We’ve just finished hosting our first Starting an Organic Market Garden course with Joyce and Mike from Allsun Farm, and it feels like the start of a quiet revolution. 30 people for 3 days, in our woolshed and down on our creekflat, learning the basics of growing good food well. Whew! I knew this was…
DetailsThe Australian City Farms and Community Gardens network has just released a new poster for free download. And it is a beautiful thing. Chooks, roots, fruit, earthworms and of course community, all flourishing together.
DetailsThere is nothing so joyful as a large group of people coming together to plant currants. Especially when they’re doing it in a forest garden, early in Spring, when the peaches and wattles are flowering madly and the sap is rising all around. As part of our first forest garden workshop here at Milkwood Farm,…
DetailsWhile we started off experimenting with annual and ground cover species seed balls, to date I’ve been most impressed by how useful they’ve proved to help us establish trees in unlikely areas. As I’ve mentioned before, we’ve been trying to figure out how to establish trees and increase biomass on the rocky, soil-deprived parts of…
DetailsWhen I’ve thought about small scale grain cropping in the past, I thought of long skirts, plaited hair, and a whole lot of winnowing, threshing, and hard work. Somehow, I always thought this stuff was either the province of the seriously self sufficient, or the seriously delusional. Nowadays I wonder why the heck in Australia…
DetailsHere’s a punchy little video piece about re-localisation of food, with soundtrack by Willie Nelson covering Coldplay. As one of the comments on the post says “When I buy naturally raised meats I don’t think, “This costs so much!”, rather I know, “This is money that won’t be going toward chemo.” You will either pay…
DetailsHooray! After a month of pig tractoring, fencing and gathering resources, the Milkwood Farm organic market garden has officially begun! Behold the image above, in which is recorded the planting of our very first lettuce. It was a very eventful day, all in all. First thing in the morning, we had to convince our hire-a-pigs…
DetailsTucked away within the Sydney College of Arts campus at Rozelle in Sydney is a gorgeous public garden of eatin’. Native bees, sugar snap peas, banana circles and raspberries all co-mingle in a glorious emerging jumble of edibility. It’s all flowered from a project called ‘Tending’, an artwork by Lucas Ihlein and Diego Bonetto, and…
DetailsOk I know I said we’d be in our tinyhouse by Spring. And we’re so achingly, so un-utterably, so plainly not in. Yet. But just when does spring start? Is it a date thing? An equinox thing? Can i find an adequate caveat? You know those wattle-and-daub walls of ours? Great idea. No really. Only…
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Following on from the cracking workshop we ran with Joel Salatin in Jamberoo earlier this month, here’s the links and resources we devised as post-workshop notes for everyone who came along. There’s so much goodness in Polyface Farm’s regenerative agriculture techniques! And heaps that can be applied usefully, at a range of scales to create…
DetailsLeading on from reading The One Straw Revolution many years ago, we’ve been experimenting with seed balls since our first year at Milkwood Farm. After 4 years of rolling ’em balls in various ways, broadcasting them, and noting the results, we’re convinced of this technique’s value. So this season we’re getting serious. We’ve found that…
DetailsPerennials, perennials, perennials. It’s all about perennials. Throw a stick near anyone enthused about permaculture or regenerative agriculture and they’ll squeak ‘perennials’ before they even duck. This book is a very old, very readable, and very good edition to any library. It’s first edition came out in 1929, it reads like a combination of Foxfire,…
DetailsMy first attempt of growing broad beans (or anything for that matter) in something other than a no-dig bed. Not planted in the still-being-pig-tractored market garden, mind you. These beans went into what will become our kitchen garden, next to the woolshed. Joyce sent up the broad bean seed from Allsun Farm, which is great.…
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