Update Februray 2021 – Landshare is no longer operating as an entity in Australia or the UK (links to those site have been removed), however Landshare NZ is still operating and there are many alternatives that have sprung up in communities all over the world. One great example in Australia is Farm it Forward who are connecting young…
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Deep in the heart of Marrickville, in a little street of workers cottages, right under the flight path to Sydney International Airport, there is a food forest. A splendid wrangle of Australian rainforest food trees, sugar cane, herbs from all parts of asia, plums and even citrus, grow on a small suburban block with a…
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One of the most powerful concepts in permaculture for me is ‘keep the water high’. All water stored high in the landscape is potential energy, thanks in part to gravity. If your water is high, you can make that water available to everything below it in the landscape, via gravity feed and piping, with no…
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Bees are amazingly resilient and adaptable creatures. In a good year, when there are many ‘honey flows’ happening, they can build comb and collect and store honey at an astonishing rate, to make the most of the bounty dripping from nearby plants. Tim tells stories of his bees filling 5 boxes full with comb and…
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All drinking water at Milkwood Farm comes from the sky. This means catchment and storage of drinking-quality water is a very big deal for us. And since we’ve got the opportunity to define the quality of our drinking water here (a luxury so many millions of people do not have), we’re determined to get it…
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Flat ground. Seemingly simple, but oh so full of implications. We didn’t really think about how cool flat ground was until we calculated that it made up exactly 10% of the total landmass of Milkwood. That means 90% hilly bits. Hmm. Flat ground is very precious – you can do all sorts of things with…
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The idea that you can build a structurally strong house with nothing more complicated than a bunch of bags, earth, clay and lime, plus some basic on-farm materials and plenty of hands on deck is pretty exciting for a lot of people, including me. Earthbag building might just be the answer to our dreams. Want…
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May all your carrots grow long and straight, may the foxes be struck blind by your chickens, may your customers love cooking your food in their kitchens, may the rains be gentle on your pastures, may your fields grow with soil, may your earthworms dance with celebration, may the wind be always at your back,…
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Grain cropping is something that, for the vast majority of us, is someone else’s problem. We just eat the results; certainly every day, and nearly with every meal. Bread, rice, corn, soy, beans and so on. Produced somewhere out there, by someone else. So a portion of our every single meal is coming from a…
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During the Spring Permaculture Design Certificate here at Milkwood, a funny thing happened to our basecamp garden. Somehow, it quadrupled in size. It was the most un-anticipated permablitz i have ever been a part of, and this time (for the first time) it was at our house! Or our woolshed, to be precise. Rosemary Morrow,…
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Now tell me this is not the prettiest compost toilet block you have ever seen. Go on. I dare you. The issue of poo at Milkwood has been a long-standing source of discussion. We know that when poo is processed into humanure it contains valuable nutrients that would greatly help establish aspects of our farm.…
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Much excitement this week as the bees finally arrived at Milkwood. Tim Malfroy brought around 3 Warré beehives, complete with bees, to install on our farm. And so I have officially become a Warré beekeeper, with all the fascination, responsibility and of course delicious raw honey that goes with that territory…
Ferrocement (sometimes called thin-shell cement) is a construction technique where cement is thinly applied to a sturdy steel or wire frame. It is very cheap and relatively quick to do, and produces extremely strong structures. While it does involve cement, which has quite a large energy footprint, the resulting strength-for-inputs equation means it is a…
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