In March this year we bought Cheslyn Rise, a 258 A property
in Kumbia, South of Kingaroy and about half an hour drive from where we live at
Nanango. The property has no house, just
a hay shed, stock yards, good fences and lots of trees! We plan to develop the property and some of
our influences will be Peter Andrews (hence the trees) and Joel Salatin, as
well as some of the things we have already found useful at Eight Acres. See the links below for more details.
Rehabilitating our
property (eight acres)
Natural
Sequence Farming - using Peter Andrews' methods
Our first big decision was the tractor, and once we had that
sorted, we could get on with baling the sorghum hay that was already planted,
and then plough and plant our own oats (after doing a soil test). We learnt a whole lot about how to manage our
pasture and how to integrate forage and hay into our system. We’re still thinking about the best way to
feed our animals and improve our pasture and carrying capacity. Ideas include no-till “pasture cropping” and using
biological agriculture. I went to a
course on sustainable agriculture – which covered biological agriculture and I’m
currently reading more about it. Its all
about improving the soil – minerals, microbes and structure – to grow better
forage and pasture. I will write more
about it when we decide what to do, but I promise there will be some compost
tea brewing in the near future!
About soil testing and sustainable agriculture
We also learnt a bit more about fencing and made lots of use
of the electric fence so that Bella could graze the house yard and I didn’t
have to mow (she’s my lawn moo-er).
We started to map out our property using GPS, this is a
cheap and easy way to figure out size of paddocks and relative location of
things. If you have basic computer
skills and a GPS (or GPS app on a smart thingy), it would even be useful on a
smaller property.
I also wrote some thoughts about organics. I read the organic standard and tried to tell
you what it meant. But on the other
hand, organic eggs don’t even taste like the ones I make at home, so organic
isn’t everything…
I also discovered a very exciting philosophy called
permaculture, and I have been reading lots more about it, so you probably won’t
be able to shut me up in 2013, actually I was thinking of having a permaculture
principle as a theme each month (well there are 12, so its hard to resist).
If you still don’t know what permaculture is, or where it
came from, well I’ll just a beginner, but I linked to lots of things in this first
post that may help you. And then I read
Linda Woodrow’s wonderful book on home garden permaculture and made my own
hugelkultur. I keep forgetting to take a
photo of the hugelkultur, but it is working quite well at preventing further
erosion of the bank, just taking a while to get anything growing as it’s a hot
and dry spot.
I have been getting into permaculture too. A year ago I found a copy of Lindas book at the Life line book fest in Brisbane and have since done a lot of reading on it all. I am currently reading Permaculture Pioneers which is a selection of short stories from different people who have been involved in the permaculture movement here in Australia. I have also ordered some books as a Christmas present to me. We (well me really)will be doing lots of study so that when we design the NZ property we so so with permaculture.
ReplyDeleteYou really do a lot of research, and there is a lot of good information out there. thank you for making available all that information. I wondered if you had seen the BBC series that Kate posted about: http://vegetablevagabond.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/a-farm-for-future.html I am not sure if you follow Kate or not, but she often posts very interesting things. I loved the way she talked about how many different types of grasses there are.
ReplyDeleteThis is a wonderful post! We too have been focusing on pasture establishment and management. I feel it's part of our land stewardship. Alas we have no tractor, but I am looking forward to spending time ready all your blog links.
ReplyDeletethanks everyone. There is so much to learn, I like to record it for all to read and comment, then we can learn together....
ReplyDelete