Last winter, we decided we needed a dedicated on-farm cook while Milkwood Farm is open (Spring-Autumn). I love cooking, but it was all getting a bit much. Interns, students, wwoofers and guests, all needing to be fed good food, every single day. We’ve tried me doing all the cooking. That worked until Ashar was too…
Details“Some call it permaculture, we prefer p-culture… ya dig? p-culture, starring the wonderful Miss Tasia Zalar, is a series of 10 segments designed to get youthful peeps actively involved in reducing their impact on the environment.” Great! Bring on the teen permacool. I mean p-culture… sorry dudes. Then there’s the Permaculture challenge, which is 50…
DetailsSoil Chromatography is both incredibly beautiful and incredibly useful, all at once. It’s a way of assessing your soil for humus, minerals, microbiology and more. Best of all, you can do this soil assessment effectively at home – no need to send off tests to a faraway lab. Maybe that’s why soil chromatography hasn’t caught…
DetailsA zuni bowl is a riparian restoration technique involving rocks, water, biology and time. It’s a great way of dealing with a small headcut (or erosion which is about to become a headcut) in order to prevent that headcut continuing up your catchment. Headcuts are not an uncommon sight in our valley’s many gullies. Many…
DetailsLook at this amazing bottle wall work by the crew at Bustan Qaraaqa in Jerusalem. Now these are folk who know how to make a feature of the waste they produce. Their bottle walls represent the entire through-put of bottles at their permaculture site. On a remote farm such as ours, there is no rubbish…
DetailsRecently Nick gave a talk at TEDx Canberra. He talked about stewarding nutrients, how we can solve the problem of peak phosphorous, and about how to grow the best cumquats ever. Yes, Nick was talking about why taking responsibility for our poo and our wee, our most basic waste streams, is so crucial to our…
DetailsWow, what a day. Colin Seis in his element, explaining to 30+ folks why pasture cropping is such a big deal. Farmers, permaculturalists and agri-entreprenuers seemed to make up the bulk of the crowd. There’s a lot of interest in this regenerative cropping technique. And so there should be.
DetailsRocket stoves are awesome, experimental, and a knowledge stream in flux. Or ours is, at any rate. Our rocket stove water heater has been doing its thing for nearly 3 years now, so we decided to take it apart and do a full examination of how it had fared. So Nick and our current permaculture…
DetailsAdam Grubb and Dan Palmer are some of the most accomplished urban permaculture designers I know. Aside from being the founding forces of the Permablitz movement, they also design professionally – creating functional, edible awesomeness in small suburban spaces through their Melbourne Permaculture business, Very Edible Gardens (VEG). We’ve snared Adam as a special guest…
DetailsOn occasion, our two big water tanks at the very top of Milkwood Farm overflow. What to do with the intermittent extra water? It’s too precious to just drain away. Time to design a water catchment and planting plan to make the most of it. Since solving this problem is both necessary and interesting, we…
DetailsSpring is slowly but surely springing at Milkwood, and our new forest garden is beginning to wake up from the cold and grow, grow grow!
A quick note as I haven’t mentioned our upcoming Intro to Holistic Management course with Kirk Gadzia that starts on the 1st of November. >> Holistic Management with Kirk Gadzia: 1-3 November @ Milkwood Farm, NSW Having worked side by side with Allan Savory for many years, Kirk knows a thing or two about using…
DetailsThanks to the amazing efforts of many forces, I can officially say that we are now feeding everyone at Milkwood Farm from the Organic Market Garden each day! Starting with feasts of fresh rocket, lettuce and pak choi. It’s been an adventure of epic proportions to get to this point. But thanks to our amazing…
DetailsThe Milkwood newsletter is an occasional publication that’s a treasure trove of writings, free DIY guides, gardening tips, permaculture hacks, special newsletter-only posts and giveaways, and lots, lots more…