I desperately want to be Annemarie and Graham Brookman. Not right away – maybe about 30 years from now. By that time I want to be sitting back and recounting our successful adventure of transforming our land from an exposed and rocky ridge into a kick-ass permaculture farm. Just like the Brookmans. Annemarie and Graham [...]
February 15, 2008 – 5:47 pm
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cBerVdPsqk]
The studio dam, the one halfway up the ridge and in the middle of our system, was the first one we all sunk our teeth into. And boy oh boy…earthworks are something else… it’s like having your skin torn off in large slabs, while someone tells you it’s not skin, it’s just butter. No problem…
January 31, 2008 – 10:01 am
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJTssuxBMhU]
Having grand plans is all very fine, but there comes a time when one must make the first, single, decisive gesture towards action.
For us, this meant placing a small wooden peg, painted white, at the southern boundary of Milkwood. And then surveying a contour which continued aaaallllll the way around the hillside at the same height as that first peg, right around to the other boundary of Milkwood on the western side of the ridge.
December 29, 2007 – 11:48 am
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9EGuviXznU]
And so here is the final product – three weeks on from the beginning, and 9 days on from the middle of the compost making process. Pretty impressive for three weeks worth of microbial action, don’t you rekon?
November 21, 2007 – 9:09 pm
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So – the compost pile is made…. fast forward to two weeks later… the compost is composting! Despite my well-intentioned but slightly incorrect assemblage (i really should have shredded all that glossy newsprint, or at least ripped it up into smaller pieces), my fast compost pile is hot-hot-hot! Maybe even a little too hot. Not to worry, I can cool it down by turning it more regularly. And we can only learn by doing, really…
November 7, 2007 – 1:37 pm
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Or7WvoOVbuM]
Compost is so good, and so essential to the establishment of any system. Balcony garden, a big kitchen garden, or just the pot-plants. Surprisingly, despite being such a benchmark of any system that involved growing stuff, it can be quite daunting to make… even tho everything you need is already there, around you, begging to be transformed, with a bit of knowledge and elbow-grease, into kick-arse super-duper soil with added flavours…
November 1, 2007 – 7:00 pm
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZS_2VhyKz4]
Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a light! And it is bright! And it lets us read at night. Hooray!
Just for the record, we got all the bits for our little solar setup from The Solar Shop (ordered online), with minimum fuss and bother.
For the energy-techies out there, you’ll be pleased to know that our solar panel is of the amorphous type… lowest possible embodied energy panel on the market. And I think the whole setup cost us around the $350 AU mark… not bad for 15 years worth of light, no? How exciting to be able to read AND cook in the one space simultaneously….
October 7, 2007 – 5:28 pm
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl8sBac3TCo]
As I think I’ve mentioned, this part of Australia is, although it doesn’t look it at first glance, a labyrinth of abandoned settler’s orchards. Every farm around here seems to have at least two of these gnarly fruit-thickets over in a back paddock somewheres. These old orchards are the only sign left of previous shacks and farmhouses which dotted the landscape here over a hundred years ago, during the gold-rush years.
October 3, 2007 – 2:48 pm
Rightio. Making your own pickled olives is not only fun and quite easy, it’s also very satisfying on some sub-conscious level. We’ve been pickling olives since around the Copper Age (4,000 BC), so it is truly a basic human foodstuff, and one which has stood the test of time. When olives come off the tree, [...]
Peow makes a guest appearance as Kirsten gives a tour of the creek, the caravan the meadow and a cup of tea. The second episode in the story of Nick and Kirsten’s adventure. This is where we live. A little patch of dirt called Milkwood.
