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.

Summer CSA

Our summer CSA started this week.  Good spring rains have meant that we are off to a flying start. We had a little scare a few weeks back with a hail storm that shredded the newly planted summer crops. But I was quick to give all the plants a tonic of seaweed which I believe gave them just the pick me up they needed after such a shock.

The cucumbers were the worst hit by the hail but have come back beautifully.

Tomatoes growing around the edge of the mandala gardens. We grow Tommy toes and Romas as we find they are least affected by fruit fly

Purple King beans growing in one of the mandala beds. We like to grow the purple variety as they are easier to see amongst the foliage making harvesting a little easier. They turn green once cooked.

Potatoes growing in a mandala bed

Long beds at the front of the mandala gardens. We use the pigs to cultivate these beds whereas the chickens cultivate the round beds. You can just see one of the chicken domes in the background.

A herb posy was part of the box this week. For those of you not familiar with all the herbs I've taken a photo for you. 

The lemon balm and lemon verbena make a beautiful drink. Leave a few leaves of each to steep in boiling water. Lovely to drink either hot or cold.

We have a few places left for our CSA this season. Please contact me via email if you would like to subscribe to receiving a beautifu box of lovely fresh produce each week for the next 3 months. Local area only.

Our workshops and courses have now been finalised. We have a Gift Voucher available for those of you who would like to give a gift of knowledge this Christmas.

It's wonderful to be back here in this space after such a long time. Our internet access was so poor for so long that I found the whole thing just too frustrating. But now our interent connection is much more reliable and I look forward to sharing with you the goings on of our little farm.

Today In The Garden

Potatoes and leeks mounded in a circular bed which is part of the chook tractor rotation.

Logan berries leafing up and bursting into flower. We had such a poor harvest last year due to the dry spring, but things are looking much better this year after a more gentle wet start to spring.

More potatoes in a bed outside the mandalas which have been cultivated by the pigs.

Guinea pigs mowing the grass between our long beds. Mark calls them his solar powered lawn mowers. They do such a great job and give us manure for our compost heap. If you're looking for another source of manure to add diversity to your compost heap, and you live in an urban situation, you can't go past guinea pigs. This is especially true if you have children. They make great pets. I've had some really rowdy boys at some of our parties and farm tours, who are settled by cuddling a guinea pig. They will sit for around 20mins or so with a guinea pig on their laps, not moving an inch. They are much more settled  and move on to some more constructive play afterward. Of course they do need supervising when they are very young. We have some available for sale if anyone's looking for one as a Christmas present.

Rows and rows of peas and broadbeans. We grow snowpeas and shelling peas.We have started netting the stone fruit for fruit fly.

More potatoes alongside the broadbeans.

We are preparing beds for all our summer crops and they will go in in the next week or so. They have to as we are off to Italy in less than two weeks. We have one last Mums and Bubs tour (fully booked) and another farm tour left before we go. If you would like to see our Biodynamic, Permaculture garden in all it's spring bounty, we still have places available.

Weekend Wrapup

We had a very busy weekend starting with a couple of workshops for Newcastle Council. we have run the worm farm and composting workshops for the council for the past couple of years. the council is keen to promote the advantages of waste reduction to their residents as a means of prolonging their landfill centres. Each participating resident receives the workshop free of charge as well as either a worm farm or compost barrel.

Mark started the day off with worm farming. He set up one of the worm farms showing how some packaging can be incorporated into the worm farm, with soft plastics taken to Coles, where they are recycled into out door furniture.

Over 70 people turned up for the mornings workshops, where Mark crammed a day and a halfs information into 2 hours. With such enthusiasm from the crowd asking wonderful questions, it was hard to keep a train of thought.

Not to self-- take composting worms to sell at the next worm farming workshop.

 Mark used this small box, as displayed at Newcastle Show earlier in the year, for a demonstration of compost making. It has a perspex front so that the layers of the compost heap is clearly visible.
Mark uses ADAM and EVE  as key words for the composting process.

Aliveness - micro organisms
Diversity - ingredients
Aeration - air for the micro organisms
Moisture - also for the micro organisms

Environment - aspect
Vitality - BD preps
Equilibrium - carbon to nitrogen ratio

Then a mad dash to a nearby school that has a Stephanie Alexander garden and kitchen. Wow I was really impressed.

here we greeted 45 participants for our next workshop on Gardening in small spaces. We chose to concentrate on container gardening. Once again a lot of information condensed into a few hours. And once again a really enthusiastic crowd.

I was chief photographer for the day and I'm sorry to say I failed miserably, but the display looked amazing, truly it did! We had strawberries in a piece of guttering, along with alyssium and yarrow as companion plants which could be attached to a railing or fence..

Here it is attached to the back of a pallet garden, similar to the one I wrote about in my last post.
We constructed a wicking bed in a broccoli box and no-dig in another. And to give them extra motivation a very quick course in propagation. I had some seeds available to buy which was good because I think they left with their heads spinning but pumped ready to get started.

Sunday we were at the first of the Courtyard Markets at our local shopping centre.

The markets are the initiative of a young mum who has a dream of invigorating the local community. I applaud her determination and will support the markets as often as I can.

There's that pallet again! I used it to display the plants I had for sale.

A councilor was invited to open the markets and I was able to spend a little time with him, suggesting that maybe our very own council might like to run some workshops just like Newcastle.  I thought he might like to know about what we do, and that maybe council might like to support some of our community activities. He sounded positive.

I celebrated Mother's Day later that evening with two of my girls and their families and Mark's daughter and her sons. Mark had managed to make us a beautiful curry. Don't know how he did it really. We were flat out. Hope all you mums out there had a lovely Mother's Day!

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!

CERES

Wow, what a place. It has a little bit of everything in terms of sustainability.

I love their Adventure Habitat.....not a playground, no not at all!Here's a design of what they hope to achieve..

There is an earthbag dome to crawl through, peer out of, sit in, and rocks and logs to climb and walk along. A sandpit to play in and hills and slopes to climb. And more things are planned for the future in partnership with some local artists. My mind has been busy with design ideas for something similar here on the farm. Any artists out there want to help?

....And a little bit of mosaic love would be nice!

We went on a tour of their chicken run. This is the fence facing into the market area. Isn't it cool? The chicken run opens up into an adjoining food forest.

  Very well set out I thought...With gentle reminders to be respectful of the animals..

While enjoying some morning tea at the cafe we were entertained by a troupe celebrating the return of the Kingfisher to the area. They danced and sang and told the story of how the local creek became so polluted that the Kingfisher vanished but after some years of rehabilitating the creek and surrounds the Kingfisher returned.

There was enough going on for us to easily spend the best part of the day there, what with the makets, tours and entertainment and food at the cafe. Much to learn from this day! There is an eco home to wonder through, a bicycle repair shop with this really cool shade area made from bike wheels...

The following day we returned for a workshop. we were lucky enough to be down there at the same time as the cider workshop was being held. It was run by Pete the Permie who has an apple orchard just outside Melbourne. He runs many workshops on his farm similar to us but also runs them for CERES. It was much more about researching workshops as anything and we were happy to see that we run ours in a similar fashion to Pete who has quite a following.And on top of that we learned how to make cider as well as tasting quite a range, Just as well we weren't driving!

Purple Pear Farm on Little Green Cheese podcast

Last week, we were lucky enough to be featured on the podcast of Gavin, from Little Green Cheese. Gavin spoke to Mark about how we got into cheese-making, our house cows, our successes and favourite cheeses.

You can listen to the podcast below.

 

Propagation

It's a busy time in the propagation house for me. It started way back in June using an underheater to get the summer crops underway. This gives us a head start on tomatoes, capsicums and basil -- those seedlings that like it to be a certain temperature before they will germinate. Since then, I have been potting them up into pots and waiting for conditions to be just right in the garden. Usually that means waiting for the threat of frosts to be over, but now we're waiting for a little rain!

In the meantime, the propagation house is full...

...as is the hardening off area.

The tomatoes have been potted up a few times now, each time a little deeper into a slightly larger pot. This gives them a strong root system.

We now have around 50 tomatoes ready to go in and some left over to sell. We grow Tommy Toes and Romas as they have slightly tougher skins and cope best for us with the fruit fly. We have a small range of other seedlings for sale also, including capsicums, marigolds and cucumbers, along with some seeds.

For more information on propagation you can find as at the Dungog Food Affair where we will be running a workshop. We will be sharing our recipe for our seed raising mix and potting mix. We will demonstrate how we propagate here on the farm on a commercial scale and how it can be tailored to fit the backyard gardener. Mark will also touch on the Biodynamic planting guide.

Cheese Making

Mark is preparing for our Cheese and Yogurt workshop on the weekend. Here is the Colby he made yesterday. It is a washed curd hard cheese. The cheese will air dry over the next few days and will be ready for waxing on Saturday as a demonstration at the workshop.  

In addition to the Colby we will be making whey ricotta and paneer, and demonstrating the making of yoghurt. If you would like to learn more about making cheese at home we still have a number of places available for our workshop this Saturday.

Sourdough Workshop on the Farm

This weekend we ran another of our sourdough workshops. It's the first of our workshops to take place in our new space (more about that another day). We hosted a lovely group of people keen to get started on their sourdough journey.

The pizza we had for lunch was made using sourdough. As the participants were keen to get their hands in the dough first up, we began with the pizza dough so that it had time to rise and cook in time for lunch. Then we added some tasty ingredients as toppings...

  

... and combined it with a garden-fresh salad to make a scrumptious lunch.

After lunch, while the bread dough was rising, we made butter. To one small jar add some cream and three marbles. Shake, shake and shake some more! Eventually the marbles stop rattling around and you're nearly done.



Just a little more shaking and the butter is formed and the butter milk can be drained away, to be used later in some baking.

Everyone left feeling very confident and excited to be embarking on their sourdough adventure. To get them started on their way, Mark sent them each home with their very own sourdough starter plus some freshly baked bread and butter to share with their family.

If you are contemplating sourdough and are in need of some instruction, we will be running more of these workshops next year. You can contact us by email and we will send you out details when they have been finalised.

Succession Planting

Here are the snow peas we planted in April. We started harvesting them in early June. From this bed and another smaller one we are able to give our CSA customers 100g each a week, (that would be worth $3.30 in the organic shop). 

This is what that bed looks like now. We will leave it to  develop our seeds for next year before removing them to plant tomatoes. The tomatoes will love the extra nutrients provide by the nutrient-rich peas.

  

The pea is swelling and the skin is becoming clear. Once it's dry, it's ready to pick and store away for next year.

Here are more snow peas that we planted a month after the first lot. There's another similar bed and, with these two beds, we are harvesting as much as we need for the boxes and ourselves and other family members.

And when their harvesting time comes to an end, we have another bed of peas ready to take their place which were planted a month later. These should take us up to the harvesting of the beans.

Through successive plantings, we are able to maximise our harvests. The most often asked questions at our gardening-related workshops are to do with what and how many vegetables to plant. The what part of the question depends a lot on what people like to eat, but what they really want to know is at what time of year should each veggie be planted and that's mainly to do with our limited knowledge of seasonality. So we help them out with a generalised guide to what grows when in our local area.

To answer how many, I suggest that they make a list of the vegies they and their family like to eat and then think about the amount of each that they eat in a week. I suggest they plant four or five varieties of things like lettuce that can have the outside leaves plucked while leaving the rest to continue to grow. For others, make successive plantings every three to four weeks. For example, if you eat one cabbage a week, plant four in your first planting and then, four weeks later, put in another four. Likewise with beans, cauliflower, cucumber, peas, sweetcorn and tomatoes. Once again, this is only a guide as all  families are different. I suggest that they make a start and keep good records of what they planted, when they planted and how much they were able to harvest. Then next year they can adjust their plantings to better suit.

Here we are using the chooks to prepare beds for sweetcorn on the outside edges of the mandala gardens. The chooks scratch and fertilise the beds and every two weeks the dome will be moved on and 40 sweetcorn seedlings will be planted in the prepared ground.

Today we are featured over on Liz's blog Eight Acres. Liz interviewed us about our house cow in her  series, Getting started with homestead dairy. Please pop over and take a look at the interview and while you're at it take a look at what she's doing in her neck of the woods. Some pretty inspiring stuff!