Projects – Page 3 – Gallifrey Forest Farm

BlogJune 2016

2016/05/27 Danielle 0

A very dear friend of ours is participating in BlogJune this year, and I figured we’d do so too. So this June, expect one post per day. The plan is to complete (at least) one task on the farm or house per day, and record it via the blog posts. At the end of the month, we’ll have a pretty detailed story of our progress for June 2016. I’ll try to put photos up where I can, although not everything we do around here is photogenic. Today’s task, for example, was mucking out the chicken coops. I don’t think […]

Re-use, repair, recycle

2016/04/28 Danielle 0

An unexpected vet bill a couple’ve weeks ago (furbabies are epensive when they get sick!) ate into our infrastructure funds a little, and although we do have pet insurance, it’ll take a few weeks for any of those funds to get back to us for use. In the mean time, we have ten baby guinea fowl which are almost big enough to need their own grown-up enclosure, so they can start learning where home is. Not to mention the five wyandotte chicks which are growing daily, and sharing a brooder box with the guinea fowl keets. We do […]

The local farm shop

2016/03/30 Danielle 0

Local may be overstating it slightly, but still. We recently visited our closest and most convenient farm shop. Like real grown-up farmers. For those who may not know, a farm shop is a retailer which specialises in equipment and supplies for farms and farmers. It’s a little like the love-child of a Bunnings style hardware store and the rural bakery/deli that inevitably exists in every small town. They carry everything from reticulation pipes & connectors to worming medications for animals to pasture seed. Which is what we were there for. This winter is not the time for goats, […]

tree cover

2016/02/19 Danielle 0

Not every landscape “wants” to be a forest. Although forest gardens are a staple in the planning diets of many permaculture enthusiasts, there are (or were) lots of other complex, balanced ecosystems. For example, there are savannahs, based around perennial grasslands and large herds of grazing animals, as well as shrub and wetland ecosystems. Forest gardening is actually a slightly controversial topic in sustainability/ regenerative agriculture/permaculture circles because so many people simply pick it up as a default without looking at what works best for their location. It’s important, I think, to keep that in mind and to challenge your biases […]

productivity

2016/01/08 Danielle 0

One of ethics of permaculture is ‘right livelihood’, which is a boiled down abstraction of the idea that people should be able to make a living – being environmentally conscious doesn’t necessarily mean giving up on commerce. Which is good news for those of us with a mortgage. I want to be ethical in my interactions with the rest of the world, even the financial ones, but I also want my bills to get paid. On that front, although this property is home now, and a test bed for a great many ideas and experiments (such as my dino-chook project […]