Earth Beat, 10 February 2012. We go all gooey on the inside, for people with a passion for what they do. There was the man who panned for gold to make a very special ring, two young entrepreneurs who fell in love with the idea of growing gourmet funghi on recycled coffee grounds and a woman who's mapping where we make out. Pucker up, because this show’s a labour of love. Comment on the show.
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How to pan for gold
John Greenwood's prospecting kit: "A gold pan (mine is plastic with riffles on one side), a small pick for raking and turning over the stones. The spy glass is a glass-bottomed tube fitted with a handle, I use this to look through bubbly water as you can't see through from the surface. The glass is from a magnifying glass - it gives a clear view over a meter away. The tube is a waterpipe.
The gravel pump is made up of a tennis ball fitted with a threaded rod through (about a meter) a handle on one end, passed through a section of plastic rainwater pipe. By drawing back it causes a vacuum behind the tennis ball, which in turn sucks up the sand, gravel and hopefully the gold as well - with a swift action, you place the contents into the gold pan.
Once the pan is full I flood it with water, and with a sideways motion wash the water in a wake in and out of the pan. Because of the action, all the heavies, black sand and gold settles to the bottom. You keep working the pan like this, it's only at the very end you can see.
Most of the time you find small specks and little flakes, the best day was two grams. For panning, Leadhills, at Wanlockhead (the highest village in Scotland) is the best place to start and there is a great mining museum. The Tyndrum area is also a great and beautiful place. Following the Highland Boundary fault, a lot of the streams and burns contain gold traces."
But imagine deciding to source the gold yourself, to spend days, weeks, months even, up to your groin in Scottish rivers panning speck by speck.
That was John Greenwood. His girlfriend Morag knew about his panning, she bought him the gold pans after all, but she had no idea it would lead to a proposal and a ring on her finger - view photos.
You may remember Andrea and Pete from a couple of years ago – they told us about a plan to pay for their wedding by collecting cans.
We caught up with them to find out if they reached their recycling goal – and how their love of all things eco continues to grow. View more wedding photos here or visit the Wedding Cans Facebook Page.
A kiss changes how you see a place. Just ask Chris Kay Fraser. She got the bright and romantic idea to get people to map where they’ve kissed someone else in the city of Toronto, and tell their story. And it turns out, a kiss is not just a kiss.
Toronto looks very different when depicted by its smooches than it does when you’re looking at a street map. Add your kiss to the Toronto Kiss Map and from February 14, the Canada Kiss Map.
(Can you find producer Anik See's kiss on the Toronto map? If you find it, let us know on our Facebook Page!)
Chris joins host Marnie Chesterton to explain what she’s done, and how any sort of kiss can alter our memory of a street corner, or a park bench, or any other kind of landscape - view photos.
You can’t talk about love without talking about chocolate. And at Van Velze’s Chocolaterie and Patisserie in Amsterdam, love is definitely in the air. Owners Deborah Kilroy and Robbert van Velze are a couple.
She’s Irish, he’s Dutch, and their labour of love is not only in the form of a chocolate store, but a chocolate store where you can feel even better about eating what they make, because everything is made with sustainable Rainforest Alliance Certified chocolate.
We took a look behind the counter to get their story - view photos.
Think Iraq and the chances are you immediately think of the US-led invasion, roadside bombs and sniper attacks. You may be forgiven for not thinking birds. But throughout the war, Omar Fadhil from environmental organisation Nature Iraq was attempting to carry out surveys about his country's bird life.
He became fixated with finding the sociable lapwing, a critically-endangered bird that takes on the annual epic journey from Kazakhstan to Sudan.
Each trip he takes involves bringing not only his binoculars and his fellow ornithologists, but also an entourage of policemen (view photos).
He talks to Marnie about his passion, some near-misses and his dream of seeing the lapwing. More on Omar Fadhil from BirdLife International.
Nikhil Arora doesn’t describe himself as a foodie, or have particularly green fingers… and yet he’s fallen in love with funghi.
Along with his friend Alex Velez, he’s set up Back to the Roots, a company that cultivates oyster mushrooms from used coffee grounds - view photos.
He talks to Marnie about the magic of growing crops in just ten days and why his company is playing its part in helping US shoppers become more conscientious.
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