Our backyard garden was created twenty odd years ago, long before I knew anything about gardening or permaculture. I planted too many trees, and although some of them were fruit trees, they just adversely effected the garden. It was a lovely design with paths bordered by bricks and key hole beds. A great looking zone 1.

But it's redesign was long overdue. It was on the southern side of the garden and surrounded by trees. The sun just couldn't get a look in during winter and in summer the tress sucked the water out of the soil leaving the poor vegies dry. I just couldn't keep the water up to them.

So today the backyard food forest began. First we needed to get rid of some large unproductive shrubs and dig up all the bricks. They'll be used elsewhere on the farm.Our intern diligently removed the bricks and stacked them. It took us most of the day to chop down the shrubs and dig out the roots.

I was truly amazed at the quality of the soil. When I planted 20 years ago the backyard was very heavy clay but now it's a lovely friable soil. I'm sure the fruit tress we have in mind will love the rich soil. This area was also waterlogged during heavy rain but it now has very good drainage. The rest of the farm is very wet and we are sloshing around in our gum boots but here it's not too bad.

I unearthed some Elders so I've potted them up to plant around the various food forests we have on the farm.

Now  that we've got the area opened up we can do a little design for the area. Our intern will be included in helping us with the design as part of her scheduled learning.We have some stone fruit on order and to support them we'll plant some nitrogen fixers. There will be some herbs for understory, some groundcovers including nasturtiums and pepinos and once established we'll look to add some climbers.

We'll let the chickens in to clean up a little. They'll be housed in the chicken run at the bottom of the garden and will have access to the forest at times during the year.

What a lovely day here on the farm with 18 adults and 30 little ones visiting. I feel like the pied piper as I wander around with a line of children behind me. And every now and then I feel a little hand holding mine as we move on from one animal to the next. Feeding, patting and holding various members of our farm menagerie. I call these our mums and bubs tours but of course we get dads and grandparents as well as mums bringing their littlies out to see the farm animals. I try to keep it real. I don't want it to become a petting zoo. I really want the children to see farm animals being treated with respect and being allowed to express their natural behaviours.

I See Red, I See Red, I See Red...

As Mark and I wandered around the farm taking photos for our Holistic Management homework, I caught sight of a splash of red in the distance. It caught my eye because of it's richness in a place usually devoid of such colour. This is the first time our little Firewheel tree has flowered.

It inspired me to grab my daughter and her camera. As we came back from taking a photo of the these beautiful flowers we were struck by the glimpses of red that could be seen here and there as we walked back up the drive.

So what follows are snapshots of red around the farm. Hope you enjoy!...
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Love from me and Sarah.

This Day On The Farm

After 230mls of rain in just a couple of days the farm is looking lush and green, although a little soggy. We are hoping that as the water recedes we will have come out of it okay. The farm is on quite low lying land. The land to the south of us is swampy. We have worked to build our soil  up to sit above the water line but some parts especially on the southern side can be quite slow for the water to drain away. Last summer we lost a lot of tomatoes and capsicum due to this. we've got our fingers crossed that it won't be as bad this year.

The passion fruit vines have loved the extra water and are producing well. I grew these plants from seeds that I'd saved.

A couple of shots of two of the mandalas, one showing seedlings still in their pots where Mark was beaten by the heavy rain in the middle of planting out a bed. We'll need to let the garden dry out a bit to complete the job. All the paths in the garden were under water so you can see how well they've drained over night.

One of the pumpkin patches looking good and loving the extra water.

Both the irrigation ponds are full and overflowing.. good news for us if the weather heats up. The bees on the southern sides of the ponds allows for them to fly out towards the sun each morning and ensures that no one walks in their flight path. You can't see it in this photo but the bees were very active, like us enjoying the break in the rain.

We are gearing up to the start of our hectic program in February commencing with a preserving the harvest workshop. Prime preserving time just now with the abundance of summer. Are you coping with the amount of produce coming from your garden or do you need some help learning how to preserve? Come and join us on 6th February. Bookings essential and can be made through the website.

Farmer's Markets

If you're at the Maitland Harvest Market tomorrow, do call in and say hello.

 This is us. We are easy to find!

We will have honey to sell

and chilli powder and flakes..

We also have a range of plants and some handmade children's clothing. All our products are from the farm.

My friend Jo joins me at the stall with her home made relish. Just delicious.

Please come along if you can. These local markets are so important for the local economy and we need local people to come along and support them. There's lovely coffee and things to eat. Come sit under the large tree and listen to some local Musos play their music. A great morning out.

Around The Farm

2014 has been declared International Year of Family Farming and so to celebrate I would like to share snippets of our family farm. So once a week for the rest of the year you can join us here for a slow tour of the farm.

The 2014 International Year of Family Farming (IYFF) aims to raise the profile of family farming and smallholder farming by focusing world attention on its significant role in eradicating hunger and poverty, providing food security and nutrition, improving livelihoods, managing natural resources, protecting the environment, and achieving sustainable development, in particular in rural areas. 

 

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A few snap shots of farm activity this week..

Community building. I was approached by one of our CSA members asking if she could run a Red Tent gathering here on the farm. Following the reading of the book of the same name, she was keen to provide a safe place for woman to come together and share experiences, information, knowledge and skills. The first session saw us speak about our experiences of becoming young women. Surprisingly similar encounters! We will be holding the Red Tent once a month, for those of you women who may be interested.

We have had rain, glorious rain. Just over 60mls, which made the four year old's birthday party a bit wet. But not to worry, they all had a great time. I told a story about sunflowers and bees and the children got to plant a sunflower seed, watch honey being extracted from the frames, and take some seeds and honey home. One of the mums has already booked her little boys party for the end of March.

A little bit of seed saving, first through the sieves to get rid of the course material and then the winnowing, to be left just with the seed. We will keep a lot of the seed for our own use but the rest is sold during farm tours or at the Harvest Farmer's Market, where we set up our first stall last Saturday...

We sold seedlings, seeds and cotton dishcloths with an underlying focus on advertising our workshops, tours and parties. The markets are on every Saturday and we will make it there as often as we can. Our weekends are often busy with farm based activities and we won't be able to commit to a stall. Periodically we may have produce for sale also, but as our CSA boxes can handle as much as we can grow at the moment, sales of excess produce at the market will have to wait.

 

The pigs are loving their work so much that they have managed to cultivate one of their pens ready for us to plant some yummy pig food for them when next we rotate them to this area.

 They are also loving their play. Here's cinnamon rolling in the mud..

Our electro netting has arrived and we can now safely put them to work in the market garden.We did wonder how we were going to move them from their enclosure to the garden and have managed to make a run through the food forest to the garden. Along the way they have also cleaned up the forest.

This part of the garden was originally a no dig garden and so it is proving to be a pretty simple job for the pigs to cultivate. we are thinking we might prep this area up for asparagus once the pigs are finished. And we have already decided on  the next spot for the pigs to move onto. What a great resource they are!

Mark is working on a new chook dome to house those other marvelous cultivators, the hens. We have four chook domes in the Market garden, which means that four beds are being cleared and dug over. They do need to be  repaired at times and sometimes replaced.Like the pigs, the hens do a fantastic job of preparing the garden for planting.

Around The Farm

2014 has been declared International Year of Family Farming and so to celebrate I would like to share snippets of our family farm. So once a week for the rest of the year you can join us here for a slow tour of the farm.

The 2014 International Year of Family Farming (IYFF) aims to raise the profile of family farming and smallholder farming by focusing world attention on its significant role in eradicating hunger and poverty, providing food security and nutrition, improving livelihoods, managing natural resources, protecting the environment, and achieving sustainable development, in particular in rural areas.

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Life has been very productive down on the farm (I try not to talk too much about how busy we are. I know that everyone is busy so they don't need to here it from me so I'll just use the term productive). For us, and many other farmers I know, have had to diversify as growing vegetables just doesn't pay the bills. Well not yet anyway! So we have channeled our skills into helping us make a living while still staying on the farm. We both have a background in education. Mark has experience in adult ed. and I have been involved in early childhood and special ed. These interests of ours have evolved into workshops on living sustainably , permaculture and Biodynamics. And my passion has always been for the littlies.

This past week has seen a combination of all of these. We have had a workshop on Preserving the Harvest where we made passata, fig jam, sauerkraut, and bottled pears., and semi dried tomatoes. That was Saturday , the official start to our year.

Sunday I helped my friend with her wedding quilt...

My friend's aunt joined us for the day, and we managed to get all pieces sewn together.Very soon I will have photos of a finished quilt.

Tuesday was the very first of our Mum's and Bubs tours. I was beginning to think that there wasn't going to be any takers for the tour, but within just a few days it had filled to overflowing. We had 16 mums and grandmums with 38 children between them. What a beautiful morning we had (even though it was very very hot). We fed all the animals, collected eggs and played and ran about.The adults enjoyed catching up with friends and meeting new ones. Here they meet one of the hens...

Two families that visited were homeschoolers and they made a day of it. After having a picnic lunch they spent some time drawing , inspired by the animals they met that day. Nutmeg and Cinnamon were very popular.

And later on during the week Sir Bowie Charles had a pedicure...

His little hooves are trimmed every six weeks or so by a lovey friend who runs a business called Barefoot Trimming. She is one of a number of people who have dispensed with shoeing horses and advocates horses going barefoot. All of her horses are now barefoot. She has done a wonderful job on Bowie, whose feet were in a bad way.  He is a favourite on the farm tours and parties!

Market Gardening In A Drought

It has been difficult over the last month or so to get together a good variety of produce for our CSA boxes. The heat and extended drought has proven quite devastating to our harvests. We have been fairly consistent with tomatoes, zucchini, and cucumber, but the salad and other leafy greens have really taken a hammering. Slowly but surley we are pushing through it all and staring to harvest more greens. And the corn is ready also, so we are pleased to be able to deliver a more rounded box today...

We have been able to do away with plastic bags by using recycled plastic containers that our customers return to us each week to be refilled.

When our customers sign up for a subscription they do so knowing that there will be fluctuations due to various farming conditions such as drought, floods, hail etc. But it always feels so much better when the boxes are overflowing than when they're a little under.