Next in our lineup of Permaculture Design Course grads is Megan Norgate from Brave New Eco, a sustainable design + interior service based in Melbourne town. While the dream of building our own ultra-sustainable, self-sufficient, ethically-made homes from scratch exists for many, the reality of the current age and circumstance is that most of us…
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Summer downtime is the perfect chance to get fermenting, even if the heat means that everything bubbles like crazy! Check out these 4 recipes for some easy yet delicious ways to get some probiotic action into your kitchen this Summer. Fermented Tomato Salsa This recipe comes via our Fermentation teacher Gillian Kozicki. It’s absolutely killer,…
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Holidays are a good time to dream about the future, and what you’re going to build one day. Here’s some articles to get you inspired about building with a minimum of money and a maximum of passion for creating natural, living homes and shelter. Let there be Mud: the Basics of Natural Building Natural Building is…
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Has this year been a big one for you? It has for us. So much digging, doing, designing, moving, re-settling, replanting and re-thinking. Thank goodness for the inaugural backyard gherkin, which appeared on our back fence trellis the other day, to calm me down. In the spirit of building on what’s gone before, or incase you’ve…
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Rustic style cooking and I seem to go way back, long before it was cool to do rustic anyway. It wasn’t because I was ahead of the hipster masses – really when it comes down to it, it’s because I’m quite a lazy cook. I’ll happily slap a rustic label on well, pretty much most…
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The act of preserving fruit, like gardening, is a hopeful act. It’s a gesture of goodwill to future meals that you plan to have, incorporating a since-past season’s bounty. It’s also darn repetitive (though some would call it calming, I suppose), all that cutting and washing and slicing and bringing up to heat and waiting and cleaning…
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The thing about farming on the small is that big machines just don’t make sense, and often aren’t affordable to your small, regenerative farming enterprise anyway. And yet, once you’ve brought 18 beds to a fine tilth to plant your precious carrots using hand tools alone, you could be forgiven for longing for the efficiency that…
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Discovering new edible plants in unexpected places is fast becoming one of my favourite pastimes. This week, we’ve been scouting our local ‘hood for beaded samphire. Beaded samphire (Sarcocornia quinqueflora) is also known as sea asparagus or beaded glasswort. It’s an edge plant that grows in highly saline environments, like salt marshes, brackish water, or at the top…
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String em up, baby! Climbing tomatoes often need a helping hand to reach their full potential. Here’s our two favourite methods for stringing up best ever backyard toms. Farm or patio, tomatoes are the go. I can’t imagine summer without them. In a small backyard like the one we’re living in just now, climbing tomatoes make lots of…
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So just how relevant or valuable IS an American farmer like Joel Salatin coming to Australia to talk small farm skills and enterprise planning? As it turns out, quite a lot. The techniques + thinking of Polyface Farms’ founder has influenced many amazing small farm enterprises in Australia that we know of, helping them to thrive,…
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Wow, this book is a cracker. Friendly, in-depth knowledge at its best. Written by US mycologist and dedicated home-scale mushroom cultivator Tradd Cotter, it’s a great blend of practical cultivation how-tos, fungi ID and strategies for mycoremediation. Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation is a great addition to any shroomish library and while it doesn’t replace the…
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The food is all around us. Or so I like to think. You just need to know where to look, and always have a bucket or basket with you. Following on from the quietly inspiring visit from Artist as Family, who parked their bikes at our place for a day or two and proceeded to…
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Calling all potential local food futurists! A quick note that the South East Local Leaders program is open for applications. South East Local Land Services, South East Landcare and the Small Farms Network have teamed up with leadership training providers Global Learning to run three high quality local leadership development opportunities in the South East Local Land…
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