Following on from the cracking workshop we ran with Joel Salatin in Jamberoo earlier this month, here’s the links and resources we devised as post-workshop notes for everyone who came along. There’s so much goodness in Polyface Farm’s regenerative agriculture techniques! And heaps that can be applied usefully, at a range of scales to create…
Leading on from reading The One Straw Revolution many years ago, we’ve been experimenting with seed balls since our first year at Milkwood Farm. After 4 years of rolling ’em balls in various ways, broadcasting them, and noting the results, we’re convinced of this technique’s value. So this season we’re getting serious. We’ve found that…
Perennials, perennials, perennials. It’s all about perennials. Throw a stick near anyone enthused about permaculture or regenerative agriculture and they’ll squeak ‘perennials’ before they even duck. This book is a very old, very readable, and very good edition to any library. It’s first edition came out in 1929, it reads like a combination of Foxfire,…
My first attempt of growing broad beans (or anything for that matter) in something other than a no-dig bed. Not planted in the still-being-pig-tractored market garden, mind you. These beans went into what will become our kitchen garden, next to the woolshed. Joyce sent up the broad bean seed from Allsun Farm, which is great.…
The Lexicon of Sustainability is a project that almost wriggles with excitement. It’s taking all those very important and even edgy things that we should care about and makes them so delicious that you want to eat them all. Which ironically, for the most part, you can! Regenerative agriculture, foraging, local food systems, community supported…
All the way through this epic project to build a very small house, we have had a couple of rules about materials: lowest possible footprint, recycled where possible, and the trickiest: non toxic. Like so non toxic, you could feed it to your toddler. And they wouldn’t expire as a result. To keep our house…
Pigs are something we’ve wanted to experiment with at Milkwood for ages. Piggies are way cool. They dig up and turn over ground, they provide valuable manure, process organic waste, and they’re great fun to watch! But with all our other current agendas at the farm, designing a system and setting up the infrastructure for…
Permaculture Pioneers is a new book looking at the trajectory of permaculture in Australia from the 1970’s until right now. It’s an amazing and humbling read. And it’s launching in Sydney next week on August 25th, with David Holmgren presenting. At the same event there will be the Sydney premiere of Anima Mundi, a new…
Early the other morning, our seriously awesome dog, Jesha, ate a bait laced with 1080 poison and after an excruciating hour of pain, dropped dead. During that hour, the whole famly piled into the truck in our pajamas and started driving frantically in the direction of the nearest vet, but by halfway to town it…
Here comes Spring! I can feel it in my bones. No matter that last night was -1.4º at Milkwood Farm… The blossoms as in bud all around. And that means it’s ground-prep time! Bring on the no-dig gardens and the sheet mulching… Sheet mulching and no-dig gardens have a fair bit of cross-over, and it…
In the course of scrounging, dumpster diving, and exploring junkyards for our building materials, we came across a pair of crazy-beautiful 1930’s french doors for five bucks. Sold! What we didn’t realize at the time was just how expensive cheap doors can be. Nearly all the materials that have gone into building our tinyhouse are…
What do you get when you cram 200 people into a room with Joel Salatin to talk about awesome small-farming techniques that heal the land and create livelihoods at the same time? You get the shivers, that’s what! Or i did, anyway. Last Tuesday we hosted a workshop with Joel on the south coast of…
So we’re sitting at the kitchen table, planning our market garden with Joyce and Mike from Allsun Farm, and Joyce suddenly looks at me sharply: “you’ve seen our vegetable growing CD ROM, haven’t you?” Erm, no? With forewords by Eliot Coleman (international edition) and Peter Cundall (Australian edition), I’m not quite sure why I’ve only…