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.

Bee Abundance

Mark has  worked really hard over spring and summer with the bees. They've been given two new ''houses''... to give them shelter during the heat. These now also have shade cloth attached. this and the other one are at the back of our mandala garden on the south side of our irrigation ponds. This allows for their flight path to be uninterrupted by people working by.

During spring we had four swarms which Mark was able to catch and rehome. This one landed in our mulberry tree, and Mark cut  the branch they were attached to and they dropped into the hive.

Here's a closer look at a swarm that flew into a shrub in our market garden. They were also successfully rehomed.

A lovely full frame ready to spin...

There's enough for us and some to sell on our market stall at the Maitland Harvest Markets..

And now we have ventured into making Mead. Yum! a beautiful refreshing drink for these long hot summer days.

The Littliest Intern

I haven't been feeling the best for the last few days, but I'd promised my daughter that I'd look after Evan today. Luckily he is easy to care for. He just loves to be involved with whatever is going on.
So when the interns were set the task of constructing some new fencing for the pigs....

I took Evan over to watch thinking that he would like to sit and watch. Instead he wanted to join in, so I popped him over the fence and and sat quietly while I watched him work...

The interns haven't had much experience with farming but are really up for the many challenges that they are presented with. Along with fencing this week, they have been learning to care for the farm animals. And once again Evan is in there amongst it.....

 Yesterday, the interns were shown how to catch the chooks and give them a bit of a health check, followed by a routine application of oil to the chooks legs to smother any scaly leg mite that may be present. Today the guys tackled the job on their own with the remainder of the chooks, with a little bit of help from Evan of course.

They have been learning the feeding routine and nightly lock up of all the animals, along with cleaning out their enclosures and replacing bedding. This continues for the week which should enable them to take care of all the animals independently.

For Evan, who has participated in feeding the animals from the time he could walk, there were other things to do...

Like taking his baby for a ride and eating oranges straight from the tree...

As I said before, Evan is quite easy to care for, so I did manage to rest a little as we slowly moved around the farm.

And now it's time to snuggle down in front of the fire with a cup of ginger, lemon and honey tea. Hopefully I will be feeling better tomorrow. But before I go a big thank you to our interns for all the wonderful work they're doing on the farm.

Mums And Bubs

Our latest Mums and Bubs tour was a huge success.

This tour is designed for those parents who would like to take a look around the farm with their little ones. It is much slower in pace than our main tour for the month so that the children can take a break for a snack and get up close to the animals....

The parents left feeling inspired to grow a little of their own food, and the children left feeling tired but happy. A great opportunity for some city kids to experience farm life!

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.

 * * * * * * *

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!

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.

* * * * * * *

Another week has just flown by and I haven't managed to write a blog post. But I have committed myself to recording farm happenings weekly and so what has been happening here? 

First of all I would like to thank all those who left such heart warming comments regarding our trip to Italy later in the year for Slow Foods. We are just one of many, many people who are promoting , through our choice of lifestyle, the wonderful ideals of the Slow Food movement. Be it Permaculture, Biodynamics, organics, or the adoption of a slow and simple life, by supporting local producers of sustainable agriculture, by choosing local businesses where possible, by reducing waste, cooking from scratch, repairing, making ethical choices, etc etc. We would like to thank those who support us through our CSA, who value the family farm and all that that entails.

 Rain, or the lack of it to be more precise continues to have a huge effect on us at the moment. Our CSA boxes have been very light on this past couple of weeks, but thankfully our subscribers understand and continue to support us during the lean times as well as the gluts.

On a personal level, the drought and heatwave has also had a detrimental effect on us both. It is hard to see seedlings and produce wither and burn , to be constantly out in the heat checking on livestock. I was beginning to feel quite despondent. But just lately the weather has been a little kinder. Still no rain, but much cooler. And along with the cooler weather came a new lease on life. I once more felt the enthusiasm that usually surrounds me here on the farm, and spent a whole day, working well into the evening, on some chores that were a little behind. 

The ducks, geese and chickens had their houses cleaned out with lovely clean straw added. I let the pigs into one pen to dig up all the old bedding for me, before cleaning it out.

 Wednesday was a fruit day so I spent the day weeding and mulching some very neglected fruit trees. They were all looking very stressed. I gave them a tonic with seaweed to help them recover before adding a mulch of aged cow manure, followed by deep watering.

A young mulberry tree after the treatment. We have planted quite a few mulberry trees in strategic positions around the farm. They offer good summer shade, as well as berries. I don't think there is any animal on the farm except maybe the dogs who don't like the berries and leaves of the mulberry. The large one in the back yard overhangs the fence into the paddock beyond and it has been grazed to head height by the cows. The pigs just love the leaves as well, and I have been told that they are great for the eradication of intestinal worms. The ducks, geese and hens just love to be let out of their yard in the mulberry season to feast on fallen fruit. It's a real race to see who gets there first.

Here is a very sad fig tree. It has really suffered during the hot dry summer, but after just a couple of days I can see much improvement. The cage is to protect it from the livestock as it is in the nut orchard where the geese ducks and hens have free access.

Cinnamon and Nutmeg spent some time in the nut orchard today while Mark worked on their pens. They are only allowed supervised visits as they can be soooo destructive.

 

 The pigs are getting another day pen so that we can rotate them onto new pasture periodically. Mark fenced in the last section with wire netting. Timber was placed between the posts first of all to prevent the pigs digging out underneath.To strain the wire he screws on these boards which hold the wire and gives a purchase for the winch.

The winch is attached to a strong piece of wire bolted to the boards and the winch attached to the ute...

 

The finished fence..

  The mesh is attached to the top two wires using netting clips and stapled at the bottom to the timber.

 Should keep them in. Fingers crossed.

Hot Hot Hot.

Into the heat of yesterday morning, descended a bus load of children.Thirty five children ranging in  age from 5 years to 11 from an inner city OOSH (out of school hours childcare), along with their teachers.

We quickly got on with the tour before it got any hotter. The aim for the day was to show the children animals living in an an environment that caters to their needs and individual behaviors.

The children noticed that the pigs liked their mud puddle and lots of food.

They noticed that the chickens liked to roll around in the soil and lay eggs.

They were surprised that ducks like to eat their food from the water.

The children were surprised that the chickens like to sleep up high on a roost.

They were a little surprised that a cow was so very very big.

There were children who were frightened of guinea pigs but by the end of the visit were promising to be back so that they could buy one for their very own because they were just so cute and just the thing to hold in your lap.

After the tour we divided into five groups and rotated around five activities. They got up close to the cow and pony with Mark, and if they felt really brave they got to brush them.

They were able to sit and cuddle with the guinea pigs.

They drew a picture of something they'd seen on the farm with a theme around what animals like in their environment. There were lots of drawings of pigs and mud!

They did some seed saving. Corn rubbed from the cob, sunflower seeds pulled from the old flower head, leek seeds pulled off and willowed, and red kidney beans taken out of their pods.

 The group doing the leeks didn't get very far did they?

And lastly a paper pot made, filled with soil and a little seed added, to be taken home to grow.

Sorry no photos. It was so full on. But we all had a great day. And as they left a little hug for me from one little girl, telling me she would miss me and that she'd be back for a guinea pig. One teacher's parting remark was ''Thank you so much. The kids learnt so much and so did we"

And that makes it so worth while. If the only thing they learn is that animals deserve to live a good life, and they can make decisions as they get older about where they source their food, then I feel that we've made a difference.

And after they all left it was back to making sure the animals were comfortable during the afternoon heat wave. We put the overhead sprinklers on in the garden to cool down the chickens in their domes, and of course make sure they have cool water to drink. I refill the guinea pigs dish of water. They don't necessarily drink it if they have enough green grass to eat, but they do like to lay in the water to cool down. And I move them into the shade.

The seedlings will need a drink as well and then it's back to the shade and a cool drink for me also. Quite often I wrap a wet towel around my shoulders while on my my tour of the livestock and this helps a lot to keep me cool. If you'd like some more tips on keeping cool this summer duck over to Linda's blog. She shows you how she keeps the house and animals as cool as possible in her neck of the woods and contemplates the real threat of bush fires.

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. 

* * * * * * * 

Apart from growing food in our mandala market garden we aim to educate and provide a model of sustainable agriculture in a peri urban location. We are just 5 mins by car from the local shopping centre and we are quickly being surrounded by development. And so we have become a city farm. As a demonstration site we are including more examples of less intensive ways to keep livestock thus enabling us to educate visitors on choosing how their food is farmed.

So today I bring you photos of our finished pig pen. And let me tell you Cinnamon and Nutmeg are well pleased with their new digs.I did try to get photos of the two of them but they are so very fast. Worse than trying to take photos of toddlers I tell you.

 A lovely house filled with nice clean straw. The house was built with second hand building materials. The weather boards are from an old shed we dismantled a couple of years ago. Don't they look great. The silky oak was already growing there and it will provide much needed shade in the future.

 A little window to the north for some winter warmth.

 And doesn't every pig want a pond to wallow in? You won't see one of those in an intensive piggery!

 Their main yard opens up into another yard where they have free access during the day. When that space needs a rest (as surely it will with the work those pigs put into every day) there is another on this side where I am taking the photo from.

The pig house collects it's own water from the roof and it is stored in this tank. The pigs drinking water comes from here via a nipple attached to the wall. The little bit of orange is shade cloth we have erected until the rest of the trees grow.

There is still more to do. Waste water will be channeled into a banana circle, some more fencing to be completed and a few more trees to be planted. We also want to grow some more fodder for the pigs. In a few weeks time some electronetting will arrive and the pigs will have access to some more spaces, in particular, areas that we want to cultivate, as they are very, very good at that.

In the mean time they are doing a great job of taking care of our over sized zucchinis and cucumbers and any other waste produce we have.