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Straw Bales
Last summer we ordered the straw bales for this years building courses and the weather as ever decides when crops will be cut and harvested, this lead to the farming neighbour who was baling the well compacted small bales for us ringing in the middle of our July 2013 Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) course. Teaching all day and helping with the cooking in the evenings leaves little time to go and collect bales, but they could not be left in the field to be rained on so collect them we did. The bales had been left in small piles around a single sloping field just off the main road so…
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New Greenhouse
Last year was our worst growing season in nine years on this site, the spring never really arrived, instead we had cold wet weather well in to June. Our first sowing of sweet corn, hemp and wheat all rotted in the ground and had to be re-sown for what turned out to be a poor crop anyway. This made us take a long considered review of our system and in particular how we could mitigate this situation if it repeated again in the future. Given our changing weather patterns it seam only logical we will experience such problems with increasing regularity well in to the future. Then on a visit…
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Meat
Preparing for this summers building and design courses and the rest of our homevour year we have recently slaughtered a calf Casta (castania sativa) was ten months old and still feeding from his mother the day he went to the abattoir. He had never eaten anything but milk, grass and hay and had access to the outdoors for his entire life, he had never been given drugs or vaccines of any description. This regime makes his meat the best domesticated food available on the planet today. There are many reasons Fiona and I still eat meat and here are just a few. Meat is a valuable part of the natural…
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Farm Transport
Our new farm transport and work horse, we have not used our old grey Ferguson tractor on site for a couple of years now, its sat round idle and a little neglected. This is mostly due to our disdain for the compaction it causes and of course the high level of pollution from what is a very inefficient vehicle. But we still have some heavy things which need to be moved around the farm and certain heavy mechanical operations which we could use some form motor assisted machine to achieve. So to that end we have purchased a second-hand garden tractor or walk behind tractor to aid with the heavy…
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New Forge
New? I have collected the three main tools you can see here over the last four years and they are all pre owned and well used but they are new to me. The hearth is a French make with a manually cranked blower, I’m told its a farriers hearth, this came my way for free it was unused in a neighbours workshop. The anvil I purchased through a national French website for for classified adverts, it came from a farm about 10 kilometres away. The swage block I recently purchased from Ebay in the UK and had it bought over by a courier. These and some hand tools I’ve purchased…
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First New Tools
Today I received the first delivery of new specialist tools for our upcoming summer of natural building courses. While I already own some of these tools and other tools will be made on site some will be purchased so every student has the tools needed to hand. With six students already booked on the may course and rising interest showing on the website we anticipate full attendance for all our summer courses, which means we will need plenty of tools. So here is a quick review of the new tools and the supplier. I have used Fine Tools to purchase this batch and another already ordered, I am not so…
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Permaculture Principals Poem
Permaculture, “Observe & interact” I will dare say you can call it a fact that “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” “catch and store energy” without looking over your shoulder. “Make hay while the sun shines” & “Obtain a yield” “You can’t work on an empty stomach” a whole day on the field. You’ll have to “apply self regulation & accept feedback” If you don’t our presence will end up in a blow back. “The sins of the father are visited on the children into the seventh generation” It is time for mankind to bring forth a peaceful revolution. “Use and value renewable resources & services” “Let nature…
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Free food
This post is inspired by a couple of recent events, one was a conversation on the telephone with someone enquiring about volunteering here, I explained we no longer offer volunteering we have now moved to “work stay” opportunities. Firstly let me explain how much we value the former volunteers we have had come here and offer their labour in exchange for food ,lodgings and learning opportunities. We have even found some life long friends who we care for very much, have been to their weddings visited in their homes and invited them to share our lives on return visits without expecting anything other than company. Then there are the volunteers…
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New Calf, Casta
Friday 19th April 2013 saw the birth of a beautiful new calf “Castanea Sativa” Casta for short as is customary for us he is named after part of his food system and the first letter of his name is the same as his mothers Camomile. Camomile gave birth to two calves a first for us but as Fiona and I were away teaching the last day of a permaculture course in the Morvan France we were not here to attend to any complications. The first born calf died of asphyxiation due to inhaling embryotic fluid a common complication during birth, our neighbours who were keeping an eye on Camomile found here in time to aid…
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Financial security and Trolls
I have a troll and no you can’t have him he is my troll I find him entertaining, both his inability to understand English and how that leads to his misunderstanding and that he bothers to vent his misunderstanding so venomously and in such poor English. I wanted to break down certain element of a previous post called “success in tough times” in which I state we have “financial security and independence” I hope no one else other than my troll thought this meant we were “financially independent” we are financially secure and I will explain what I mean by this. We are also independent of needing to buy…
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