My 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.…
DetailsThe Lexicon of Sustainability is a project that almost wriggles with excitement. It’s taking all those very important and even edgy things that we should care about and makes them so delicious that you want to eat them all. Which ironically, for the most part, you can! Regenerative agriculture, foraging, local food systems, community supported…
DetailsAll the way through this epic project to build a very small house, we have had a couple of rules about materials: lowest possible footprint, recycled where possible, and the trickiest: non toxic. Like so non toxic, you could feed it to your toddler. And they wouldn’t expire as a result. To keep our house…
DetailsPigs are something we’ve wanted to experiment with at Milkwood for ages. Piggies are way cool. They dig up and turn over ground, they provide valuable manure, process organic waste, and they’re great fun to watch! But with all our other current agendas at the farm, designing a system and setting up the infrastructure for…
DetailsPermaculture Pioneers is a new book looking at the trajectory of permaculture in Australia from the 1970’s until right now. It’s an amazing and humbling read. And it’s launching in Sydney next week on August 25th, with David Holmgren presenting. At the same event there will be the Sydney premiere of Anima Mundi, a new…
DetailsEarly the other morning, our seriously awesome dog, Jesha, ate a bait laced with 1080 poison and after an excruciating hour of pain, dropped dead. During that hour, the whole famly piled into the truck in our pajamas and started driving frantically in the direction of the nearest vet, but by halfway to town it…
DetailsHere comes Spring! I can feel it in my bones. No matter that last night was -1.4º at Milkwood Farm… The blossoms as in bud all around. And that means it’s ground-prep time! Bring on the no-dig gardens and the sheet mulching… Sheet mulching and no-dig gardens have a fair bit of cross-over, and it…
DetailsIn the course of scrounging, dumpster diving, and exploring junkyards for our building materials, we came across a pair of crazy-beautiful 1930’s french doors for five bucks. Sold! What we didn’t realize at the time was just how expensive cheap doors can be. Nearly all the materials that have gone into building our tinyhouse are…
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What do you get when you cram 200 people into a room with Joel Salatin to talk about awesome small-farming techniques that heal the land and create livelihoods at the same time? You get the shivers, that’s what! Or i did, anyway. Last Tuesday we hosted a workshop with Joel on the south coast of…
DetailsSo we’re sitting at the kitchen table, planning our market garden with Joyce and Mike from Allsun Farm, and Joyce suddenly looks at me sharply: “you’ve seen our vegetable growing CD ROM, haven’t you?” Erm, no? With forewords by Eliot Coleman (international edition) and Peter Cundall (Australian edition), I’m not quite sure why I’ve only…
Details*Update* – Since writing this article, we’ve deconstructed, improved, reconstructed and cobbed this rocket stove. Have a look here. Way back in the summer of 2009, we built a rocket stove water heater so we could have hot showers at Milkwood. What a revolution. And 2.5 years later, our rocket powered shower is, surprisingly, still…
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Percy Arnold Yeomans was a visionary farmer who could read the Australian landscape in a way unheard of, before or since. He designed water into landscape and drought-proofed farms, designed a sub-soil Keyline Plow, and generally left a massive legacy of knowledge and implemented design. In 1975, a conceptual artist decided the Art Gallery of…
DetailsOver the last couple of months, we’ve been cooking up a re-design of our top food forest with Harris. Once we move into our tinyhouse, this food forest will be right outside our back door. So we want to get serious about making it a gorgeous place that drips with fun and food. Up until…
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