Systems – Gallifrey Forest Farm

Permaculture Zones

2022/07/31 Danielle 0

So, last time I mentioned “permaculture zone 4 / 5”, and I realised that for anyone who hasn’t studied permaculture, that’s probably quite confusing. Even with the link I included. First off, you have to remember that permaculture is a set of design principles, not really a set of techniques. It’s almost more philosophical than practical, except that the philosophical part is taught via practical exercises. But because the fundamentals are philosophical and design concepts, each parctitioner must adapt them to their own context. Which is a long way of saying, there is no one true permaculture way. There are, […]

Rainy Days

2022/07/18 Danielle 0

It is raining right now. Sheets of chilly, clean water, falling from the sky, and it’s hard to watch it and also hold in my brain that this has been a very dry winter, statistically speaking. Obviously, that’s only in WA. The east coast has been inundated, again, and apparently we’re (the Bureau of Meteorology is) predicting another La Niña summer coming up. Our third in a row, which is, I am told, unprecedented in recorded history. La Niña years are wetter than average, for context; the east coast probably has more flooding to look forward to, and WA will […]

Farm Club

2018/05/06 Danielle 0

The first rule of farm club is.. please do in fact talk about farm club. Tell anyone you know who might be interested. Encourage other people to start their own versions – maybe we can make it into a movement. Farm club is a combination of a (hopefully) practical co-op for food sharing and an attempt at a real-world version of a gifting/barter economy. The idea is that members offer “shares” in whatever they produce, along with what they need back to keep producing the thing, and other members sign up for those shares. So in our case, we produce […]

Sustainable Living

2016/09/01 Danielle 0

This week I spent two full days on a process workshop, learning about the ‘product owner’ role in an agile software development or business process. That might not sound like it has much to do with farming or sustainability, but you’d be surprised. I’m not going to bore anyone by describing the agile process, but it’s basically about efficiency, about doing more with less and getting results quickly. And if you think about it, often when we talk about sustainability, we’re really talking about efficiency. We absolutely want to protect and maintain the ecological systems that support us, […]

we have a little list..

2016/08/14 Danielle 0

Last weekend, the auto-waterers for the chicken coops went in. K spent most of Sunday digging and cutting sections of hose, attaching taps and connectors and the float-valve controlled water dishes to each of our coops. We have two up-cycled 200 L plastic olive barrels as the water reservoirs, which should only need refilling every couple’ve weeks even in summer. It’s a pretty big item to tick off the to-do list, because making sure the poultry have access to fresh water all day every day through summer is a real pain when using the standard pet-shop waterers (max size: 10 […]