Martin Crawford’s forest garden in Devon might not be in a biosphere anything like the climate at Milkwood Farm, but it’s a project that’s been an inspiration to me for a while, nonetheless.
Martin’s forest garden is a poem of time and space and the seasons – or a big jumbly mess of green stuff, depending on how you look at it. But one thing is not debatable. That forest garden of his produces a lot of very edible food, in a very stable, resilient and low-energy input system. Like. Read More
Where should I buy land? Where’s a good area? What should I be looking for in a landscape?
This question is something that Nick gets asked a lot when he’s teaching and consulting, so we thought we’d ask Joel Salatin’s opinion while he was at our farm last Summer. Apparently we’re all in agreement with the answer: go where you will be happy with the company, regardless of the landscape. Because growing topsoil is the easy bit. Read More
Last summer, when Joel Salatin was at our farm, we asked him a question or two. The first one was: what’s your advice for young-uns who want to farm but don’t want to get into debt?
You see, at Milkwood Farm we’re very committed to positive balances. Positive natural balances, and positive (if only slightly) bank balances. In short, we want to figure out how to do mortgage-free regenerative farming, bit by bit, as our means allow. Can it be done? We hope so. Read More
Recently I watched Tim Malfroy open and inspect a Warré hive that he installed in Sydney. Over 20 people looked on (it was part of a natural beekeeping workshop) as Tim lifted up boxes, pulled out combs full of honey and brood, and generally checked that all was well in the hive.
What did the bees do during this? Nothing. Nothing at all except keep on buzzing about happily. And that is just unheard of. Read More
The studio dam, the one halfway up the ridge and in the middle of our system, was the first one we all sunk our teeth into. And boy oh boy…earthworks are something else… it’s like having your skin torn off in large slabs, while someone tells you it’s not skin, it’s just butter. No problem…
Strange analogy, perhaps… but until I had witnessed these earthworks, the landscape of Milkwood to me was a solid and impermeable mass… something that you could get a shovel into if you were lucky, but essentially one big, solid object. And then the bulldozer showed up. And now everything looks like a completely different place.
We were actually really lucky with what is usually a traumatic time (don’t get me wrong… it was still pretty scary) when setting up a property… hydrology earthworks are something that you want to only do once, if at all possible. Nick and I had chewed over the Permaculture earthworks design for months, and to add excitement to the situation, we invited Geoff Lawton to Milkwood to teach a Permaculture Earthworks course during the first three days of the madness that has been the terra-forming of Milkwood. Read More
Having grand plans is all very fine, but there comes a time when one must make the first, single, decisive gesture towards action.
For us, this meant placing a small wooden peg, painted white, at the southern boundary of Milkwood. And then surveying a contour which continued aaaallllll the way around the hillside at the same height as that first peg, right around to the other boundary of Milkwood on the western side of the ridge. This first contour was important to mark out for a couple of reasons: Read More
So – the compost pile is made…. fast forward to two weeks later… the compost is composting! Despite my well-intentioned but slightly incorrect assemblage (i really should have shredded all that glossy newsprint, or at least ripped it up into smaller pieces), my fast compost pile is hot-hot-hot! Maybe even a little too hot. Not to worry, I can cool it down by turning it more regularly. And we can only learn by doing, really… Read More
I’ve been aware for years that to make really good compost, you need to get the right balance between materials so that you get a good ratio of carbon to nitrogen, or c:n ratio…. Why? Because it is these two elements which all the bacteria and fungi feed on in order to make your compost. Yes that’s right. Compost is a process of actively feeding a huge number of micro-organisims the right stuff in the right amounts, so that they munch and breed and munch some more, converting your pile of poo, paper, greenstuff, whatever into what we call compost. So really, it’s basic organic decomposition, accelerated by the right chemical balance so you don’t have to wait 2 years between having a pile of muck and something that can be a growing medium and general nutrient source for plants (and, therefore in turn, you). Read More
Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a light! And it is bright! And it lets us read at night. Hooray!
Just for the record, we got all the bits for our little solar setup from The Solar Shop (ordered online), with minimum fuss and bother.
For the energy-techies out there, you’ll be pleased to know that our solar panel is of the amorphous type… lowest possible embodied energy panel on the market. And I think the whole setup cost us around the $350 AU mark… not bad for 15 years worth of light, no? How exciting to be able to read AND cook in the one space simultaneously….
