Our property is in Kumbia in the South Burnett region of Queensland Australia. The climate is sub-tropical, we get hot summers, which can be very dry or very wet. We have cold winters and can have frost at times. As we are relatively close to the equator, day length does not change much - in Summer it gets light around 5am and dark at 630pm, in Winter its more like 6am and 530pm respectively.
I'm still learning what grows well here and a lot of things have been a bit backwards, for example, Winter is the season for strawberries! Here's a bit of info about about climate:
Spring - warm days and cool nights, minimal pests, so a good time to get plants established
Harvest silverbeet, mustard greens, spring onions and broccoli, herbs start regrowing
Start planting seeds and seedlings for summer!
Summer - hot and humid, slugs and powdery mildew are a problem, but if plants get established in Spring and are nice and strong they can survive and produce well
Autumn - still warm, but nights cooling off again, time to prepare for winter frosts and bring in the last of the summer harvest, time to plant winter crops including:
peas, brasicas and root crops
Winter - expect heavy frosts, nothing tender will survive to be eaten, put effort into silverbeet, brasicas and root crops, watch out for bandicoots!
I do try to follow organic principles where possible and my two best allies for adding fertility are mulch and compost/weed teas. More on compost here. And I have a worm farm.
Very soon this blogspot address will automatically redirect to the new Eight Acres site, but in the meantime, you can check it out here . You will find all my soaps, ebooks and beeswax/honey products there, as well as the blog (needs a tidy up, but its all there!). I will be gradually updating all my social media links and updating and sharing blog posts over the next few months. I'm very excited to share this new website with you!
Its been cold this month, and very nice to have the fire going every night. Here's a photo of my boy in his cape, great for late night woofing at things. Most of July we were either preparing for the butcher to come or putting meat away. Its always a big job, but its only once a year, and its all done now. My lovely neighbour came over to help, so it was fun to have the company and work together. Taz was a champion once again as she helped us to move cattle in the yards ready to load for the market. Gus is not at that level yet and had to stay home (he cries when he gets left behind, but he just gets in the way and scatters the cattle). We have had a few sprinkles of rain here and there, but also plenty of cold nights, so the grass is mostly dead and dry, waiting for the warmer weather to revive our summer-active pasture. Gus in his cape Taz after she helped to move cattle Food and cooking It was all about beef in July and we are v...
Sign up for my weekly email updates here , you will find out more about soap and our farmlife, straight to your inbox, never miss a post! New soap website and shop opening soon.... For some reason I've always thought that making soap seemed too hard. For a start the number of ingredients required was confusing and all the safety warnings about using the alkali put me off. The worst part for me was that most of the ingredients had to be purchased, and some even imported (palm oil and coconut oil), which never seemed very self-sufficient. I can definitely see the benefits of using homemade soap instead of mass produced soap (that often contains synthetic fragrance, colour, preservatives, and has had the glycerine removed), but it seemed to me that if I was going to buy all the ingredients I may as well just buy the soap and save myself all the hassle. For the past several years I have bought homemade soap from various market stalls and websites, and that...