So 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…
DetailsOur current permaculture design course in Sydney is producing a heap of exciting, creative and actually doable urban design, but not as you might know it. 40 urban folks have taken up paper and software, and also cross-stitch and dioramas to help them re-imagine home. I love watching people design. Especially people who are thinking…
DetailsThere’s nothing like a good old deadline to fire things up and move a building project along. A hard deadline, that is. Our first deadline, the birth of our child, didn’t seem to work as impetus. But this time, we mean it. And we’re going to make it. And so i make my pledge to…
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The night before our workshop with Joel Salatin at Jamberoo, there’s going to be an awesome evening. It’s the Australian premiere of The Greenhorns, a new and funky film on young farmers. And Joel Salatin will be there, slurping soup and talking farming. The Greenhorns is a great new film we discovered recently and have…
DetailsShiitake mushrooms are the yummiest variety, in my opinion. They’re also the most expensive in the shops, and virtually impossible to find in an organic variety (at least where we live). Solution: grow your own. You’ll be happy to hear that making your own shiitake mushroom log turns out to be very easy. It would…
DetailsThe main food forest at Milkwood Farm sits above our tinyhouse, in a sheltered, east-facing, sloping paddock, with lots of rocky bits and a sprinkling of useful trees. Not for much longer though. We’re determined to fast-track it into an incredible, luscious forest garden, dripping with fruit, herbs and shady green nooks. Enter Dan Harris-Pascal…
DetailsRecognizing simple pattern in nature is easy, and it’s the basis of bio mimicry. But just as crucial as recognizing these natural patterns, is thinking about how you can use them to create. That’s where the design comes in. Figuring how to integrate natural patterning into permaculture designs for homesteads, communities, farms and cities in…
DetailsThis week I received all our yearly seed catalogs, and, as usual, started planning feverishly. How many is too many weird and wonderful heirloom watermelon varieties? And then I paused. Wait a minute, we’re aiming for community scale in our vegetable production this year. This shifts the goalposts entirely. I’m now realizing that, for our…
DetailsA week or so ago Nick had the opportunity to hang out with Allan Savory, the founder of Holistic Management, way out west at Brewarrina. He was in the car and off before I could say ‘biological accelerators’. 7 hours of driving into the great flatness of the Aussie outback later, Nick and his mate…
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They say that one of the many blessings of country life is that you appreciate the little things. Like clean air, water and food. And I do. I also VERY much appreciate our internet connection, now that we’ve finally got it (kind of) sorted. Our hidden valley is questionably blessed with being devoid of mobile…
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