Blackberries are our favorite noxious weed, by far. They provide valuable habitat for small birds, hold eroded creekbanks together where nothing else will, and bring forth a motherlode of antioxidant and vitamin rich berries, right about this time of year. Ashar and I have been going foraging on a regular basis in the name of…
DetailsWe love a good bit of barter. Especially when it’s for amazing blood orange cordial and lunch in the city. And now as a result, folks in Marrickville are chomping on Milkwood salad! Whoohoo. Last week Nick and Gigi were heading down to Sydney for a Mushroom Cultivation course. We’d heard that there was a…
DetailsJust a quick note that we’re extremely excited to announce a comprehensive Natural Building course that will be happening at Milkwood Farm 6 – 9 April 2013 with Sam Vivas of Viva Eco Homes. As you may have worked out, we’re rather passionate about natural building, and the empowerment that comes from having the knowledge…
DetailsThe Bee People was written by Margaret Warner Morley in 1905 as a book for children about honeybees; their biology, their social habits, their work as pollinators, and their honey. I picked it up as a curiosity but you know what? It’s a pretty solid bee book for kids.
DetailsIntegrated pest management is the process of aiming to manage your garden like an ecosystem… and balancing the bad with the good. In simplest terms, its about creating favorable conditions for ‘good bugs’ that eat and/or mitigate the ‘bad bugs’, and encouraging other useful animals (like small birds) to hang out in the garden and…
Details[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/78600410″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /] Last week I talked to Dave Jacke (primary author of Edible Forest Gardens) about his upcoming Australian tour of talks and workshops. We talked about consciously designing gardens like forest ecosystems that maximise food production, for backyard scale and beyond. Have a listen! We also talked about…
DetailsWithout Joyce and Mike from Allsun Farm, we probably wouldn’t have a market garden. These two firey spirits have been growing good stuff and passing on their knowledge for decades. We feel lucky to know them and we love to see other folks writing about them.
Mid summer is a relative term. Where we are, high in the hills, Spring comes late according the calendar, but at just the right time according to our land. And right now, it’s mid summer. In the Milkwood market garden and all around us. The tomatoes are everywhere, the cucumbers are going nuts, the beans…
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Justine and her family live in inner-suburban Sydney. They have a small yard. And her garden grows fun, food and fish… right next to the cubby house. In the midst of Justine’s kids play area is a robust, family friendly, downright gorgeous aquaponics system, which cycles water through a fish pond and a vegetable bed…
DetailsSadly a ‘pig tractor’ as we know it is not a pig in a jaunty hat driving a little red tractor. But the reality is even better. It’s an excellent low-energy, high return way of preparing ground for a new garden or an orchard: removing all grass, roots and weeds with the aid of a…
DetailsMilkwood are proud to announce Dave Jacke is coming to Australia in March to share his extensive knowledge in designing both urban and rural regenerative food, fiber and community systems, using forest ecologies as a model. This is a special chance to learn from a world leading permaculturalist and forest ecology designer, thinker and teacher.…
DetailsBit of a golden opportunity, this. Boxgum Grazing is looking for a paid farm hand near Young in NSW. And Boxgum Grazing happens to be a darn fine family-run, holistically managed, pastured beef and pork operation, who want to pass their knowledge on as part of it all. Excited yet? The story goes that when…
DetailsIt was bound to happen. The beautiful insanity that is tomato season on a small farm. Big ones, little ones, fat ones, skinny ones. We’re eating them with breakfast and we’re eating them with dinner. Plenty of preserving happening, too. This year, it’s passata, diced tomatoes and roast tomatoes in the vacola preserving jars. Experiments…
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