As promised, here is Rose’s nitrate-free, home made way of making bacon from scratch.
I say ‘way’ rather than ‘recipe’ because it’s still in development in terms of quantities. But if you too are a tinkerer rather than a straight-up recipe follower, then come on down and join us in the glorious land of home made, DIY, no nasties, bacony goodness. Read More
Figuring out the puzzle of successful pastured pigs has been interesting, but luckily we’ve got excellent mentors like Joel Salatin to help us along the way.
One technique Joel explained to us during his visit last year is how he trains his piglets to ‘respect the fence’ at an early age so you’re not chasing after runaway piggies. This year we got a chance to try it out and it’s proved a really useful technique – simple, and effective… Read More
Back when Costa was setting up his verge garden (the one that now beams into Aussie homes every Saturday night on Gardening Australia), he proved that chicken tractors will work just about anywhere, even on the verge.
As part of the preparation of taking his verge from grass to community veggie patch, Costa made a great chicken tractor out of a table with wheels and chicken wire, into which he put his ‘ladies’ when he was outside working on the garden… here he is in the process of taking them back to their run in his backyard one evening. Chickens in the city. Gotta love them.
We can’t wait to see Costa at our Serious Backyard Veggies course later this month…
The pigs are back! 6 wessex saddleback piglets, about 8 weeks old, are the new pig tractor team of Milkwood Farm. Welcome little ones.
Back is not of course the correct term as the previous 2 pigs have now been turned into everything from terrine to bacon to roast pork to feed the oscillating numbers of crew, wwoofers and students who pass through Milkwood Farm, but you get my drift. Which brings me to Milkwood Farm’s new animal enterprise manager, Floyd. Read More
So what does moving a mob of pastured pigs look like, and how does it work? Our friend Derek has just finished up interning at Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farm, and he sent us some photos of a recent ‘pig move’.
As you can see, this method of pastured/forested pig production is many worlds away from the process of raising industrial pork. It’s a great life for the pig, and their rootling nature means that, when well managed, they can regenerate ground as they go… Read More
Time to move the pigs. They’ve done a great job tractoring and manuring up in the suntrap, in readiness for groundcover plantings. Now we need their help down below the swale, to help prep ground for the new forest garden.
Time for the biggest adventure the pigs’ lives on their own trotters – all the way down the hill and around the corner. Will a bucket of feed be enough to entice them to go the right way? What if they make a break for it? Just in case, time to make some pig boards, the pig fancier’s best friend… Read More
Azolla is a native water plant with some seriously exciting attributes for anyone looking to develop closed-loop cycles for organic animal feed. It’s high in protein and minerals, fixes nitrogen, is palatable to chickens, pigs, goats, ducks and cows, and can be grown on any closed body of water.
At Milkwood Farm we have many emerging animal production systems, and we’re looking for cost and energy effective ways to produce organic feed for them, using passive and regenerative techniques. Azolla looks like a great tool for us. Read More
The Gravity Chicken Run is now entering its second winter as one of the gravity-powered (and chicken powered) composting experiments at Milkwood Farm. We’ve made some modifications since last winter, and things are looking good.
As with all on-farm experiments, we’re learning as we go. But egg production is good and, as we continue to tweak things, all-round chicken happiness is high. Read More
Hooray for the return of piggies to Milkwood Farm! Ahead of our illustrious plans for forested pig systems next season, we’re doing a micro-pig prepping job over winter. Pepper and George have arrived to help us prepare the suntrap for Spring planting.
The suntrap is our former top dam, which nearly failed rather spectacularly a while back and had to be moved along the contour. So now we have a north-facing amphitheater of subsoil instead. A fantastic canvass filled with possibilities, but lacking in topsoil and nutrients to get things growing. Enter the permaculture pigs! Read More
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 a free-range chicken system where the hens can venture well beyond their house to the limits of whatever fences them in (commonly electric netting in a farm setting). They are a darn fine idea. Read More
