August 18, 2011 – 6:00 am
Pigs are something we’ve wanted to experiment with at Milkwood for ages. Piggies are way cool. They dig up and turn over ground, they provide valuable manure, process organic waste, and they’re great fun to watch! But with all our other current agendas at the farm, designing a system and setting up the infrastructure for [...]
A week or so ago Nick had the opportunity to hang out with Allan Savory, the founder of Holistic Management, way out west at Brewarrina. He was in the car and off before I could say ‘biological accelerators’. 7 hours of driving into the great flatness of the Aussie outback later, Nick and his mate [...]
Within our gravity chicken run, we needed a way to feed the chickens up off the ground. Mainly so nothing would impede the gradual down-hill slump of mulch we’re hoping this overall design will provide. The answer? Recycled palettes and assorted fabulous junk.
I am pleased to say that our emergency measure of combining two Warré beehive colonies at Milkwood Farm seems to have worked. The two colonies have made friends, combined, and are now operating as one big family (or super organism, to be technical). Time to bed the new uber-colony down for winter, following one last [...]
Gravity and chickens are two of our favorite natural forces at Milkwood. Chickens scratch, poo, give eggs and good company, plus a trillion other benefits. Gravity draws things down. Great it you want stuff to end up down the bottom. Which, in the case of our gravity fed chicken house, we do! For the past [...]
February 21, 2011 – 6:00 am
Bees are amazingly resilient and adaptable creatures. In a good year, when there are many ‘honey flows’ happening, they can build comb and collect and store honey at an astonishing rate, to make the most of the bounty dripping from nearby plants. Tim tells stories of his bees filling 5 boxes full with comb and [...]
October 28, 2010 – 11:01 am
Bees just want to be bees. I’ve learned recently that, like most things in nature, a honeybee colony is most happy, calm and resilient when it’s left to do what it does best. For bees, this means forage for nectar and pollen, raise a brood, and make honey. And bees want to do this in [...]
