Gallifrey Forest Farm

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, […]

dairy production

2016/08/31 Danielle 4

I was interested (and felt vindicated too!) to see that the national response to predatory milk pricing by the milk wholesalers, potentially pushing dairy farmers past where they can make any profit at all, has been to boycott non-name branded milk in droves. The supermarkets are struggling to move it off the shelves, while sales of name brand milk (Pura, Browns, Harvey Fresh, etc., as well as smaller local brands such as Sunnydale and ?) have continued as normal. Consumers really do want to support farmers, and when a way to do so is offered which makes sense and is […]

Spring Planting

2016/08/21 Danielle 0

It’s been a busy weekend. As well as finishing off a literature review around implementing dehesa style agroforestry in Australia, for my uni course (once the paper is marked and returned, I’ll put it up here in the Resources section), I’ve planted 17 trees. The bare root trees from Heritage Fruit Trees arrived, so there’s been a lot of digging and planting happening. Five more apple trees for the orchard, five pears and two nashi pears planted in a new little pear grove, and another five stone fruit trees for Zone 1 behind the house. Zone 1 includes the […]

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 […]

the first tastes of spring

2016/08/04 Danielle 0

The wet, cold weather doesn’t feel like spring, but I have other clues to go by. The jacarandas may not be flowering yet, but the early peaches and apricots are, and the coral trees in the swan valley are covered in red flowers and hungry birds. My newly planted bare root Prunus mume trees are starting to flower too, so I’m hopeful that they’ll fruit in a couple’ve years and I’ll be able to make umeboshi and plum wine. Also covered in flowers already are my blueberry bushes. I may have to plant more of these – they’ve been […]