The rains are 'ere

This is what our farm looks like today. (Our blog background fits in really well I think)

                                                  An irrigation pond nearly full.

We are rejoicing in the beautiful rain we are receiving at the moment. It is the first worthwhile rain we have seen in 6months. But too wet to garden,so... a little project that Mark has been saving for just such a day.

We garden with the help of chickens. They live in domes just like this...

They do what chickens do best- scratch, poo, and eats insects. Once they've done their thing we add mulch and 2 weeks later move them on to the next bed.With a little compost added with each seedling we plant straight into the newly chicken cultivated bed.

But after 5 years the domes are looking a little worse for wear. They get knocked around pretty badly in strong winds and have had to be repaired many times. So our plan is to use a different design- a geodesic dome. This should prove to be a much sturdier design.

This is the first of the panels that Mark finished today. He will show you the finished product and how he built it in the days to come so stay tuned!!!

In the meantime I have been enjoying being inside. I baked gem scones for morning tea. I've had the old  gem iron for a long time but only started using it 6 or so years ago, when we decided that we would cook all our food from scratch. First you put the iron in the oven to heat up while you get the mixture ready- butter, sugar, an egg, milk and SR flour (We use locally grown, freshly milled flour)

This is how they look straight from the oven , add a little homemade berry jam and a mug of freshly ground organic coffee and it makes a delicious morning tea

We hand grind our coffee everyday for morning tea and make it in a stove top expresso. It's the only cup of coffee I have each day and I like it to be a nice one.We decided that we really needed to slow down as our days were just so busy and agreed that if we didn't have time to grind our coffee beans we didn't have time for coffee. We always find time for our morning coffee.

Lunch was homemade damper and zucchini soup from the freezer, made in the summer from our home grown onions, garlic and zucchinis when they were all in abundance, awaiting just such a day when a hot warming soup is most appreciated.

Our days are always wonderfully busy ,so it's the evenings I look forward to, to do my knitting or sewing. Just lately I have finished two of these 3 pairs of leggings. The red pair are for a friends first grandchild- a girl, the yellow pair are for a friend's first baby- a girl and the pink pair are for our grand daughter due in July.

They are from this book Retro Babes and from the same book I have just started the little cardigan for that same grand daughter.

I look forward to knitting some more this evening once I get the dishes done.

Obtain a Yield

Today is harvest day. We sell our produce through a CSA -Community Supported Agriculture. Our customers support us to grow their food by paying up front, either quarterly or yearly, for a seasonal,weekly box of food grown here on the farm. We pick twice a week- Mondays and Fridays , and do a delivery to the local Steiner school where the boxes are picked up. I am also able to set up a small market stall there for the parents if I have any excess, once the boxes are packed. At the moment we are mid season and so I have little excess but we do have honey from our bees which always sells well at the stall.

This is what we picked today ( plus oranges which I forgot to photograph)

I the background you can see writing on the wall. That's where our WWOOFer's write their name and their country. WWOOF stands for Willing Worker On Organic Farms. Generally they are young backpackers travelling around Australia (or other countries of the world) and they agree to work for their food and accomodation. We have been taking WWOOFers now for 5years and their help has been fantastic, and we have met some really great and interesting people. We have also influenced many young people in a positive way going on the remarks they leave in our guest book.Here's another look at the wall.

  

      Next harvest day is Friday.We are finally getting some rain so I'm hoping we'll have some beetroot to add to the boxes.

Growing onions

I was feeling a little off colour today. Caught the bug Mark had a few days ago and decided to have a quiet day inside in front of the fire. While I was resting Mark was outside planting onions. He planted them the same way as we planted the garlic. First he prepped the bed, threw in some compost, laid down some newspapers and then put on some mulch.

 We do this to suppress weeds. As the onions are first planted it can be very difficult to distinguish the weeds from the baby onions but with the paper and mulch the onions are well and truly away before the weeds become a problem. We did this for the first time last year and it worked really well. Mark planted 400 onions today and we hope to get 2000 in

                                       
If you look closely you can see our garlic growing

My time inside was also productive. After a good rest this morning I decided to start on a gift for our grandson who turns 2 in June.

 I bought him this little book (the other book is where I got my patterns from) and thought some farm animals would be nice to go with it. My first project was a mother pig. I used some pink flannelette from my stash, that I'd  found in an Op shop (thrift store)

           

                                                           Pattern and fabric cut out

                                                         Finished pig   stuffed with unspun sheeps wool

I look forward to making him a few more. Maybe a milking cow because we have them on the farm, a dog and a hen. And Mark is set to make him some wooden fences. I will post them as they're finished

Reskilling workshop

Thanks Mark for getting my blog started. I have felt inspired to start a blog for nearly a year now, but being a little challenged around computers I 've put it into the too hard basket. But reading other blogs keeps reminding me how much I'd really like to give it a go. I was reading  Farmama's  blog (one of these days I'll learn how to link directly to other blogs) and she invites others to share what's going on at their farms every Thursday and I would really like to be a part  of that so I've got just under a week to get some sort of competency.
So I had thought of telling a little about myself and what we do here on this farm but I think you'll get an idea as we progress and as I explain what we do each day and fill in anything else as it arises Upfront I will say that we are Permaculturists and live a very simple but rewarding life.

One of the things we do is educate and today we ran a reskilling workshop on Backyard vegetable production. Our topic covered Garden design based on Permaculture design principle, Propagation and No dig gardening.

Our participants were able to put down on paper a simple site analysis, make their own seed raising mix and potting mix and make a nodig garden. A lot in just 3 hours but they were all inspired to go home and start their own vegie gardens. Did you know that after WW2 households were encouraged to give up their home gardens here in Australia in favour of buying food from shops so as to stimulate the economy? Sound familiar? Anyway we are really passionate about reversing that trend and look to get as many people as possible back into home gardening.

The design for our garden

double m design 

This is a picture of the design showing stuff

A garden perspective at Purple Pear

a garden perspective

This picture shows the roof of the cow pat pit which is where we make one of the biodynamic preparations also known as barrel compost and is a type of homoeopathic compost if you like, spreading the influences of the compost over larger areas than we could ever cover with actual compost. This is used on pasture for the dairy cows.