We were rather impressed with Joel Salatin when he came to Australia last year. So were one or two other people. Aside from being the most entertaining farmer that we’ve ever met, he’s really onto something. Multiple somethings, even.
To call the Salatin’s farming practices at Polyface Farms in Virginia USA ‘innovative’ is a bit of a massive understatement. Joel’s unique approach to productive small-scale farming, that focuses on great ideas, biomimicry, and what can only be called truly regenerative agriculture, are fast becoming legendary. Read More »
Landshare is a concept we’ve been excited about for a while. It addresses the huge (and getting huger) issue of land access in an immediate, accessible fashion.
In short, people with spare land can offer that land to people who want to grow stuff. That stuff might be vegetables, herbs, cows, chickens, trees or anything else you can think of. The reasons they might want to grow stuff might be for personal food supply, or for a small commercial venture. It doesn’t matter. The point is this: to share the land, for the ultimate benefit of all. Read More »
January 31, 2011 – 8:13 am
Floyd un-hooks the ends of the electric fence to let the sheep into the next cell
Flat ground. Seemingly simple, but oh so full of implications. We didn’t really think about how cool flat ground was until we calculated that it made up exactly 10% of the total landmass of Milkwood. That means 90% hilly bits. Hmm.
Flat ground is very precious – you can do all sorts of things with it which are just not suitable for steeply sloping ground. So we’ve been trying to figure out how best to use it. Main crop with hedgerows? Chook-clock market garden? Pastured poultry? Food forest? Read More »
December 20, 2010 – 6:00 am
Joel, Kirsten and Nick at Milkwood Farm
May all your carrots grow long and straight,
may the foxes be struck blind by your chickens,
may your customers love cooking your food in their kitchens,
may the rains be gentle on your pastures,
may your fields grow with soil,
may your earthworms dance with celebration,
may the wind be always at your back,
your children rise up and call you blessed,
and may we all leave a better world than we found…
With such a blessing did Joel Salatin close each workshop and talk he gave while in Australia on his recent RegenAG tour. And I could feel the crowd accepting that blessing with gratitude, each and every time.
We were lucky enough to run 3 public talks and 2 workshops with Joel while he was in Australia this year and I’m afraid he’s changed our outlook on agriculture, land use, land stewardship and the funkiness of farming forever. Read More »
December 7, 2010 – 11:13 am
pasture cropped oats growing in symbiosis with native perennial pastures at Col Seis’s farm
Grain cropping is something that, for the vast majority of us, is someone else’s problem. We just eat the results; certainly every day, and nearly with every meal. Bread, rice, corn, soy, beans and so on. Produced somewhere out there, by someone else.
So a portion of our every single meal is coming from a grain crop, somewhere way out west. We wish it were grown organically, and in a way that doesn’t destroy too much of our topsoil. But we’ll eat it regardless of the farming practices, really. It’s in our diet. It’s what we do. Read More »
When I lived in the city, I always loved the idea of a microfarm. In my head, a microfarm was a plot of land with a footprint the size of a city terrace which was simultaneously blooming with flowers and vegetables, honking with geese, clucking with chickens and covered in trailing greenery and mulch. Someone drove a wheelbarrow through the plot, delivering hay to some minature cows while a small but sturdy windmill creaked overhead.
While this version of a microfarm might be only realisable in my head (or in duplo) and might seem a little idiotic, the real-life version of farming seems just as crazy these days, though its up the other end of the scale. The median size of an Australian farm which functions as a ‘primary producer’ is something like 700 acres. As opposed to my imagined 0.03 acres. Which means (leaving aside the delightful conversation we could have here about big agribusiness and the demise of the productive small farm) that any farm less than 700 acres is therefore a small(er) farm, and anything less than, say, 100 acres, would by today’s definition be getting into the micro. Read More »
We were rather impressed with Joel Salatin when he came to Australia last year. So were one or two other people. Aside from being the most entertaining farmer that we’ve ever met, he’s really onto something. Multiple somethings, even.
