Blog is closed

 This blog is closed, we no longer own the farm or live in Bredbo.  Thanks. 

Let the Harvest begin

Yummy!

The harvest has begun, zuccihin as far as the eye can see.  I've planted about 5 differnet heritage varieties, these are last nights harvest with many more to come over the next few weeks.  Unfortunatley the camera run out of life before I could get a picture opf the various egg plants we picked also.

The Cook has decided I should concerntrate on about four differnet veg just to get the whole process right before I branch out into other stuff.

It's pretty dry at the moment, not much rain to mention, but hopefully February will bring something!

This is not what you need on a Monday

So, I picked up my car from the panel beaters on Friday, the front end all fixed from my short, but deverstating interlude with a wombat.  I needed to pickup feed on Monday so I hooked up the trailer and headed off.  I got to within cooee of town when the truck began to swerve across the road flicking the trailer about and scarring the hell out of me.

I did notice one of my wheels passed me as I was trying to control the beast, also thought that this was not going to end well.  I finbally managed to pull the vehicle up off the road, 500m from where I hit teh wombat, I don't kow what the truck and dog loaded with 20tons of gravel that was right behind me thought - but he never slowed down. 

I need to go back to the spot and have a look around - maybe I'm being drawn to that spot by some kind of force that wants me to see something????

I then spent 6.5hrs awaiting a tow truck due to an adminsitrative error with my road side service, it was only 36 degs, nothing to get hot under the collar about.  It wasn't wasted - I did help a cuple change teh tyre on their trailer and they lent me thier phone to call the cook :)

I'm not sure why this came off, cold be something to do withthe wombat strike, somebody took it off and didbn;t put it back on propery during repairs, somebody trying to steal the tyre (brand new) I don;t know.  All I do know is that I'm in for another round with the insurance company from hell - QBE.

  

Forgot to mention we had a tornado - Valley View is 500m to the North of this - second one this year in our district

Getting a harvest

We've had a really good start with the garden this year, a great crop of garlic was harvested just before Christmas and we have a pile of onions we harvested at New Years.

freshly harvested garlic 

enough onions to make anybody cry

  We've still heaps in the garden, beans, beets,  cabbage, corn and a mix of various tomatoes, chillies, capsicum, kale, squash, pumpkins, eggplants and okra.  Probably other stuff but I've forgotten what else is there.  I'm putting in greens and lettuces this weekend in the vacant beds.

  The only failure in the veg department has been my potatoes, they've ended up with some fungal disease (blight) that has destroyed the whole crop.    

  I planted a few trees in late winter early spring as well.  So far I've been really happy with my Cider Apple trees, but the Chestnuts have been a disaster.  I've now lost half of the trees I planted and I'm not really sure why yet.  I know a couple got knocked by the hot winds, but some just didn't go form the outset.  I've also planted a hazel nut hedge which thankfully is going well so far having only lost one bush.

It looks messy but the weeds and clover help keep the soil moist and confuses pests

We've had a few snake drama's this summer.  Although we have a few of those sonic snake repellers we have had a huge brown snake causing problems around the place.  Flicka our white labrador was killed the other day and Little Pig as bitten and died just after Christmas.  I've since been chasing the snake from hiding spot to hiding spot - his days are numbered.

we have a new batch of Plymouth Rock Pullets growing up in the yard and soon they'll have a nicely renovated chicken coup to live in.  Our Guinea Fowl are somewhere sitting on eggs, this should be interesting, they're a bit loud at 5am in the morning - I cant imagine what the noise will be like with a dozen or more of them.

Like Queensland we are starting to get a little dry,  the river is getting low and there is not much chance of rain in the near future.  If you haven't seen it yet BOM have a new heat wave warning map - we are forecast for our first next week.

They're here!

I told you all - Zombies are coming!

      Well okay, that's what I thought when I first saw this on my camera.   But, apparently I was wrong and in fact it is Wallace.   Probably not the best picture he's ever taken.  

Kittens - two left if you want one.

its a girl

nap time - middle one and bottom ones are girls

family

Things at Floriade are getting serious




The Site

  This is teh third day of construction and assembly.  So far so good!  Danny O'Brien from The Farm Shop is doing a great job.   The building is being supplied by Jigsaw, a compnay specialising in sustainable building.  There is a lot of work being done by Josh from Easycare Landscapes are assisting with some really beautiful elements in the design.

This weekend as well as being at the Enviro Expo at Queanbeyan we are dong a weekend Cob building workshop to get the Flow Form and Rocket Stove into the design - big thanks to Tanya for doing this, inspite of the morning sickness.

Preparing for the Zombie Apocolypse

It’a unlikely, buit just in case we are planting our Zombie Apocolypse victory garden this weekend. I’ve been working on the garlic and onions for the past few weeks, keeping the weeds at bay. And las weekend went in the first of our beetroot in line with our moon planting calendar. It’s really important if you want only the best fruit and veg to go by the moon planting system. This weekend I’ll be


Add caption



digging the holes for the Cider Apple trees I received yesterday. I will now have eight Kingston Black Cider apple trees in my little orchard. I’m also putting in some Walnuts into this particular site and some Hazelnuts. The plan is to then plant out the spaces in between with berries and cane fruits. Under all the apple trees we’ve been busy planting asparagus – you can never have too much asapargus. And of course all this will come in handy once the Zombies Apocolypse starts and the National Food Retail Duopoly is rendered useless and people can’t buy food in teh cities any longer. Of course this will all be bought about by a mysterious gene ‘accidentially’ released into our food chain by you know who.

Add caption

Floriade is on the horizon

Our new Guinea Fowl

It’s been really busy here lately, the project we are working on at Floriade is coming along nicely, it’s been such a privilage to work with so many great and talented people from so many differnet and diverse community groups and businesses. As construction of the project gets underway in the next week or so I’ll put pictures up of our sites progress.


A couple of weeks ago we ran an Introduction to Permaculture course for the Floriade volunteers. Together with Trish McEwan and ten other presenters we spent two days talking about the principals and ethics of Permaculture and demonstrating various methods and techniques for growing food in the urban back yard.

On the farm we have been struggling a little with a lack of feed at the moment. This year it seems a little different to previous years. We’ve not had as serve a winter as usual, but it’s been a little drier than we expected. Thank goodness all our pastures are starting to come out of their dormant period and tiny green regrowth is sprouting up everywhere.

On top of this, we have just been notified by the local Buttercup Bakery will no longer be selling their stale bread to farmers. The stale bread made up only a small portion of their daily feed ration, but we aill still have to replace it with grain or something similar.

On a much happier note we have been going gang busters as far as everything else goes. Our brand new shed with lock up work shop has finally been finished. This will be converted into a classroom over the summer as I have time. It’s so nice to have a couple of weather proof structures now where we can sotre all our valuable tools and equipment. We have started a market garden area above the pigs. I just recieved today another five cider apple trees to go with the five I purchasd earlier. The first lot were planted during a food forest course we ran in August. These trees will be interplanted with walnuts, and some perennial veg, hopefully I’ll get both asparagus and artichokes into this area.

Next on the list are some olive trees, I have still got a few chestnuts and hazelnuts to plant first – going to be a busy weekend.

Pigs in Compost




Pigs sleeping in compost - note the piglet on top the pile

 

Turning compost is a chore I love doping, but during this period of short days I need a hand.  I've been investigating different ways to make compost over the past months after I was asked to do a workshop for the City Farm on composting.

I've noticed that the Berekely Method of composting has it's draw backs in a cold climate.  Do what you might it is difficult to keep it hot enough in the -8 mornings.  I've tried covering in plastic and tarps - even a slab curing blanket, but nothing kept the heat going.  I also noticed I was using a lot of water, the constant westerly winds keep drying the compost out,  I started to worry about leeching nutrients from the pile because of the amount of water I was putting on.

So, after a lot of research I decided to give the biodynamic method a go and it's working really well.  I have introduced the pigs into the system to turn the compost every other day. They love it,  I just move them from one heap to another - it also keeps them warm at night - one of those permaculture win/wins.  So no more hour long session turning compost every other night , just move a few pigs from one spot to another at feed time.

Now I have time to weed between the onions I planted at solstice, lucky me;)

    

Posting on the run

Lots of stuff going on at the moment, just when I was trying to get back into blogging. Wee are currently running a Permaculture Design Certificate with our great mate Trish McEwan. Trish is a really dedicated lady and puts a lot into the course. As usual we get to meet all sorts of interesting people with lots of different backgrounds on these courses. The information sharing is amazing and the depth of knowledge remarkable – and that’s the students.




Some of our PDC Students at one of Canberra's Community Gardens



We have had a fair bit of rain of late, which caused havoc with keeping pigs in for a couple of days. It would have been much easier had it not been for our neighbours cows. I can’t believe the things will get through a five strand wire fence, three strand electric fence to push over a sheep yard – and then just stand there chewing their cud.

Our new Holistic Management system is going well, but I should have seeded a paddock last week and ran out of time. Never mind, not much on this weekend anyway.

I had the opportunity to be interviewed by the local ABC radio station, on my way into the study I even passed our new Prime minister taking his early morning walk around the lake, the other day about our Urban Farm at Floriade project. It was a great experience and the interview went pretty well – the Cook even heard it and sent me a nice well done text message – aaahhhhh!

We managed to plant forty Chestnut Trees last Sunday into our pig area.  I just have to sit back for the next 15 years to see how they go.  It was a miserable afternoon when we put them in, luckily with all hands on deck and the soil being really soft the Job wasn't too onerous.  I will be muching them this weekend,  it ended up being too boggy to get in along the swales until then. 

So, one of the things I set out to do this year was to make a large barrel of Apple Cider, from locally sourced apples, for the end of year Christmas Party. We have a recipe we’ve used previously, and it worked well. But, alas, I seem not to have followed it to well and now I have 33 bottles of really good Apple Cider Vinegar. It won’t go to waste, if nothing else the pigs will drink it.

The boy’s were a little upset, they had tried the Cider before it turned and thought it was going really well, and is probably why I only managed 33 litres from the original 44 litres I put up.

Ben received the shield for academic achievement, for his year, at Monaro High again. His name is now on each shield from year 7 -9, he’s got his sites set on the end trophy now.

The word is spreading

We had a few farewells to do yesterday, so it was decided that we'd run our own soup kitchen in honor of those taking their redundancies.  It was a great event, I made a Pea and Ham, with Valley View smoked bacon bones.  In adition we had two venison stews, a pumkin and a wonderful potato and leek soup.  All provided by friends for friends. 

Our River Cottage Journey



Paul West, myself and pigs at River Cottage Australia


Well,  it all started about ten years ago when we first moved to Murrumbateman,  I convinced The Cook that we could afford satellite TV.  One of, the first show we got hooked on was an English sustainability show called River Cottage.  After watching a few episodes we soon began talking about how good it would be to actually grow all our own food.  A little later the kids went on a scout camp that included a trip to a free range pig farm in the Southern Highlands.

The Cook came home and full of enthusiasm it was decided that we'd find a property and raise some pigs - we'd be just like Hugh.  Ten years along and, we have our pigs, the farm is moving along and we actually pretty much ffed ourselves.   Then one day recently, at work, somebody told me that there was going to be a River Cottage Australia, they were having auditions - that I should apply.  So I did, but nothing came of it and we carried on with our lives.

Then one day I had a phone call at work. Some how, through a friend of a friend, they found out about our pigs and we were asked to provide the pigs for the show.  It was being produced just down on the coast not far from home in a small town called Tilba.

Now, like that wasn't enough, being asked to supply pigs to River Cottage Australia was one thing, but to actually play a small part in one of the episodes was fantastic.  We were invited down to Tilba to have a look at the site for the pigs and meet Paul West the Australian Hugh.   The Cook took down one of her now famous Rhubarb Cakes and sat on the back porch and talked pigs for the afternoon.   Paul is a great guy and very passionate about what he's doing and very conscious about doing everything as well as possible.

We had no idea that we were going to be involved at this stage, but after a phone call from the production people it was pretty obvious.  Bredbo put on the perfect day, the pigs all behaved and everybody was really happy.

But, to top it all off I actually got to meet Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall - in person,  as Hugh said, we'd come full circle, me, Hugh and our pigs all at River Cottage.

Don't miss an episode - River Cottage Australia starts on June the 27th 8:30pm on the LIfestyle channel, I think we are in episode 2 or 3,  can't wait.

Canberra Times River Cottage Article

We've been doing some work on the pig paddocks.   Our local farm contractor has been deep ripping parts of the property with a Yoemans plough.  This has made a huge difference on the penertration of recent rain into the soil.  We'll be seeding and adding probiotics to the soil again soon which should prepare the paddocks well for spring.

This morning I heard noises outside from about 4am.  I shuold have got up to check, but it was wet and dark.   By the time I did get up, about 5:30am we had about 100 lose pigs running about the place.  I'd forgotten we had not had sun for about four days and the solar powered fence energiser had run down.  Luckily I had the spare charging and by the end of feed time, with a lot of help from the boys and the Cook (she was wearing heels and a skirt chasing pigs through the mud - I love her) we ggot them all back.

Starting small and slow

Our new Hiolistically managed pig system is worknig well, and with this rain our recent seeding should be cming out of the ground after the first bit of sun shine.

 

Back from the blogging wilderness

Well after more then a years break it's time to get back into blogging.  A lot has happened over the past year and there is so much coming up.  We've had our ups and downs, none quite as momentous as Sunday when our "Boar King" Tiberius passed away in his sleep.   He's been with us from the start and   his passing has left a large emptiness in the paddock.

I'll try and update the blog on what has happened over the past twelve months as I go along.  We start our first first Permaculture Design Certificate course on Saturday, this is really exciting, we have a bunch of keen and enthusiastic people just itching to get into the lessons.

The Cook has a new off farm job which she is really enjoying,  nine to five as well - no more shift work for her ;)   Harry turned 18 and is in his final year of school, how time flies!

Anyway there will be more, I just have to pace myself for the moment.  

Yesterday was the first of our Holistic Farm Management Course Support Group Meetings, held out at Gunning. We visited John Weatherstone’s place near Gunning. I’ve been there before, but each visit is more educational. Johns work planting trees and building soil is both an example and inspiration. This time I was able to have a good look at his Palonia Tree plantation, which is something that the Cook introduced us to a while back, and pick up a few white walnuts for planting this weekend.


Anybody interested in looking at Johns work can look here.
We had lunch following the visit and sat around talking about the various issues we were facing in regards to Holistic Management and looking towards the future.
On Wednesday I was lucky enough to get a seat at a lecture on Food Security at ANU. The lecture was titled - Real food security - and what’s wrong with current development. It was focused on how our foreign aid dollars for food security should spent on supporting small farmers not the commercialisation of farms in third world countries. The details are spelt out here –

Basic food security is an important step towards good governance and socio-economic development. Globally, food security is said to exist for some 4.7 billion persons with another two billion being food insecure. If global population stabilizes at 9 billion around 2050, food demand will probably rise to an equivalent of 12 billion of today’s persons due to such factors as affluence-induced food preferences and food wastage in urban supply chains. Unless food security is realistically defined as basic food for survival, it is not achievable without major changes in our worldviews.
By examining three philosophical perspectives - food as a commodity; food as a product of nature to be balanced with other products; and food as a human right, this paper explores the disconnect between the current worldview of ‘donors’ who allocate solutions to food insecurity to aid agencies, and the small third-world farmers who produce the food from farms of less than two hectares.

Professor Lindsay Falvey, a Fellow of the Academy of Technological Science and of Clare Hall University of Cambridge, was foundation Dean of Land and Food and Chair of Agriculture at the University of Melbourne. He has written 12 books, the most recent being, Small Farmers Secure Food: Survival Food Security, the World’s Kitchen & the Critical Role of Small Farmers.

I was late getting home from Gunning last night and on the way home I was listening to the ABC Radio National. I think the program was big ideas and about what a panel thought Australia would be like in the year 2030. One of panellist’s spoke about how we now live in an economy, no longer do we live in a society or a community. This is a really sad statement – but when you look at what fills the news and the papers – it’s a true statement.

One thing that permaculture teaches you is that community is the key to survival, from community you get security, growth, education and social stimulus. The sooner we don’t have an economy the better off we’ll all be, the sooner we take responsibility for ourselves and stop relying on government the happier we’ll be.

Oh, you mean a Scythe

I was off travelling over the weekend to the April Scythe workshop in the Totnes Valley northwest of Mudgee. I have been to the workshop on one previous occasion and enjoyed myself and I thought it would be nice to go back and see what had change and how the event had grown.

I travelled up on the Friday, I really enjoy the change in scenery from home. I arrived just in time to help set things up and get dinner – a beautiful Pumpkin soup, which if I remember correctly was what we had the last time I was there. Friday night was spent meeting new people and sharing our stories around the camp fire.
Differently to last time I was there, they had traders, only a couple but selling interesting wares. One guy was selling old tools, axes, adzes and hatchets. I would have loved to have bought some home but I’m saving for cows at the moment and I really needed a peening hammer anyway.
Activities started Saturday morning, and as traditionally happens a short yoga class before breakfast. I’m no yogi enthusiast so I stood back and willed the others on with positive thoughts – like ‘I’m positive I could never do that with my dickie knee’ or ‘I would positively look fat doing that’. Any way once that and breakfast were over it was into Scything, on really nice grass. I was asked to look after some beginners and in 10mins they were off happily scything their hearts away in the long grass. After things warmed up we had a demonstration on peening or sharpening the scythes. This was interesting in itself as I’ve never seen a field peening anvil used before; I also got to see one of the new anvil tables in action.

After lunch it was into Bio fertilizer making. I’m really interested in this and seeing we have so many issues with mineral deficiencies in our soil I was intent on learning more about using natural processes to get them back into the soil, or made available in the soil whichever the case may be.

Later in the afternoon I was able to try something I’d wanted to do for years, ever since the Cook and I did our ‘Cooks tour of American Civil War Battlefields’ (that’s a long story in itself) where we stopped and spent an afternoon watching Amish people mow hay with a team of mules near Intercourse in Pennsylvania. Anyway, one of the Mudgee locals, Danny , bought up his Clydesdale and hitched it to a plough. They guys from Scythes Australia want to start a market garden and needed a piece of land ploughed and Danny was giving everybody a go – so I was in.
It’s way harder than it looks, but way more fun as well, I think I had a grin on my face for hours after would. We had the opportunity to both handle the plough and drive the horse, I couldn’t wait to get home and tell the cook all about it.

Next on the agenda was Bio Char making, which I’d seen shows about and read about on the internet. The guys doing it made a small and simple error and allowed too much air into the burn compartment and buy morning there was nothing left but ash. There’s always next time.
I was lucky enough to be on a table of very interesting people for the dinner on Saturday night. We had a Biodynamic farmer from the Atherton Tablelands, the owner of Milkwood Permaculture, a Mine Worker, an Anarchist, a beginning farmer and myself. The conversation switch from topics like biodynamics and preparations to soil biology, home building and growing communities. I really enjoyed the evening and went off to bed with my head full of questions, ideas and plans.

Sunday morning I woke about 4:30am with the roosters crowing, this was drowned out by the snoring. I’ve never heard snoring like it before, it was worse than the pigs and Shadow. I couldn’t get back to sleep so I stoked the fire, made a cup of tea and enjoyed the stillness. After some more talking I was off back to Bredbo, picked teh Cook up some more Plymouth rock Chics and arrived home about 8pm – still trying to digest the information that had filled my head over the weekend.

Our changing landscape

The recent summer rains have left parts of the farm in disrepair. We have issues with fencing being destroyed, new erosion gullies forming and the possibility of losing our large dam in the gully up the back (now christened Carabineers Creek).

As we don’t have stock in that part of the property the loss of the dam won’t really affect us, but it will affect the wildlife that live in it and on its banks. Every year families of water birds use the dam and backed up gully for breeding, this year we had our first waders, as well as the Grebes, Coots, shags and ibis. What we would really love to do is to turn the dam and the area between the dam and the river back into a wetland habitat. Something that was common on the Monaro 200 years ago but sadly missing today – so if anybody knows of any grants going that we would be able to apply for let me know.

So, with all this hydrological damage about I spent a few days out at Milkwood near Mudgee doing a Watershed Rehabilitation Workshop. This was run by a guy called Craig Sponholtz from the US and was based on solutions outlined in the book “Let the Water do the Work” by Bill Zeedyk and Van Clothier. You can find a review of the book here -
http://permaculture.org.au/2011/07/14/let-the-water-do-the-work-induced-meandering-an-evolving-method-for-restoring-incised-channels/

The course was three days of mostly theory and a day of practical. Most importantly to my mind was the course covered in detail the effects that putting any structure into a stream will have, and the importance of putting the right structure in the right place. We covered stream and gully profiles, types and anatomy as well as formation and development.

The last day involved repairing an eroded gully using the techniques we had learnt. Which is another way of saying ‘hauling rocks’.

Overall I would recommend anybody who has a stream, gully, creek or run on their property to do this course. It's a pity the NSF doesn't have a course like this.