Eight Acres

Windmills were once ubiquitous in the rural landscape, but you might have noticed something new appearing in their place. Increasingly farmers are choosing to replace old windmills and equip new bores and dams with solar panels instead. Like windmills, solar panels use renewable energy and have very low running costs. Solar panels and pumps, however, are now cheaper to set up and to maintain, giving them the advantage over windmills for remote applications. Even where access to grid electricity is available, with increasing electricity prices, the use of a free energy source is desirable. And they are far more practical than diesel or petrol pumps which must be attended regularly for starting, stopping, maintaining and refuelling.    The disadvantage of a solar pump, like a windmill, is that the power source is not always available on demand. A windmill will only pump water while the wind is blowing, and similarly, solar panels will only power a pump while the sun ...

When we moved our new old house to Cheslyn Rise last year, the one thing that the removalist would not do was replace the external stairs. At first I wondered why, but when the house was settled in its new location, it was obvious that the old stairs were the wrong height! The thing with a removal house, is that it generally gets set up differently in its new location, different orientation, different height, so it needs different stairs. We had thought of just modifying the old stairs, but they were in terrible condition, quite rotten, which is another reason the removalist would not want to reinstate them. The house in its original condition - the old ramp More original house - old wooden stairs For several months we had a house perched about a metre above the ground with no stairs! The poor plumbers and electricians had to climb in and out of the doors until we had a chance to build the stairs. It took us a while to get the stairs organised because we are hopeless...

We have only owned our farm since March 2012 and I think I’ve figured out the problem with farming already. The problem is that the most crucial input, the weather, is completely out of the farmer’s control! Not only that, it seems to be impossible to predict accurately. Some years will be average, some will be amazing and some will be awful, and you never know what you’re going to get, but you need to always plan for the worst. Sometimes I wish we could just pool our money and buy some rain, but of course, it’s the one thing that we can’t buy. Our largest dam We made two mistakes this year, and we are determined to learn from them and become better at managing our farm. The first thing we did wrong was overstock our property. We knew we had too many cattle, but at first we had an awful lot of excess grass, so it seemed like a good way to clear the property and find out where all the stumps and logs were lurking in the long grass. Also the Brafords were doing a great j...

When we bought Cheslyn Rise, we thought we had purchased a property with a really good, solid set of wooden cattle yards.  It wasn't until we worked the cattle in the yards a few times that we realised there were a few problems with the layout.  It is very important to have yards that are easy to work in, this leads to less stress for the cattle and the people, and makes the whole exercise safer. Our new and old yards The previous owner told us that he built the smaller wing of the yards first, and then he decided to add the larger wing.  He has built some nice solid yards, but the layout isn't ideal.  The result was the following issues: The race is up the middle of the yards, so there is no safe place for people to stand while working in the yards The large yard was too big, the cattle just circle the yard and don't go where you want them to go The only way to get the cattle into the race was to drive them across the race from the large yard to the small ...

Back in December we bought a house .  Not a house and land, just a house that someone didn't want on their land any more.  The house is a "Queenslander" style, which means its up on stumps to keep out the snakes, termites and flood waters, and it once had a wrap-around veranda, which is now half built-in, but still very generous.  The original parts of the house are probably nearly 100 years old, with some parts added in the 1980s (and already tested negative for asbestos, phew!). It has taken SEVEN months to organise all the council paperwork and for the removalists to be ready, but our house finally moved this week! Half of the house on the truck ready to move The first half coming down our road around 3am The first half in the house yard The second half still on the truck The removalist just has to put the roof back on and stump the house.  Then all we have to do is connect power, install rainwater tanks and septic system, replace the roof,...

A concept that is mentioned frequently in permaculture is “keyline”. I started reading about it when I reviewed “ catch and store energy ”, but I got stuck, and now that I’m up to “ design from patterns to detail ”, I thought that I'd better figure it out. What is keyline? P. A. Yeoman (1904 – 1984) was an Australian engineer and agronomist who lived and worked in New South Wales. He observed how water flowed over the land and developed a system for harnessing water to build soil fertility without chemicals, which he called the keyline system. A keyline plan is developed for a property using the concepts of the keyline system. His ideas are published in four books, three of which are available free online: Yeomans, P. A., The Keyline Plan (1954) Online version Yeomans, P. A., The Challenge of Landscape : the development and practice of keyline , Keyline Pub. Pty., Sydney, (1958). Online version Yeomans, P. A., The City Forest : The Keyline Plan for the Human Envir...

It may seem strange that we bought our herd of Braford cows without knowing much about the breed, but when we decided that we wanted to buy cows, it was more important to us to find a herd of a consistent breed in the local area on a (cattle) tick-free property, than worry about specific breeds.  If we had done all the research at the start and had our heart set on a breed, chances are we would never have found a herd of cows in that particular breed.  When we started looking at the Brafords, we found out a little about the breed and they seemed to be suitable for our property, so we went ahead and bought them. By coincidence, an acquaintance of ours happened to own a book called “The Australian Braford”, which was published by the Australian Braford Society to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of the breed in 1987.  The book details all the early stud breeders and, more importantly, the origins of the breed itself.  I found it absolutely fascinating to find o...

This time of year (spring) we don’t get much rain.  The tropical grass species in our pasture have dried out over winter due to the low temperatures and low rainfall.  They are in a fully mature state, with relatively low protein and mineral content.  The stock feeding on this pasture tend to lose or maintain weight, but rarely gain significant weight.  Now that the temperatures are starting to increase, we are waiting for rain so that the pasture will re-enter its leafy growth stage and provide good quality fodder for the cattle to start getting fat for market. In Queensland, late winter and spring tend to be our dry period, with rain coming in summer. Growth stages of perinneal grasses and legumes ( image source ), note that protein and mineral content decrease with maturity There are several ways to accelerate this process.  Certainly if you leave the dry dead bushes of grass in the pasture, the amount of leafy growth, even when it rains, will be...

I wrote recently about how we were intending to raise steers on Cheslyn Rise with a long term plan to buy a herd of cows to breed cattle, so that we weren't tied to buying and selling through the sale yards.  We were on the look out for a suitable herd, but never expected to find them so quickly!  We are quite picky, we wanted to buy an established herd of about 20 cows that had been together for a few years, they had to be all one breed, and a breed that was suitable for our property, and they were preferably from a cattle tick-free area, so that we didn't have to pay to have them inspected for ticks. Farmer Pete had been looking on farmstock for cattle, just to keep an eye on prices, when he found a herd of about 20 Braford cows and calves for sale near Wondai, which is tick-free.  So off we went to have a look at the herd.  The owner wasn't actually sure how many cows were there (and they are very difficult to count, as they don't stand still).  Ev...