Eight Acres

The last few weeks I've been asking bloggers to tell me more about their ducks.  Kim from Oasis Biodynamic Farm volunteered and I'm please to share her story with you today. Kim: “The Oasis” is our 20 acre lifestyle property near Inverell in northern NSW. Since moving here in 2005 we have set about rehabilitating our land, which was once sluiced for tin and in a very degraded condition. We employ permaculture principles and use biodynamic agricultural practices. We rotationally graze Dorper sheep and Highland cattle to maintain and improve ground cover and build soil organic matter which in combination with the above is healing the land on which we live. We believe that a healthy soil leads to healthy food and ultimately to healthier people. In addition to the sheep and cattle we keep chickens for eggs, ducks, and grow as much of our own fruit and vegetables as possible. We have been growing a small crop of garlic for the past three years, but this year drought conditio...

I wanted to know more about ducks, so I've interviewed a few other bloggers who keep ducks.  A couple of weeks ago we heard from Megan , and today I have an interview with Tracy from Sunny Corner Farm . I asked Tracy to tell me a bit about her farm to start with: Tracy: My garden and farm is situated in a very pleasant valley outside of Tamworth, NSW. We have lived here for over 15 years but my heart has been in the area much longer as it is where many of my forebears are from. The climate ranges from hot, dry summers with temperatures reaching into the mid-40s to very cool winters with snow occasionally and frosts often. The garden is quite substantial but I always have ways of extended it in mind. I have an orchard of over 60 fruit trees too. My blog is what I call a no-niche blog, a little bit of everything about our life on a small-holding. The good and the bad. The first ‘livestock’ we kept were a couple of bantam chickens back when we lived in the suburbs of Sy...

You might remember that last year I ran a few series of "getting started", where I interviewed other bloggers about how to get started with homestead/farm things, like a vege garden, chickens and a dairy animal.  I had so much fun with that series, I decided to organise another round, but this time I'm asking about things that I haven't tried personally, that I want to know more about.  After the turkey and the guinea fowl turned out to be so difficult for us to manage they made chickens look smart, I thought it might be a good idea to do a bit more research before we get any other crazy animals.  Even though I do search through blogs for information, sometimes my questions just don't get answered.  So I went straight to the source and asked the questions myself.  I'm starting with ducks, but if this works out ok, I think I'll be doing a series on bee keeping and one on fruit trees.  If you are keen to join in, just send me an email at eight.acres.liz at g...