Happy holidays everyone! We hope you’re in the midst of some serious downtime. As it’s all about midsummer meals and cramming a year’s worth of days off into a week around here, we’ve all been hard at it. Christmas day saw Floyd, Gigi, Michael and Lawrence (incoming market garden intern) harvesting and cooking the first…
Wow what a ridiculously big and beautiful year! We’ve come so far from where we were at the start of 2012 that I can barely believe it. But we have photographic evidence, so it must have all happened. Here’s 12 months of thrills and spills at Milkwood…
It’s a Catalan Christmas at Milkwood Farm this year. Which means that, in pride of place, sits Caga Tió. Caga Tió is a happy ‘uncle’ who is actually a log. You feed him fruit for 2 weeks leading up to Christmas and, on the appointed day, he poos out presents of nougat. And you sing to…
What better soundtrack for Christmas than combining two essential ingredients for a good life: permaculture, and ukulele. Permaculture: A Rhymer’s manual is a set of songs based on David Holmgren’s 12 permaculture principles, created with the idea that education and learning resources come in many forms, so why not. We love em. This week at…
This week marked a big step for us at Milkwood Farm, as we got the chance to follow-through on the stewardship of our pastured pigs by taking them all the way to the plate. In the spirit of honoring both life and death, we wanted to make the most of our pigs, and learn how…
I am pleased to announce that we have, 4 months after moving in, finally spend a whole weekend at the Tiny House. And it was beautiful. Stand by for pics (I’ve tried to offset their normality by framing them as best i could) of children, dogs, swims, potato prints and all the things a proper…
As promised, here is Rose’s nitrate-free, home made way of making bacon from scratch. I say ‘way’ rather than ‘recipe’ because it’s still in development in terms of quantities. But if you too are a tinkerer rather than a straight-up recipe follower, then come on down and join us in the glorious land of home…
Last spring the Milkwood interns cooked up a design to tackle the erosion on a degraded hillside next to the woolshed, and then implemented and planted it all out. This design was done collaboratively and realised with simple tools and natural materials. One year on, it’s working a treat. The parameters for this design had…
After a crazy, wonderful and challenging spring, we’ve finally hosted the last Milkwood event till after New Years. Wow. Since the farm opened in September we’ve taught and hosted courses in forest gardening, permaculture design, mushroom cultivation, market gardening and beekeeping and polished it off with big open days. Alongside all that, we’ve been establishing…
Reciprocating roof roundhouses are pretty darn cool. They look gorgeous and they are a very good way to quickly make a strong structure with simple, available materials, the right knowledge and a bunch of willing hands. We’ve been researching reciprocating roof structures, but hadn’t as yet had a chance to build one. Luckily Harris has…
We’ve just finished up our Spring Permaculture Design Certificate here at Milkwood Farm, and I thought I’d share some of the (yet again) truly impressive design work that came out of it. Some great permaculture designs for both urban and rural systems. One of the Spring PDC students described their new understanding of permaculture as:…
So we’re into year 2 of community-scale tomato production. Last year the tomato yield was respectable, hailstorms and fruit fly notwithstanding. This year, we’re trying to hone our technique a little in terms of infrastructure, as well as planning to preserve the harvest while preserving our sanity.
Yes, I do realise that is a big call, because potato salads can get pretty good. Whether it was the combo of 100% home-grown veggies or the home-made ricotta on top, i don’t care. This is the most rocking potato salad I’ve tasted. And created by Rose Newberry, who we’re lucky enough to have at…
The Milkwood newsletter is an occasional publication that’s a treasure trove of writings, free DIY guides, gardening tips, permaculture hacks, special newsletter-only posts and giveaways, and lots, lots more…