Our bees are back! We’ve set up a small Warré apiary at Buena Vista Farm on the coast at Gerringong. This will be a little different from beekeeping in the dry inland hills of Mudgee… 18 months ago we said goodbye to our Milkwood Farm bees, which, after we left the farm, went to live at Rahamim Ecolearning…
So you want to create a permaculture design for your home, farm, verge or community. How exactly do you begin the design process? By forming a goal statement, that’s how. Goals Articulation When we clearly articulate our goals we are creating a powerful statement which we can then design by, and for. Dave Jacke refers to this…
It was hot, and humid, and threatening to storm. Perfect weather for catching our first honeybee swarm. We got the alert via our friends Adam + Fiona of Buenavista Farm – the usual bush telegraph story – someone called them about a swarm on a driveway, but Fi + Adam were packing for market day…
There’s a lot packed into our 3 day Natural Building course – students learn hands-on techniques in mud + lime renders, earth floors, strawbale, roundwood building, reciprocal roofs and more. Most folks that come to this course are there to get a solid overview of all these techniques from a master builder, so they can…
A Crop and Swap is an informal get-together of folks who have backyard harvest to spare, or are looking for new ideas for what to grow next. Recently we went to the very first crop and swap held at Kiama Community Garden, with our home-grown offerings of greens, herbs and a few oyster mushrooms. It…
Have you seen the latest edition of Organic Gardener Magazine? It contains an article we wrote, about the principles of natural beekeeping. We really wanted to write this article from a principles based approach for a couple of reasons – primarily because there’s an awful lot of mis-information out there about what constitutes natural beekeeping. We’ve learned…
This Pickled Fennel Agrodolche is an excellent small-batch vinegar pickle recipe for whatever vegetables you’ve got a bit too much of. You know the kind of situation I’m talking about. In our veggie patch, it is time to plant the climbing tomatoes against the fence. And this means the end of the winter fennel crop must…
So you’ve got your bag/jar of spawn, and you’re ready to turn it into many bags (or buckets) of mushrooms. Here’s a simple + effective way to go about that process. Firstly, take your bag or jar of spawn that you’ve either cultivated yourself, or bought from a mushroom supplier. Break up the spawn (easier to…
Given how locked-up our city real estate is, many new farmers are thinking between the spaces. Is farming on small-plot, rented land possible in an urban context? Today we’re talking to Canadian micro-farmer Curtis Stone, otherwise known as ‘The Urban Farmer’, about how to do just that. Curtis runs his growing enterprise Green City Acres…
Recently we held a Biointensive Growing course with Jodi Roebuck at Buena Vista Farm in Gerringong. It was a big learning experience for everyone involved! The Biointensive Method is one that focusses on growing vegetables with maximum productivity from minimal space, in as immediate a timeframe as possible. This means there’s lots of energy that needs…
One way to obtain yourself a healthy honeybee colony to put in your hive is to catch a swarm. While this might sound daunting, catching a swarm is entirely doable, and there’s many ways to go about it. Swarming is an optimistic act, and usually an indication that the colony has outgrown its hive space due to…
Dark Emu is not a large book, but it packs a punch well above its weight. Prepare to have your understanding of Australia’s agricultural heritage re-wired completely. We’re definitely adding this to the required reading list for all our Permaculture + regenerative farming + growing courses. Bruce Pascoe, the author of Dark Emu, has with this…
Cascara is a drink made from the outer berry of a coffee bean – a byproduct of the coffee harvest, and a tasty drink unto itself, as we’ve recently learned. Coffee trees are an unlikely but awesome backyard plant that can be found in many community gardens in Sydney these days, including the 107 Rooftop Garden in…
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