Carrots! Purple ones, orange ones, cream ones, yellow ones… they all make for rainbow salads, just at the point when the summer of colors coming out of the market garden is starting to wind down for winter…
So while we have a kind of anti-spring festival here in the southern hemisphere every Easter, we do have one thing that supposedly goes with bunnies, even if the hens have all decided to wrap it up for the year and stop laying…
‘On The Anatomy Of Thrift: Harvest Day‘ is a video by Farmrun and Farmstead Meatsmith about honoring the the pig, the whole pig, and everything inside the pig. This is the next generation of charcuterie, done with respect for the animal and unashamed enthusiasm for the results.
This is also previous generations of charcuterie – the coming together of people to process preserved meat for winter and to eat what cannot be kept very long, employing generosity as a strategy for survival… Read More
While I have heard from multiple sources that cow poo is a fine and admirable structural component for cob render mix, I never thought we’d try it.
But thanks to Harris, we have finally given the Earthbag dome we started building in February 2011 it’s first complete outer render, featuring mud, sand, silt and cow poo. And it seems to be working! Read More
Soil blocks are a great technique for getting a heap of seedlings started without pots. The basic concept is that you make blocks of soil with a mold and then plant seeds into the block, and raise the seed to seedling size.
When you’re ready to transplant the seedling to your garden, you simply plant the whole soil block – no transplant shock, no shaking out of pots… just pop it in the garden and there you go… Read More
We’re getting very excited about growing delicious culinary mushrooms at Milkwood. Ever since we ran our first mushroom cultivation course in January, they’re springing up all over the place.
One of the easiest and cheapest ways to grow them is on sawdust spawn that you can make yourself… Read More
So a little while ago (ok quite some time ago – like 4 years) I took a bunch of fig cuttings from an old abandoned orchard across the creek, and potted them up. And they grew. So we planted them. And guess what? This week, we ate our first figs, and they were delish. Hooray!
When I took the cuttings from this magnificent old fig i knew the plant stock was hardy for our area. What I didn’t know at the time was whether the figs were any good or not. But, biomass is biomass, and we needed lots of it, so back in 2008 we hedged our bets and potted and then planted up about 40 fig cuttings. Read More
I am a little bit in love with our new honey press. It is made from stainless steel and it can crush close to a whole box of natural honeycomb in one fell squish. What better way to get all that goodness of the pollen, propolis and of course the honey into the jar? Read More
We’re very excited to announce that Hannah Moloney will be joining Nick + guests to deliver our Urban Permaculture Design Certificate in Sydney in July!
Hannah is a bombshell, in more ways than one. She’s an urban change-maker, composter, community facilitator, teacher, aid worker, writer and permaculture designer. I mean, the girl set up a bike-powered urban community compost facility. Need I say more? Read More
Last weekend we held our annual Autumn Natural Beekeeping course at Milkwood Farm. We got to harvest Warré honeycomb for eating, press a bunch of stored honeycomb, and check one of the Warré hives as part of the course. It was an amazing two days with a great crew of folks… Read More
