June 2016 – Page 4 – Gallifrey Forest Farm

June 15: staple crops

2016/06/15 Danielle 0

A staple crop is one that provides the majority of a population’s diet, generally providing primarily starch and/or protein. Our current primary staple crops worldwide are corn (maize), wheat, and rice. There are also other staple crops or potential staple crops (crops with the capacity to provide the majority of a population’s diet) grown – barley, rye, oats, teff, sorghum (milo), millet, soybeans and other legumes (beans, chickpeas, lentils, ..), quinoa, amaranth, potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, oca, cassava, arrowroot, plantains and sago (derived from the pith of the sago palm). There are probably others, but those are some of the more common ones. Do […]

June 14: plant profile: quinoa

2016/06/14 Danielle 0

No tasks completed yesterday, so here’s another plant profile instead 🙂 Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa) is an annual plant from South America, which grows in climates just as hot and dry as ours. Its seeds are edible, and can be used the way you would use rice. They’re very high in protein, so they’re especially good for vegetarians. Although it’s used as a cereal grain, quinoa is actually a pseudocereal, like amaranth or buckwheat, meaning that it is not a grass. All true grains are grasses; quinoa is actually more closely related to spinach and beetroot. It grows 1 […]

June 13: study plans

2016/06/13 Danielle 1

As many people who know me are aware, I’m currently partway through studying towards a Masters degree in Sustainable Agriculture. I embarked on this particular project for many reasons. I love studying, learning and researching things make me genuinely happy. Agriculture and horticulture are long term interests, and we are trying to build a sustainable, commercially viable farming enterprise on this property – so getting some more-or-less hands on ideas about large-scale farming (as opposed to suburban gardening) is useful, since I don’t come from a farming family or have any background in large scale agriculture of any sort. And […]

June 12: Housework

2016/06/12 Danielle 2

This is not a post about cleaning, doing laundry, or even about looking after the cats (yes, that counts as housework normally). The kind of house-work I’m talking about is more along the lines of minor renovations. When the house went in, nine months ago, there were some casualties – a few trees had to go to make room for the trucks to come in. The contractors knocked them over, and (at our request) left them for us to deal with. We collected a few sections and painstakingly de-barked them on the verandah. They’ve been drying out and seasoning […]

June 11: plant profile: mulberry

2016/06/11 Danielle 1

Mulberries (Morus spp.) thrive in Perth, and they are (in my opinion) one of the most under-utilised trees which grow well here. Not only are their fruit edible, both to humans and to most domestic animals (all poultry and most domesticated herbivores and omnivores, plus not toxic to carnivores such as dogs or cats), their leaves can be used to feed herbivorous livestock (rabbits, goats, sheep, cows, etc.) as a replacement for hay – i.e. as almost the entire diet of the animal if necessary. The leaves are also used in the silk industry, as fodder for domesticated silkworms. […]