SUN SETTING ON PAPER BEANS

Chook rotation garden plans for different seasons

Watercolour garden plans

Close up of watercolour garden plan

2012 garden diary on homemade paper

Watercolour bean thank you letter

Watercolour calendar garden task list

 

The perfect summer weather is mocking me while I work, the upstairs study becomes a hot house, while I dream of being at the beach! This, my friends, is a lesson on the importance of passive solar design and insulation!

I have been wickedly slack with a hard drive full of Christmas photos to put up, but it’s funny how delightful things become a chore when there is an overwhelming number to go through and edit. Just wait until I have to clean my room or do something productive and I shall fill your lives with beach and Gracie dog and a little bit of David Holmgren too.

In the meantime I have been catching up on my thank you notes and garden diary. It’s amazing how much less work I’ve had to put into it since the Permablitz, when we had the chook rotation, the planning that had to go into the beds and planting and harvesting just at the right time was ridiculous. I’m all for the new chickens roaming the orchard in winter thing, now if only they could learn how to use their new Red Comb Chook Feeder…

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THANK YOU MY FINNED FRIEND

Fishing off the rocks at the beach, Grey River, the Otways

Dylan catching his first and only fish of the day at the beach, Grey River, the Otways

tom spearfishing at the beach, Grey River, the Otways
Tom cleaning the fish at the beach, Grey River, the Otways

Our catch at the beach, Grey River, the Otways

Shelling broad beans at the beach, Grey River, the Otways

Broad beans at the beach, Grey River, the Otways

Fishing and trying to avoid snags at the beach, Grey River, the Otways

Sitting and fishing at the beach, Grey River, the Otways

Little penguin on the beach, Grey River, the Otways

 

We started reducing the amount of meat we ate during our Permaculture course, how could we not after learning about how unsustainable it is and unnecessary? Humans have evolved as omnivores so I’m not about to tell people who love meat they shouldn’t eat it, I don’t think it is unnatural to do so, but we definitely didn’t evolve eating it everyday, perhaps once a week. It was a special thing which involved a lot of skill in tracking and hunting, the animals were not on a production line, they were revered and every part of them from skin to horn were used, nothing was wasted.

We decided to eat only wild meats, ones that would otherwise be a waste product of culling. But slowly becoming more awake to the implications of what I eat, I came to a conclusion…I should only eat what I would be willing to kill myself, with my two hands, no more little styrofoam trays!

After this decision, I realised I didn’t have much of a stomach for such things, the list of meats dwindled to birds and fish. It came to a head when our housemate wanted to hatch a dozen Bantams and kill and eat the roosters. I quietly and shamefully sobbed into my pillow that night and realised afterward I could not eat chicken anymore, so I became a pescatarian. (Of course if you are going to eat chicken my housemates approach was perfectly right, on a farm the extra roosters would to be dispatched, often without being eaten at all.) Then one night I had a nightmare that I had a fish in my hands and it was wriggling and I knew I shouldn’t just let it drown in air, but I just couldn’t deal the fatal stroke . The next time I ate fish I had this niggling guilt, I had to go fishing and see if I could do it before I could eat fish again.

That is how rod in hand (and spear for our British friend) we came to be at the beach fishing off the rocks. Surprisingly the first cast we got, was not what we at first thought was a snag, but a healthy sized fish, and … it was fine. But it did make me more aware of the idea that even eating a fish you have caught yourself is taking a life and it shouldn’t be done too lightly. I am happy to stick to just eating fish that we had caught ourselves. It seems unnecessary to eat it more than that. Meanwhile, is it me or is the average vegetarian food often more gourmet tasting than the usual meat and three veg? There are so many delicious subtle flavours!

Oh I guess I should make mention of the shelling of broad beans on the beach, it can be tedious shelling them so why not get little sun at the same time. On the way back home, catch in hand we spotted a little penguin who had obviously taken a wrong turn and needed a little rest on the rocks before heading to more familiar waters.

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THE FLEMINGTON PERMABLITZ PART 3 – FROM WATERCOLOUR TO REALITY

Watercolour plan of the espalier orchard and chook yard

Aligning the posts for the espalier orchard/chook yard at the Flemington Permablitz

Laying barbed wire in the earthbag garden bed wall at the Flemington Permablitz

Watercolour plan of the earth oven

Filling the earthbags, scoria and shadecloth laid on bottom of raised garden bed for drainage at the Flemington Permablitz

Felix levelling the scoria for drainage of the raised garden beds at the Flemington Permablitz

Kids rendering the earthbags at the Flemington Permablitz

Watercolour plan of the food forest

Mark mixing the earthen plaster to render the earthbag garden bed at the Flemington Permablitz

Rendering the earthbag garden bed walls at the Flemington Permablitz

Aerial of the garden after the permablitz, Flemington

Watercolour plan of the Flemington Sharehouse Garden

We called an armistice with the sky while we dropped shovels for lunch. The Blitzers made use of the newly constructed garden walls to gather around while we explained the design.

 

The raised earthbag garden beds form our Zone 1, the part of the garden we visit everyday. We were inspired by one of our Permaculture tutors who shared his garden responsibilities with his housemates by allocating each one a plot and a plant family to look after. This was so very appealing after oh so many days last year where we were late to work trying to get everything watered and sheltered in preparation for a particularly brutally hot day. So the annual beds are divided into four for a four year crop rotation so each housemate has a little piece of land all of their own and are assured of the purity of their seed saving (no more fights over contaminated brassica seeds, haha no we really are more civilised than that). Everyone seems pretty keen to get involved, even our housemates who have never grown a lettuce before (let’s home Melbourne’s climate is kind to them, she can be cruel).

The two “ribbons” of beds are thread so there is a path around the edge for a quick sandwich harvest before work with a more direct root down the centre to the woodpile/worm farm. The bags are at two different seating heights so kids, giants and the vertically challenged alike can find a nice sheltered place to soak in the sun or have a chat. The earth oven is the highlight of Zone 1, but will have to wait until after the Blitz to roar into life, as the rain just won’t let us make the sand mould! It is sheltered from the ghastly flats next door by the big tree, which brings us to Zone 2.

Despite the shade we are trying our best to grow a Food Forest to the West to block out the overlookers with Avocados and Tagasaste. Only time will tell how successful we can be. The Orchard to the east is where we will grow crops like corn between espalier trees, and maybe even our dream of a banana. (It can be done in Melbourne!) In summer the chooks, on the border of Zone 1 and 2 will doze in the shade of the shed and in winter when it is colder they will free range through the orchard after the corn has been harvested and reinvigerate the earth. And so that is how we have tried to make each area have multiple uses: the annual garden beds/seating & entertaining area, the food forest/neighbour shade and the orchard/chicken range.

 

And so the Blitzers went back to work, so keen that many stayed well after wrap up time and could’nt be pried from earthbag or rendering glove until after 6. The children in particular were so full of beans that when an exhausted father asked hopefully if they were ready to go they answered a definitive “NO” and he trudged defeated to the couch for a nap. As people started drifting away the transformation truely sunk in, it had taken us weeks to build the first two beds and in only a day the Blitzers had almost finished the remaining two, plus the posts in the orchard, a wicking bed and some rendering to top it all off.

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