Hi All,
Please excuse me for not writing a post for so long. The only time and place I was able to do it at Zaytuna Farm was in the evening at a common room full of often bubbly (loud) people; a distraction that further impedes my, already lousy, typing skills (pathetic excuse maybe, but I thinks it's fair to call myself an easily distracted, non-multi-tasker. I personally, need to make my environment conducive for the task at hand, and nothing else. This could be as simple as moving a chair & table, or somehow blocking my access to the web, so I'm not tempted to watch 'The Mighty Boosh' (stunning British comedy) on YouTube, as an example).
After the PDC (permaculture design course) Carl and I did a week of WWOOFing then enrolled on the earthworks course, which ended a couple of weeks ago (I type that last statement with great satisfaction; as a fair few people know, I'm not much of a classroom person). Earthworks (mainly for water harvesting) is considered the skeleton of permaculture design. In a nutshell, the land is dug with dams and swales (a level trench on the contour of a slope, with a soft mound on the lower side that absorbs rainfall, in turn slowly and gently soaking into the soil down the rest of the slope), in order to catch and passively spread as much water and nutrients (rainfall coming of trees, for example, will have this) as possible. Earthworks also include any better road access, as well as any levelling of land for structures, like a house.
I thoroughly enjoyed my 7 weeks at Zaytuna farm; the people (of diverse backrounds around the world. I sincerely miss a handful of them) the farming system and it's principles thoroughly rooted in sustainabilty, the lifestyle of farming, and the charm of the place and area itself. Looking back, I'm suprised at how much fun I had there.
On the week after the earthworks course, we embarked on a fruitless property search around southern New South Wales. The next day on our way back through Victoria, we found a seemingly stunning property only 2 and a half hours away from Melbourne. Along with being beautiful, in a beautiful location, it ticks a lot of boxes on a practical level for efficient permaculture design, and is at a good price (I only compare that to every other property we've looked at). We are currently waiting on a couple of things for the owner to do before Carl can put in an offer. (Any person of faith, please pray that we get it! Joke, but please do if you want to)
When I got back to Melbourne there was so much I wanted to study (permaculture covers every bloody aspect of living sustainably. Examples beyond farming are: construction, cooking and food preservation, water havesting, aquaculture to name but a few), but I've honed it down to 2 priorities at the moment. These are organic gardening and chicken farming, as these will be the first things we will be doing (after any earthworks) when we move on to the property (I've suprised myself in the interest I've taken in soil and the importance of it's biology). I'm spending a large part of my days in the library researching these 2 things and if moving onto a property takes much longer I may see if it's possible to do some WWOOFing on a permaculture farm nearby (largely to get some more gardening experience and to see what grows well in this area).
Om Tat Sat
Please excuse me for not writing a post for so long. The only time and place I was able to do it at Zaytuna Farm was in the evening at a common room full of often bubbly (loud) people; a distraction that further impedes my, already lousy, typing skills (pathetic excuse maybe, but I thinks it's fair to call myself an easily distracted, non-multi-tasker. I personally, need to make my environment conducive for the task at hand, and nothing else. This could be as simple as moving a chair & table, or somehow blocking my access to the web, so I'm not tempted to watch 'The Mighty Boosh' (stunning British comedy) on YouTube, as an example).
After the PDC (permaculture design course) Carl and I did a week of WWOOFing then enrolled on the earthworks course, which ended a couple of weeks ago (I type that last statement with great satisfaction; as a fair few people know, I'm not much of a classroom person). Earthworks (mainly for water harvesting) is considered the skeleton of permaculture design. In a nutshell, the land is dug with dams and swales (a level trench on the contour of a slope, with a soft mound on the lower side that absorbs rainfall, in turn slowly and gently soaking into the soil down the rest of the slope), in order to catch and passively spread as much water and nutrients (rainfall coming of trees, for example, will have this) as possible. Earthworks also include any better road access, as well as any levelling of land for structures, like a house.
I thoroughly enjoyed my 7 weeks at Zaytuna farm; the people (of diverse backrounds around the world. I sincerely miss a handful of them) the farming system and it's principles thoroughly rooted in sustainabilty, the lifestyle of farming, and the charm of the place and area itself. Looking back, I'm suprised at how much fun I had there.
On the week after the earthworks course, we embarked on a fruitless property search around southern New South Wales. The next day on our way back through Victoria, we found a seemingly stunning property only 2 and a half hours away from Melbourne. Along with being beautiful, in a beautiful location, it ticks a lot of boxes on a practical level for efficient permaculture design, and is at a good price (I only compare that to every other property we've looked at). We are currently waiting on a couple of things for the owner to do before Carl can put in an offer. (Any person of faith, please pray that we get it! Joke, but please do if you want to)
When I got back to Melbourne there was so much I wanted to study (permaculture covers every bloody aspect of living sustainably. Examples beyond farming are: construction, cooking and food preservation, water havesting, aquaculture to name but a few), but I've honed it down to 2 priorities at the moment. These are organic gardening and chicken farming, as these will be the first things we will be doing (after any earthworks) when we move on to the property (I've suprised myself in the interest I've taken in soil and the importance of it's biology). I'm spending a large part of my days in the library researching these 2 things and if moving onto a property takes much longer I may see if it's possible to do some WWOOFing on a permaculture farm nearby (largely to get some more gardening experience and to see what grows well in this area).
Om Tat Sat
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