The delights of the country show are many. For me, though, it’s all about the vegetables. Specifically the vegetables dressed as animals, or people. All the rest of pales in comparison. Last week I was lucky enough to catch the Kiama show, south of Sydney. Kiama is where we’ll be hosting Joel Salatin’s upcoming Masterclasses,…
Bees deserve more study than they get, seems to me. No matter if you’re a budding beekeeper or just a responsible citizen, these ladies and their ongoing work are responsible for one in every three bites of food we eat. They deserve both our joyful respect and a deeper understanding. The two books above are…
When we moved in to the tiny house last August, our design plans for our edible courtyard were vast, and immediate. It would be a riot of color and flavor in no time – citrus trees ripening in the microclimate of the east-facing gabion wall, feasts of greens, herbs everywhere, scenting the air as pollinators…
Wow what a January. Thank you to all the amazing Permaculture Design Course students that joined us at Milkwood Farm for two weeks of Permaculture design training, and the hottest January in Australia on record. It was all happening at Milkwood Farm! Yes the heat was intense. But because of our elevation, we never saw…
The Urban Farming Guidebook is a free pdf resource for helping local governments to plan the growing of food in their cities. Given that we’re all about bottom-up action, we feel that it’s best placed in the hands of potential growers, so they can get on with creating local food systems! And that means you.…
We’ve been wanting to introduce ducks to our integrated animal systems for some time now. We’ve been trying to decide which breed to start with and where they would best fit, so we can maximise the Power of Duck at Milkwood. Random opportunity seems to have decided for us, for now. Friends down the road…
Reading about our kitchen, in our kitchen. Kinda spooky, but mostly fun! We’re tickled to announce that the Milkwood Tiny House is featured in the latest edition of Green Lifestyle Magazine… get it while it’s hot! As many of you know, the building of this Tiny House has been a looooong labor of love –…
Just a quick update on the Milkwood Farm piggies who are tractoring their way through our future holistic orchard site. You know that training technique I mentioned for getting them used to electric fencing so we can minimise their fencing and maximise their pigginess? It’s working.
Last year it was so easy, the carrots seemed to grow themselves! This year, however… not so much. Carrots are one of those crops that, in dry summers like this one, need a lot of love and care from before they’re even planted, all the way through to harvest. Under Michael’s tender care the carrots…
This new pdf resource is free to download and a great document for anyone wanting to ensure their garden, verge, community patch or farm is as pollinator friendly as it can possibly be. It’s a guide put out by Rural Industries Research and Development, and is a fantastic resource covering ideas for bee-friendly plantings in…
Last Spring Nick gave a Tedx talk about stewarding our most available nutrients to grow food for our communities in a closed-loop system. Yes, he was talking about humanure. And during said talk, Nick had a healthy, humanure-grown cumquat tree on stage with him. During the talk, some of the cumquats from this tree were…
The upside down fire technique rocks. It’s a cleaner burn with far less smoke and better combustion, gives off more heat, needs less tending and uses the embodied energy in wood more efficiently than the tipi-esque fire method. As an added bonus, the first time you make a fire like this in front of a…
We can’t wait to host Joel Salatin for 3 one-day masterclasses in February. This will be the first time that Joel will present the in-depth specifics of the various integrated animal systems of Polyface Farm to a NSW audience. Leading on from our previous 2 years of working with Joel, we very much wanted to…
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