In celebration (and anticipation) of hosting the insightful and awesome David Holmgren for an Advanced Permaculture Principles and planning tools course in Sydney this July, here’s a pack of fabulous resources we’d like to give to someone… Read More
Milkwood is extremely excited to announce that we’re presenting Allan Savory, founder of Holistic Management, for a series of talks and seminars in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne this coming August.
Alongside our long-time collaborators Kym and Georgie of RegenAG, we’re charged with presenting Holistic Management for what it is: a key tool for reversing desertification and healing climate change. Right now. On this Planet Earth. Read More
It’s the pace of everything, that gets you most of all – everyone is busy – doing a task that needs to be done, right now, then walking purposefully to the next task, which also needs to be done.
Joel Salatin often describes the interaction between his rotational beef grazing and egg mobile systems as ‘ballet of the pasture’ – a slow dance of animals circling, shifting and moving in precise relation to each other, to create a symphony of regenerated land and outputs of ‘beyond organic’ protein.
What Nick witnessed in the time he was at Polyface this last week, however, was more a ballet of the entire farming system. But to a faster beat. Read More
Our Urban Permaculture Design Course is coming up fast in July, and is shaping to be pretty special. Leading the learning will be the awesome Hannah Moloney, supported by Nick Ritar and none other that the co-originator of Permaculture, David Holmgren.
The great thing about this teaching team is the breadth of experience and enthusiasm they bring to share with students of urban permaculture design – Hannah is a long-time urban community cultivator, Nick’s focus is the small farm / urban permaculture resurgence, and David Holmgren, well, he’s David Holmgren. Need we say more. But we will. Read More
‘Catch and Store Energy’ is one of David Holmgren’s twelve permaculture principles. It’s a far-reaching theme that can be applied just as effectively at the home scale as it can be at the larger level of communities and society.
So what are some of the ways we catch and store energy in our home system at Milkwood Farm? I’ll walk you through just a couple… Read More
At Milkwood, we spend the majority of our time focusing on positivistic strategies for an uncertain future. This is mostly because the other way of looking at the future has a big flashing ‘here be dragons’ sign on it.
Like everyone else, we know what’s happening out there in the big wide world. We know that there’s many gigantic problems, that the climate is changing, and that our granchildren’s world will definitely not look like this one.
It’s scary stuff. And yes, it does sometimes keep me awake at night. But then it’s morning again. Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can. Read More
So who would like a copy of this fabulous book? It’s one of the favourites of our permaculture library, and also the textbook we give out to students at our Intro to Permaculture courses.
The reason for choosing this as our introductory textbook is simple: it’s a great introduction to permaculture theory and practice. It’s also a good choice as a gift, if you’re looking to get someone excited about ecological design… Read More
Recently Nick was lucky enough to hang out with David Holmgren for a couple of days at Melliodora, the superb small-acre permaculture site that David has established with his partner Su Dennett in Hepburn Springs, Victoria.
Being in the thick of a super-productive, comfortable and energy efficient permaculture system at harvest time was inspiring, to say the least. To add to that, the purpose of the visit was for Dave Jacke to spend time with David and Su while he was in Australia. You can imagine the intensely wonderful conversations that went down! Read More
No room to grow? Your options for vertical gardens are expanding by the day. Some are big, and some are small, some blend in, and some stand out. Like this one.
Here’s a funky little home growing project by the crew behind Calanthe Artisian Loft, a homestay in Melaka, Malaysia… Read More
When we moved in to the tiny house last August, our design plans for our edible courtyard were vast, and immediate. It would be a riot of color and flavor in no time – citrus trees ripening in the microclimate of the east-facing gabion wall, feasts of greens, herbs everywhere, scenting the air as pollinators buzzed, and my child laughing and playing, surrounded by an oversupply of butterflies attracted by the many small flowers that would be springing from every crack we could see.
I expected all this to take shape by mid spring, or early Summer at the latest. Hey, we’d lived through the build and we had moved in. What more was there to do but garden?
Well, there was life and a farm and permaculture education to run, and egg-cup dinosaurs to make, as it turned out. We hope to realise the design next winter in our quieter months. But in the meantime, bring on the glory of potted interim gardening! Never have I lived in such a happy space. Read More
