G'day,

As always, I would've like to have written this post sooner.

Not long after the last post we had Dave Spicer back to do some major earthworks. The earthworks consisted of repairing our 3 dam walls (with clay taken from elsewhere) connecting swales to the 3 dams (which would run on contour across the landscape for a few hundred metres) and finally make some terraces in the zone 1/2 areas, using the excavated material for the dam wall reapair. After surveying the area with a lazer level nd dry-hiring an excavator, the work commenced. It took about 4 days altogether and looked to be a real success. We even squeezed in time with the machine to dig out a cave in the side of the hill for food preservation and storage. It's been 3 months since then and last week the swales completely filled with water, due to the dams being up to their full potential. One of the terraces has become a cropping area, the other has currently got the skeleton of a polytunnel, a tree 'hardening off' area and a compost area.

Other jobs in the past 3 months have been building a permanent chicken coop near the house. The structure was made from round poles and the walls were made using an old technique called 'wattle and daub'. This was made by weaving thin, green pieces of wattles in a criss-cross fashion and then covering the wood up with a mixture of wet clay and straw. The technique seems to have been a succes, though I found willow branches to be more efficient than wattles so perhaps the technique should be called 'willow and daub'. The clay wall then needs to be lime rendered, which we have not done yet due to struggling to find the particular type of lime.

Other jobs have included repairing on old wood stove and intstalling it, planting a load more trees (productive, support species and windbreaks mainly), keeping on top of the veggie,garden milling a load more wood with Dave's portable sawmill, and general maintenance indoors and outdoors with the goal of continually trying to make the place at least somewhat comfortable, organized and civilized.

G’day

It’s been a long time since I’ve written a post (4 months… phew that has flown buy!). I would like to make a resolve to be more diligent at writing posts more frequently, but that would be wishful thinking on my part and a commitment I may not be able to meet. I will however now make a resolve to be more disciplined in uploading photos with captions (this is much less daunting. I could be in and out of the cyber café in 20 minutes, BOOM! ... no, we still don’t have an internet connection at the farm)

Just after my last post I went away for 2 weeks to cater for a permaculture design course in South Gippsland at the Southern Cross Permaculture Institute (where I was WWOOFING for 2 months just before Carl and I moved on to the property). I was also able to attend some of the classes and the field trips to some very inspiring properties practicing various sustainable horticulture and agriculture.

We’ve had friends over around the festive period who have been an incredible help (mostly) with building structures out of home-milled timber, as well as planting trees and making lots of compost. As anticipated, our more-longer-term cavalry has arrived in the form of Adon (passionate permie from Newcastle, NSW) and Drew (aka Drewbie Dusty D-money Drizzle; a really cool guy Carl and I met in California). Other new members of the crew are the cat (known as puss), the chickens (12 rhode island reds, 10 australorps and 6 pekin buff bantams), and just the other day 2 blue heeler pups (Ozzy and Sally).

Next week Mr Dave Spicer will be back with an excavator to help us perform some major and minor earthworks. These are mainly in order to emerge the patterns, already existing in the landscape, that maximize the water harvesting capacity and make it much easier to decide the placement of any new element in the system (be it structure plant or animal). I’ll try to let the photos do the rest of the typing.