Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Pump up the Dam: A P&E fundraising sale

Our little farm is steep arrangement. The fall from the very top to the very bottom is almost 100m.
At the very bottom of our land we are extremely blessed to have a reasonably big, spring-fed dam, which is currently overflowing, even though it hasn't rained properly for months. Just behind the house, near the top of our block, we have a small, very sweet little duck pond. This pond is fed, via a diversion drain running through our orchard, with rain that is mostly harvested from the road. On account of aforementioned hardly-any-rain, this little dam is approaching empty, so our plans to use it to gravity-feed water to our veggie garden and fruit trees has been thwarted.

At present, we are driving down the hill, hand-filling 20L barrels of water (we have 5 of them), then driving back up to water our garden. We do this daily, and while our early-morning water-carrying adventures are mostly lovely, it's kind of unsustainable, especially since our garden is growing by the day. Clearly, we are in need of a pump, which is why, as soon as we have our solar-power-system set up, I will be making skirts and boleros and such in order to raise a little bit of money towards our impending kind-of-large purchase of some water-carrying infrastructure so we can get our water from here

Luscious, spring-fed, overflowing dam, with a pyjama-ed Pearlie collecting water and azolla in a pre-7am water-carrying adventure (barrels to the right)


to here

Top dam: not as full as she could be, but still looking quite pretty in the morning sun

without driving our car and/or busting our backs in the process.

If you would like to support our pump-buying, and get yourself a sweet, custom-made and probably kind of underpriced P&E skirt into the bargain, read on and pre-order your package NOW! Tell your friends! Or, even better, get them a gift certificate for their birthday/Jesus' birthday (useful also for dudes who would like to participate and are disappointed that I don't make dude-clothes)! And I suppose it would also be useful for you to 'like' this on facebook (though I find making this request inherently embarrassing and I do apologise).

Package 1: A custom-made P&E skirt, made using vintage/reclaimed fabrics and fixtures, sewed in our little strawbale house and powered by 100% solar energy! This will set you back $70 (RRP $90)
Package 2: Aforementioned custom skirt PLUS a jar of our hand-made, hand-picked preserves and a little package of super-azolla, so you can start your own azolla farm. $90
Package 3: A P&E lovely skirt AND a custom bolero (matching, or not). This lot'll be $100 (RRP $130)
Package 4: The works (ie. packages 1,2 and 3 combined) PLUS a little hand-made something extra, as a surprise treat. This is for the hey big spenders amongst you. $130

This is a fab-o opportunity to a) get some lean-priced P&E in your life and b) support a little family on a little baby farm who are trying to do some good by growing some good. So if you feel like doing either or both of these things please do send me an email so I can put you in my sewing book. Don't forget to let me know what package you'd like (or if you'd like your skirt in gift-certificate form).

PLEASE NOTE: The number of packages is NOT unlimited. We need to raise $1300 for the pump and associated pipes and fixtures, so once I reach this number I won't accept any more orders. I learned that capping can be useful in my last skirt sale, which saw me make 40 skirts in  month. Kind of hectic.

Looking forward to sewing for y'all!

7 comments:

  1. Great idea ladies. I will be happy to kick start you fund :D

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  2. Oh so exciting Annie! Unfortunately I'm currently about as broke as an unemployed student can be :( But only another four months to go! Yippee! Looking forward to being part of the next fundraiser and getting me some desperately needed and very beautiful P&E gear!

    Cx

    PS: Is there a page with images of said gear that I can direct friends to? Perhaps from the last sale?

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    1. No worries Clairey -I still have your fabric set aside, and even know exactly where it is in the shipping container! All 'skirt' posts can be found at

      http://www.pearlandelspeth.blogspot.com.au/search/label/skirts

      there's a heap of 'em... xxxxx

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  3. Dear Annie,

    I would be so happy to order a new skirt. Perhaps one with birds? I am loving my wattle skirt... Wearing it heaps!

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  4. GREAT name for your post and great idea. Wish I could take you up on it but we've just spent a week trying to get recruits to help render our house....and ended up paying people as most of our friends are away on school holiday adventures. And then our material costs for render started to blow the budget too. Argf. The house, however, almost has its second coat on.
    So whilst I can offer solidarity in the strawbale building adventure, I can't take advantage of this fab. offer.
    Bugger. Will definitely keen P&E in mind come christmas, however.

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  5. Hello! Just wanted to check your email is pearlandelspeth@gmail.com incase my first email went astray? Cheers, Meg

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