Harvest a yield

Some of this year's garlic crop


A HUUUUUUUUUGE loganberry.


So far this year on the berry front we have harvested

• 19kg (!!!!) brambleberries
• 4.5 kg redcurrants
• 1kg blackcurrants
• 1.9kg raspberries
• 1.6kg loganberries
• 200g (!!) cherries - the tree is only a baby :*)
  

Mini-permablitz garden progress

The beans, pumpkins and squash have almost all come up, and are growing well, and both the tomatillos are flowering.

Produce no Waste

A local farmer had purchased a load of rice straw to feed his cattle, but the wouldn't eat it ... so he put the word out to local Landcare groups for BIG bales of mulch

and here one is! (our trailer is 6x4, so that will give you and idea of scale). It's a SERIOUS bale of straw, and should keep us mulching happily throughout summer.

Obtain a yield

I've just spend a happy hour in the kitchen weighing, bagging and dicing lamb. Today we took delivery of 1 1/2 lambs that were raised by local friends. They lived a happy life, with everything they needed, and at the end of their time they were "processed" (don't you love euphemisms?!) humanely on-site so did not have to experience the trauma of the abattoir system. A butcher did the hard work (chops, roasts etc) but left the dicing to me.

Although we didn't get the offal (the owners keep them) we got everything else, including all the bones and scrap pieces (some for the dogs, some for the dogs, some for the stew pot). For only $165 - delivered - that will see us in lamb for 3-4 months at least. It goes without saying that the flavour is superior to that we used to experience from the butcher. In addition to the cash I also gave a few tomatillo plants as well.

As I don't think I can ever become a vegetarian (just love meat too much...LOL) to me this seems the best possible way to buy meat, and I'm lucky that I live in a rural area that makes this easier.

mini-Permablitz!

Recently a few friends from the PDC course came up to do a mini-permablitz, and help us make a new extension to the vege patch. This new extension also means that we can access the vege patch from both sides of the house (very zone 1 now!), and it also means that in a few months we will be able to open the bedroom curtains in the morning and see beans and pumpkins everywhere (fingers crossed).

First there was some site prep to do - James got into the whippersnipper/strimming, while Ben tried to work out how the fence-ring pliers worked (NICE apron Ben!).

Then it was time to cut through the existing fence and make a gateway.

Then the real fun began - James demonstrated the proper way to use an auger (not bad for a city kid!!) and we made post holes and put in the two new gate posts.

Hang on - it's not time to stop working yet!!!!!!! (and frankly our local paper isn't THAT interesting!!!) Get on with that sheet mulching!! We used some colourbond salvaged from the tip to create a backing for the fence beds so that the dogs can't stick their paws through and dig out all the soil

Looking good - time to plant!

We recycled some old slate for stepping stones, and planted lots of bush beans, climbing beans and pumpkins

After all that work it was time for a drink - so we headed down to Pennyweight - our local organic winery - for a tasting!!

So where to now?

OK, I have my PDC and a head stuffed full of information and ideas - what do I do now? I think the principles that most apply here are observe and interact, and small and slow solutions. To sum it up I need to take a "hurry up and wait" approach!

There are so many things I want to do on our property, but I really need to cultivate (no pun intended!) patience and just watch the sun, wind and weather, and really plan the best use of all our space. It's not going to be easy though - I WANT IT ALL NOW :*) .

In the meantime there are some small things that I am doing:

• valuing a renewable resource by putting buckets in the sink and shower to collect 'waste' water and recycling it onto the garden
• I've turned off the house pump and we now gravity feed all water into the house. It's a small thing but it makes me feel better. It also helps to reduce water consumption as there is less pressure. An added bonus of this is I have learned about tap architecture as I had to take the flow regulator our of our kitchen tap to get any water out!
• Mulch, mulch and more mulch - I've raked up the grass clippings and put them on the garden beds
• Harvesting a yield - growing even more of my own food

Days 12 and 13 - Design project

After nearly 2 weeks of information overload it was time to put some of the information into our first design. We were split up into groups of 5, and had all of day 12 to work on the plans for our sites. Our group had a good mix of people, and we seemed to get into the 'zone' fairly quickly and came up with a phased plan for our urban site in Seymour. As well as the presentation we put together a folio of drawings (done by the drawers in the group - I can't draw a straight line even with a ruler!!) for our client.

Group work has never been one of my favourite things, but the process seemed to go reasonably smoothly - and it was a really good exercise to bounce ideas off other people, and to try and incorporate everything we've learned about the principle in a practical way.

Day 13 was presentation day, where each group presented their designs to our 'clients' and the rest of the class. It was fascinating to see the different directions each group took - even though two groups had the same client. Some really creative ideas, and even a mini practical water demonstration using green cordial (nice one Dan!).

By the end of the day it was time to relax and chill out - everyone was glad it was over! Time for pre-dinner drinks in the sunshine, another fab dinner, and then the end of course quiz night. Highlight of the quiz night was the various caption competitions using photos taken on the course. Some very creative responses!!

Day 11 - Violet Town / Murrnong

Today we visited David Arnold's property in Violet Town. It was great to see a different permaculture property in action. A real contrast to other places, as it was flat, and very orderly with rows and rows of trees on the way into the main building.

He has an incredible diversity of fruit and fodder trees, and a dam that made me really envious! As well as the property tour, we did a session on water, and spend some time calculating how much water we could catch from our roof, and also catch in our soils. I was amazed to find I could store about 10 olympic swimming pools of water in my soil - safe from evaporation and available to the plants. Time to start planning my soil improvement and keyline ripping for next spring!

You can see David's vid's at www.youtube.com/murrnong.

On the subject of water a mini rant - I was dismayed and annoyed to see this heading in today's age: "Water worries temporary" Claims that Melbourne will not need new rainwater tanks or greywater systems in homes . HELLO PEOPLE!!!! We need to catch and store!!!!!!!!! That way you wouldn't have to take water from regional victoria and pipe it away from agricultural land and down to the city. And you could spend the money for the desalination plant on public transport. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Day 10 - animals, urban retrofitting and design projectwater,

Lots happening today! We started with a session on greywater - reviewing a range of systems from commercial to DIY home based ones. I'm very excited by some of the possibilities for a simple system at our place. I definitely want to get one of these happening in the next few months. We also talked a bit about simple aquaculture systems.

The next session was looking at options for 'retrofitting' the urban landscape - including treasure in skips, options for guerilla gardening (LOVED this part of the session) as a community building exercise helping to reclaim unwanted urban spaces.

This afternoon we had the intro to our design project - we'll be working in groups of 5 on 2 real life design projects for members of commonground. My group are looking at creating a permie-plan the urban house (run down) and land in Seymour town. I've got a great group with diverse skills and experiences so I'm really looking forward to working on our design. Lots of exciting possibilities. The rest of the afternoon was taken up with the site visit and talking to our 'client' about his plans and visions for the site.

Tonight is a night off (bliss) so will probably do some notes / planning for the project. Tomorrow is another site visit to Violet Town.

Day 9 - Introduction to design & earthworks

Today we've had 4 sessions (one more to come after dinner) with David Arnold about designing - focussing on principle 7 - design from patterns to detail. I found today great - things just started to fall into place. Lots of outdoor work looking at patterns to work out sectors (eg fire sector, winter sun, summer sun, wind) that need to be considered when doing a design. We also talked a bit about mapping, and the various tools available to map

We also had a discussion about the design consultation process - things to think about / look for / ask about when working with clients (something we have to do for our final project, although the clients are people from commonground - so friendly!!).

Last thing this afternoon we looked at earth works and looked at various way to find contours and levels - including an a frame with plumb line, and a bunyip. We they wandered around looking at various earthworks at Commonground, and did some practical work with the bunyip trying to look at how we might extend drainage ditches with the right gradient. Very useful.

The last section of earthworks was a discussion about the keyline concept developed by yeomans, and how that can be used to keep water in a landscape - either just by ditches / keyline riplines and/or keyline dams.

Lots of food for thought - and possibilities for practical application to our place.

Day 7 and 8 - Melliodora

Wow. I am blown away by Melliodora (the Holmgren property). So many thing to inspire...makes me want to bulldoze our house and start again! It was great to see permaculture in action on this scale - and in the middle (ish) of a town rather than out in the sticks (so to speak).

Some things I will be trying at our place include:

• simple composting toilet
• greenhouse on the house (might be a longer term project!)
• cool cupboard in the house
• more fruit trees
• goats
• maybe a dam
• sprouted grain bread (Su's food was amazing and all from the garden)
  

Lots of interesting discussion / debate about weed ecology, use of plants like tagasaste and other non-natives, as well as a rather depressing presentation on peak oil - I haven't quite got David's knack of seeing the problem as the solution yet - it just depressed the you-know-what out of me.

It will take me a long time to work through all the things I have seen and heard over those 2 days - but today I have a day at home and need to get out into my own garden and tend the tomato empire and do more spring planting!

Day 6 - pests, social and economic permaculture, and retrofitting

If that sounds like a lot to take in in one day - you're right!

The morning was taken up with sessions on plant and animal pests in the garden, and different strategies for dealing with them anything from crowding out unwanted plants, to vaseline on trees, to pureed bug sprays, home made bug traps and attracting beneficial insects.

After another excellent lunch the team from Commonground (where we are staying) they spent some time talking about their community. It started with an exercise on power, and a discussion about the different types of power and how it can be expressed. They then talked more about the way it's organised, how they make decisions and manage the property.

The last session of the day was about housing design and retrofitting, which included a walk across to the straw bale house on the property - which is FAB. Loads of character - and I was particularly excited to see the beginnings of a reed bed (see pic - coming soon to our place I
think!!!).

Tommorrow we're off to Hepburn for a few days, including a visit to David Holmgren's property - should be inspirational, to say the least!

Day 5 - Reading the landscape

Already 9:15pm and I had to skip the last dinner session as my brain is so fried that I can't take any more in. The design flaw in the course is a derious absense of time to actually mull over what you are learning. It's full on from 8:45 until oftem 9:30 at night, with only meal and coffee breaks. A lot of peopel are hitting the wall now - so to speak.

Today was another day of sessions with David Holmgren - he's a great teacher. This morning we talked about different climate types, and looked at examples, and then did a session on retrofitting the suburbs - looking at how suburbia has changed since the 1950sw, and how it might look in the future (there's a paper on this on his website if you want to read more).

We also did a couple of sessions on reading the landscape - and had an outdoor exercise in groups of 5 where we went out to the grounds to look at the landscape and see what we coudl learn just by observing. I found this ecercise really interesting. We went to a gully which had quite different characteristics on each side (moss on one side, leaf litter on the other, signs of regorwth post fire on one side, but different characteristics on the other). It was really amazing how much you could pick up just in 20 minutes walking around and really loooking at different features - both large and small.

The last session of the day was a look at a range of landscape photos David had taken in various places, and looking at how we could read them and what they said about climate, conditions and past soil use. Again very interesting (and there were some great photos too).

Sorry this post isn't more detailed, but I just don't have the brain energy for anything more. And it's an early start tomorrow (the only way to get some personal time is to get up early!).

Day 4 - Permaculture principles

Impossible in the short time availabel to cover everything we did today, but to give you an idea, here's the 12 permaculture principles David went through today, and the parable he used to describe / illustrate them. If you want more detail see www.holmgren.com.au

1. Observe and interact - beauty is in the eye of the beholder
2. Catch and store energy (my new excuse for eating cake!!) - make hay while the sun shines
3. Obtain a yeild - you can't work on an empty stomach
4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback - the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children unto the seventh generation
5. Use and value renewable resources and services - let nature take it's course
6. Produce no waste - waste not, want not & a stitch in time saves nine
7. Design from patterns to details - can't see the forest for the trees
8. Integrate rather than segregate - many hands make light work
9. Use small and slow solutions - the bigger they are the harder they fall / slow and steady wins the race
10. Use and value diversity - don't put all your eggs in one basket
11. Use edges and value the marginal - don't think you are on the right track just because it is a well-beaten path
12. Creatively use and respond to change - vision is not seeing things as they are, but as they will be

Lots of food for though over the 6 hours of lessons today - and now there is a Q&A session with David so it's time to go again.

This course is SERIOUSLY full on - the only unstructured free time is when we're asleep!!!

A few photos from days 1-3

Commonground and gardens

Some snaps from Tukkadjungul

Day 3 - Part 2

Right! Just time between dinner and evening session for a quick overview of our first field trip to Tukkadjungul - the property belonging to the Cydonia tutors Beck and Mark. It was really good to get away from the 'classroom' and out into the real world to see some permaculture in action. I picked up lots of intersting ideas that I could use at our place - using old tyres as rabbit guards for new planting in the paddock, creating microclimates by going up lovely teepee structures they had created using deadwood from the bush, and more dense interplanting than I had ever tried. Mark has also made a gorgeous deadwood pergola near the chicken housing area which I would love to replicate somewhere at our place (ie woudl love to get Jerry to replicate somewhere at our place!!

I also discovered a few species of tree that might be useful in one form or another for our place including Fejoa, Loquat, evergreen cherry, carob, quince and kangaroo apple - so I'll have to do more research on them once the course is over. They have chickens, a few pigs, ducks and goats, and a really lovely setting. Perfect to wander around in on a sunny warm spring afternoon. Speaking of walking I need to go for a stroll after another excellent meal before the evening session starts.

I'm sure tomorrow will be overdrive with A full day of sessions with David Holmgren.

Day 3, part 1 - Ecology, cycles and patterns

If you haven't seen the power of community yet (see yesterday's post) I HIGHLY recommend it. A lot of food for thought (literally!!) and very inspiring and thought provoking.

But back to today - This morning we started with a couple of sessions on patterns and cycles in nature. We had a mini-exercise looking for different types of patterns in the environment just outside the meeting room (layers, cracks, spirals, branching, symmetry, repetition). We also looked at how these different types of patterns can be used in the garden eg a zig zag fence gives you more area to plant up, plus can create microclimates. A circle has the smallest surface area of edge, but a crennelated (wavy) edge gives you twice as much edge for the same diameter. THis can be useful for ponds, as many pond plants like to be on the edge - so by making a wavy edge (think corrugated iron on it's side) you get more edge space for planting. This is a great idea and one I will be using on the planned pond. Other pattern types we looked at were keyholes, spirals (herb spirals near the kitchen door were discussed) and hexagons.

My top "aha" moment was actually something very simple. Beck talked about using triangles to help in your planting - Lets take beetroot which like sto be about 10cm apart. You make a triangle with 10cm sides. Place it on the soil, plant one seed at each of 2 edges. Flip it over, then plant seeds on the next 2 edges...keep going flipping it on the point that has no seed. This helps you maximise planting area. Genius! Of course, you can make different sized triangles for different spacings. The idea came from a book but I didn't ge the name. It's a great idea for use in community settings too where people might not know much about gardening and planting.

Jerry - get your tools ready, you're going to be making triangles!!

Next ecercise was small group work where we tried to come up with a garden cycle and look at all the different kinds of relationships we could find eg tree gives pollen for bees and insects, and birds, fruit for us, waste fruit goes to chickens that poo and feed the soil etc. We also talked about the different types of relationships that can be found incl parasitic, symbiotic / pollination, competition, facilitation, inhibition and so on. It was a really interesting session - I'm just glad we had an artist in our group so the pictures in our poster looked great :*)

The only complaint I have so far is that there isn't enough down time to process and reflect - particularly for people like me that need to get away for some quiet 'me' time to do this. I've only had 10 mins to do this post and now it's already dinner. I will try and blog about the site visit after dinner / after the evening session.

Day 2 - getting down with dirt!

Today we had a few sessions taken by Adam from permablitz. The first morning session was all about energy - starting with a quick lesson on the laws of thermodynamics, and then looking at different forms of energy (eg chemical, kinetic, thermal) and how they are converted through from one form to another. The highlight of this session was "The Energy Price is Right" - where we had to order a range of items (eg kilo of firewood, manpower for a day, a ham and cheese sandwich, a lightglobe on all night, a bullet) in terms of their potential energy.

Then we got down and dirty with dirt! The next few sessions were about soil -soil structure, soil organisms, how to get good soil (get humus baby!), and varios soil types around the region. We had a good practical session where we did some simple soil testing (the ribbon test), and looked at different layers in a cut away secion of the soil just outside Commonground. Adam has some great slides of photos and mini-video taken through a microscope on another course he did recently (with Dr Elaine Ingham from soilfoodweb ). We saw lots of mini-soil critters - really interesting. We learned strategies for improving soil health, and building up your topsoil. We also had another practical session where we had to try and match 5 buckets of soil with the regions there were taken from - ranging from soil from a vege patch, to soil from a regenerating forest area. We were encouraged to use all our senses - but only a few brave souls actually tried soil tasting.

The last session of the day was on water and aquaculture (but we didn't get to the aquaculture - that will be for the next session). We talked about the way water cycles through the system through plants, evaporation, precipitation etc. We did a group exercise where we had to come up with as many ways as possible to re-use a litre of water in an average suburban block before it leaves the system. Most groups came up with 6/7 reuses, which was pretty inspiring.

By 5pm all our brains were hurting! It was good to be able to get out into the Commonground garden run by Robbie, and get into the dirt by helping to weed, plant and pot on in his organic garden. Then an excellent mean of Laksa followed by fruit salad and ice cream. Now it's after dinner and many of us are watching "The power of community" - about the Cuban's fuel crisis and how they responded to start growing their own food, and reorganising their society. So I'm goign to stop typing and start watching!

Just getting started with my PDC

I'm going to use this blog as a way to try and keep track of all the things I'm learning about permaculture - starting with my permaculture design certificate (PDC) (I'm on day 2 even as I type).

I'm doing my PDC with Cydonia Permaculture, and it's being held at Commonground near Seymour. Great facilites, super location and excellent food so far!!

Yesterday was mostly introducing ourselves (there are about 20 people on the course), and then some introduction to permaculture sessions, and a session about different learning styles. In one of the permaculture sessions with Ian Lillington, we looked at the permaculture 'flower' (more on that here http://www.permacultureprinciples.com/flower.php) as a way of representing the different aspects of permaculture across a range of areas - nost just food, landcare and growing)

Today we're focussing on soils....but more about that in my next post, as lunch is nearly over!