Eight Acres

I'm still here!  I just got distracted by making a new soap website and I couldn't decide where to post this.  But I'm not ready to move just yet.  I wanted to show you my pot garden as I've been pleasantly surprised by what I can grow (in winter anyway).  We are going to build a proper garden and set up the aquaponics, but other things need to be done first and meanwhile my pot collection keeps growing every time I go to our monthly share meeting and come home with another herb! Celery, peas, winter savory and parsley I have my collection of pots stacked on my potting table, which is the size of a sheet of mesh - I think its 2m by 3m or so.  And I have more pots underneath.  The worm farms are up top as well.  It seems to be good for the shade-loving plants, like mints, yarrow and strawberries to be down below in the partial shade.  I really like the location, it is between the house and the shed, so every time we go to the shed or to the ...

A tractor with implements is an essential tool for getting work done around the farm (as I recently wrote about here). At Cheslyn Rise, our 258-acre property, we have a 75 HP tractor with front bucket and forklift tynes. We have ploughs, a hay rake, cultivator drill (seeder), an 800 L spray tank and a slasher. At Eight Acres, we only had a tiny 15 HP tractor with a slasher. Often we wish we could use the big tractor there too, but it's just not practical to transport it.  When I write about farm work we’ve done using our big tractor, I usually get questions from readers about how to do these things on a smaller scale, for a hobby farm or lifestyle block, especially our recent pasture seeding, which required two ploughs and the cultivator drill. Until recently, I haven’t had any answers. I think it's an issue that we’ve all experienced, it's hard to justify buying even a small tractor for a small hobby farm, and even if you do buy one (ours is second hand), it'...

I’ve been wanting to try growing mushrooms for some time. I LOVE mushrooms and we buy them from the supermarket every week, so I was keen to find a way to produce them at home to reduce waste and potentially cost as well. A few years ago I found out that you could grow mushrooms from the spent mushroom compost from mushroom farms. So we dropped in to a farm on the Sunshine Coast and picked up a couple of boxes for $2 each. I diligently kept them dark and sprayed them with water, but in our climate, I just couldn’t keep them damp enough (and I had to keep them outside because our shed was too hot). I never managed to produce any mushrooms from those boxes, but when I gave up and tipped the compost out onto the garden, mushrooms sprang up everywhere. I wasn’t confident that they were the right mushrooms though, so I didn’t harvest any of those. As the proverb says, All mushrooms are edible, but some only once! I am generally a bit nervous about unidentified fungi. Since t...

I haven't updated the story of our house cows lately, but its necessary now because Molly, our younger house cow, died a couple of weeks ago.  It was strange because I really thought that we were going to lose Bella first, but she is a resilient old thing, and seems in good health at the moment.  We are not sure what happened to Molly, it was not a long illness, she seemed fine one day and was found dead the next morning.  Anyway, I better start where I finished Part 3 . I wish our pasture looked like THIS all the time! If you need to catch up, you can find Part 1 and Part 2 here. Back in November 2015, we were still milking Molly and not sure what to do with Bella after she lost another calf and had severe mastitis.  We continued to milk Molly once a week, while Charlotte milked her foster mother Bella and Rosey had some of Molly's milk. Bella and Molly Around July 2016 we started to run out of grass at Eight Acres and decided, rather than keep...

I just updated our house cows' story over on my house cow ebook blog.   You can check it out here . Bella with Molly in the background future house cow Charlotte Getting started with homestead dairy Interview with myself Interview with Mark and Kate from Purple Pear Permaculture Interview with Kim from the Little Black Cow Interview with Rose Petal Interview with Marie from Go Milk the Cow Interview with Ohio Farmgirl If you want to know more about house cows, my eBook is now available, for details see my  house cow eBook blog .

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...

I don't have a proper post to write today.   At the moment we are just a bit stunned.  Pete found Molly dead on Monday when he heard her calf bawling.  We don't know what happened to her.  She had starting losing condition due to feeding her calf (we haven't been milking) and we had just put out hay to make sure that everyone was getting enough to eat.   We don't know if there was an underlying condition, or that something else affected her while she was already weak, but she didn't seem deathly ill to me when I chatted to her on Sunday afternoon.  I googled it and there are over 200 causes of sudden death in cattle , so we will probably never know for sure. Her absence is still sinking in.  I've stopped looking for the cow with horns when I do the herd check.  Her calf is, fortunately for us, about 3 months old, so can be weaned as long as he gets enough hay.  He is wild and there is no way to catch him at the moment without making ever...

I know I keep saying that I hate cleaning, but now that we are in our new house, I have more motivation.  Firstly this house is way nicer than our old house, from the colour of the walls (that we chose of course) to the high ceilings and better lighting, I just enjoy being in the house more than ever before.  And I know how much effort went into getting it this nice so I don't want to see it getting dusty and dirty.   Permaculture principle "produce no waste" suggests that timely maintenance prevents wasteful rework and big jobs to fix things that could have taken very little time if they were done earlier.  This helps me to prioritise small cleaning jobs before they turn into big ones. One new thing that we have tried since moving is the ENJO range of cleaning products ( affiliate link ).  You won't find ENJO in your supermarket, its sold by independent consultants, and also available online ( I get a small commission if you use my links) . E...

Sometimes I write about the herbs I've been growing for a long time and use frequently, other time I use these posts as an opportunity to find out more about a new herb.  Feverfew ( Tanacetum parthenium ) is the latter!  I've had it in my garden for a couple of years after a friend gave me a seedling and it has self-seeded, but I haven't known how to use it., so its time to look up the herb books! How to grow feverfew Apparently it is a perennial, it must die back when its too cold or too hot and dry because it disappeared for a while.  It grows from seed or root division or cuttings.  If you let it flower and seed it will self-seed (that's my favourite type of plant!). How to use feverfew The flowers are pretty, however they repel insects including bees, so not one for the bee garden (although can be used as a companion plant around brasiccas to repel cabbage moth etc and the dried leaves can be used to keep moths out of your wardrobe...