A Bell and a Sock and a Violet Von Hungry-Face

One of the ambitions of a sustainable system is that it should be a 'closed loop'. This means that things entering the system (eg resources, energy etc) and leaving the system (eg waste) should be reduced as much as possible. 

We are still a ways off a closed loop system. Honestly, I don't believe we'll ever achieve it because there will always be things we want/need that we can't produce for ourselves. As farmers, we are bringing nutrients onto our land (in the form of chicken feed) and taking nutrients off our land (in the form of chickens for our community to eat). No closed loop there. But that doesn't mean that we can't do everything possible to reduce what we bring onto and take off our land in other ways. And most of it's pretty easy - we compost our waste (yes, even our humanure); we buy food in bulk, using our own packaging, so we don't generate much rubbish; we grow as much food as we can, so that nutrients cycle around our land; we collect and use our own water and solar energy. None of these are closed loops, but they're a conscious effort towards localising energy production and usage on our property.

Mmmmmm....turkey-foot...

And then we got 2 chook guard dogs from a local sheep farmer, and were very surprised to discover we had a closed loop on our property after all. Without even trying.

The inputs required for pets has weighed quite heavily on my mind since reading a bit about the ecological footprint of pets in the West. This information came as a bit of a shock to me, and was something I'd never even considered, in a whole life of pet-loving. But with our pastured chicken enterprise booming, we were wiling to take the plunge into dog ownership in order to fortify our fox defences.

Tiny dog teething on a chook feeder

The first 2 dogs we got - Bell and Sock - are brother and sister  kelpie-collie cross sheep dog rejects. This means that they're trained for farm work, but didn't quite make the grade for intensive large-scale sheep farming. The most recent addition to our working dog family is a little thing called Violet Tiny-Dog Von Hungry Face. She's also a farming dog, whose parents are integral to the workings of our friends at Symphony Farm, and, when she's big enough, she will also be doing her part to deter hungry foxes from our chickens.

A Sock

So the dogs are working for us, protecting our chickens (and herding the chicks who have strayed from the group), their waste doesn't leave the property, and all that they require in the way of inputs (ie. food) is some chicken feet/heads/gizzards/necks, which are left over from our chicken processing. An additional bonus is that the completely unrefined, fresh and unprocessed nature of their diet means that they're healthy and non-smelly. Yay!

 

And while they're not cats (card-carrying 3rd generation crazy cat lady right here...) they are kind of cute, in their own doggy way.

Cracking the secret of very hot hot compost

I've been trying to make hot compost for a great many years. I've never gotten it right. The usual things have befallen my attempts: pile not big enough, not enough nitrogen, drying out, etc etc. I've read books, I've been to workshops, I've thought and I've talked to people, but still I managed to get it wrong. That is, I got it wrong until I discovered The Secret. And what this secret involved was, for me at least, just a slight shift in thinking, and taking a step towards some other materials that I'd never tried before, namely: chicken offal.

Compost bay 1: chickens dig it

We here in this lovely valley have the good fortune to have access to Australia's only small scale, co-operatively and grower-run small species abattoir. For us folk here at Autumn Farm, this is a massive boon, because it means that we have a local facility where we can legally and safely process our meat chickens (first batch of chicks arriving in less than 4 weeks!!). We are tremendously excited to be embarking upon this little CSA/regenerative ag biz, and will definitely be writing more about it SOON. But I digress...

In preparation for our entry into the pastured meat chicken biz, I've been getting involved with the co-op. This means working on processing days, which means I get to hone my chicken killing/gutting/plucking techniques, and I also get access to quite a lot of chicken offal. I have to say the first time I brought home those wheelie bins, I was a tad nervous. So many feathers! So many guts and organs! But I did as I'd been taught (oh so many times...) and layered them with carbon (a combo of wood shavings and cut grass from our property) and wet the whole thing down and whaddya know? That baby heated up in NO time. I was thrilled.

Encouraged by this success, I thought it high time I embarked upon another composting challenge - humanure.

The dunny shed. Dunny box was made from timber scraps and doesn't wobble or collapse when it's sat on. I was pretty proud...

Since we moved onto our land, we've been making use of a commercially-made compost toilet that has a rotating drum, which was supposed to pre-compost the 'stuff' before it went into a compost bay or worm farm (we used the latter). In short, it wasn't big enough for us, and was kind of a pain to empty. Inspired by the amazing humanure handbook, and the vast plethora of information about safely composting human poo available on the trusty inter-web, I sought to simplify our situation.

And it's working a treat.

Now before you get all grossed/freaked out (or maybe you are already...), I should say that the humanure compost doesn't go on the veggies. Once it's hot composted for ages, then left to settle for 12 months (during which time worms will work their wonder) it will be applied to the base of our fruit trees in the orchard, then mulched over. Perfectly safe, perfectly legal. And for us, perfectly sensible, given that it means we're now creating a closed loop of waste on our farm (produce no waste!), whereby 20L/week of nutrients are recycled back into the earth, rather than being flushed out to sea with drinking-quality water.

Some people who come to visit are grossed/freaked out by this situation. Fair enough, I suppose. There is a lot to be said for properly-managed disposal of human waste. But there's even more to be said, methinks, for properly-managed recycling of any and all waste.

First coat of render finished - happy permaculture day!

First thing this morning I headed up to the land, determined to finish the first coat of render. It's been pretty slow going these last couple of weeks (since our divine working party dispersed). While it's been fun, the 4 of us on weekends, me late at night by myself, and me and Olive on a Friday night working by moon- and lantern-light, I was feeling a bit "is this ever going to be over?". But over it is - I feel confident that layers 2 and 3 will be quicker and easier, though I'm not sure what this is based on...

Of course, I'd left the tricky bits til last. Frank, in his haste to get away, didn't give us any very clear instructions on how to get the render to stick to the underside of the window and door frames. You know those beautiful curved frames you see in strawbale books? Not so easy to come by. Luckily, we only had 4 windows and a door to do, and by the time I'd gotten to the final window, I was pretty good at it, developing my own loose-straw with clay-slip-suspended-in-a-mesh-hammock-attached-with-foil-clips method. 

mesh hammock attached, awaiting render

Render seemed reasonably obliging and stuck to this contraption with only a small amount falling off.

render almost done

As always, I enjoyed every minute in our little house, and was especially excited to observe the passage of the sun over the morning hours, watching closely to see just how much solar gain we'd be getting this winter. I was pretty happy, as it crawled across the walls and floor for the whole time I was there. 

We're counting on this sun to heat up the walls and floor (our thermal mass) so that as the temperature drops in the afternoon, the heat is released into the house, keeping us warm in the night time. I was slightly apprehensive about how the house would perform in this respect, since the orientation was forced from solar north to more of a north-north-east aspect thanks to our friend the massive submerged boulder. But it seems like it's going to be OK. Yay!

As if finishing the first coat and watching the sun crawl around our little house wasn't enough to make today awesome, it's also National Permaculture Day, and we were very lucky to be able to tour a few totally inspiring houses in our area. 

I felt invigorated and excited as I looked through these properties, picking and choosing the bits that could be applied to our place, learning about ducks and sheep, and  feeling liberated by our friend Cam's approach to weeds in his food forest. Interestingly, I was actually calmed by seeing the 'big picture' that we're working towards, rather than just the 'to do' list that I've been struggling with since we started this crazy project. 

view from the top of John Champagne's

It was awesome to take a step back and visit people who, like us, started with just a couple of paddocks of weeds and grass, and built for themselves a home and a garden that are sustaining and fulfilling and brimming with joy and beauty.

.

Olive, Pearl and Oscar taking in the goodness (and the diversion drain!) at John Champagne's place

Exciting thoughts and plans resulting from today:

1. sheep are probably better than goats - rams are not nearly as offensive as man-goats, so we can have plenty of ewes getting knocked up without having to send them on sex-holidays or worrying about insemination

2. we need to harvest more water off the road! this means planning a drain across the driveway to get that road-water into our diversion drain, which leads straight into the soon-to-be-built top dam.

3. cool-cupboards are cool! On the south side of the house, make a cool, shaded fernery-type garden. Then, make a big underground pipe that carries the cool fernery air into the bottom of a well-insulated cupboard (I'm thinking a dead fridge). At the top of the cupboard, have another pipe outletting the warm air. Convection currents will keep the air circulating and cool.

4. make the duck house in the middle of the dam, island-style, to keep them safe from foxes.

5. kikuyu doesn't actually need to be eradicated at all costs. 

Sara and Cam's swale-y food forest

I'd been expending quite a bit of energy stressing about all the weeds on our place, so was absolutely and joyfully liberated by Cam's approach, which he adapted from Jackie French - spend your time and energy planting, rather than pulling stuff out. If you focus on growing the plants you want, keeping them happy and healthy with things like mulch, worm juice, friends (as in a biodiverse food forest) and compost, they'll thrive, and eventually the weeds won't matter, and/or they'll be shaded out.

And here's what I learnt yesterday: borage flowers look beautiful on an orange cake.

Tige's borage and orange birthday cake

Weeds? What weeds?

Today, after visiting a nearby strawbale home and interrogating the owners for a good hour or so, we all went up to the land to get us some more blackberries, this time with the intention of collecting enough berries to make some jam.

The main source of my experience with blackberries in the past has come about through my career as a bush regenerator. Many a sunny day was spent by me and my comrades crouched in the thorniness digging around trying to get out the pesky tap-root, and not, unfortunately partaking of the "juicy as" deliciousness. But those days are behind me now, not to say I haven't been deeply affected by them.

I'm loving the blackberries! Yes, I know they are a terrible pest and many many hours and dollars are spent by well-intentioned people each year trying to get rid of them. But you know what? They feed us. They feed us well. And they grow themselves. These sentiments are inclining me towards leaving the blackberries to ramble on our land, but the bush regenerator in me tells me I'm being irresponsible - a weak link in what should be a consolidated effort to get rid of them.

Weediness, I'm learning, is subjective. Just ask any permaculturist. And then ask a bush regenerator. There has been a long-standing perception of incompatability between these 2 (excellent) schools of thought which has, for the most part, seemed a little silly to me. But by jingo by crikey is it hotly debated, as was evinced at the Weeds or Wild Nature? Forum I went to a few months back. Personally, I can pretty much wholeheartedly identify with and see the good in both of these factions. Am I a fence-sitter? Not really. I prefer to see myself as a pragmatist who sees the good in both schools of thought and thinks they are not entirely mutually exclusive.

For example: I worked a site in Sydney that was a revegetated, regenerated corridor of 'bush' leading down to a large, constructed wetland and reserve that was built on an old dump site. No remnant bushland here, but we worked diligently, replanting and encouraging indigenous native plants and removing the 'weeds'. Except for the mulberry tree. It was huge and abundant and well-visited by many many locals. And its edible status seemed to give it a free pass, meaning that instead of cutting it down, as we would have done without question had it been, say, a liquid amber, we happily weeded 'weeds' out of the native grasses underneath and enjoyed the annual bounty. Weird eh?

But cool! NOT that I'm advocating planting edible exotics in tracts of remnant native bushland or orchards in the national park, but the mentality of either/or in an urban setting is, I think kinda crazy. Our urban and suburban spaces have been so irreversibly altered by the presence of white human settlement it seems slightly ill-conceived to try to pretend that revegetation of a piece of 'native bush' should exclude the edible plants we all rely on. And the same goes for rural land, like our precious 7 acres. Can't get much more altered than hundreds of trees cut down to make way for the planting of, what are according to bush regenerators, weeds, to grow the cows to make the milk so we can all eat Bega cheese whenever we feel like it. So why not embrace the blackberries who thrive in the disturbed landscape? We embrace the cheese, after all.

But I also embrace the native grasses, shrubs, vines and trees. They, on par with the blackberries, warm my heart. I love that they have survived the last 150 years, that they're coming back, picking up where they left off when hundreds of cows started trampling them and chewing them and providing them with a tad more nitrogen than they'd probably like under 'normal' circumstances. I say bring on the coexistence. Except when it comes to introduced grass species. Several years of removing kikuyu and buffalo and ehrharta from native bushland is bound to give you more than a slight disdain for lawns. Not to mention the fact that they're total waste of resources. Lawns, you see, were invented a couple of hundred years ago by rich people who wanted to advertise the fact that they were so wealthy they didn't have to grow their own food. Nothing, not even 'weeds' invading 'native' bush, raises my hackles more than conspicuous consumption, so I've basically got it in for lawns of any and all varieties. Oscar does too (well, he will once he's old enough to be brainwashed) but he's also pretty keen on the hand mover I picked up at the tip shop for 5 bucks so I could 'maintain' the lawn at our rental place.

And now, for your reading pleasure and to reiterate the sentiments contained within this rant, I give you God's thoughts on lawn, courtesy of Paul Wheaton's awesomely awesome and inspiring permaculture blog.

God on Lawns

Imagine the conversation The Creator might have had with St. Francis on the subject of lawns:

God: Hey St. Francis, you know all about gardens and nature. What in the world is going on down there in the Midwest? What happened to the dandelions, violets, thistle and stuff I started eons ago? I had a perfect "no maintenance" garden plan. Those plants grow in any type of soil, withstand drought and multiply with abandon. The nectar from the long lasting blossoms attracts butterflies, honey bees and flocks of songbirds. I expected to see a vast garden of colors by now. But all I see are these green rectangles.

St. Francis: It's the tribes that settled there, Lord. The Suburbanites. They started calling your flowers "weeds" and went to great lengths to kill them and replace them with grass.

God: Grass? But it's so boring. It's not colorful. It doesn't attract butterflies, birds and bees, only grubs and sod worms. It's temperamental with temperatures. Do these Suburbanites really want all that grass growing there?

St. Francis: Apparently so, Lord. They go to great pains to grow it and keep it green. The begin each spring by fertilizing grass and poisoning any other plant that crops up in the lawn.

God: The spring rains and warm weather probably make grass grow really fast. That must make the Suburbanites happy.

St. Francis: Apparently not, Lord. As soon as it grows a little, they cut it... sometimes twice a week.

God: They cut it? Do they then bail it like hay?

St. Francis: Not exactly, Lord. Most of them rake it up and put it in bags.

God: They bag it? Why? Is it a cash crop? Do they sell it?

St. Francis: No Sir. Just the opposite. They pay to throw it away.

God: Now let me get this straight. They fertilize grass so when it does grow, they cut it off and pay to throw it away?

St. Francis: Yes, Sir.

God: These Suburbanites must be relieved in the summer when we cut back on the rain and turn up the heat. That surely slows the growth and saves them a lot of work.

St. Francis: You are not going to believe this Lord. When the grass stops growing so fast, they drag out hoses and pay more money to water it so they can continue to mow it and pay to get rid of it.

God: What nonsense. At least they kept some of the trees. That was a sheer stroke of genius, if I do say so myself. The trees grow leaves in the spring to provide beauty and shade in the summer. In the autumn they fall to the ground and form a natural blanket to keep moisture in the soil and protect the trees and bushes. Plus, as they rot, the leaves form compost to enhance the soil. It's a natural circle of life.

St. Francis: You better sit down, Lord. The Suburbanites have drawn a new circle. As soon as the leaves fall, they rake them into great piles and pay to have them hauled away.

God: No. What do they do to protect the shrub and tree roots in the winter and to keep the soil moist and loose?

St. Francis: After throwing away the leaves, they go out and buy something which they call mulch. The haul it home and spread it around in place of the leaves.

God: And where do they get this mulch?

St. Francis: They cut down trees and grind them up to make the mulch.

God: Enough. I don't want to think about this anymore. Sister Catherine, you're in charge of the arts. What movie have you scheduled for us tonight?

Sister Catherine: "Dumb and Dumber", Lord. It's a real stupid movie about.....

God: Never mind, I think I just heard the whole story from St. Francis.

We have a bit of a plan... by Pearl

You may recall our recent discussion around what we are actually going to do with our 7 acres. So this morn we 4 rolled out of our beds, a little bit excited, and breakfasted on pikelets and buttery pears sitting in the grass on our land in the sun while awaiting our site analysis and mini-consult with local permaculture trainer John Champagne.

We know that we want to grow enough food for ourselves and our visiting friends and family and that maybe we want to extend into some kind of semi-commercial venture in the future - olives? pomegranates? goats cheese? heirloom pumpkins? But right now we have a slopey block with no water and a bit of a weed problem. We also have two young children and not much money. Our experience of gardening to date has involved urban and suburban food growing and while we know you can do some truly amazing things with a suburban block, 7 acres provides a whole new array of possibilities.

Some books that have influenced our thinking and opened our minds to what's possible are The Earth User's Guide to Permaculture by Rosemary Morrow and Smart Permaculture Design by Jenny Allen. While an array of possibilities should equate to pure excitement I'd be lying if I didn't admit to some anxiety. It's odd how anxiety-inducing an array of possibilities can be (especially in a world that tells us that Choice is King), but maybe it's just a sign of my privilege, given how truly horrible a lack of possibility really is.

We talked with John about our ideas and about what we want to achieve, we wandered around the block and mentioned what we had observed so far. And within 2 hours he had drawn up the beginnings of a plan. It's a broad plan but it's a plan and frankly, it feels good.

For now we will be focussing on excavation. Far out. Big machine cutting into the earth and moving it around in order that we can build a house and garden that allows us to live more gently on the earth. Not entirely sure what I think of this, but maybe it's one of those things that requires more pragmatism, less thinking especially given our ex-dairy farm is far from being an unadulterated landscape. John must have noticed our soft city sensibilities warning us that the excavation would be somewhat traumatic and that the earth would indeed shake. Goodness. So we'll be sketching a little plan of what we want - driveway, studio site, house site, pond and a bit of extra flat-ness to aid in our Zone 1 veg patch and orchard and hoping against hope that the excavators can do it within our meagre budget. There'll be quite a bit of bush regeneration occurring, in part, to aid as a windbreak against hot westerly and northerly winds and to work as a shelter belt against bushfire but also to provide balance to the overall landscape. We'll be planting a woodlot in order that we can harvest our own wood to burn in winter. We'll be fencing an area for our immediate food production - fruit trees, nuts, berries, veg, herbs, chickens and ducks for eggs and meat with an eye and an ear to what else we may want to grow in the future.

Oh but we can't excavate until our D.A is approved. It's been lodged and the hefty fee has been paid. We're still reeling from the crazily mammoth heft of the fee. In the meantime we continue to research off grid solar systems, follow every lead towards free recycled hardwoods, search for cheap, local native plant tube stock, work out what where we can get a large number of excellent fruit and nut trees for the littlest amount of money and pontificate on exactly what the kids' cubby should be made of.