Gallifrey Forest Farm

the great livestock debate

2016/05/23 Danielle 0

As may have become clear by now, I adore animals. Fur, feathers, scales – they are all awesome in their own special ways. Even guinea fowl (noisy, dumb as bricks, but pretty and useful and lovely) and rabbits (destructive, tree-ringbarking wild versions are annoyingly hardy, while the tame meat-breed ones die far too easily) are pretty cool. My problem is deciding which animals to keep. I mean, I obviously can’t have them all. That would take more space than we have, and feeding them and taking care of them would take more time and $$$ than we have available. […]

Perth Storm 2016

2016/05/22 Danielle 0

In case anyone was concerned, we made it through the storm with no damage. To be honest, the storm was less impressive than the many wild weather warnings led us to expect, although I think it was worse in some places than it was for us. None of the trees blew down, feel down, or really suffered any harm beyond a few leaves being blown off. Some of the big eucalypts lost a few small branches, but nothing significant. We had a LOT of rain, and the swales all filled up; a few overflowed a little, but that’s why […]

Crying Wolf

2016/05/12 Danielle 0

It was inevitable. We’ve had our first losses to a fox or foxes. This morning, early, I heard the guinea fowl making a racket outside, including the one elusive one (which we are still unable to catch in order to pen her with the rest) squawking and scolding near the house. They’re irritatingly noisy birds at the best of times, and they take fright and scold at anything and everything. Pot plants are particularly scary. So I thought, the kangaroos are going through the woods, or the parrots have gone to investigate or something. Or the lone loose […]

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 […]

sector analysis

2016/04/20 Danielle 0

Back when we first bought the property, and we were starting to think about what we’d like to do in terms of building a house and putting in some productive systems, I did a sector analysis. This is one tool or technique used by permaculture practitioners in the early stages of creating a design, and it looks at the external factors that are going to influence a place. Things like winds, rain and storms, fire risk, noise, migratory pathways for birds or animals, flood risk, and summer and winter sun. It was brought to mind because someone posted […]