Posts about our farm in 2013

The farm is a constant source of entertainment and learning for us. We try to view it as a hobby and wonder what else we would do on our weekends if we didn't have fields to plough, cattle to chase and fences to mend! Of course our long term plan is to only have one farm, but we currently have our Eight Acre property (for which this blog was named) and our 258 A property (which is sadly still a hobby farm! 8 acres becomes 258 acres). I hope by sharing some of our experiences here, new hobby farmers don't make the same mistakes that we did, and more seasoned farmers might pick up some of our ideas that work and use them for themselves to improve the sustainability and viability of their farms.

No matter what size farm you have, you will relate to this post: The truth about farming

And if you do have a small farm, here's some ideas for you: What to do with eight acres

We strongly belive that farming can only be profitable and enjoyable if it is sustainable and that current practices based on chemical fertilisers, monocultures and herbicides/pesticides are not sustainable in the long term. While I don't have the answer for you yet, I think I am looking in the right places! I think that permaculture, organic farming, biological agriculture, and the teachings of Joel Salatin and Peter Andrews are a good place to start, and we then have to work to adapt what works on our own property.

Permaculture:

Discovering Permaculture

Permaculture - Observe and Interact
Permaculture - Catch and Store Energy
Permaculture - Obtain a yield
Permaculture - Self-regulation
Permaculture - Use renewable resources
Permaculture - Produce no waste
Permaculture - design from patterns to details
Permaculture - Integrate rather than segregate
Permaculture - use small and slow solutions
Permaculture - Use and Value Diversity
Permaculture - Use edges and value the marginal
Permaculture - Creatively Use and Respond to Change

Hybrid hugelkultur
Hugelkultur update
Planning our property - Keyline design
Perennial plants and trees - a food forest

Organic farming from the consumer's point of view:
Why choose organic produce?

Biological agriculture as a transition to organic farming:
Biological agriculture - a transition to organic f...
Biological farming - mineral management
Making use of microbes in the soil

Mentors:
Natural Sequence Farming - using Peter Andrews' me...
Joel Salatin - adapting Polyface farming method

And then to some more practical matters, we seems to spend a lot of time with fences! Either checking and fixing barbed wire fences or setting up electric fences and changing batteries...

Checking the fences
Shocking tactics! Confessions of an electric fence...
Electric fencing for beginners
Splitting up paddocks for intensive grazing

We also have spent a lot of time trying to grow forage for hay and realised two things, it is cheaper to buy hay from a farmer who knows what he's doing and we'd rather be growing a perennial pasture than ploughing. Here are a few thoughts on pasture, forage and hay:

Growing forage or perennial pasture
Making hay
Fabricate a round-bale holder at home
Planting forage oats
Forage crops, pasture, hay - isn't it just grass?
Managing pasture - is burning necessary?

And a few other things that you may find useful:

GPS mapping our property
Buying a bigger tractor

Water for stock - setting up a dam pump
Harvesting water for the house and animals
Water for small farms

So that was a bit of a summary of the last year and a bit on our farm, how was your year and what are you planning for next year?

The new Eight Acres website is live!

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!

Chicken tractor guest post

Sign up for my weekly email updates here , you will find out more about chickens, soap and our farmlife, straight to your inbox, never miss a post! New soap website and shop opening soon.... Tanya from Lovely Greens invited me to write a guest post on chicken tractors for her blog. I can't believe how many page views I get for chicken tractors, they seem to be a real area of interest and I hope that the information on my blog has helped people. I find that when I use something everyday, I forget the details that other people may not be aware of, so in this post for Tanya, I tried to just write everything I could think of that I haven't covered in previous posts. I tried to explain everything we do and why, so that people in other locations and situations can figure out how best to use chicken tractors with their own chickens. The dogs like to hang out behind the chicken tractors and eat chicken poo. Dogs are gross! If you want to read more about...

How to make soap with beer (and tallow)

I may have mentioned this before.... soap making is addictive! Once you start, you just want to keep making more soap. And not the same soap, you want to try all sorts of different soaps. I made the mistake of joining a facebook group called Saponification Nation and now my facebook newsfeed is full of glorious soaps, in all colours and shapes, which makes it even harder to resist the urge to experiment. One soap that kept popping up a few weeks ago was soap made with beer. I generally prefer not to use ingredients just for the sake of it, I like to know that they are adding something to the properties of the finished soap. As you know, I don't like to use artificial ingredients either (colours or fragrances). When I read about beer in soap I found out that beer adds sugar to the mixture, which increases lather. I use tallow in my soap, which has limited lather, so anything that adds lather could improve the soap. ...

Eight Acres

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