Gallifrey Forest Farm

House Update – April 2015

2015/04/19 Danielle 0

It looks like, just maybe, we have a green light finally. I’m not sure if I’m even excited after all this time or just relieved that the bank got off its rear end and dealt with the mistakes they made when signing us up for this mortgage refinance shenanigans in December. The first progress payment has been released to the builder, so building can start now. We’re waiting to hear when the building will actually start, which will depend on what else in in the queue at the builder. So we don’t have a delivery date yet, but.. it’s closer […]

Blazing Swan 2015

2015/04/19 Danielle 0

A couple’ve weeks ago now (time flies! I meant to write this post just after we got back) we just spent the long weekend at the Blazing Swan festival, dancing and exploring and engaging with some quite amazing artworks and people. Blazing Swan is an offshoot of the famous Burning Man festival in the US, running in rural Western Australia. This is the second year it’s run, and I think it’s doing really well. I thought twice about writing about this, because on the face of it a music & art festival has nothing to do with sustainability or permaculture […]

Lessons Learned: Bunnies

2015/04/09 Danielle 0

This has been a long process so far, and we’ve learned a lot – mostly by doing it wrong and having to deal with the mistakes. The rabbits, for example, haven’t been nearly as successful as I’d hoped. We brought Tsuki the British Giant home almost 2 years ago. She was a bright, inquisitive bunny, about 4 months old, a soft tawny colour with good bone structure, good teeth (no hereditary issues visible) and she was already a big rabbit. The idea was that we’d get a boy bunny, and Tsuki would be the mother of a line of meat […]

Less is More Festival 2015

2015/03/16 Danielle 0

On Saturday, I went along to the Less is More Festival – it’s an annual community festival & conference which supports skill-sharing and practical sustainability. I went for the first time last year, although the festival has been running for four years now. Last year I went along to see what it was like, and enjoyed it a lot. This year I wanted to get more involved, so I volunteered to give a presentation on urban livestock options for food security. The gist of my talk was that most people, even those with very small back yards or even only […]

Abundance

2015/03/14 Danielle 0

Abundance is such a lovely word. It brings to mind the idea of an elegant sufficiency, of warmth and safety, of sharing. In the garden the other day, I stopped for a moment and I thought: this is abundance. The sun was shining, the air smelled of green, growing things, and there were bees and paper wasps buzzing around the flowers collecting nectar and, at least int he case of the wasps, (hopefully) killing the various insects which eat my vegetables. I had just picked a bowl full of cherry tomatoes from the vine, and collected a couple’ve warm, fresh-laid […]