells funny they won’t buy it. Also they buy too much and it goes off.

Australian Farmers

Agriculture is the production of crops and livestock. Agriculture is very important for Australia because we export around 60 percent of our red meat and crops to other countries. Australia exports a lot of things including fruit, vegetables grains and meat. We export goods to over 100 countries a year like China, Japan, USA, Indonesia and many other countries. It is so important for Australia to export food because even though we only have 22.3 million people in Australia we provide food for 60 million people each year.
If we stop exporting Australian goods to other countries we and the people we export to are going to suffer. Firstly 172 000 people work in the red meat industry if we stopped exporting our meat to other countries they will lose their jobs. If they lose their jobs, they will need support from the government. The government will be losing money because they won’t be getting the 16 billion dollars that Australian exports provide.
Other countries need our exports because they have big populations to feed but they don’t have the land or resources to produce their own food. If we stop exporting to them they will not have the food to feed their people, the food they will have will be more expensive and a lot of people won’t be able to afford to eat.

Jasmine Nixon Young Farmer

Young Farming Champion
Jasmine Nixon
On the 16th August 2013 Jasmine Nixon from Art4Agriculture came to teach us about her farm and beef.
Jasmine is from Crookwell, NSW which is just over an hour away from Avoca. She lives on a farm called Merryvale and keeps Angus cattle.
First she showed us a power point presentation about her farm and beef. She showed us a couple slides and then it came to a clip. The clip was about Jasmine, her farm and her cattle.
Then she went through some slides about her cattle and what happens to them when she sells them. She sells her cattle to a feed lot. The feed lot fattens up the cows that are then sold to the abattoir. The abattoir kills them then separates them to go to different butchers. Then the butchers sell the meat to us for us to eat.
At the end Jasmine said because we were such a good audience she was going to show us a video clip. The clip was a parody of the song Gangnam Style called Farmer Style.
After that we had to do an interview with Jasmine. We filmed it on an iPad.

Megan Rowlatt Eco Champion

Megan Young Eco Champion

Megan is a young eco champion; she came to Avoca Public School on August 9th 2013. Megan came to tell us about herself and her job as a Land Care specialist.
In a PowerPoint she told us a bit about herself. She grew up in Wollongong, loves to travel (she has been to lots of places) and she is an adventurer. She is also a nature lover. Megan graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Ecotourism on the Gold Coast. She worked for National Parks and Wildlife Service and now is the Illawarra Local Land services officer. Megan also won the 2012 National Young Land Care Leader of the year.
Then she showed us a video about what she does and about her job. She said she and her group work towards achieving the best outcomes for the environment as well the land holder. Megan also holds workshop days.
When she had finished showing us the other video about herself we went outside and had a picture with her. After a while of talking and asking questions we had to say goodbye. She will be coming back soon so we can ask her some more questions.
We really enjoyed Megan coming to our school to teach us more about sustainability and ways to be sustainable. The valuable sustainable practises we learned were to not let cattle near river banks and water ways because they will pollute the water with their droppings and will knock dirt from the river bank in there as well. Rotating cattle is very important because you need to keep the cattle and grass healthy. This will also make the cattle stronger. Weeds strangle other native plants and can kill cattle if they eat the flower fruit from the weeds.

Threats to Australian Farmers

Threats to farmers
Australian cattle farmers are care caretakers of 50 % of Australia’s land. They feed millions of people every day and the beef industry is responsible for thousands of jobs. Being a farmer in Australia is not a walk in the park. They face many threats from technology, poor markets and of course Mother Nature herself! We decided to focus on the natural disasters that farmers face.
Droughts
Australia is known for its long and hard droughts. Sometimes farmers go months without rain. Some impacts of a drought are:
. Crops need water, they will deteriorate meaning farmers can’t grow grain for their livestock. This also means that there is no crop for them to harvest and sell. If they don’t have the money from last year’s crop it makes it hard to afford to put the next year’s crop in.
. Farmers have to buy water. If they don’t have water in their dams they have to buy water. This is another cost they have to find money for.
. Crops have failed and no feed is growing in the paddocks because it is too dry. Farmers have to buy grain and because there isn’t much of it around it is expensive.
. 1864- 1866: A huge drought which affected every state in Australia except Tasmania. There was also a really bad drought from 2002-2006 where most of Australia was classified as being in drought.

Here are some photos from our teacher's farm in Western NSW in 2004





Floods are also a threat to Australian farmers. Floods occur when too much rain falls in one area. The floods that will impact on farmers are usually from long periods of rain that cause river banks to break. This sometimes causes flash flooding and if farmers don’t get enough warning to get their stock to higher ground they can drown.

Other impacts of floods include water logged crops. Too much water will drown the crops; this is not good for farmers because that is one of the main sources of their income.

DJ Beef is the king of Avoca Public School

Poor DJ had a rough time on the field playing footy.

DJ helped Year Two with reading at the reading table.

Apparently DJ Beef loves bingo!

DJ Beef was helping Year One with spelling.

DJ decided to try out the bridge, surprisingly cows don't have very good balance.

DJ being introduced to Oscar our steer and fruit and vegetable garbage disposal.
Oscar doesn't seem too impressed with the new kid. He challenged DJ to a staring contest....... DJ won!

DJ Beef was very happy to finally make it to Avoca Public School after he accidently got sent to Avoca Beach!

DJ showing off his awesome basketball skills.

DJ having a word with Mrs McMillan our office lady about not wasting paper.

Teething problems!!!!

This is our first ever blog! It has been an interesting ride learning how to blog!

We havn't figured everything out yet and it may take a while.

Avoca Public school is a small school in the Southern Highlands. We have 34 students and 2 teachers!

Most of the farmers around here are dairy farmers, so learning about the beef industry is like talking in a different language!

A few weeks ago after a bit of a mix up (our calf took the scenic route via Avoca Beach) we unwrapped our calf and after  lots of discussion we called him DJ Beef.