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.