Fruit Tree Workshop

An apple tree potted up and pruned in a vase shape. I hope to make mine this good next weekend

I went to a fantastic fruit tree workshop at CERES on Saturday. And I get to go back again next Saturday to finish it off!

Justin Caverely is our very knowledgeable teacher. If you get a chance to do one of his courses: go for it! The first course I did with him was back in 2007, the Organic Vegetable Gardening. and it really started me to spin off at ever increasing speeds on a new pathway in life: towards my permaculture future. In the vegie growing course, Justin mentioned this concept of permaculture. It all seemed to make sense. Here was a system that used common sense that provided for us with minimal effort, plus it protected the natural ecosystem, all through designing the system carefully.

After the course, I started doing my own research on permaculture. Found out there was a local permaculture network, Permaculture Melbourne. One of their members was running an Introduction to Permaculture weekend. My curiosity continued to grow. I read more, I gardened more, I joined The Digger's Club and spent hours pouring over their seed catalogue. It wasn't particularly wise of me to buy so many seeds, as I soon after took leave without pay for a year to volunteer in Guatemala. Volunteer where, I wasn't sure. But I packed my recently acquired Earth User's Guide to Permaculture by Rosemary Morrow as I wanted to finish reading it and thought it may be useful if I volunteered in sustainable agriculture.

The forces of the world pointed me in one direction: volunteering at a permaculture institute in Guatemala, Instituto Mesoamericano de Permacultura for most of 2009. I didn't even realise how far an Australian design system had travelled! This of course made me want to do my Permaculture Design Certificate as soon as I got back to Australia in November 2009.

Here I am now, one week off from going part time so I can put my energy into starting a permaculture plot and sell my produce directly to householders through a Community Supported Agriculture scheme of weekly box of vegies, fruit and nuts.

I'm just a little excited!

So my tip: go do a course on organic gardening or permaculture at wherever is closest to you. Lucky if that be at CERES and you'll be taught by Justin. You never know where it may lead...

This blog entry was supposed to be about fruit trees, but I got carried away. Details on what I learnt will be after next class. Tip: prune hard and set up the design of your tree. You'll be rewarded.

Count down to part time

Native revegetation of eucalyptus and wattles, top corner

One week before I go part time at my current full time job. This means I will have lots of time available to concentrate on my three projects.

Bring on my permaculture future!

I'll be balancing a couple of days of work in Melbourne and working on my Three Part Plot in the King Valley for the remainder of the week.

The spooky thing is at the beginning of 2010, I picked a date to aim for as a goal. 12 July 2010. A somewhat random date and I picked this as it is the date my term deposit matures. Then I had to work out what my goal was. I decided on:

• be part time in the King Valley
• have started my three projects (permaculture plot, preserves business and importing naturally dyed, hand woven textiles from Guatemala)

And guess what? My first week of going part time in my current job is Monday 12 July 2010. So I guess by picking a goal, always having it in the back of my mind, the physical, social and spiritual world made it come true. I'm not sure what "started" my three projects actually meant, but I guess you could say I'm following the permaculture principle "observe and interact" at this point by observing others and gaining knowledge first.

My plot in June winter, up to the ridge

My plot is a triangle. My motto was: keep your mind on the triangle prize.

Earthworks Practicum

The gentle pattern left by keyline ploughing

Walking across the paddock was like walking on a firm sponge: the earth was so soft, it had such give in it, it had no resemblance to hard concrete. If you played footy, you'd be wanting to fall on this stuff. This is what keyline ploughing will do to your land. It will decompact the soil and allow air and water to penetrate. Healthy soil.

I visited Darren Doherty and Lisa Heenan's block near Bendigo for an earthworks practicum. This week, with a group of eager students, he'll be adding a new dam, access roads, drainage ditches and house, cabin and tank sites. I only had the chance to go for one day, and I took it. So I didn't actually get to see any earth moved.

However, I did learn the theory behind earthworks, including more information on keyline design, and get to have my questions answered. Then we headed out to the 22 acre block that has already been keyline ploughed twice in a few years. A keyline plough, the Yeomans' Plow, cuts the earth and so loosens it slightly. It is ploughed just off contour, encouraging rainfall to penetrate the earth rather than run off. It is ploughed just off contour so the water is directed more to the ridge rather than straight to the valley. Which is where it will end up eventually. While walking, I stepped on the access road which hasn't been ploughed and it was your typical hard soil. The rest of it has a wonderful soft feel to it.

Darren Doherty and Ben Falloon have come up with some crazy additions to create the Keyline Super Plow. Check out their clip on deep cultivating/compost tea/biofertiliser/seed planter in one hit.

Darren Doherty and earth mover

While on the block, we did some surveying, marking out the drainage from one dam to a new dam, a sill spillway for the overflow, the new dam high watermark. Then the access road, which will collect water and direct it to the dam. This is what permaculturalists do: the design of the whole system where one element supports many functions. Then we marked out the house site. By this stage, my nose was freezing off in the Central Victorian late afternoon air. We headed back as the sun was setting.

I had to head back to Melbourne that night for work the next day, but first enjoyed yet another wonderful meal at Darren and Lisa's home in Bendigo. I'm looking forward to seeing what it all looks like when Darren posts the video.

Even though I've only got five acres to play with in the King Valley, I'll be able to use my new found knowledge. That's even if I stop eyeing of the relative's place on the other side of the creek for what can be done there. One disappointment, though, was I won't be able to plough the land until Autumn: that's the best time in our region for the keyline plow. That will hydrate the landscape. Once the hydrating has begun, I can then build small dams, access roads and perhaps a site for a house, shed or classroom.

The impact of keyline ploughing: neighbour vs Darren's block

Edible Weeds

Edible weed quiche and salad

You read correctly: edible weeds. Green stuff that's good for you. Plus the lovely flowers that may come along with them.

I did a course at CERES today on edible weeds, mainly out of curiosity. What in my yard or permaculture plot can I eat for free? Apparently, a lot.

I have two previous experiences of edible weeds: one in East Brunswick the other at Lake Atitlán in Guatemala.

When I lived in East Brunswick, a lady walked past my terrace house, then backtracked and knocked on the door. She pointed at my small front yard and asked if she could pick something. What? The very underdeveloped capsicum I'd planted? No, something which I'd assumed was a weed and was doing very well in my front yard.

She called the plant baqla, perhaps a Lebanese word? It wasn't until I spoke with my workmates I learnt what the Greek word for it was (because the Aussie Greeks still use it), and then what the English word was: purslane.

I fetched a plastic bag for the lady to fill with the baqla, and took down her recipe for how to use it. Similar to tabouli.

In Guatemala, I became accustomed to seeing the local women foraging around the centre and along the track for greens. The greens often ended up in soups or stirred through frijoles. For some of the weeds at today's class, I only knew the Spanish name! Or their medicinal properties.

Today's course was very useful. We were taught some theory behind weeds and why they are good (they are great at collecting nutrients in degraded land by either tapping into a deep layer of soil or absorbing nutrients from the air). Then to the practical: finding and picking weeds from around CERES and the Merri Creek. They're everywhere! This helped me to firm up what the difference between a milk thistle, dandelion and wild lettuce was. The best part was then enjoying the weeds as food.

I eagerly polished off a salad, quiche and smoothie. The salad had mallow, dandelion flowers and leaves, calendula flowers, wild lettuce, angle onion, wandering jew, chickweed, wild fennel and brassica flowers. The smoothie included mallow, nettles, plantain, milk thistle, dandelion and clivers (plus orange, banana and water, so it really just tasted of the fruit but was green). The quiche was a typical quiche using nettle, milk thistle, dandelion and angle onion. So not so typical.

All up, very yummy. I now have a bit more confidence to harvest free food from my yard and the paddock.

Angle Onion growing amongst other bulbs

Learning

I continue my crusade to learn as much as I can to do with permaculture NOW. And I'm not doing too badly. The other night, I sat in a very cold shed at CERES to learn about small scale wind power. I'm assessing how I can power a water pump at my plot or even power a building if I decide to build a house, classroom or storage for my produce.

Was the Australian landscape not covered with windmills at one time, slowly pumping up water?

Prices have dropped substantially for small scale solar power (due to a mix of technology improvements and government subsidies). Not so true for wind power. Quite expensive in comparison, now. Though the government has started cutting the small scale wind power sector some slack: I think they're eligible for the feed-in-tariff now.

A feed-in-tariff means when you connect your renewable energy system to the electricity grid, the energy retailer pays YOU for what electricity you produce. Technically, as Victoria has a net feed-in-tariff not a gross feed-in-tariff, they will pay for what you don't use. Eventually you'll have paid off the system and be earning money from your wind turbine or solar panel.

Not bad.

So I'll go away and ponder my options, weighing up the pros and cons of solar and wind. Or a hybrid. At least wind continues at night. And my plot is in a valley that runs north-south, which tends to be the predominant wind direction. Which makes sense when you're in Melbourne. I listen to the radio for both the temperature and wind direction in summer before deciding if it is really warm or cool: is there a cold southerly or a hot blast of northerly wind?

The tutor is writing a consumer's guide to small scale wind power for Sustainability Victoria, so keep your eye out for it. Very useful. He also recommended "Wind Power:Plan Your Own Wind Power System" published by Alternative Technology Association, for more information on windmills as opposed to wind turbines.

I was wanting to do a workshop on Australian bushfoods, which I plan to use on my plot and even connect with the local indigenous group, and a water wise gardening workshop. Unfortunately, they were both cancelled for lack of numbers. Very sad.

So if you're interested in learning, sign up to CERES workshops (so I can go to the workshops, too).

The Good Life

Sometimes it is useful to look to comedy for inspiration. I think Tom and Barbara from The Good Life sitcom of the 1970s display brilliantly what I'm trying to do.

Enjoy the laugh

The Good Life

The First Dig

Permaculture plot looking north west (creek behind trees)

For my birthday, instead of going out for a lovely dinner with friends, I decided to show them my permaculture plot.

With just a few friends, for the first time on my plot, the earth was moved. It was dug into and scraped against. Truth be told, we didn't do a massive amount of work, seeing that after a midday arrival, then lunch, we only had two hours before the autumn sun set behind the hill at 5pm.

Come spring, I will see a mass of flowers around the two grave sites as 120 bulbs were planted around the edge. I want to clean up the cemetery and give a nice home to William B. Smith of England. I don't know the details of these residents, but hope to find out.

Other friends piled up the fallen wood. I think these trees are robinia pseudoacacia (Black Locust) if it isn't Honey Locust. I plan to chip the fallen wood and use as mulch on the vegetable patch or fruit trees. I will convert this large grove of trees to a food forest. Little by little.

While my friends were doing this, I was surveying the open paddock. This took forever and we did 1m interval readings of 60m. A lot more to do. I want to translate this onto a map if I can work out what technology I need, both a GPS reader and the mapping software.

I planned on replacing a dinner with a weekend away. However, many people couldn't come so I have been having a culinary delight having dinner with many of them over the last few days.

Black Locust grove (looking north)