Homeland
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The bee saga (part 2)
May 15, 2023
Yes, we are still around… In a previous post I described how we were processing a hive infected by hive beetles and promised a follow up. Well, here it is – a short [...] -
The bee saga (part 1)
October 31, 2022
In the fall, due to some crookness, a very quick onset of a very cold winter and some other extenuating circumstances, we didn’t pack our beehives down. With a very wet [...] -
My annual sunflower garden
October 14, 2022
Spring is here in name only and as usual winter still reaches its long fingers deep into October. My perseverance is low. In winter I felt strong and bold, barely [...] -
Tree lucerne harvest
August 22, 2022
A long, long time ago, in the month of June in the year of 2018 actually, I posted that we planted quite a lot of tagasaste tree-lets, in an attempt to increase the nitrogen [...] -
Aviary update
October 18, 2021
Although I haven’t been writing much – more about that later, maybe, one day – anyway, life in the aviary has been going on at full [...] -
Harvest reflections
May 9, 2021
Autumn is almost done. It approached rather suddenly and with my brother and his wife departing at the start of it I did not feel prepared to do justice to the harvest [...] -
March highlight reel
March 31, 2021
Someone wise said you shouldn’t compare yourself to others’ facebook highlight reel. However, I’m getting very little time to write long blog stories nowadays, so [...] -
You spin me right round baby
March 26, 2021
My wife has a deep-rooted aversion to cleaning the honey spinner; and she has an equally deep-rooted belief that I can’t do it thoroughly. I clean it, then it stands [...] -
Rico and friends
March 2, 2021
No, this is not about a Latin jazz band or a little Salsa congunto, but it might have been… Why would I give an indigenous Australian grass parrot a Spanish name? Well, [...] -
Whodunnit
February 25, 2021
My goodness, I wrote this in mid January… Anyway here it is. So the festive season and supposed summer holidays rushed by in a blur of cold and rainy weather, chores, [...] -
The big day – P roject part VI
December 22, 2020
So we made in time. On the first day of Christmas… oops I mean on the first day of the school holidays, I put a change request in to shift my mid morning meeting even [...] -
Sticks and stones – P Project part V
December 20, 2020
It’s getting to the pointy end of the project. We really wanted to get this done so we can introduce the birds at the start of the school holidays. It’s slowly getting [...] -
Waterworks – P project part IV
December 19, 2020
The weekend was dedicated to waterworks. We’re using copper pipe because we don’t want plastic pipe inside the aviary where the birds can gnaw at it. And there’s a [...] -
My life is a mesh – P Project Part III
December 14, 2020
The last n days (n a large integer number) seems to be blur of… mesh! Putting two layers of mesh on a 9m x 3m x 2.5m structure is no trivial task – especially around the [...] -
P Project Part II
December 1, 2020
And so the saga continues. I don’t really know why I called it the P project. It’s actually the A project – a big spacious walk-in aviary for small parrot type birds. A [...] -
The P project
November 19, 2020
Well this isn’t strictly permaculture. But then, everything doesn’t necessarily have to be. The P stands for something else. But I guess repurposing a climbing frame may [...] -
It’s a jungle out there
November 12, 2020
IT IS A JUNGLE OUT THERE So with Martin taking a forced hiatus from garden work it falls to me to make sense of the overgrown jungle our vegetable garden has become. [...] -
Chick alert!
November 4, 2020
Stop the press! Hold back the Tagasaste and Vegetable posts (yes I have at least two more in store) – the chicks have hatched! They literally hatched the day after my [...] -
Flapping and buzzing
October 29, 2020
So although I’ve taken a bit of a hiatus from the “urban farming” activities , obviously the birds and the bees have not been impartial to the coming of spring – even [...] -
First winter rain
April 5, 2020
As we are busy experiencing our first bout of winter rain, it seems a good time to reflect on the strangest summer we have had – with regards to rainfall, anyway, since we [...] -
Tumbling down
January 13, 2020
Wednesday dawned a bit brighter and clearer than the previous smoke-hazed days. It was a bit more pleasant out while setting the irrigation and letting the ducks and chooks [...] -
Dry vs Drive
January 8, 2020
After a hiatus of a couple of weeks, I’m battling to get back into the swing of things. It’s as if the dry heat and smoke haze have sapped up all the drive and energy. [...] -
The day that was Thursday
December 2, 2019
I don’t typically write “a day in the life” type posts, but last Thursday may be worth highlighting in this manner. The day started off quite special with a quick surf [...] -
Fighting in the trenches
November 29, 2019
As I’m embarking on phase 3 of the battle against the kikuyu in the driveway orchard, in addition to the complicated terrain, two additional complications also set in. But [...] -
Vegetable garden activities
November 25, 2019
I guess it’s that time of the year when you just have to be really busy in the vegetable section of garden. Actually, I don’t mind working in the Homeland vegetable [...] -
K is for kumquat
November 22, 2019
Well, there is one way to get another harvest entry under “k”, and that is to use the alternate spelling! We inherited two little kumquat trees at Dreamland and this year [...] -
Biodynamics update
November 11, 2019
We don’t write about biodynamics much, because it is something we just do as part of our periodic activities, so it normally just gets done without any photos or stories. [...] -
Unscrambling carpets
November 4, 2019
For those who have been concerned that I may have been slipping on the driveway de-kikuyuing project – phase II – the battle for the middle ground, don’t worry, I’ve [...] -
G is for Grapefruit
October 30, 2019
We’re currently in that weird time of the spring season, where most of the winter veggies are basically done, except for two beds of broad beans and peas. None of the [...] -
Doing the berry shuffle
October 16, 2019
It’s has always been our dream to grow our own blueberries. Besides being delicious, they pack a punch in nutrients. In fact, all berries are good for my condition, and the [...]
Dreamland
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Changing of the guard
October 26, 2022
I wrote about the fox-orchestrated devastation at Dreamland a while ago, and since then we had another fox decimation one night because someone was too tired and forgot to [...] -
Devastation at Dreamland
December 3, 2020
In the last post on the aviary construction, I mentioned that we have the occasional wild cat and fox coming through here… In fact, there is a resident wild black cat on [...] -
Random Ramblings
October 24, 2020
Yeah, I know, I haven’t blogged for many months. We’ll explore that, as well as a few random observations in this [...] -
From Olive to Oil – part 1
May 7, 2020
At the start of the process, olives are like juicy gems – so beautiful and full of potential. You savour the fresh air while you carefully pick the berries from the [...] -
The Rise and Temporary Demise of the PDC Exchange
March 30, 2020
I know, I’ve been pretty quiet on the blogging front lately. I can only blame the day job partly, but it, together with some other interesting developments have kept me off [...] -
Saturday Saturday Saturday
January 20, 2020
With compliments to sir Elton John… so, now you know what my kids get me into, or me them, I’m not too sure who can be held responsible. With the still relatively new [...] -
Cluedo anyone?
December 3, 2019
We have grown used to the idea that when you keep chooks and ducks – especially together – weird things can happen. But this latest tragic event that happened at [...] -
PDC Exchange
November 13, 2019
There’s a new form of Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) course afoot! Launching on 20 November 2019, it’s called the “PDC Exchange”. It is a brand new concept [...] -
Permie + Pizza = Progress
October 28, 2019
We’ve always had it in mind to use Dreamland as a permaculture demonstration and teaching site. The first step towards this was to host a Permie Get-Together – basically [...] -
Gimme a sign
October 23, 2019
No this isn’t about a Ryan Adams song, nor about a Kevin Rudolf or Breaking Benjamin song either, not that I have ever heard of either of the latter two… thank you, [...] -
Native greens and other Dreamland stories
October 21, 2019
We’ve been on quite a drive to provide a steady supply of greens for the chooks in a more sustainable way. We’re currently trailing these low triangular frames where the [...] -
Places of contemplation
October 7, 2019
A while ago I wrote that we needed some places of contemplation, especially at Dreamland where we have designed little areas especially for this purpose. So we had the [...] -
Framed chicken greens
September 23, 2019
One of our goals is to reduce the amount of chicken feed we buy, not only to save money, but also to give the chooks a healthier diet. Even an organic medication-free feed [...] -
Compost Bins in Dreamland
September 16, 2019
No this isn’t some weird nightmare… it was a real project to build and start using compost bins over at Dreamland too. Up to now, we have been carting all the compost [...] -
Tanking up
September 9, 2019
Last summer was a costly one for us, especially at Dreamland. We had a newly planted edible forest garden, with new grass and clover paths, and it was blazingly hot and dry. [...] -
Living with Fowl – part II
September 2, 2019
As I’ve said in a previous post, living with widely free-ranging chooks and ducks is an interesting exercise, especially in a delicate urban forest garden. In part one we [...] -
Living with Fowl – part I
August 26, 2019
Living with widely free-ranging chooks and ducks is an interesting exercise. It becomes especially challenging when you have a relatively large flock in a relatively young [...] -
Amazing Neighbours – Gaë, Pauline and Adrien
August 5, 2019
An important part of community are the people who live right next to you. Well, we have been blessed by landing “by accident” (or is it destiny?) next to some amazing [...] -
Chicken Greens part 3
July 29, 2019
For some bizarre reason we’re in the third phase of a lot of things – no-dig beds, paths and now chicken greens too. These phases don’t have anything to do with each [...] -
E if for more Eggs
July 15, 2019
Supposedly as winter settles in, we should be getting less and less eggs, especially from a very young laying flock. When I wrote this initially we were getting between 5 and [...] -
When the heat is over…
July 8, 2019
A while ago I said “when the heat is over, I’m going to plant more clover”, primarily for the bees. We plant all the open areas and paths at Dreamland with a mixture of [...] -
No-dig beds – round 3
July 1, 2019
In both the savannah forest garden and the vegetable market garden at Dreamland, our approach is to build up no-dig beds from the ground up. So at Dreamland, we don’t have [...] -
Shelter from the storms
June 25, 2019
We’ve had a lot of rain last week, in addition to the previous big rain. In fact, we’ve now had four sunny days and our driveway still has so many puddles of water that [...] -
Rabbits – grrrrr
June 20, 2019
I guess every place has their “pet” pests that you just battle to live with. Through my permaculture studies I have learnt a lot about integrated pest management, and we [...] -
Bye-Bye Barry
June 11, 2019
Since he started growing – and he got really big really fast – Barry has always been a conversation piece. He just has that stand-out type of character and physique that [...] -
When it rains it pours
June 4, 2019
I can’t believe only a month ago we were highly concerned about how long the super-dry hottest summer on record was stretching out. The tanks were all dry – all 120 000 [...] -
F is for Feijoa
May 27, 2019
We’ve planted quite a few Feijoa bushes at Homeland, although they seem very slow in growing big enough to start bearing. However, just over the fence at Dreamland, [...] -
E is for Eggs
May 20, 2019
In our post about our first honey harvest I mentioned how great the first harvest of anything new is. But I think that is because most harvests come in some quantity. I mean [...] -
Chicken greens and some energy cycling
May 9, 2019
In a previous post I mentioned I’m busy with an interesting resource cycling exercise. So this is it. With our setup where we have big fixed fox-proof chicken coops, it’s [...] -
Q is for Quince
April 29, 2019
One of the mature trees we inherited at Dreamland is a beautiful bearing Quince tree. It doesn’t seem to have the bi-annual cycles that many of the other fruit trees have. [...]