
At Milkwood, we spend the majority of our time focusing on positivistic strategies for an uncertain future. This is mostly because the other way of looking at the future has a big flashing ‘here be dragons’ sign on it.
Like everyone else, we know what’s happening out there in the big wide world. We know that there’s many gigantic problems, that the climate is changing, and that our granchildren’s world will definitely not look like this one.
It’s scary stuff. And yes, it does sometimes keep me awake at night. But then it’s morning again. Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can. Read More »

Recently Nick was lucky enough to hang out with David Holmgren for a couple of days at Melliodora, the superb small-acre permaculture site that David has established with his partner Su Dennett in Hepburn Springs, Victoria.
Being in the thick of a super-productive, comfortable and energy efficient permaculture system at harvest time was inspiring, to say the least. To add to that, the purpose of the visit was for Dave Jacke to spend time with David and Su while he was in Australia. You can imagine the intensely wonderful conversations that went down! Read More »
August 30, 2012 – 6:00 am

The ‘Gundaroo Tiller’ is an Australian adaptation the traditional European broadfork, and an essential tool for our small market garden. It may look like just a big clunky fork-thing, but it is actually a finely tuned instrument of permaculture soil conditioning goodness. Truly.
Famously, when Allan Yeomans‘ saw his first Gundaroo Tiller, he called it ‘A Keyline plow for gardeners’. For us, it’s an essential part of creating aerated soil structure on compacted pasture without inverting the soil…
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January 13, 2012 – 3:14 pm

Right now Nick’s in the the middle of teaching Milkwood Permaculture’s annual summer Urban Permaculture Design Certificate in Sydney, which is always a fabulous two weeks. This year, we have the wonderful Cathy X as one of the students, and she’s documenting the process in pictures.
I love this course. It’s so similar, yet so different to the PDCs we run at Milkwood Farm – same core curriculum, principles and Nick’s fabulous + infectious energy, but realized in the middle of the city, instead of way out in the backwoods. And once again we’re blessed to have an awesome group of students to work with for 2 weeks. Read More »

The second week of our Winter 2011 Permaculture Design Certificate, we were lucky enough to have David Holmgren, co-originator of Permaculture, presenting for the whole day. I don’t think anyone will forget this day in a hurry.
Apart from walking us through his 12 principles with elegance, enthusiasm and what is clearly an extremely deep appreciation for how natural system function, David emphasized what is for me a new way of explaining what the heck permaculture is: ecological design theory applied to an everyday context. Right on. Read More »
We’re bringing David Holmgren to Sydney shortly as a guest teacher on our Winter Part-time PDC. So we thought we’d offer up a dinner while he’s here. Would you like to come?
Dinner with David Holmgren
- Saturday 21st May
- Peasant’s Feast Organic Restaurant, Sydney
We’d like to invite our current and future friends, readers, students and comrades to a chance to sit down and eat delicious organic food together. Please join us for an evening of good food & great conversation, with a talk by David between courses. Read More »