How to Harvest Honey from Natural Comb
Insects, Processing & Food Preservation — by Milkwood Permaculture January 24, 2012
Once you’ve harvested your natural honeycomb from your Warré (or other kind of top bar) beehive, it’s time to get some of that goodness into jars! Fortunately, like many other aspects of natural beekeeping, getting the honey out of natural comb is easy and simple, once you know how.
We’re just at the start of our beekeeping journey, but still, even though we don’t have whizz-bang equipment, we found this a wonderfully tactile and rewarding experience. It’s pretty much just a case of crushing the comb, sieving it, and bottling the results. 100% organic yum, with all the goodness of the honey still utterly intact.
Comments (11)Michael Reynolds, Earthship Originator, Speaking in Sydney
Building, Courses/Workshops — by Milkwood Permaculture
Guess what? Milkwood are hosting a great evening talk with Michael Reynolds, that world-leading sustainability pioneer of Earthship Biotecture, in Sydney on the 26th Feb. Do you want to come?
Comments (1)Rocket Stove Water Heater Redux
Energy Systems — by Milkwood Permaculture October 31, 2011
Rocket stoves are awesome, experimental, and a knowledge stream in flux. Or ours is, at any rate. Our rocket stove water heater has been doing its thing for nearly three years now, so we decided to take it apart and do a full examination of how it had fared.
So Nick and our current permaculture interns set to work completely dismantling the rocket stove water heater and examining all its components. We made new discoveries and adjustments, put it all back together, and then covered the whole thing with mud.
Comments (4)Milkwood Farm: Summer/Autumn 2012 Permaculture Internships
Courses/Workshops — by Milkwood Permaculture
Do you already have a Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC)? Do you want to progress your skills in permaculture, regenerative agriculture, and the nuts and bolts of creating a permaculture enterprise? Our next round of intensive permaculture design internships at Milkwood Permaculture are open for applications until November 7th!
Comments (0)Introduction to Holistic Management Course with Kirk Gadzia at Milkwood
Animal Forage, Courses/Workshops, Land, Livestock, Rehabilitation, Soil Conservation — by Milkwood Permaculture October 26, 2011
Here’s a quick note about our upcoming Intro to Holistic Management course with Kirk Gadzia that starts on the 1st of November at Milkwood Farm in Mudgee, NSW, Australia.
Having worked side by side with Allan Savory for many years, Kirk knows a thing or two about using herbivores to heal a landscape. What’s more, he’s an amazing teacher, the likes of whom I haven’t yet encountered. So it’s a pretty special opportunity to have him back.
Comments (2)Shifting to Community-Scale Food Thinking
Commercial Farm Projects, Courses/Workshops, Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Land, Markets & Outlets, Plant Systems, Seeds, Village Development — by Milkwood Permaculture July 27, 2011
This week I received all our yearly seed catalogs, and, as usual, started planning feverishly. How many is too many weird and wonderful heirloom watermelon varieties? And then I paused. Wait a minute, we’re aiming for community scale in our vegetable production this year. This shifts the goalposts entirely.
I’m now realizing that, for our organic market garden adventure, we will no longer be focusing on the craziest colored tomatoes. At least for this first year, while we learn the ropes, we will be going for yield and nutritional density as top priority. Pragmatic organic, here we come.
Comments (2)The Greenhorns and Joel Salatin in Gerringong, NSW, Australia
Courses/Workshops — by Milkwood Permaculture July 22, 2011
The night before our workshop with Joel Salatin at Jamberoo, there’s going to be an awesome evening. It’s the Australian premiere of The Greenhorns, a new and funky film on young farmers. And Joel Salatin will be there, slurping soup and talking farming.
The Greenhorns is a great new film we discovered recently and have brought to Australia. It’s made by young farmers, for young farmers, and for young wanna-be farmers. The Greenhorns tells it like it is: farming is hard work, a super worthy cause, and the ultimate in rebellion in the face of our current food system.
Comments (2)Planning Our Organic Market Garden
Food Plants - Annual, Food Plants - Perennial, Nurseries & Propogation — by Milkwood Permaculture June 9, 2011
I never thought we would get excited about, let along plan to do, the whole market garden thing. But while I’m all for no-dig polycultures like our domestic-scale kitchen garden, I’m also a pragmatist.
These days, we need more vegetables than we currently produce, especially from Spring through till Autumn. Way, way more. So I figure we’d better get ourselves into gear and learn how to grow ‘em.
Comments (9)Milkwood Farm: Spring 2011 Internships Applications are Open!
Courses/Workshops — by Milkwood Permaculture
Want to come and get your hands dirty while skilling-up for a future in permaculture and regenerative agriculture? A Milkwood Farm internship might be just the ticket!
Comments (2)Gravity Chicken Run Design
Animal Forage, Animal Housing, Building, Compost, Fencing, Livestock, Plant Systems, Waste Systems & Recycling, Working Animals — by Milkwood Permaculture May 30, 2011
Gravity and chickens are two of our favorite natural forces at Milkwood Farm. Chickens scratch, poo, give eggs and good company, plus a trillion other benefits. Gravity draws things down. Great if you want stuff to end up down the bottom. Which, in the case of our gravity fed chicken house, we do!
Comments (15)Joel Salatin Returns to Australia
Courses/Workshops, Livestock — by Milkwood Permaculture May 25, 2011
We were rather impressed with Joel Salatin when he came to Australia last year. So were one or two other people. Aside from being the most entertaining farmer that we’ve ever met, he’s really onto something. Multiple somethings, even.
Comments (8)Why Pasture Cropping is Such a Big Deal
Animal Forage, Food Plants - Annual, Land, Plant Systems, Rehabilitation, Soil Composition, Soil Conservation, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Structure — by Milkwood Permaculture January 26, 2011
Pasture cropped oats growing in symbiosis with
native perennial pastures at Col Seis’s farm
Grain cropping is something that, for the vast majority of us, is someone else’s problem. We just eat the results; certainly every day, and nearly with every meal. Bread, rice, corn, soy, beans and so on. Produced somewhere out there, by someone else.
So a portion of our every single meal is coming from a grain crop, somewhere way out west. We wish it were grown organically, and in a way that doesn’t destroy too much of our topsoil. But we’ll eat it regardless of the farming practices, really. It’s in our diet. It’s what we do.
Comments (7)Earthbag Building Workshop at Milkwood Farm
Building, Courses/Workshops — by Milkwood Permaculture
Earthbag dome going up at the Permaforest Trust Farm in Northern NSW
The idea that you can build a structurally strong house with nothing more complicated than a bunch of bags, earth, clay and lime, plus some basic on-farm materials and plenty of hands on deck is pretty exciting for a lot of people, including me. Earthbag building might just be the answer to our dreams. Want to join us creating our first earthbag structure at Milkwood?
Comments (3)FRESH Movie Screening: Sydney May 28th
Community Projects, Consumerism, DVDs/Books, News, Social Gatherings, Society, Village Development — by Milkwood Permaculture May 13, 2010
Milkwood is hosting a screening of new documentary FRESH at 7pm on Friday, May 28th, at Alexandria Park Community Center in Sydney. The screening is free and everyone’s welcome. Directions to the venue are here.
Holistic Management: Herbivores, Hats, and Hope
Commercial Farm Projects, Livestock, Plant Systems, Rehabilitation, Soil Conservation — by Milkwood Permaculture May 7, 2010
Image by Granny Buttons
Grazing animals bad, undisturbed grass good. That’s how we personally thought regeneration worked, five years ago. And we were not alone. You could be forgiven for thinking that any and all grazing animals (particularly of the introduced kind) have no role whatsoever to play in regenerating pastures, soils and land, simply because we know how much damage badly-managed grazing and animal management can do. And we as a society do love a good bit of polarity, especially when it comes to nature. Perhaps it’s our quest for simplicity. At the same time, we inherently know that an ecosystem cannot be simplified down to a set of polar opposites.
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