Introducing Mairead An!

Here is our wee girl! So happy to have her here with us, she was born beautifully in the water April 30 after a very short, sharp labour! Ro has been wonderful with her, tries to feed her his brocolli and informs me she needs milk when she pokes out her tongue. We are happily tucked up in the yurt as the weather turns autumn and frost sparkles on our roof in the morning sun...

A wee turtle cave

The other morning Cam found a wee baby turtle tumbled into the grease-trap pit (part of the greywater reed bed system, more on that anon), and duly plopped it in the dam.




Then a few days later our Canadian woofers found another one, also in the pit!



That afternoon we spotted some pieces of soft shell in a tiny cave broken open in the wall of the trench to the grease-pit, the pieces of about six or so eggs and in one the dried fragile leather of a small turtle’s shell, a little one who didn't make it to the water.



(P.S. Still getting my head around new Mac - no idea why this photo is coming in sideways?! If you would all obligingly turn your heads onto your left shoulders you will see the soft bits of shell in the foreground!)

Settled, truly in yurtish, nomad style

Hello everyone!!! Apologies for the long radio silence, we've been madly on the road and the internet hasn't been handy, but - finally, and in what style! - we are settled again and able to roam here once more (albeit for the next little while on a friend's computer up the driveway a little way)....We have come to Mulloon Creek Natural Farm; a couple of Saturdays ago we unpacked a yurt from a box and built it, et voila! Stunning views, a dam out the window to jump in on hot days, a cow to share the milking of, and a huge farm out the door for Cam to run around doing keyline design and holistic management and natural sequence farming, etc etc! One of the etc's being to teach permaculture and all of the above through the Mulloon Institute, which aims to go beyond teaching and sharing about sustainability practices (from an urban to broadacre scale) towards regeneration and restoration of damaged landscapes. Woohoo!

Meanwhile I shall be growing our new baby along with all the fruit, vegies, berries, nuts, herbs and spices that could be needed by the eight families who live on site; the farm is several thousand hectares straddling the Dividing Range and produces free-range organic and biodynamic pastured eggs and beef. All in all, I feel like I'm in Heaven! I promise to be back soon with some photos...

Spring fertility

Sneezing, itching, eyes streaming – wandering the garden like a small walking storm system, watering hankies, thinking how marvellous it is my body can intercept and register so well all this fertility of the plants!

Spring is sprung!

Here's Ro and Cam preparing the terrace beds ready for their spring planting. Many little seedlings are sprouting in trays in the greenhouse, corn and tomatoes and capsicums and pumpkins, cucumbers and many other delicious things....

Ro aerating the soil with the very fine Gundaroo tiller:

Putting straw out over the slashed green manure crop (oats and broad beans) to keep the carbon in the soil:




Ready to go!

Herb harvest

Cam and Yarrow collecting calendula flowers to dry for tea.

Spawning frogs

One of our lovely students has given us some eggs from her established pond to hatch frogs into ours. I've slopped them in among the water plants and fingers crossed they make it through to frog-hood!

Go well, wee froglets!