Gallifrey Forest Farm

(repair, re-use) recycle

2016/02/12 Danielle 0

Not all of my interests are plant or animal related, although you might be hard pressed to know that from the things I post on here. It occurred to me this morning that other permaculture-ish and farm-minded people might well share some of my other interests. One of those is recycling. Not ‘put it in the recycling bin’ recycling, but actually repurposing or reusing objects and materials. For example, I’m currently collecting soft drink cans, because this winter we plan to build an aluminium smelter so I can make aluminium sculptures (this sort of thing) and timber-and-aluminium furniture (similar to […]

hot and cold

2016/02/08 Danielle 0

The climate is something that a lot of people don’t really think about much, unless they happen to be involved in climate change activism or have friends or family who are. For my family, I am that person – although my family are generally better than average in terms of awareness of climate change and the science behind it. Weeks like this – 41 degrees Celcius yesterday, and predictions of 42 – 45 degrees every day this week – make me painfully aware of these issues. The heat is unpleasant for me, but I spend my days in my air-conditioned […]

new additions to the menagerie

2016/01/27 Danielle 0

We didn’t do any of the traditional things on the Australia Day public holiday yesterday. No fireworks, no picnic, no BBQ, no beach trip. Instead we bought some new baby chickens, and almost burned the house down. Turns out, when the dough in the bread machine overflows, it ends up directly on the element. Which is fine, unless the element is on, to cook the bread. At that point, you get charcoal inside the bread machine. We did not in fact start a fire, but it was unhappily close – and it took all afternoon to air the smoke out […]

if not you..

2016/01/18 Danielle 0

This weekend just passed, I attended an event called GenghisCon. It’s a small science fiction / speculative fantasy & gaming convention, which runs every year in Perth. It’s run every year for the last 15 years, which is a pretty impressive run for something which gets no funding or support from any corporate or government body. Every year the committee (elected at the previous convention) does fundraising to make sure there’s enough money to pay for the venue and insurance, and organises a program of events to run at the convention, including discussion panels (on anything and everything from how to […]

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 […]