We’re currently getting up to 5 zucchini every day:

Little wonder that our fridge’s crisper looks like this, then:

So, on to the dehydrating. First, I cut the zucchini into slices about 5mm thick. It’s fairly important to get the thickness uniform, so the slices will dehydrate at the same rate. A mandolin slicer is very handy for this, but be careful! I cut my finger quite badly a few weeks ago on this one.

You generally need to blanch vegetables before freezing or dehydrating. This is done by boiling or steaming them for a short time, then quickly chilling them in cold water to halt the cooking process. Blanching destroys the enzymes that cause vegetables to develop off colours and flavours and get tough, and also kills off most of the microorganisms that can cause vegetables to deteriorate.

I’ve found the microwave to be a very convenient, precise and non-messy way to blanch vegetables. I spread them in a single layer in a microwave steamer, steam them for the recommended time, and then plunge them into cold water. About 2:30 seems to be the right time for zucchini slices.

At this point, Hannah likes to help me by arranging the slices in the dehydrator trays.

We then pat them dry with a clean teatowel, and put the trays into the dehydrator.

We run the dehydrator on the front deck. There’s a power point out there, it’s under cover and protected from the elements, and it keeps the noise and warm air out of the house. After about 8 hours, the slices have dehydrated.

All that’s left then is to bag up the zucchini chips, and store them for the soup-and-stew-making season!

What do you have a glut of at the moment? How are you dealing with it?

Related posts:

1. Hand-Pollinating Zucchini Flowers
2. Planting Out Fruit Trees

I’ve held off on getting more chickens until I could secure the pen – obviously I never want something like that to happen again. We did get some ducks along the way, but I’ve been locking them up in the shed at night and letting them out into the pen each morning. We also got a dog not long after that attack, and I’ve been placing her droppings around the perimeter of the pen to ward off predators.

It’s taken a while, but this weekend I finally got some time to put my Predator Protection Plan into practice!

My original plan was to create a smaller secure pen, and turn the remainder of the existing run into separate breeding pens. It would have been less work in the short term, but then I’d have to make sure each breeding pen was also built securely. If I could completely secure the perimeter of the existing large run, then I could later build simple breeding pens inside it without needing to fox-proof every one of them.

I originally built the frame of my chicken run a bit like a post-and-rail fence, with one rail at ground level and another about 3 feet (1 m) above the ground. This made it easy to attach the chicken wire and bury it in a skirt around the pen. You can see what I’m trying to describe in this older photo:

Note: clever though it sounds, burying a skirt of chicken wire around the pen didn’t stop the foxes from digging under. The wire was a very light gauge, and although galvanised, it rusted and was easy to break through. In a later attack, a fox even chewed right through a non-rusted piece of this wire! Chicken wire keeps chickens in, not predators out.

I bought sheets of “ripple iron” (like corrugated iron, but with smaller corrugations) from a recycler a while ago for $4 each. I dug trenches between the posts on the inside edge of the pen, about 1.5 feet (45 cm) deep. I then screwed the sheets of ripple iron to both of the rails and backfilled the trenches.

I got five sections – each with three pieces of ripple iron – done on Saturday, despite the rain. I’ve still got one section to go, and then I just need to secure the pen door.

The ducks enjoyed all the digging, and received a good few worms as reward for their patience. Below are the Indian Runners now – they’ve grown a lot since we got them as week-old ducklings in October, and should be laying soon! The front two ducks in the line are Pekins, and the warty grey-and-white one at the rear is our Muscovy drake.

Construction went a lot smoother than I was expecting, and I was really pleased with the end result. I can’t see a fox getting through that!

Related posts:

1. Chicken Massacre
2. Chicken Ark Plans
3. An Assortment of Duck and Chicken Eggs

We eventually found the nest fairly low in a gum tree. It contains two cute little chicks:

Willie wagtails are great birds to have in the garden, so we’re happy to leave them in peace to raise their babies.

Adult Willie Wagtail (CC BY 3.0 image courtesy Duncan McCaskill)

Related posts:

1. Organic Fruit Fly Control and Hatching Chicks
2. Chicks Taken By Predator!
3. Hatching Chicks

Potatoes are also amazing for establishing new garden beds. They break up the ground, attract lots of worms, and leave a lovely rich soil behind.

I use the standard potato-growing technique – dig a fairly deep trench (up to a foot deep), put the seed potatoes in the bottom, and cover them with an inch or so of dirt. As the shoots start coming through, keep backfilling the dirt around them. Keep hilling and mulching them until you can’t go any higher, then leave them until the tops start to die off. Finally, dig!

The girls gave me a hand pulling up our most recent potatoes last weekend.

It’s like a treasure hunt! Every time I turn over the soil, the girls rush in and try to outdo each other. There’s always a bit of competition to see who can collect the most potatoes.

These were the biggest two, although they were all pretty uniform:

After they’ve all been recovered, we brush the clods of dirt off the potatoes, sort them (use any damaged ones first), and let them dry a little in the sun.

Look at that lovely rich soil left behind! There were heaps of worms all through the garden bed.

The end result – a big tub of potatoes. We collected about 12 kg, having started with about 1 kg of sprouted potatoes from the cupboard. Not a bad return! They were all a lovely big size too – sometimes you get lots of little ones, but not this time.

And of course, the girls were proud to have gotten their hands dirty helping Dad!

We’re fortunate here on the South Coast. Our climate is mild enough that we can plant potatoes pretty much any time of the year. Gardening web sites tell you to plant them between August and October; that may give you the best yields, but really they’ll grow anytime the soil is above 10C (50F). If you have potatoes sprouting the cupboard, you’ve got nothing to lose by planting them out!

Do you grow potatoes? Do you have any special techniques to share?

Related posts:

1. Potato Harvest
2. Potato Harvest
3. Mulch Delivery

This post follows on from Kiama Primary School Garden Opening.

This drawing shows the original design plan for the Kiama Primary School permaculture garden, put together by Aaron Sorenson. It’s not exactly how the garden worked out (they never are!), but the general placement of the elements is pretty close. It gives a good overview of the site, buildings, access paths and roads, etc that Aaron had to work with.

You can click on the photo to see a larger version, big enough to read the writing.

I really like looking at these kinds of permaculture designs. They’re full of ideas to borrow, and you can see how the designer has placed things relative to each other, using site properties (slope, aspect, views, winds, sun, access, etc) to their best advantage.

When looking at a plan, I like to imagine how the various jobs would get done in the garden (mulch delivery and application to beds, watering, composting, harvesting, cooking, relaxing, planting out seedlings from the nursery area, and so on). How far would you have to walk, and is it uphill or downhill? How long would hoses have to be to water every plant? Is it far from the regular-picking plants to the kitchen? Would you have to barrow compost very far, and could a wheelbarrow get through to every area? How far would you have to carry tools?

It’s also useful to think about rain on the site, where water will flow, and how it will interact with swales, paths, and other garden elements.

With all that in mind, lets get on with the tour!

First, the top entrance. This is where people enter from the school. Just to the left of where I took the photo is the car park and an access gate. That area serves as a mulch drop point – nice, since you only have to wheelbarrow it downhill! The entrance invites you to enter and follow the path down to the main seating circle.

The path down from the main entrance is gently sloping, built as a switch-back down the side of the hill. Besides being easier to walk up and down, it slows water flow during rain and prevents erosion. And how about that ocean view!

The paths/swales across the hill have been lined with lots of comfrey. This is a hardy, deep-rooted and fast-growing plant, so it stabilises the banks. Because it has such long roots, it “mines” nutrients and minerals from deep down and brings them to the surface, storing them in its leaves. The leaves are regularly harvested for compost and mulch, and it can also be used to make “comfrey tea” fertiliser or fed to livestock.

You can’t see it very well in this photo, but there are banana plants and other fruit trees in amongst the comfrey. These are mostly shallow-rooted plants, so the comfrey doesn’t compete with them for nutrients.

And that brings us to the seating circle, about half-way down the slope. This is a large level area, with enough seating for a whole class and plenty of room in the middle for demonstrations. Being central, you can also see most of the garden from this vantage point. What a great learning area!

The next three photos are from a display board at the school, to show a bit more detail about how the seating circle was constructed.

It started off with earthworks to level the site, and construction of retaining walls (which provide additional seating if needed).

Next, a base was put down and tyres were put in place as the structure of the seating circle. The tyres were filled for structural strength and stability.

Boards were fixed to the top of the tyres as a base for the decking timber of the finished seats.

Back to the tour…

This area between the schoolhouse and the seating circle is a north-facing slope, but is protected from southerly and easterly winds by the buildings. That makes an ideal environment for south-east Asian vegetables. Below this area is the Mediterranean area, also a north-facing hot area.

Don’t you love the signs the kids have made? They were dotted around the garden to identify various features, plants, microclimates, etc.

About half-way down the slope is the public entrance to the garden, leading in from the footpath. This also serves as a secondary receiving point for mulch, compost, etc.

In a little from the public entrance is the main composting area. Being a large flat area right near the entrance, it would make a good place for stacking bulk materials like hay bales and garden stakes, before distribution around the garden.

Near the composting area were some striking rainbow chard plants. You can see the huge curly kale plants in the background too. Doesn’t everything look super healthy?

Dotted around the garden at the end of swales are these compost bins, dubbed the Daleks by the students. You’re never far from one of these, making it very convenient to get rid of prunings, dropped fruit and other waste while working in the garden. They are the Gedye compost bins that are available from Kiama Council.

Moving further down the slope, the kids have planted a wind break to provide some protection against the salty coastal breezes coming in from the east. There are a few windbreaks around the garden, mostly either bana grass or sugar cane. Both grow quickly to about two metres tall, and can be cut for mulch or composting.

The bottom of the garden (the northern edge) is bounded by the school’s service road. This would reflect a lot of heat on a sunny day, being light-coloured concrete, so the lower part of the garden needs to be planted with species able to handle it. The kids have designated this bottom swale the citrus mound.

Looking back up the slope at the schoolhouse. The main garden is to the right in this photo, and there’s native gardens continuing along the slope to the left. These swales have been planted with bananas and other fruit trees, and also provide a pathway back up to the schoolyard.

I hope you enjoyed this tour as much as I enjoyed visiting the garden!

Please let me know what you think in the comments.

Related posts:

1. Kiama Primary School Garden Opening
2. Permaculture Design Certificate Scholarship!
3. Sydney Water “Love Your Garden” Review

Remember I was awarded a Permaculture Design Certificate scholarship by my local council? One of the other recipients was Maria, a teacher from Kiama Primary School, and she’s been heavily involved in getting this garden up and running. I’m helping to get a similar garden (although perhaps not quite on the same scale!) going at Jamberoo Primary School as the community project aspect of my PDC scholarship, so it was a great opportunity to gather ideas.

Here’s Maria (in the checked shirt) speaking at the opening ceremony:

During the ceremony, all the school kids were lined up along the swales to watch:

Costa Georgiadis (from Costa’s Garden Odyssey on SBS TV) was the celebrity guest and keynote speaker. What a great guy! He was funny, informative, and has an incredible way of relating to kids with irreverent humour and infectious enthusiasm. Here’s Costa with our mayor, Sandra McCarthy, and Vanessa John (Environmental Strategy Officer at Wollongong Council, and coordinator of the PDC scholarship programme) presenting students with some fruit trees for the garden:

I’ll write a follow-up post in the next couple of days to give you a tour of the garden.

Update: Here’s the promised follow-up: Kiama Primary School Permaculture Garden Tour.

Related posts:

1. Kiama Sustainability Expo 2011
2. Costa’s Garden Odyssey – Tonight 8:00 on SBS
3. Backyard Veggie Patch Workshop in Jamberoo

Luckily, I found a guy selling ducklings on the Backyard Poultry board (look for Harry from Thirroul if you’re interested – he’s a great guy and breeds lovely ducks!). We were up in Sydney this weekend, so we picked up 8 ducklings on the way back through. We’ll be keeping 6, and the other 2 are for a friend.

How cute are they?!

They’re very young, and so still need a heat lamp for a few more weeks.

Related posts:

1. Muscovy Ducks Arrive
2. We’ve Got Ducks!
3. An Assortment of Duck and Chicken Eggs

I was pulling weeds out of an overgrown garden bed on the weekend, and noticed some carrot leaves among the mess. Megan had just harvested the last of the carrots (about a kilo worth) from the bed before I got started, so I figured she missed one.

Needless to say, I got a bit of a surprise!

In case you can’t read the scales, it clocked in at 894 grams – almost as much as the small bucketfull Megan had spent half an hour picking!

Does anyone else have any monster vegetable stories?

No related posts.

The FreeCycle Network is made up of almost 5,000 regional groups, with a total of nearly 9 million members. Happily our region is represented, with FreeCycle Illawarra.

The way it works is you first join up to your regional group, and then you’ll start receiving emails. Some will be people wanting things, some will be people offering things. You can only offer things for free (no money can change hands!), and all items must be legal and appropriate for all ages.

A few other local bloggers are active on FreeCycle, including NellyMary and Rich & Ally.

So, here are some of the cool things I’ve been able to pick up…

Lots of firewood. A guy at Gerringong had some trees fall down on his property, so I went down and cut them up with my chainsaw and brought back many trailer loads. I’m still splitting it, but we won’t go cold for a few winters!

A dog kennel.

A stainless steel BBQ plate. It’s very heavy and quite thick, so it’ll go great on a traditional stone-sided wood-fired barbie.

While collecting the above BBQ plate, I noticed the guy had a pile of scrap metal in his front yard waiting for the recycler. He said I could take whatever I wanted. These galvanised flues, and the capped flue below, will be great for building a wood-fired pizza oven like Gavin’s cob oven!

I’ve also given away some stuff on FreeCycle – a microwave and a few other small things.

So how about you – have you used FreeCycle? What did you give away or get?

Related posts:

1. Sustainable Illawarra Super Challenge Launches!
2. Chicken Sellers In The Illawarra
3. Upcoming Illawarra Seedsavers Meeting

What is a swale?

• A perfectly level ditch, following the contour of the land.

(diagram from Toby Hemenway’s excellent book, Gaia’s Garden)

What does a swale do?

• Water harvesting: captures surface water flowing downhill during rain.
• Slows the movement of surface water across the landscape, putting it to use rather than just letting it flow off.
• Spreads the water evenly along the length of the swale. Water will naturally flow into gullies and away from ridges – swales redistribute it more evenly.
• Holds water for some time (usually days, up to a week) after a rain event, allowing it to slowly infiltrate into the ground.
• Hydrates the slope below the swale, storing water in the soils and sediments underground.
• You won’t need to water even the most fussy plants on a swale for a few weeks after a rain event – more hardy plants won’t ever need watering.

How do you build a swale?

• Start by marking out where it will go – dumpy level/a-frame, clear hose, builder’s level on plank, laser level. Use little flags or pegs to mark the uphill edge of the swale.
• Dig a trench along the marked line, piling the removed soil on the downhill side of the trench to make a mound.
• Think about what will happen if the swale overflows – plan a spillway that won’t erode during high flow, and ensure that the water that exits won’t cause problems downhill.
• Make the bottom of the trench level.
• Crack/chip the bottom of the swale to aid water infiltration.
• You can completely fill the swale with mulch (leaves, sticks, wood, bark, etc) (good for smaller swales) or leave a trench/gullly that will fill with water.
• Mulch the swale mound well to prevent weeds and erosion.
• Plant legumes on the mound (pigeon pea, cow pea, clover, tagasaste, wattle, etc) to build soil nitrogen and act as nursery trees for your crop species. These can be “chopped and dropped” as mulch during the life of the swale.
• Plant fruit and nut trees on the top of the mound (for plants that like drainage) and below the mound (for plants that like moisture).
• Build successive swales down a slope, giving consideration to how they overflow into one another.
• Space neighbouring swales widely on shallow slopes, closer together on steeper slopes.
• Important: Plant out and mulch the swale immediately after construction so you don’t have to fight with weeds later!

Potential problems with swales

• If you don’t get the levels right, you can get a heavy flow of water along your swale and concentrate it to the overflow point, which might cause problems downhill. Even worse, it might burst through the mound somewhere along the swale and erode it out.
• If you don’t plant trees below the swale, you’ll cause waterlogging by infiltrating more water than grasses and small plants can absorb.
• High evaporation can cause salt buildup. You need to ensure the base of the swale is not sealed like a dam, but allows slow infiltration of water. Trees help take up the water and shade the trench to reduce evaporation. Water lost to evaporation is water not used!
• Get the overflow point right! Make sure it won’t erode during high rainfall (e.g. line a sill with rocks or pavers, or use buried overflow pipe through the mound). Plan where you’re directing the overflow water, and ensure a heavy storm won’t cause downhill problems.
• Don’t allow plants to grow thickly and clog up your overflow points.

My backyard swale, planted with taro, bananas, mango, and sweet potato.

More swale ideas

• Make swales a generous width, fill them with wood chips or green waste mulch to level the surface, and use them as access paths. Water will be held in the mulch, reducing evaporation and encouraging beneficial fungi (mycorrhiza), but the top layer will be dry for walking on.
• Similar to above, dig ditches on contour in your vegetable garden beds and fill them with mulch as access paths.
• Create crescent-shaped mini-swales for individual trees. They’ll collect water (possibly from a wide area) and concentrate it for infiltration just uphill of the tree.
• Direct swale overflows into water features, dams, rain gardens, banana circles, or (if you don’t have any other options) stormwater drains.
• Direct greywater (from laundry, outdoor showers, etc) into a slotted irrigation pipe that runs along the bottom of a swale. Cover the pipe with lots of wood chips and mulch, so the greywater won’t sit at the surface.
• Road or driveway runoff and rainwater tank overflows can also be directed into swales.
• On rocky ground that can’t be dug (or if you don’t have the time and energy!), place fallen trees, branches, sticks and rocks along contours (across the slope) and fill behind them with mulch, compost, dirt, rocks, etc. When it rains, more silt will wash down the slope and build up behind the branches, creating a swale-like mound.
• Plant water-loving plants (taro, rice, kangkong, lillies) in the swales, and moisture-loving plants (asaparagus, mints, blueberries, bananas, ginger) just above the swale flood level.
• In large swale systems, small dams or pools can be created by deepening and widening the trench at intervals. This would create a string of ponds that link up during rain events, much like billabongs along a river.
• Swales are starting to be used in urban planning to reduce water flows, nurture street trees, and reduce the amount of water going into stormwater systems.
• Aim to keep all the water that falls on your land, on your land!

Related posts:

1. Mulch Delivery
2. Swale And Banana Circle
3. Sydney Water “Love Your Garden” Review

Well, an Australian TV show in a very similar vein debuted on SBS last year, named Gourmet Farmer and starring Matthew Evans. Like Hugh, Matthew once made his living as a chef. He then worked as a food critic for The Sydney Morning Herald, before packing it all in to move to a 22-acre small farm near Cygnet, in Tasmania’s Huon Valley.

One of the highlights of the first series for me was when Matthew’s mum came to visit, and she asked him if he was planning to breed his new sows. “Nah,” he replied, “I was thinking of getting a boar in to do that.”

Gourmet Farmer comes across as a bit of a lifestyle show with magnificent scenery and delicious recipes, but it has more depth than most and touches on some important food issues – preserving heritage breeds, free-ranging animals, use of sow farrowing crates, the economics of family farming, the excessive restrictions of our “food safety” regulations, etc.

The new series started last week – you can still catch Episode 1 on the SBS web site if you missed it. The second episode will air on SBS tonight (Thursday) at 7:30 pm.

Here’s the promo video of Gourmet Farmer Series 2, to give you a taste of what’s coming up:

So what do you think? Is Gourmet Farmer Australia’s answer to River Cottage?

Related posts:

1. Podcast Interview With Gavin From “The Greening of Gavin”
2. Keeping Cows In The City?
3. Joel Salatin in Australia

The good news is, both are currently available from the respective breeders!

There were about 7 or so pups in Jessie’s litter, all just as cute as her, and as far as I know there are still some available. The family lives in Jamberoo.

The family I got the pigs from last year emailed me last week to let me know they have just had two litters of pigs born, both of which should be available for purchase in about 2 months or so (maybe a little less).

If you’d like to be put in touch with either of them, please email me!

Related posts:

1. Swill Feeding Pigs In Las Vegas
2. The Pigs Escaped!
3. Pig Information From NSW DPI

She’s a female red kelpie. We picked her up on Saturday from a local family, after waiting several weeks for her to grow big enough. Not all of us were terribly patient with the wait!

Her mum’s owners have girls in both Hannah and Sarah’s years at school, and I think every kid in both classes has been asking their parents if they can have a puppy!

Jessie’s mum is a beautiful dog with a really good nature. She’s great with kids and chooks, and is really active and playful.

So far, Jessie has handled the transition really well. The kids play with her a lot and tire her out, so she’s been eating and sleeping well. She cried a lot the first night (we tried all the tricks, like a hot water bottle and a sock with a clock in it), but slept through last night without fuss.

I think she’s going to be a great family pet and companion for the kids, and an excellent first line of defence against those dastardly foxes. I’m hoping she’ll also chase the cockatoos out of the fruit trees and the bower birds out of the vegie gardens!

No related posts.

I went to an all-day workshop with Joel Salatin (of Polyface Farm, brought to fame by Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma), right here in Jamberoo. I was there with a bunch of friends from around town and from further afield, I met some interesting new people, and I finally got to meet Kirsten and Nick from Milkwood in person!

My head is spinning with all the ideas I heard today, and working out ways to scale them down to work on our acre. I’m going back over my notes, and I’ll be watching more of Joel’s videos on YouTube, and reading his books, to get even more ideas.

But most importantly, Joel’s enthusiasm just fires you up to get out there and try stuff. One of his sayings that struck a chord with me was “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly first”. There’ll be plenty of time to refine and get it right as you go. He actually used the example of a fox eating all your chickens as just a setback, something to learn from and move on from.

I was hugely impressed that both the Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Kiama were there today. I think that shows the level of commitment they have to supporting localised and sustainable agriculture here. I’m sure they can’t have missed all Joel’s points about government regulations and bureaucracy getting in the way of producing and selling food on a local scale!

I even got to try raw milk for the first time in my life, from a local dairy farmer. It was really good, like bought milk but better. Too bad I’ll probably never be able to have it again!

I’ll post some more of my notes over the next few days, as I get it all straight in my head.

Related posts:

1. Joel Salatin in Australia
2. Jamberoo FutureCare – My First Meeting
3. Jamberoo Community Growers Launch

Pop over and check it out!

The prize for picking the winning name was a chunk of home-made parmesan. I wasn’t sure how that was going to go in the post from Melbourne, but it arrived safe and sound.

I was a bit nervous about wasting it, and wanted to keep this special cheese for a worthy meal. Tonight I made Tuscan meatballs on spaghetti, and we finally had to opportunity to break out the parmesan.

What can I say – yum! The cheese was excellent!

If you’re interested in how parmesan is made, Gav has a recipe and instructions on his new site – making parmesan.

Cheesemaking is something I’d like to try, but I have so many other projects on the go that I don’t want to take on a new hobby that I know I’ll become obsessed with! If only there were more hours in the day .

Have you ever made cheese? How did it go? Do you make it regularly?

Related posts:

1. Home Made Bacon
2. Home Made Pasta
3. Home Made Laundry Soap

Sonia, I have your email address from the blog comment, so look out for a message from me!

To select the winner, I used Random.org‘s True Random Number Generator. There were 16 comments, but one was a follow-up comment by somebody who’d already entered, so I chose a random number between 1 and 15. Sonia’s was the 4th comment.

Thanks to all who entered, and I hope everybody had a nice Tree Day!

Related posts:

1. “Choosing Eden” Winner
2. National Tree Day 2011 – Giveaway!
3. Book Giveaway – Choosing Eden

This is a great excuse to get the family outdoors, celebrate trees and all they do for us, and do some good for the environment. If you want to engage with others in your local community, you can use the online tool to find out what events are happening in your area (or even register your own event!).

For our part, my family will be planting some more fruit and nut trees in our yard.

As a bit of a promotion for National Tree Day, Planet Ark has sent me a $50 Bunnings gift card to give away. One lucky reader can use it to buy some trees!

To enter the draw, simply leave a comment below telling me what your favourite type of tree is, and why.

The giveaway is only open to people from Australia (Bunnings is an Australian store, so the prize would be useless to everyone else!), but overseas readers are welcome to comment too. You can list multiple trees and/or make multiple comments, but you’ll only get one entry into the draw per person.

I’ll select the winner at random from all eligible comments made before 8:00 pm AEST on Sunday the 31st.

What is your favourite type of tree, and why?

Related posts:

1. Schools Tree Day 2011
2. Kiama Sustainability Expo 2011
3. Planting Out Fruit Trees

The aim of the day is to get kids outdoors, planting and caring for trees and shrubs, improving the environment where they live and learn.

Back in March, Planet Ark commissioned a study to see how childhood interaction with nature has changed over time. You can access the full study, or read the 2-page media summary.

I wasn’t surprised that kids today spend less time playing outdoors now than they (we!) did a generation ago. But the actual figures really shocked me – of the parents surveyed (all had kids aged 3-12):

• 73% said they played outside more often than inside as a child. Only 13% of their children do now.
• 72% said they played outside every day as a child. Only 23% of their children do now.
• 64% said they climbed trees as a child. Only 20% of their children do now.

The main reasons parents gave for this change were crime and safety concerns, and their own lack of time.

On a personal note, I’m proud to say that my girls have recently discovered the joy of climbing trees. My 8-year-old likes to stop and say hello to her favourite climbing tree every day as she walks up the drive from the school bus .

Do those numbers surprise you? Do you actively try to get your kids to play outside?

Related posts:

1. Kiama Sustainability Expo 2011
2. Backyard Flying Fox (Zip Line)
3. Jamberoo Community Growers – A Successful Launch!

Well, the big thing on my mind for the past week or so has been foxes. Mostly, how to keep them away from my poultry.

• Swampy Acres Farm had trouble with foxes taking Australorps about a year ago. He has a good page on chicken predators, and also a good description of his fencing. I really like his chicken feeder, too.
• Outback Tania has a good article about what they did to fox-proof their chook pens. This is pretty much the same as what I’m planning to do, so it’s good to hear it’s been successful.
• Lots of info from the UK on deterring foxes. They have some good info and diagrams on building fox-proof fences around poultry pens, using electric wires, chemical repellents, and the interesting-sounding “taste aversion” – leaving them samples of the types of poultry you keep, laced with very hot spices or vomit-enducing chemicals, so they associate your particular species with being sick and avoid them in future.
• Milkwood’s new gravity-fed chicken house is a nice design, although to copy it I’d have to use heavier wire, sink the perimeter iron sheets deeper, and net over the top (they’re in a very different area to me, with different pests and predators). I’m particularly interested in how they built the corner poles for the chook run, leaning out and placed under tension. I’ve never seen that before!
• I discovered the FeralScan web site via the ABC rural radio Bush Telegraph podcast. It’s all about “crowdsourcing” the mapping and monitoring of various rural pests. In particular, they have FoxScan and MynaScan – two of the pests that I’m most concerned about. There’s also CamelScan, but I don’t get too many of them in my garden! The various sites have a lot of good information about the pests, what damage they cause, and how you can help control them.

Please leave suggestions below for further reading, especially on chicken pens and protecting poultry from predators!

Related posts:

1. Fox In The Henhouse!
2. Chicken Massacre
3. Our New Chicken – A Cuckoo Leghorn

Last week, foxes broke into our chicken run and killed 20 of our 21 chickens, and both of our Indian Runner ducks.

They dug underneath the gate to gain access, despite the fact that I’d laid chicken wire under it to prevent digging. They simply tore through the chicken wire, just like they did a few weeks ago when we lost four chooks.

Since that first attack, I’d secured all around the base of the pen with heavy wire, pavers, and railway sleepers. I was even putting stuff across the gate at night to prevent them from digging under it. But it wasn’t enough. They managed to move some pavers and timber enough to dig under the gate.

You can see the hole wasn’t very big – not much bigger than my fist.

That’s what angers me the most about this whole thing – they slaughtered everything in sight, 20 chickens and 2 ducks, just to take 2 chickens away for food. It’s such a senseless waste.

The one surviving rooster wasn’t in the pen. So when I locked him up the next night, I made sure to check all the reinforcing around the pen and put a wooden pallet in front of the gate to stop anything getting under again.

But that night, the foxes tore a hole straight through the perimeter fence of the pen and killed him. The fence had a layer of normal 2-inch chicken wire and a second layer of half-inch chicken wire over the top to keep chicks in. They simply tore through both.

So we now have no chickens at all, just the two muscovy ducks that were housed separately.

But you have to look for the silver lining in every cloud.

I’m going to go back to the drawing board, and build some new chicken pens. They’ll have strong welded mesh fences with buried corrugated iron perimeters to stop anything digging underneath. Chicken wire just doesn’t cut it for keeping predators out. I’ll build a number of smaller pens instead of one large one. This will reduce the chance that the whole flock can get wiped out at once like happened this time, and it also gives me more flexibility in managing breeding, isolating sick birds, and looking after mothers with chicks.

As an additional line of defense, we’ll also be moving up our plans to get a dog. We were originally planning to get one next year, but we’ve now started looking and if the right dog comes up we’ll grab it. We want to get a puppy so it can grow up around chickens and ducks, with strong protective instincts towards them.

I’d like to hear about any good predator-proof chicken run designs you’ve seen, and would love to see photos. Please leave links in the comments below!

Related posts:

1. We’ve Got Ducks!
2. Plants For The Chicken Run
3. An Assortment of Duck and Chicken Eggs

The idea was that they would provide funding for 4 people from each Council area to attend a PDC course of their choosing, and Council would pay the course fees (up to $1400 worth). The students have to pay accommodation, meals, travel, etc themselves. In return, the 12 students agree to share their new skills with others in the community, through whatever forms of community service interest them.

It sounded like a great opportunity, so I applied and was successful!

Because of work and family commitments, I couldn’t afford to be gone for 2 weeks on a typical PDC course. So I elected to do my course by correspondence, through local trainers Permaculture Visions. I met the owner, April, and toured their property a little while ago so I have full confidence that they offer a great course and have excellent knowledge of local climate, conditions, and resources.

I’ve wanted to do a PDC for a long time now, but could never really justify the cost. Most (all?) of the course content is available either free on the internet or in books from the library, and I’m the kind of person who enjoys learning from books. So I figured there wasn’t enough extra value in paying for a course.

But doing the PDC course brings all that disparate knowledge together into a structured curriculum. It also puts you in contact with other students and experienced instructors, so you can get information and advice on specific issues you have. And you get the certificate at the end, which demonstrates your qualification to others and gives you the right to use the term “permaculture” in a business name (likely not a big deal to me, but you never know what the future may hold!).

I’m hoping that by the end of the course, I’ll have at least the bare bones of a permaculture design plan for our property here. I’ll be able to pick the brains of the students and instructors, and hopefully get feedback as I develop it. So that will be a huge tangible benefit.

I’ll be able to use the skills I learn from the PDC in my activities in various local groups – Jamberoo Community Growers, Jamberoo FutureCare, the Kiama Council Health & Sustainability Advisory Committee, etc. Jamberoo Primary school is just starting to get a school garden going, and I’ll be involved in that too. Plus I’ll be blogging about the course as I go. So, plenty of opportunities to share the PDC goodness with other people!

I’m just waiting on the paperwork from Council so I can enrol and get started. I’m super keen!

Related posts:

1. Free Permaculture Downloads
2. Video: The Permaculture Concept – Bill Mollison
3. Permaculture Chicken Mansion

(Note when I say “pumpkin” here, I’m using Australian usage – North Americans please substitute your term “winter squash”.)

The key is in understanding what factors lead to deterioration of your pumpkins, and addressing those factors in your storage system.

Vermin like rats and mice also love pumpkins and have been known to dig a tunnel into the center and set up a home inside!

Harvesting Pumpkins For Storage

Leave a long piece of stem attached to each pumpkin when you pick them. Don’t carry pumpkins by the stalk, and handle them carefully to avoid cuts and bruises. If the stalk is damaged or falls off, seal the attachment point by melting candle wax into it.

Leave the pumpkins in full sun for a couple of weeks before bringing them in for storage (cover or move them if it looks like rain). This will toughen the skin and improve their shelf life. The chook shed or dunny roof is the traditional place to harden off pumpkins!

Storing Pumpkins

The best storage place is somewhere cool, dark, dry and well-ventilated. A shed or garage, under-house storage area, or covered verandah can be excellent. The ideal storage temperature is around 12 C (about 55 F).

Pumpkins should be lifted off the ground to improve airflow around them, and should not be touching each other. Place them on newspaper or straw, on top of chicken wire or timber slats. Store them on their side, so that moisture doesn’t accumulate in the hollow around the stem.

Don’t store pumpkins near apples, pears or other ripening fruit. The ethylene gas the fruit gives off will hasten the deterioration of your pumpkins.

Check your stored pumpkins regularly. Remove (eat or discard) any that start to soften or rot, or have become damaged.

Over time, your stored pumpkins will get lighter as they lose moisture content. That’s not a bad thing though – they become sweeter and more richly-flavoured the longer they’re stored.

Best Pumpkin Varieties For Storage

Other Ways To Preserve Pumpkins

• cut them up and dehydrate them
• cook, mash and freeze (good for curries, soups, pumpkin bread, pumpkin scones, etc)
• make pumpkin soup, pumpkin pie, or pumpkin bread and freeze
• Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s pumpkin achar (pickled pumpkin)

What Can You Do With The Pumpkin Vines After Harvest?

Do you have any pumpkin storage tips or favourite recipes? Please leave a comment!

Related posts:

1. Why Grow Your Own Pumpkins?
2. Hand-Pollinating Pumpkin and Squash
3. Home-Grown Pumpkin Soup

Besides better taste, better nutrition, lack of herbicides/pesticides/fungicides, and absence of chemical treatments to prolong storage life and/or hasten ripening, there is still economic value in growing your own vegies.

Pumpkins (squash to North Americans) are one of my favourite crops, simply because they don’t ask anything of you for the whole growing season. If you start them in a nice patch of nutrient-rich compost, you won’t need to revisit them until picking time!

All 13 of the pumpkins below (plus a 14th that we ate a couple of weeks ago) came from a couple of vines that self-seeded out of a pile of compost.

I weighed one of the average-sized pumpkins, and it was 6 kg. So 14 pumpkins add up to about 84 kg. This type of pumpkin is currently selling in the supermarket for $2.49/kg (I’m using commercial produce prices, not the higher organic prices).

So that was over $200 worth of pumpkins that just popped up out of the dirt by themselves and waited for us to pick them!

These will last us for months, making lots of beautiful soups, stews and roasts through the winter.

Other low-effort crops I love include sweet potatoes, snow peas, climbing beans, sugar-snap peas, cherry tomatoes, chokoes, potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes and rhubarb, plus herbs like bay, parsley, mint and rosemary. They all seem to thrive without any need for care from sowing right through to harvest. Some even cut out the sowing step for me, and propagate themselves!

What are your favourite low-effort/high-payback crops?

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1. Dinner From The Backyard
2. Potato Harvest
3. What Is Lunar Planting?

Last week we had a truckload of mulch delivered from the Dunmore waste depot. It cost about $115 to have them deliver 9 cubic metres (12 cubic yards, or 4.6 tons), which I think is money well spent. Apparently you can go and fill your trailer with the stuff for free, but look at my trailer compared to the pile. I think it would have taken at least 10-15 trips to drag home that much mulch, and I would have had to do all the shovelling myself!

Can you see the steam rising out of the top of the pile? It’s partially composted, but still pretty hot.

And here’s a close-up to give you an idea of the structure and composition of the mulch. It’s made up of all the municipal green waste, shredded and partially composted. There’s a good mix of fine compost and larger chunks in it. There’s also more plastic and bits of painted wood than I’d like, but not enough to be a big concern. I can pick most of it out as I use the mulch.

So what am I going to do with all this mulch?

I’ve been digging some new garden beds, and in between them I’ve dug deep paths on contour. The paths are about a foot deep, and I dug that soil onto the beds to make them a little higher. In the bottom of the trenches I’m laying down cardboard (to smother any kikuyu grass that tries to grow back), and then filling them with this mulch.

Because the paths are on contour, they hold water when it rains and act like swales. The mulch soaks up the water and forms a reservoir, but because it’s loose and chunky the surface is still fine to walk on. The water will then be released to the surrounding garden beds slowly over the following week or two, reducing the need to water. As the plants in the beds get bigger, their roots will seek out the moisture in the paths and hopefully grow nice and deep and strong.

Normally you’d shy away from putting so much woody matter on garden beds for fear of locking up nitrogen in the soil. But the paths are between the beds, so the soil in the beds will not be affected. In addition, mycelium (fungi) will colonise the mulch paths. Plant roots and soil microorganisms work together with the mycelium to feed each other, for the benefit of the growing plants.

When the mulch in the paths eventually breaks down, it can be dug onto the garden beds as a rich humus dressing, and new mulch can be laid in the paths again.

Rob over at One Straw has a great explanation of the concept, which he calls pit and mound gardening.

It’s kind of like a mini swale/hugelkultur – garden paths don’t have to be unproductive!

I’ll post some photos soon. Hopefully I’ll get to do some more work on the garden beds over the weekend.

Related posts:

1. Jamberoo Community Growers – Don Cairns Talk
2. Rotary Hoe Advice?
3. Backyard Veggie Patch Workshop in Jamberoo

As I was showing them around the garden on Sunday, something about her mother was familiar. Then she mentioned winning a garden award a couple of years ago – turns out it was the Sunshine Coast Council’s 2009 Living Smart award for the Edible Landscape category.

Ah, that’s it!

Her name is Rosina Buckman, and there’d been an article about her and her garden at the Permaculture Research Institute web site.

Image credit: Craig Mackintosh, Permaculture Research Institute of Australia

We had a cuppa and a great chat about gardens, permaculture and everything else. Rosina mentioned that she’d had people at her home recently doing some filming of her in the garden, which was a lot of fun.

That night, I sat down at my computer and one of the first items in my RSS reader was this: Rosina Buckman’s Chop Chop Compost. What are the odds?!

Here’s a clip from the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzQva2H735I

So of course, the next day I had to get out a plank of wood and my meat cleaver and give it a go! We had just picked the remaining pumpkins off our overgrown vine (14 big pumpkins from the one vine!), and I needed to clean it up and put the scraps in the compost.

I can vouch that Rosina’s “chop chop” method works great!

Oh, and here’s another video that she did a while ago on raised bed gardens:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saP_Dcgtg5w

Related posts:

1. Chop and Drop
2. Free Permaculture Downloads
3. Backyard Veggie Patch Workshop in Jamberoo