Last weekend we were down in Sydney teaching an Introduction to Permaculture course, which went really well. Two days of intensive learning, discussing, eating and exploring. Lots of new friends made. It was especially great to see students make connections between each other - that old story of new friends you hadn't met yet, just around the corner from your house. 

On the Sunday morning we all trooped down to Angel St Permaculture Garden in Newtown, and assisted by the unstoppable Tamara, who is the central custodian of the garden, had a good look around at Permaculture in practice. An amazing community garden, bursting with food, all planted in the last 15 years on concrete and one street from the highway. The King Mulberries were especially tasty...

Thanks to the generosity and energy of our students, we've now got extra ideas and points of focus to incorporate into our Mudgee course in November, and our Kiama course in December. Thanks to all who came, learnt, shared and ate, to Tamara, and to the wonderous Sam Lim for use of his beautiful  artspace....

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....

We live a long, long way from luxuries like a town water supply. We have to cart the water we use for our personal needs, it's a lot of work and it means we are very conservative when it comes to using our precious drinking water.

Carting water for plants really isn't an option. Not only would it be way too much work, but the wasted energy would make the process truly unsustainable. This has been a serious impediment to starting the vege garden, the orchards and tree planting... until now!!!

A couple of days ago we finished our irrigation water supply. We can now pump water up from the creek at the bottom of our farm to two tanks near the top of our hill. We have a wonderful little petrol powered pump in it's very own little house and our first tap. We are so proud it scares us.

Click on the first thumbnail to see how it all works.  You can continue through the photos by clicking on the right hand side of each image.

The materials we used amounted to;

• A honda/onga firefighter pump - secondhand from a clearing sale for $100
• Half an old water tank, star posts and some scrap timber for the pump house salvaged from a friend
• 150 metres (450 feet) of agricultural poly pipe and a whole bunch of plumbing fittings that we bought new for about $350
• Two 1000 litre (250 gallon) recycled chemical totes. They originally contained organic hand cleaner. Bought from a friend for $50 

It's hard to describe how I felt when I turned on the tap for the first time and lovely clear water came out. After quite a few days of hard work (mostly digging the trench) and a fair outlay of cash, it really made me appreciate the basic services I used to take for granted. Water is so basic to our survival, yet we rarely worry about where our next glass of the stuff is coming from, let alone the water for our showers, washing and toilets.

Although we are allowed to pump from the creek for non-commercial irrigation, this system won't remain our main supply permanently. We have a plan in place to build three dams that should capture enough rain to supply all our irrigation needs. Hopefully this will all start to fall into place over the next few months. In the meantime this system will keep all of Kirsten's cuttings alive and well. Once we build the nursery that is.....

 As I think I've mentioned, this part of Australia is, although it doesn't look it at first glance, a labyrinth of abandoned settler's orchards. Every farm around here seems to have at least two of these gnarly fruit-thickets over in a back paddock somewheres. These old orchards are the only sign left of previous shacks and farmhouses which dotted the landscape here over a hundred years ago, during the gold-rush years.

Yesterday I went to my favourite one, which is a couple of hills over from us, because we had heard some tantalizing reports about a Fig tree there - apparently this Fig was still pumping out the fruit most years, and if you could get in there before the birds, you would be in for a tasty snack. We're very keen on Figs as they're pretty perfect for this bioregion, are deciduous, and grow rampantly - or so we've heard. And, novice gardener that I am, I'm on the lookout for non-tricky-to-grow trees in a serious way.

So off I went, and I made an episode while i was there... as you can see, I am, as they say, 'at the beginning of my journey' when it comes to gardening and propgating effectively... but there is only one way to learn...

We've become quite attached to them as sort of abstract maps, which indicate the activity that was here 4 generations ago. They're like little mysteries in the landscape - signs of former homes and domesticity in a seemingly otherwise barren landscape of sheep and dry, dusty roads. Strangely, most of these orchards seem to be doing pretty well, despite a considerable lack of attention (unless you count the sheep, who love them)... and because they're obviously acclimatised to this area, we've been going a little crazy collecting cuttings from here, there and everywhere, in the hope of establishing an orchard of our own.

Anyone got any cuttings advice they'd like to share? I am very open to suggestions...