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Earthbag bench building workshop: 6th May, Sydney

This Sunday Nick is leading a free earthbag bench building workshop as part of National Permaculture Day in Sydney. Do you want to come along? Earthbag is a really excellent, low-impact building technique used for building strong, solid structures; be they benches, garden beds, or homes. We’ve cut our teeth on an Earthbag dome at [...]

In-kitchen worm farm design

Ok perhaps I’m having a rabidly bright-green moment, but i rekon this artwork is pretty cool. An in-kitchen wormfarm, with built in chopping board! Nutrient cycling beneath the bench…

Mushroom Cultivation: Good books for Aussies

The further we get into mushroom cultivation, the more I realise just how useful and amazing fungi is. I’ve also found that it’s sometimes a little hard to find info that relates to growing edible mushrooms in Australian conditions. Finding local knowledge is crucial! Luckily, Will Borowski, that friendly expert who teaches the Mushroom Cultivation [...]

Watershed Restoration: Constructing a Media Luna

Recently at Milkwood Farm, Craig Sponholtz led a course in Applied Watershed Restoration, and taught us all a bit about how to tackle on-farm erosion control with human-scale solutions. One of the things we constructed as part of the workshop was a media luna, a simple but effective rockwork structure that can be used to [...]

A weekend of chooks, raw milk and urban agriculture

Last weekend I went on a rare road trip to see Michael Ableman speak down at Mulloon Creek. While I was there I squeezed in a quick peek at Mulloon’s free-range egg operation… I was also lucky enough to stay on farm with our good friends (and comrades in permaculture farming aspirations) Cam and Jessie [...]

Celebrating the Summer that was, and the Winter to come

The first frost has arrived and the last tomatoes and capsicums harvested. The last course has been hosted and the cups all put away. Tis officially the end of the year for our seasonal courses and crew at Milkwood Farm. At this time of year our focus shifts from welcoming many students, woofers and friends [...]

Egg Mobiles I Have Loved…

An Egg Mobile is a movable chicken house designed to house laying hens at night, who by day cluck around on open pasture. Joel Salatin made them famous at Polyface Farms, but who invented the concept I do not know. Egg mobiles are different from chicken tractors in that they are designed as part of [...]

The dark and the light: eating different honeycombs as part of natural beekeeping

Once you start natural beekeeping you’ll soon be introduced to eating brood honeycomb – comb that has had baby bees (brood) go through it, and now contains honey. In many traditional cultures, this dark honeycomb is the most sought after – it is riddled with extra enzymes and traces of pollen from the brood rearing [...]

Dave and Phoebe’s DIY Yurt

Over the Easter weekend we had a little shindig at Milkwood Farm, with camping and artists and lots of food. Dave and Phoebe brought their yurt, which they made themselves, from scratch, for under $2,000. It was an amazing and a beautiful thing. ‘Oh yes’, i thought, when Dave said they were bringing it… ‘I [...]

Talking tiny houses with the Telegraph

So about 5 months ago we got interviewed about the process of building a very small house… and last weekend the resulting article finally made it to the paper. Apparently we’re part of a ‘backlash’… I just thought we were trying (trying as opposed to necessarily succeeding) to build something simple and within our means… [...]

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