Urban dispatches from the undergrowth

lucas and bon scott

Lucas Ihlein. And Bon Scott.

We are very pleased to announce that the esteemed Sydney blogger and artist, Lucas Ilhlein, will be keeping a weekly diary of the ongoing process that will be our part-time Urban Permaculture Design Course in Sydney this Winter, starting May 29th. Lucas will be attending our course as a student and will lend his unique perspective to a summation of the class (as he understood it) on a weekly basis.

As the course progresses, from the end of May until mid August this year, i imagine we’ll all get a pretty clear idea of what a Permaculture Design Course involves and also how it intersects with the life of an inner-city artist who lives in a flat but dreams of reviving city-wide goat keeping, vegetable swaps and edible footpaths.

Comrade Ilhlein will be providing these urban dispatches at his blog Bilateral. Bring on the urban permaculture.

Holistic Management: Herbivores, Hats, and Hope

cows
 

Grazing animals bad, undisturbed grass good. That's how we personally thought regeneration worked, five years ago. And we were not alone. You could be forgiven for thinking that any and all grazing animals (particularly of the introduced kind) have no role whatsoever to play in regenerating pastures, soils and land, simply because we know how much damage badly-managed grazing and animal management can do. And we as a society do love a good bit of polarity, especially when it comes to nature. Perhaps it's our quest for simplicity. At the same time, we inherently know that an ecosystem cannot be simplified down to a set of polar opposites.

However we frequently farm the land and expect it to give back without much thought or consideration for the complexity within the pastures, the biological relationships, the edge effects, the soil. The results of this approach speak for themselves – widespread desertification, aridity, loss of topsoil, salinification and the introduction of a catastrophe of chemicals and hormones into the food chain, which our grandchildren will not be the last to bear the legacy of Read More…

How to choose a chook

mr strange
It takes all types to make a coop…

The usefulness of the chicken, especially on a small farm is difficult to understate. They bring incredible fertility wherever they pass if managed correctly – not to mention the potential in eggs, meat, companionship and more chickens.

Our first chooks at Milkwood were a motely crew purchased from the Windeyer trash and treasure sale – of inderterminate age and questionable parentage. Still, they did the trick and scratched their way through the tough grass of our hillside as we utilised them to clear and prepare the ground for our top food forest in their lovingly-made geodesic chook dome. Even got an egg or three two a week.

Milkwood Internships

tanya + jesse
Tanya + Jesse making a no-dig vegetable bed outside the Milkwood Classroom

As part of our skilling-up phase, back in the days before we moved to Milkwood, both Nick and i spent time at various Permaculture farms and properties all over the joint. We learnt to milk beautiful, melting-eyed jersey cows, hack away at spiny amaranth with machetes, shift un-cooperative cell-grazed sheep, make good compost and propagate seedlings.