Info & News – Page 5 – Gallifrey Forest Farm

June 18: midwinter gathering

2016/06/18 Danielle 0

It’s not quite midwinter yet – the solstice is officially a few days off – but we’re very close to the longest night of the year. It’s dark in the morning when I get up, and the sun sets remarkably early. But winter isn’t quite the same here as it is in Europe; in WA, winter is the season of growth and fertility. Summer is when things die and hibernate to survive through the heat. So in spite of the cold nights, and the periodic rain (more than average so far this winter!), I like winter. I like the […]

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 6: furniture modification

2016/06/06 Danielle 0

When I was 19 or so, I built myself a bed. To be precise, a queen-size loft bed – effectively the top bunk of a bunk bed, but with no bottom bunk and instead space for a desk or couch underneath – made of large chunks of jarrah and aged pine. Today’s project was modifying that bed. We’ve cut the legs down a bit, so it’s only 80 cm off the ground, rather than a full 1.5 m. K got to use the table saw he got for his birthday (and thinks it’s the best toy ever). And then […]

June 5: community and support

2016/06/05 Danielle 0

Yesterday was the 5-weekly cat food run. Four ox hearts from the meat markets, and 2 beef livers, which then had to be cut up and minced. We were a bit low on taurine – I need to order more, which I didn’t realise until we started making up the mix – so we added extra lamb hearts to the mix in place of some of the minced beef. Heart is rich in taurine, and taurine is an essential amino acid for cats. So we borrowed my parents’ mincer and spent a couple’ve hours cutting and mincing and mixing and […]