Plan of chook run and food forest
Here is a plan showing the food forest I am creating next to the chook run and then our cow/sheep paddock. The chook run has small compartments down it in which to grow veges and chook food. The hens can be let in or out as wanted through gates. They can also forage in the food forest when it is mature enough. The Midyim bushes are only 1-1.5m tall so wont shade the veges and the forest will get progressively taller towards the east. This will also help with frost protection, I hope! The forest needs to be dense enough to provide a cover for more frost sensitive things. I am mulching with cardboard from our local shops and the grass I rake up from the paddock. A mower wouldn't fit between the rows and petrol costs might make that impossible anyway, dont you think! Kikuyu is hard to kill off though, so I hope this works!
I want to inspire others to try this. I have to do it fairly much myself so it is a bit at a time and it will eventually be a forest. When I am old I hope to sit under it and eat the fruit of my labours (alongside the chooks!)
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April 5th, 2008
Vege Garden
I've started the repair on the netting fence. It had lifted and the chooks could get under it. I made a trench along the base and pulled the wire down, and then thought to use some old star pickets that were too bent for fencing to weigh the wire down and peg it into position. Now the vege patch is fenced off and the chooks are on the outside, longingly looking in! Some of the beds need repair to their boxing and they all need redigging. The soil is great and I cant wait!
April 3rd, 2008
Midyim planting finished
Just a short note to say that I finished planting the 70 Midyim plants today and am feeling really pleased! They are all mulched down with cardboard and grass (which has already started to kill the kikuyu grass underneath) and watered in. I have more cardboard so will lay it down as well in preparation for whatever I get to go in next.
Next project is the vege garden in one of my compartments. More on the progress later.
We are going to get together and help each other get vege gardens happening at each of our houses. Get to know each other and share ideas. I thought of having a Powerdown BBQ at sundown followed by candlelight gathering by the fire in the shed. Sounds good for Winter?
March 30th, 2008
More trees for the forest
Half of my Midyims are now planted. Today I was talking after church to a local grower and telling them of this plan. They offered to help me sprout a lot of Macadamias and teach me how to graft from their good tree! A few of us here could learn at the same time. I mentioned the frost problem and they suggested quick growing wattles as a cover with the Macadamias planted under them. In about 15 years the wattles are finished and can be removed and the Macadamias are mature and should resist frost. I had read this idea so it sounds like it would work.
Another local lady said she had lots of sprouting Bunya nuts and would pot some up for me if I wanted! Yes! I will plant them near the river where we dont walk, because they are terrible to stand on in a forest unexpectedly! Great food though! It looks like I have generated lots of work in a short time of networking after church! Whew!
Some more friends are interested in growing locally, as well. We want to get some form of farmers market going, even if it starts with just us. We feel enthusiastic. The film "Think Global, Eat Local" that we saw in Maleny was very inspiring.
I grew up on a dairy farm here which in my grandmother's time was almost self-sufficient. She grew all the veges and fruit and raised hens,ducks etc. and all this was without electricity! My father farmed with horses and worked the farm by hand. They needed many farm workers to do it, though. As a toddler, I used to follow my grandmother in the garden as she worked, picking up worms and getting right under her fork! I loved stories about how they had to make do. It was so much hard work though, and now we have all the equipment to use, I wonder if we could return to all that back breaking work! Not voluntarily, I think!