11Animals - Milkwood: permaculture courses, skills + stories

Closed-Loop Cheese: The Goat Forage System at Melliodora

October 31, 2016 | Animals, Farming, Food & Fermentation, Fruit Trees, Grazing, Melliodora, Permaculture, Silviculture | 9 comments | Author : Kirsten Bradley

At Melliodora, the goat forage system is designed to support this permaculture smallholding in numerous ways, while closing the loop, keeping happy goats and making tasty cheese. Every morning, Pip and Willow make their way up to the milking shed … Continued

Keeping Backyard Quails: Efficient Home-Grown Protein

June 13, 2016 | Animals, Permaculture Design, Urban Permaculture | 1 comments | Author : Kirsten Bradley

If you’re wanting home-grown eggs but don’t have quite enough room for chickens, keeping backyard quails are a super option – they’re easy care, lay protein rich eggs, don’t need much space and are great fun to have around. There’s many different … Continued

Nature Play: Raising a Butterfly at Home

April 4, 2016 | Animals, Gardening, Nature Play | 4 comments | Author : Kirsten Bradley

This small project is a study in macrocosms and microcosms – the large world and the small, the now and the forever. And all on your kitchen bench. Not bad for a grub in a jam jar. I’ve always wanted to … Continued

Farming the Commons: How to Turn Brambles into Goats Cheese

February 22, 2016 | Animals, Foraging, Frugalism, Grazing, Integrated Pest Management, Permaculture | 0 comments | Author : Kirsten Bradley

Though we may not realise it, common ground is still to be found in our towns. It’s just not called that anymore. And utilizing common land as the community resource it is makes good sense. Especially when you can turn brambles … Continued

Visiting Melliodora in a Dry Year

January 25, 2016 | Animals, Appropriate Technology, Forest Gardening, Frugalism, Gardening, Permaculture | 8 comments | Author : Kirsten Bradley

This place, Melliodora. A world renowned permaculture homestead, full of nut, fruit and forage trees, geese, goats, berries, vegetables, mudbrick homes and lives worth living. If you have studied, read or participated in any Permaculture-type doings and learnings in Australia, … Continued

How to Convince your School to Get a Goat

November 18, 2015 | Animals, Schools, Urban Permaculture | 2 comments | Author : Brydie Piaf

You can milk them, they’re known for their excellent weed control and they make great educational pets. We’re talking goats and how you might go about convincing your school to get one (or two). Waiting at the bus stop, the … Continued

Natural Beekeeping: Tips for catching a swarm

September 28, 2015 | Animals, Natural Beekeeping | 8 comments | Author : Kirsten Bradley

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 … Continued

Good Book: Dark Emu – rethinking Indigenous Australian Agriculture

September 25, 2015 | Animal Systems, Animals, Australian agriculture, Design, Farming, Grazing, Permaculture, Seed Saving, Silviculture, Water Harvesting + Reuse, Watershed Restoration | 1 comments | Author : Kirsten Bradley

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 + … Continued

How to Build or Rennovate a Worm Farm

September 23, 2015 | Animals, Gardening, Nutrient Cycling, Vermiculture (worms) | 8 comments | Author : Brydie Piaf

Worms. The very essence of every flourishing garden. They are great for improving soil quality, turn your kitchen scraps into a valuable, incredibly rich fertiliser, and also make for an undemanding household pet. With a block of coir, some newspaper … Continued

How to Build a Microbat Box

September 21, 2015 | Animals, Integrated Pest Management, Permaculture | 7 comments | Author : Tricia Hogbin

Microbats are worth encouraging into your garden. Not only are they delightful to watch on dusk – they gobble thousands of mosquitoes, moths and other garden pests each and every night. A single microbat can eat up to 1,200 mosquitoes … Continued

Muscovy Ducks: a great homesteading breed

January 14, 2014 | Animals, Ducks, Permaculture | 72 comments | Author : Kirsten Bradley

Why are muscovy ducks so awesome? Let me count the ways… They’re quiet and friendly, they hunt flies (seriously), are hardy in all weathers, and produce fabulous eggs and the best duck meat ever. Convinced yet?

Drawing the comb downwards (video)

July 17, 2013 | Animals, Farming, Natural Beekeeping, Video | 8 comments | Author : Kirsten Bradley

This is a great little video from Gaia Bees, an American natural beekeeper doing some very interesting work in bee colony resilience and apicentric beekeeping. The super interesting thing about this video is that it clearly shows how, in a … Continued

The Sun Hive: experimental Natural Beekeeping

March 5, 2013 | Animal Systems, Animals, Natural Beekeeping, Permaculture | 59 comments | Author : Kirsten Bradley

Sun Hives are a hive design coming out of Germany and now gathering interest in Britain. They’re part of the world-wide movement towards ‘apicentric’ beekeeping – beekeeping that prioritizes honeybees firstly as pollinators, with honey production being a secondary goal. … Continued

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