Milkwood: permaculture farming and living

Recently we welcomed a crew of budding market gardeners to Milkwood Farm to start learning the craft of organic market gardening.

The crew was a mix of city folks dreaming of rooftop farms, enterprising suburban folks, small farm owners looking to diversify and keen-but-landless growers looking for opportunities. All of them left full of good knowledge.

Tools at the ready

Trying out the seeder

Making a bed

Michael in teaching mode

Compost making time!

Mmm cow poo slurry, the secret of good hot compost piles at Milkwood Farm

Testing the pH of the previous compost pile… all’s well here…

Go diggers go!

Rotation cards… it’s all in the cycling of crops, is organic market gardening…

Making soil blocks

And of course, then there was the catering, freshly picked from the same garden everyone had just been learning in…

And, as always, Rose’s amazing sourdough that is just getting more awesome with time…

Then back down the garden for more learning…

Lastly just a few resources from the Milkwood files:

• Making soil blocks
• Recommended reading for organic growers
• New models for awesome Community Supported Agricultures (CSAs)

Thanks so much to everyone who came along to this excellent weekend! It was great to meet you all. Thanks also to Gianna for the gorgeous photos and to Michael Hewins for his dedication to effective knowledge transfer.

The next round of Starting an Organic Market Garden will be on September 27 – 29, and will be just as excellent. For more confident growers there’s also the Market Garden Masterclass this weekend at Allsun Farm. We’ll run another one in the Spring also.

>> More posts and resources for growing organic food on a community scale

What a great crew of future growers! Yeehar!