Last of the new, its skimping and reusing from here on in.

 I do hope to post about individual things in more detail instead of these post that cover lots of things with a few pictures eventually. But we have just been all over the place getting things sorted. We are looking forward to when things can settle into a more regular routine.

These are just a few of the things we have been up to.

We set up an animal shelter. It has alkaline crushed rock base that is good for hooved feet. There is also a drain trench under the gravel to stop it getting too damp under there. We have also spread the gravel around in paddocks and night yards where the ground can get soggy, its a natural way to keep a horses hooves happy.

The sheep like it in there too. DID I MENTION WE HAVE SHEEP! That's a whole other can of worms, I hope to do another post just about them later.

 We now have our solar panels installed. 11 panels plugged into a 2kw inverter. That's more potential in the panels than the inverter can take, but we don't have a north sloping section of roof, so they are unlikely to reach maximum output.

We doubled our water storage from the house. The location for the new tank was pretty obvious. I built a little rock retaining wall and filled it up with more gravel to make it level.

Above you can see Molly sitting behind a fence. That fence is gone now, we have also worked a lot on getting the bigger fence around to top part of the property dog proof, so now Molly has a much larger space to run around in.

 Here (below) you can see the new tank in place and the finished solar panels. Also you can see I have several more garden beds in now.

We have also put a new electric oven in the kitchen, put in electric fencing for the horse (mostly Vicki on that), I've planted quite a few more trees (8 in the food forest now), cleared more grass out the front of the property and I've made a little progress on the chook pen (hopefully I can finish it before the Nanango markets next Saturday, because I'd love to buy some chooks).

And that's about it for the money left over from selling our old house in the suburbs. We didn't do too bad managing the money. I feel that pretty much everything was spent on things that are a long term investment, hopefully paying for themselves eventually. There were a few things in the garden, kitchen and with the fencing we have not quite managed out of the money. But on the whole we are happy. So now its down to getting serious about being frugal.

Lastly a tip for country living..... check inside your boots before putting them on.... pew it must smell down there :P

Bob, Jack and planting TREES!

Yesterday I got to start doing something great a little sooner than I thought I would. PLANT TREES! And I thought I'd share how I came to be doing this.

One of the first locals we got to know here in Nanango was an old bloke name Bob, he is mostly retired but restores wood ovens and sells them on Ebay as a hobby. We bought our stove from him before we even moved into our new place and he kept it in his shed for us until we were ready for it. He and his wife Elaine are really nice people, Bob is a real character, bubbling away with passionate political views and an opinion on everything.

When Bob learned I was into gardening he said he would take me to meet a friend of his who knows a lot about what was best to grow around here. I thought it was the kind of flippant thing you say to someone and never plan to follow through on, but then the other day Bob calls me up and takes me out to see Jack.

Jack had 30 acres a ways out of town on the edge of the forestry, he was a generous gardening guru. Within seconds it became clear we were on the same page, we talked about the importance of staying organic and working with natural systems, and the good feeling from a days work in the garden.  "I hope you're ready for hard work Ian, ya can't be homesteadin and be afraid of hard work. Bob and I are 60 years old and still going."

Then we started a tour of his vegie garden and orchard, I had a note pad and started writing down plant names. Hardly anything was the kind of thing you'd find in the supermarket, there were Cherimoya Custard Apples, White Sapote, Cherry Guava, Feijoa Trees, Jaboticaba and on and on. Jack was plucking fruit from the trees as we walkad and passing it to me to sample, everything was delicious. 

As we walked Jack would drift effortlessly from details on planting, to saving water, to quoting George Washington (who described the Cherimoya as, "the fruit of the gods") and Greek philosophers, to jam preparation and propagation. I was loving every second of it, and then it got even better because Jack started giving me stuff. I came home with 4 plants, and seeds for Asparagus and Carob Trees. Jack and his wife Liege were generous to a fault, and invited Vicki and I back to visit again soon.

So now I had some planting to do. I had already earmarked a spot for my Orchard/Food Forest, its down the hill a ways, where the water runs down towards the neighbours dam. It is a bit further away from the house than I would like, but fitting in around animal paddocks and following where the water was going ended up being stronger factors. 

The site.

Man I'm getting good at digging holes I tell ya, 

I think I've dug more in the last month or so than in my whole life before.

The trees, some manure and some compost tea.

My supervisor stopped by :P

I also planted a couple of mulberry cutting from my dad further down the hill the other day, that makes 5 trees in the ground so far. The one remaining plant I brought back from jacks is a Monstera Deliciosa, it needs to be planted up against some rocks or a tree trunk, I'm going to think about where I want it a bit longer before putting it in.

YAY FOR TREES!

The "Real" world interrupts, but we're not listening.

We have been very busy over the last few weeks getting our little farm set up. The biggest job has been fencing. With the horse and sheep on the way we need dog proof night paddocks and if we want the grass to survive in them there needs to be enough to allow some rotation and resting time for each one. The fencing is hard yakka, aching muscles are the order of the day, but for now I'm still enjoying the manual work.

Meanwhile there have been some rumblings along the few remaining links we have with the world of commerce. Vicki has had her hours reduced and it seems questions are being asked about my teaching hours by senior bean counters at the Tafe. It has been another year of disappointingly low enrolment numbers in the course I teach for. There is no malice, mistreatment or hostility involved at any point, its just the way these things go, a familiar pattern where budgets (people) are inevitably squeezed. Both Vicki and I are blessed with having great people to work with, when there is work.

So what does this mean?

Well in the short term not much, in both cases it is factors beyond our control that will take time to sort themselves out, and it could all amount to nothing. My work at the Tafe in particular seems to be under some kind of threat constantly and yet still keeps kicking along year after year (so far). So there is no point rushing off in a panic until things become clearer.

That said, I can't help but muse about what I might do if these jobs disappear. There are definitely no art jobs to speak off out this way. I have noticed there is no art education either (Tafe, Uni, etc), maybe I could put some signs up on noticeboards (noticeboards are a big deal in the country :P ) offering tuition for kids or something. We will be going to the local markets for the first time in about a week and I'm keen to see if there are any opportunities there. The Nanango markets are quite big, and almost every local I talk to goes to them. I don't really want to run a stall or anything, but I'm wondering if there are already people selling art, then they might be willing to sell some of ours as well on commission.

Then there is also the possibility that I walk away from commercial art completely. If so then I'd like to do something where I'm helping people and can feel good about my contribution at the end of the day. One thing you notice in the country is a much higher percentage of older folk, maybe I can get some work doing home help or similar, conveniently it also seems to be an area where they are often short staffed and looking for new employees.

For now though its just a case of steady as she goes. We only have meagre requirements for living. We also have more money set aside to spend on the farm set up. It feels counter intuitive to be spending large amounts of money when your income is shaky, but we just have to make sure the spending is focused on things that will save us money in the long run.

I suppose we could be moaning about this and crying something like, "Why now just after we moved?!?" But the truth is we feel more like, "Phew, at least we managed to move before this happened." If we were still in the suburbs this could have so easily become an excuse for procrastination. But we know from long experience that hanging out for some time when everything is stable and you have lots of money while working in commercial art is a fools errand. We are here now, we love it here, and we are going to make it work.

First Post from the homestead

All right! Now its down to business! This is actually what I mostly set this blog up for, I just didn't think it would take so long to get here. But boy howdy was it worth it. I'm so happy. I may just be happier than I've ever been in my life. I'm springing out of bed at dawn and loving every second of the day, even the ditch digging and heavy lifting :P

So A bit of an over view of our first couple of weeks.

Our house is near the front of the block, but still about 40 meters from a generally quiet road thanks to a wide bush covered council strip. We will have to cut back some of the long grass out there because of fire danger, but not too much because it is bursting with bird life and we don't want to mess with that too much. Apart from being beautiful to have around many of those birds will be my pest control once the vegie patch is going. I've cleared a little patch already and I've gradually work my way through some of it (the stuff closer to the house), planting a few things in place of the grass. Stuff like Lucerne tree which is a nitrogen fixing legume and can form a fire resistant hedge.

The view from our front deck. The road is up there somewhere.

Out the back is 5 acres of pure bliss that gradually slopes away from the house. Its regularly populated by as many as 17 grey kangaroos.

The house is small, low tech for now, cheaply made and simple. Our biggest problem has been fitting everything in. Our last house had 11 rooms, this new one only has 5 so its a tight squeeze, but 5 rooms is far more appropriate for 2 people. The house has no oven which is odd, a new one is on the way as well as a new more energy efficient fridge, the old one will become my worm farm. We have ordered a 2 kilowatt solar system too, it should produce a little more energy than we use.

 

Our main living area just after moving, where are we gona put all that!!??!!

Just a few days after we arrived so did Archie our horse. Much of our time and energy (especially Vicki's) has been spent working on fencing for him. Electric fences and dog proof netting for night time safe paddocks.  We still have more to go on that. Vicki is so happy to finally be living with her favourite boy (well after me I hope :P) close by. 

Archie in his shelter.

Vicki and Archie kicking back.

Molly the dog has had a clip to make it easier to check for ticks and keep seeds off her coat. She is settling in just fine, like most dogs she is happy as long as we are close by.

Molly with a small country bone.

There has been a lot of digging since we arrived, and its given me a good chance to look at the soils. Pretty much every where it has a deep red colour, which I think means its volcanic. Its soft and even when I dig down several feet there is very little clay. So its maybe a little sandy, but I can still just squeeze it into solid ball, so its holding onto some moisture. A neighbour has told me it can set hard after a long dry spell.

A trench I was digging to run an electrical cable for the fence under a gate.

Now I'm not too worried about the soil being sandy because a good permaculturalist doesn't exploit the soil anyway. I plan to be making soil non stop from now on, composting is to the garden/farm what bread making is to the kitchen. Just a few days after Archie arrived (that is when I had enough horse poo) I made my first compost pile. Since then I have started a second.

Next was to get my first garden bed set up. There was much deliberation and nashing of teeth to decide on the location for the vegie garden. At first I planned to put it where the driveway loops around to allow people to drive out of the property without reversing, but it soon became obvious that it was just too practical a function to discard when there was so many other places the vegies could go. I did a lot of thinking about where the water would flow across the property, where the sun was going to be, what areas were exposed to pests etc. The problem was that with each new factor I took into consideration I was getting further away from the house. According to the permaculture basic principles the vegies should be in zone 1 very close to the house, because it requires daily attention. So eventually I flipped back in the other direction and decided to literally put it right out side the front door in the lawn space between the house and front fence (I hate lawn anyway). 

I pretty much followed Geof Lawnton's (7 time sop box derby champion) guide to a raised bed.

First a layer of manure. If you are wondering why it isn't lined up with the fence, that's because it follows the contour of the land so it catches maximum water.

Then a layer of cardboard and newspaper, reusing stuff left over from the move.

 Then a thick layer of  grassy straw. We got the property slashed just before moving in so the paddocks are full of straw laying around on the ground. Molly says, "something under there smells good!"

Now when the compost is ready, its just a matter of making a small hole or well in the straw, punching some holes in the cardboard at the bottom, filling the well with compost and planting directly into it. 

Next up, what to plant. Some seeds need to be planted directly into the bed, so they will have to wait till the compost is ready. But some other things need to be raised in seed beds first. Eventually I will look after the seedlings around the back of the house, but until we set up some kind of shade out there (A tale for another day) I have set up this temporary table out the front. Its more than half herbs and companion plants so far, I'm hoping to do pest control without any inorganic sprays.

Lastly, I've just started planning out the hen house. Not much to look at for now, but give me a couple more days :) More holes to dig.

My first impressions of farming life are that its like being a kid again in many ways. Suddenly much of my time seems to be filled with things I was warned away from as I grew up. Playing with electricity for the fence, slashing the long grass where the could be snakes, cutting things down, nailing things together. Its like your property becomes your very own club house, reminiscent of when you found a great tree in the scrub with some friends as a kid and decided to make it into a place to set up a fort.

The weather is key in everything you do, that's why country people are obsessed with rain. On hot days you start early, hide indoors through the mid day doing things you would normally do in the evening, then back out in the last couple of hours light till its to dark to continue. Then eat and fall into bed exhausted. Sleep like a log.

Your legs have a honest ache at the end of the day, you can look around you and see physical evidence of where your effort went that day, its simply how life is meant to be :)

In Theory..... eeer well time will tell.

One of the bizarre things about the way this whole moving to the country thing is panning out is that I have had way to long to think about the things I might do once I get there without being able to test anything in practice. For over a year now I've been scouring the internet about all manner of things, preserving fruit, working with PVC pipe, building with old shipping palates, creating a ventilated pantry, turning an old fridge into a dehydrator, irrigation systems, composting, killing chickens, raising sheep, fencing, building a geodesic dome, growing fodder crops, making a dam, using a sun oven etc etc. There is no way I can actually remember everything I have learned about.

Sometimes when I have an idea I jump on the computer and make a 3d model. That may seem a bit odd, but like I said I can't do anything in practice for now (only a couple of weeks to left to wait!) and I am an animator :P

So I thought I'd put up some images of the sorts of things I've been doing, not because these are locking plans, more because I think it will be interesting in the future to look back and see the difference between these ideas and what I actually ended up doing. In reality I will be working with the limited materials and funds at my disposal, scrounging and foraging for materials when I can. Responding creatively to change is one of the principles of permaculture after all :)

Its also worth noting that we don't actually own the house yet, until the 12th of December, and while everything seems in order, you never know 100% for sure. If the sale or purchase falls through for any reason we will be taking a few steps back.

First up is some experiments with shade sails on the back of the house which faces west and will get the afternoon sun. I have tried to simulate the angle of the sun in the afternoon, I've taken into account the latitude for this part of the world, the slop of the land and based to direction of the house on google maps.

Initially I has hoped the sails could slop back towards the house so that we could catch some of the water from them in the water tank, but as you can see in the first example here this will significantly reduce the shade on the back of the house. In permaculture everything should be able to justify its self in more than one way so I will have to look into some ways of catching the water from the front of the sails, maybe if it slopes towards the outer corners I can make something up.

Next up is an idea for a mobile chicken coop.

Its on wheels so I can move it into the sun in winter and the shade in summer, the floor would be made out of fine wire so I can park it over areas I want to fertilise, even over veggie beds and (in theory) their dropping and scraps would fall through. It would not be my intention that the chooks are in there all the time, but I will have to be careful about when I leave them out to free range because there are wild dogs, fox's and hawks in the area.

On the end of the house is a fold up cage, so during the day even when I'm not keeping a close eye on them they can still get out and stretch their legs in relative safety. this could be a separate piece if its not practical to attach it to the side.

Lastly is the plan for the vegie garden beds, I'm particularly proud of this one. A few other principles of Permaculture is to work from patterns to detail, and to exploit edges. These things clicked together for me when I was watching a documentary on fractals the other day, these are mathematical equations that exist all around us in nature (apologies to any mathematicians reading for my inept definition :P) and the create repetitions in scale (ie patterns). I wanted a design that would capture the water running off the driveway at the property, and was wondering if there would be some kind of fractal design that would help me achieve this. 

 Sloping driveways are great for catching water, or so I've read, so I want to exploit that. The individual small rounded beds should be easy enough to protect with wire and netting when necessary using wire and netting.

This solution dawned on me when I though maybe I should be looking for a design in the paths between the garden beds instead of the beds themselves (the edges). If you look at the paths between the shapes bellow you can see a kind of repeated branching pattern where the path splits into three, the middle path stops and then the two remaining paths start over. If I gradually reduce the width and length of the branches I can create a variety of different sized beds.

The Experiment Continues

I just thought it might be worth noting that it is about a year now that Vicki and I have been living on one day of work each a week. I have had a few freelance jobs, and a 6 week stint filling in for another teacher, but then again I am a casual teacher and don't get paid for school holidays so that kind of balances out. 

We still have our savings in the bank, we have not required or sought any welfare assistance, we have been supporting ourselves, a horse and a dog, and best of all we are as happy as we have ever been. I can't tell you how liberating it is to have the work to live to work model smashed before your eyes. I walk around these days looking at people working their way through a strange parallel dimension. Everything we achieve is made possible by my the co-operation, drive and support of beautiful wife, she rocks :)

While life still has its inevitable ups and downs I am at least free from having my happiness tied to some unattainable work related goal, maybe other readers manage to engage in full time work without this trade off, but for me its never really been an option. I don't do things by halves and always tended to end up emotionally entangled in my work. I still do even with the one day a week of teaching I do, but I find the long periods of time away from the classroom inevitably keep me grounded.

I wonder if others read this (all 2 or 3 of you :P) and tell themselves I'm somehow lucky I can do this, and that for some reason you can not. I suppose one factor is that we don't have a mortgage, but even if we did have one, that could probably be covered if we each worked an extra day or so each a week, so we could still be keeping full time work at bay. Before this situation was forced upon us the changes we are making seemed impossible to us as well.

Next we look ahead to enhancing our lives even further with land, a serious veggie patch and livestock.

Packing

 Well with less than a month to go till the move its time to start packing up this house. Not a pleasant job, but the sooner we get it out of the way the sooner we can focus on out new life.

We also made a purchase for the new house, we drove out to Nanango on Wednesday and bought a wood fire stove from an old guy who restores them.  It was a real interesting day, a taste of things to come perhaps. We were not allowed to just drop in and pay, we were invited in for tea and cake and ended up spend most of the afternoon there. As we had been told would be the case, our first encounter with locals (who were not real estate agents) showed that people are open, giving, and friendly.

Within minutes of meeting us for the first time Bob had offered to lend me his rotary hoe to help get my veggie patch started, amazing. As we thought might happen we do have to be careful when it comes to politics as some country folk can be a little conservative, but its not like they jam things down your throat, there is a distinct live and let live vibe. Having lived in the suburbs for as long as we have it was quite confronting to have strangers open up their lives to us so readily, but it was also a wonderful feeling.

I'm finished teaching for the year so we need to switch to money saving mode, a challenge when we are in the middle of moving and setting up a new home. It will be interesting times. But on the whole we are super excited and very happy, can't wait! :D