This short documentary is about a weekend workshop hosted recently by Ampersand Sustainable Learning Center.
Watershed Restoration: The Cutting Edge was taught by Brad Lancaster, Amanda Bramble, Jan-Willem Jansens, Steve Carson, and Craig Sponholtz. It focused on catching, sinking, storing, and using water where it falls.
So good to see this knowledge gaining ground spreading far and wide! We loved having Craig Sponholtz at Milkwood Farm last year…
Last weekend Milkwood made the telly! Sydney Weekender to be exact… it was a bit of fun. Big thanks to everyone who helped pull the day of filming off, including our awesome crew and friends from afar…
© Retracad http://www.retracad.com.au
Perhaps you can tell at a glance why I am so excited by this photo? I’ll tell you. We have a humanure compost toilet system built on wheelie bins. We love it. But the place we want to use the finished, composted humanure is over the hill from the toilet block.
At the moment, we’re loading full wheelie bins of humanure onto the back of the Milkwood truck and shipping it over the hill. It works as a system, but it isn’t ideal. Maybe these wheelie bin trailers will hold the answer! Read More
So we’re creating a forest garden – a lush, shady place, dripping with fruit and springing with herbs, flowers and tubers. But when you think of a forest garden, do you think of paths, their construction, and their capabilities? Or do you just figure you’ll wind your way through the green herbage as you see fit?
The paths make the garden. And by consciously designing them before you begin, you can bring many benefits to the forest garden space that are difficult to retro-fit later on. So here’s how we designed the Milkwood forest garden paths… Read More
A hot day. A secret valley. A high hill. A shady billabong. And a whole afternoon, stretching out before us.
Sometimes, you just gotta get off the farm. And go somewhere just over the ridge where the landscape rolls in a different direction, the creek contains waterholes you’ve never seen before, and different plants are flowering in the shady places…
Off to the Milkwood bush block, just down the road but a world away...
Edible Forest Gardens – Volumes 1 and 2 by Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeier is a spectacular double volume of knowledge. Really, truly incredible stuff. So it was with some excitement that i found this recent podcast with Dave Jacke on Gardening like a forest.
Author of Edible Forest Gardens- Volumes 1 and 2, Dave Jacke is a longtime permaculture teacher and designer. In this interview, he talks about the history of forest gardening, its many benefits, and how gardening like a forest can enrich your life... sounds good! Have a listen: Read More
The last danger of frosts have passed – finally. It is officially time to plant tomatoes at Milkwood. And plant them we did. Oh yes, how we did.
The plan here is to be awash in tomatoes by early February. We want tomatoes coming out our ears and out our toes. At which point there will be an impromptu passata festival, where all the tomatoes get squished into a year’s worth of pasta sauce. But first we have to grow them… Read More
Last winter, we decided we needed a dedicated on-farm cook while Milkwood Farm is open (Spring-Autumn). I love cooking, but it was all getting a bit much. Interns, students, wwoofers and guests, all needing to be fed good food, every single day.
We’ve tried me doing all the cooking. That worked until Ashar was too old to happily hang out on my back all the time. We’ve tried cooking rosters, we’ve tried catering. But clearly what we needed was a dedicated person who would joyfully cook with whatever we had available, and keep everyone fed and happy. Enter Rose.
“Some call it permaculture, we prefer p-culture… ya dig? p-culture, starring the wonderful Miss Tasia Zalar, is a series of 10 segments designed to get youthful peeps actively involved in reducing their impact on the environment.”
Great! Bring on the teen permacool. I mean p-culture… sorry dudes.
Then there’s the Permaculture challenge, which is 50 funded places for 15-17 y.o. peeps to embark on a wilderness adventure, permaculture certification and some permablitz action.
So it looks like we’re finally cool! I knew everyone would cotton on to holistic systems theory eventually. Even the cool kids.
Rocket stoves are awesome, experimental, and a knowledge stream in flux. Or ours is, at any rate. Our rocket stove water heater has been doing its thing for nearly 3 years now, so we decided to take it apart and do a full examination of how it had fared.
So Nick and our current permaculture interns set to work completely dis-mantling the rocket stove water heater and examining all its components. We made new discoveries and adjustments, put it all back together, and then covered the whole thing with mud. Read More
