February 26, 2013 – 6:03 am
This Summer has been downright weird, weather-wise. Which has meant all sorts of things, for all sorts of things. Including for the bees of Milkwood Farm, and the bees of eastern Australia in general.
For the central west of NSW (Where Milkwood Farm is) it’s been a crazy dry Spring/Summer with short downpours, following on from three very wet summers. This means in turn that all the flowering patterns of many trees around us have gone somewhat skewiff, and the bees have had to adapt accordingly. Read More »
December 29, 2012 – 12:45 pm
Happy holidays everyone! We hope you’re in the midst of some serious downtime. As it’s all about midsummer meals and cramming a year’s worth of days off into a week around here, we’ve all been hard at it.
Christmas day saw Floyd, Gigi, Michael and Lawrence (incoming market garden intern) harvesting and cooking the first ever Christmas lunch at the Tinyhouse, followed by a session with Caga Tió… Read More »
October 24, 2012 – 6:00 am
We’ve been fielding a lot of questions lately on what exactly a Milkwood Permaculture Design Certificate course (PDC) consists of. In short, it’s an exceptional and intensive foundation course in permaculture theory, from which students emerge with solid design skills.
The application of these design skills are broad – some people use their new knowledge to design their current (or future) farm, their suburban block, or their apartment courtyard. Some of our graduates have used what they learn overseas to design futures for their communities, some have used the design skills to re-design their businesses, and many go on to teach permaculture, in a range of community and classroom scenarios. Read More »
Anyone with compost worms knows how valuable the worm juice from their wormfarm can be as part of veggie growing. The trick is remembering to add it, and having a good method of applying it.
Last year Nick devised a way to passively add worm juice into our kitchen garden irrigation supply, via a rather clever little DIY setup. Read More »
It’s pretty amazing what a bunch of logs, a lot of gumption, some wheelbarrows and a couple of days digging can do. What was once a slippery slope becomes a lovely place to be – what a huge difference a home-made set of steps can make!
The core edible forest garden of Milkwood Farm is on sloping ground, and ends up against the chicken’s strawyard. And dividing the two, up until recently, has been a steep and slippery dirt track. But Trevor decided to change that, so he called our available on-farm crew together, and they set about transforming the space. Read More »
In early September we’ll be running a 3-day Market Garden Masterclass at the fabulous Allsun Farm in Gundaroo, which will be taught by Joyce Wilkie and Mike Plane, two long-time organic market gardeners (and our mentors for the Milkwood market garden).
This 3-day class is a chance for folks with good backyard (or larger scale) vegetable growing experience to learn the ins and outs of setting up a thriving organic market garden as an enterprise – whether that be a family enterprise, a community enterprise, or whatever else your situation needs. Read More »
So it turns out that when we go to the toilet, each of us ‘produces’ nearly 80% of the nutrients we need to grow our food. That’s quite something. If you take hold of that concept, it really does make you ask questions about why the heck we manufacture chemicals (with all the detrimental side-effects of that production) to grow food…
Recently Nick did an interview with Ollie Lavender of Sustainable Solutions Radio about this very subject, following on from his TedX Canberra talk with a similar drift. Have a listen:
Or to summarize the above podcast, fortunately there’s a lot of straight-forward, completely safe and highly doable ways that you can re-cycle your family’s nutrients back though food producing systems. With very little ick factor, even. Starting with the simple act of collecting your wee. Read More »
By milkwoodkirsten
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Posted in Appropriate Technology, Humanure, Nutrient Cycling
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Also tagged Biogeochemical cycle, compost toilet, farm, food, humanure, Nutrient, Pasture, soil, urine
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