Water is precious. And hard to find, around here. The process of designing hydrology into a site so that whatever water is available is used intelligently and for multiple purposes before it is allowed to seep out of the soil and into the creek is a tricky task. We have spend nigh on a year now, just watching the rainfall and the landscape and thinking and planning how we would best design Milkwood to make the most of our limited rainwater catchment. 

How we could harvest that water and divert it across the landscape so that it seeps in gently and slowly, creating places for things to grow, rather than have the water pelting down the cleared gullies on either side of Milkwood, to swell the eroded creek and rush off downstream before the land and the soil has had a chance to benefit from it.

So we designed water into the landscape. Then we re-designed, we watched some more and then designed again. And now it is time to do it! And we're making a course out of it, so other people can learn about this stuff too, as it gets implemented at Milkwood.The fantabulous Geoff Lawton has agreed to teach a three-day earthworks course on-site here at Milkwood, while the earthworks get done. How cool is that? Dams will be built, swales will be dug, and all manner of sustainable earthworks and design will be at play. If anyone's interested, it's on 18-20 December and it's called Designing Water into Landscape.

Also also..... there is more!  Next March, following on from APC9 (a big Permaculture conference in Sydney), we will be hosting a Keyine Design Course with Darren Doherty. Darren knows his onions when it comes to Keyline Design. Darren knows his onions on quite a few things, actually... it is going to be a true gift to have two such experienced Permaculture educators coming to Milkwood before next winter... we are really looking forward to it.

Most of all, we're looking forward  to sharing the process of system-establishment with whoever wants to come to Milkwood and learn while it all goes down... for me, I like the idea that we're opening up every stage of the process  for viewing and learning, rather than just the finished article. I've seen quite a few established Permaculture systems now - beautiful, gorgeous places where everything within the system is tootling along happily together - plants, animals, native species, people... but sometimes it just seems so daunting to try and project forwards to that point. Especially when you're starting with, very literally, nothing.

I know that Milkwood is well designed, and with energy and intelligence it will one day be a smashing and downright gorgeous example of what you can do with a piece of over-grazed, farmed-out land... but right now it's still a mostly-bare, windy hillside with a little caravan, some compost piles and the two of us. But we will get there, yes sirree... and following on from the Permaculture maxim order of design: access, water, structure, we are designed to the hilt and ready to embark on the first two.

One month from now, we will have a funky array of access roads, swales, dams and gabeons, all ready and waiting to harvest that elusive rainfall and steep it into the landscape of Milkwood. And then, let the planting begin in earnest....

 
 Milkwood in 2006... yet to become carbon sequestration central, due to overgrazing for... oh... only the last 100 years or so...

Last weekend Nick and I trooped off to the inaugural Carbon Farmers Conference (the first of its kind in Aus) which was conveniently held in Mudgee, just up the road (it's quite a long road, though - this being the country and all).

And holy cow it was a jam-packed two days... The conference was set up to thresh out the concepts behind Carbon Farming - a term used to describe the process of sequestering carbon into good, healthy soil. This concept isn't that hard to grasp - we're all surrounded by a gazillion 'carbon credit' systems at the moment - systems and companies who are offering to 'zero your footprint' or 'make your wedding carbon neutral' or whatever... and the ethics of that industry is a long conversation in its self, which I will set aside for now (there's plenty about it online though, if you want to get all riled up).

In short, some soils have the ability to hold onto (sequester) a HUGE amount of carbon. And which soils are they? The incredibly healthy ones, of course! By measuring the amount of carbon in their soils, and then undertaking activities which will increase the amount of carbon in their soils, farmers can then measure this increase in carbon and sell the difference as 'carbon credits' on a contractual basis. From here on in it gets a bit more complicated, so I'll stick to the exciting bit: Farmers can get Paid to build Really Healthy Soil.

Really Healthy Soil does not come in a packet. It does not come from the local outlet of the chemical company who have been pushing their wares on western Farmers for 50 years. It comes from real land management - sustainable farming practices that don't rip up, wear down, wear out, dry out or poison the earth, the ecosystem, or us.

Really healthy soil, which is a full-on, kick-arse ecosystem of microfauna, plants, roots and fungi, also happens to be... well... what everyone wants anyway... so... it's really quite a good idea. Farmers can get paid to basically repair their farms to a state where the soil is once more capable of holding life without the incredible amount of chemical and high-energy inputs that broadscale and intensive farming currently involves. Hurrah to that. 

 So this conference was great fun. A mixture of speakers which covered a wide spectrum of voices involved (or wanting to be involved) in this concept... with a couple of notable exceptions, the attitude of speakers was positive and inclusive. It was really great to see a mixture of old-timers and younger farmers from across Australia who really did give a damn about the future, daunting as it may be (especially when you're an Australian farmer). It did seem to me that most of the people there were either involved with, or wanting to be involved with, farming practices that were actually sustainable in the long term.

Speakers and projects of note:

- Mike Walsh: speaking from the Chicago Climate Exchange in the US via video conference on carbon trading in the US. 

- Col Seis: great example of some funky techniques around pasture cropping and 'biological farming' (a nebulous term, but still...). One of his crops is native grass seed.

- Cam McKellar: biodynamics in a broad-ish-scale context - and lots of pasture cropping.

- Craig Carter: spoke on Natural Sequence Farming , using his property as an example of waterway rehabilitation. Pretty impressive stuff.

- David Marsh: "harvest the interest, not the capital from the landscape"... what a guy - dyed-in-the-wool type old-school farmer.

- Louisa Keily : one of the organizers of the conference, talking on soil carbon trading schemes which might actually work.

If anyone's interested, I believe the Carbon Farmers mob will be putting the whole conference and all the presentations online soon. And if you're feeling particularly chipper, you can check out various recent reports released by the Climate Institute and Greenhouse2007.

And then once you've read those reports, go dig a vege garden. Or have a stiff drink. Or even better, go have a stiff drink in a vege garden, while resolutely deciding apon your chosen positive course of action, rather than crumpling and locking yourself in a cupboard. And bend down and give the soil (albeit probably beneath concrete and other impediments) beneath your feet a bit of a pat and offer a word of thanks... because everything that sustains our species, at some point in its cycle, depends on soil to exist.

Hooray for compost! Compost is the best. You can grow stuff in it. And it's free to make, if you know how. I am now the proud owner of not one but two compost piles, covered with tarps and awaiting their first 'turning'... which means, in a couple of weeks, I'm going to have a couple of sizable piles of nutrient-rich, good brown soil. My nursery will never be the same. I shall range far and wide, taking cuttings from new and unpronounceable trees, and propagate, plant and nurture, until I have a forest in miniature, waiting for Autumn to be planted out. Milkwood will be a sea of green, and i can bed down for the winter in a drowsy, contented heap.

Not that I'm counting my chickens before they've hatched, mind you. But I am very hopeful for my new compost piles. Nick rigged up a little web-widget for us (and you) to use - a nifty little  Compost Calculator - which is very helpful in figuring out how much of what to put in a pile to make sure you end up with good compost at the end. And I've written the article How to: Make compost - Pt.1 that explains the basics of the process as i understand it...

Now I just have to wait four days until I can start turning the piles... very exciting. Unfortunately, however, I cannot play with baby bird while I wait... that evil hound, housed in his troll-like abode under the Loquat tree, munched Little Cheeper yesterday. And vomited his little birdy head back out onto my foot.

I am restraining myself from making Dog Pie, and instead have put the remains of Little Cheeper into my compost pile - from wattlebird into wattles shall Little Cheeper thus transform... 

The Loquat tree next door at Kirwin is a mighty beast - and it is much beloved by many of the birds hereabouts. Its got dense green foilage year round, doesn't give a toss about frost, becomes a humming tree in winter as the bees go crazy with all of its blooms, and then has masses of fruit before Christmas. If only I could strike it from cuttings... but apparently it grows well from seed - yay. It is definitely a power tree and i want as many as i can possibly have all over Milkwood.

While poking about in my nursery, which sits underneath this great specimen, today I discovered a new little friend on the ground. He'd fallen out of his nest which is way, way up at the very top of the tree (a sort of messy openwork arrangement of sticks), and from the look of his anxious mother, he is a red Wattlebird. Given that Cobba, the kelpie sheepdog, is also housed under the Loquat, i thought I'd make the little cheeper a temporary nest to prevent him from becoming Cobba's supper.

So now he is happily housed in a shoebox on a branch, and his mum comes and feeds him regularly, along with his sibling who is still way up in the tree, wobbling precariously on a branch. I take it both babies are out of the nest and stretching their new legs, although both can't actually fly yet, it seems, and the little cheeper got a bit ahead of himself and ended up on the ground. I don't think they're far from flapping about though - maybe a couple of weeks?

On the other side of the same tree, the willie wagtails (just about my favourite bird) are setting up home in the cutest little nest. Lots of calling and fussing, but not much actual sitting on the nest as yet. I check it every day for signs of family action. Fingers crossed. All this makes for a quite communal feeling in my nursery, in which the fig cuttings are actually GROWING! I feel like a right professional.