Robert Burns’ TEDx Talk and His WWOOFing Experience at Zaytuna Farm
Compost, Project Positions, Rehabilitation, Soil Biology, Working Animals — by Robert Burns February 25, 2012
Aloha. This is an introduction to my TEDx talk and my WWOOFing experience here at the PRI’s Zaytuna Farm at The Channon, NSW, Australia.
I came here the day after Christmas 2011. I knew about Geoff Lawton and Zaytuna Farm from my time in Hawaii on an organic, educational farm there where I had seen the DVDs on permaculture that Geoff had made. I wanted to see what permaculture was all about. I had had an introduction to it there and so I ventured out. In my TEDx talk I mention going on a journey and it led me here to this permaculture farm and it is a wonderful experience. This has mostly been due to the people I have met here, the students/interns and the food is incredible. I tell everybody I am here for the food and chef Ish and chef Tee do a fantastic job.
Comments (6)The Dance with Bees Continues
Building, Insects, Working Animals — by Anthony Andrist February 6, 2012
Editor’s Note: Those keen to gain more expert insights into beekeeping would do well to take Anthony’s upcoming 1-day Introduction to Beekeeping using Permaculture Principles course, to be held March 25, 2012 at Lansdowne in the scenic Manning Valley on the Mid North Coast of NSW, Australia.
Go to the bee, thou poet: consider her ways and be wise.
– George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman
Looking for simplicity and compatibility between styles, we moved next towards a top-bar design. Essentially, it is a wooden bar placed horizontally across the width of the hive and has a starter strip of foundation comb or a wax bead along the centre to encourage the bees to build comb. The bar can be flat on the bottom, have a notch along the centre to place a wax strip, a semi-circle, a triangle or even a comb footprint, to give the bees a starting point. The bars are set side by side across the top of the hive and can be any length. Most bars are between 3.175 to 3.5cm wide and from 40 to 50cm long.
Comments (9)New book: Equine Permaculture – Regenerative Horse Property Design & Pasture Management
DVDs/Books, Livestock, Rehabilitation, Working Animals — by Mariette van den Berg November 18, 2011
Equine Permaculture: Regenerative Horse Property Design & Pasture Management
A collection of articles, 80 pages
by Mariette van den Berg & Nicholas Huggins
Generally, horse keeping is considered to be a costly hobby or business, especially with current price rises in living expenses and feed costs. On top of that, horse and land owners encounter high input costs or difficulties to maintain pastures and sustain the dietary needs of horses.
Comments (3)How to Revive the Honeybee
Animal Forage, Animal Housing, Insects, Plant Systems, Working Animals — by Mari Korhonen August 19, 2011
I recently saw a new film, Queen Of The Sun: What are the bees telling us?, about the global honeybee crisis and colony collapse disorder. From a holistic perspective the movie tells a story of transformation of beekeeping and the relationship of humans and bees to explore what is really going on. Once there were times when honey was so appreciated it could not be sold but only given away, yet now we have moved into an era of ruthless one sided exploitation in the search of economical profits, both in beekeeping as well as the agricultural and land use practices surrounding it. As most of us are aware, we have now come to face the consequences of this transformation. Queen of the Sun is a fascinating prelude to rediscovering the synergistic relationship between humans and bees, and is complemented on a practical level by natural beekeeping. Bee guardianship, a natural beekeeping approach taught by Corwin Bell from Boulder, Colorado, encourages and appreciates the beeness of bees and helps to nurture their currently delicate existence by integrating top bar hives into our own backyards, gardens and farms. I think permaculturists could do a lot of good by linking up with these people.
Comments (7)What Happens When We Stop Observing?
Insects, Livestock, Plant Systems, Working Animals — by Anthony Andrist June 25, 2011
You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t possibly live long enough to make them all yourself. – Samuel Levenson
 Front Sign for The Dunoon Honey man |
One of my recent experiences has been while beekeeping between Sydney and the PRI’s Zaytuna Farm, in The Channon. Over the last two years, I have learned a great deal from working and living in a Permaculture system but also from the endless advice from experienced beekeepers. One of the more experienced ones, Nevil Watts, lives just up the road from Zaytuna Farm in the township of Dunoon.
Just back in February, Nevil and I took a good deal of honey off the hives in order to have them lighter for transport. The honey was extracted and what was left on the bees would have sufficed until the move, as long as they were going to a good honey flow. When I didn’t make it back to move them, their stores dwindled. Between then and just the last week or so, they have been hammered with about six weeks of rain, which needless to say, didn’t help much.
Comments (11)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)Animal Systems at HEPA, Vietnam
Aid Projects, Animal Housing, Bird Life, Breeds, Community Projects, Demonstration Sites, Education Centres, Fencing, Fish, Livestock, Working Animals — by Marty Miller-Crispe May 19, 2011
At SPERI’s Human Ecology Project Area we have a number of Farmer Field Schools (HEPA FFS) which are host to students from a variety of indigenous minority groups from Vietnam and Laos. The students are here to learn about eco-farming and permaculture whilst respecting traditional laws and customs.
The main focus of the farms isn’t to be productive, but rather to provide an environment where the students can experiment with various farming methods of growing crops and raising animals. So, although we do obtain a yield from the farms, the greater yield is the knowledge the students gain from trial and error.
HEPA FFS is in lush rainforest near the Laos border south-west of Ha Noi. The weather here varies from very cold winters (no snow but feels like it could!), to hot dry summers toasted with hot winds from Laos, and moving into cold monsoons and flooding at other times of the year. As such it is a challenge for the students to obtain a yield from the crops year round, and even more of a challenge to keep healthy animals.
Comments (4)Native Bees to Help Our Garden
Animal Housing, Biodiversity, Insects, Working Animals — by Zaia Kendall May 17, 2011
As the world’s bee population is becoming more and more endangered we are keen to embark on the journey of native bee keeping.
by Zaia Kendall
Australian Stingless Bee
As many of you already know, the world’s bees are in trouble. Colony collapse disorder, predator beetles and probably a range of other factors that have to do with our lack of care for the earth is slowly annihilating the world’s bee population. We have definitely noticed a decrease in bee activity in our garden this year and are extremely concerned about this problem, since a lot of our plants depend on bees to produce fruit or vegetables.
So, we were very excited to discover a native beehive in a log on our property.
Comments (3)Everything You Need to Know About Composting With Worms
Compost, Rehabilitation, Soil Biology, Urban Projects, Working Animals — by Rob Avis April 2, 2011
by Rob Avis
Following my recent blog post on the Do-It-Yourself Vermipod, I’ve been receiving a ton of questions from folks who built Vermipods and are looking for information on how to manage and maintain their new pets. So here’s a compilation called Everything You Need To Know About Composting With Worms….
Comments (12)Permaculture Design for Horses, People & Habitat
Animal Forage, Commercial Farm Projects, Economics, Energy Systems, Financial Management, Gabions, Land, Livestock, Plant Systems, Swales, Waste Systems & Recycling, Working Animals — by Nick Huggins February 16, 2011
Click for larger view
Introduction
I want to share with you a few things about a permaculture design project I finished in late October 2010. Details of the design, some details of working with clients on design projects, basic costing and what to be aware of when doing so. I also outline how I put the project together and what it included.
Comments (14)Keeping Native Australian Stingless Bees
Insects, Working Animals — by Ecofilms February 2, 2011
There are reported to be over 1600 varieties of bees in Australia, but only 14 species are stingless. Australian stingless bees are a lot smaller and darker looking than your average sized honey bee. There’s one good advantage in being small, and that’s being able to pollinate tiny, delicate, hard to reach blossoms.
That’s where the Australian native, stingless bees come into the picture.
Permaculture practitioner Anne Wensley has been keeping these bees for over 25 years. Whilst we were filming a segment with Anne about her chickens we spotted her bees in a log outside her door. Generations of these bees have inhabited the same log.
Watch the Youtube clip to see Anne show you her native bee hive.
Comments (2)
Pig Tractors
Animal Forage, Fencing, Land, Livestock, Rehabilitation, Waste Systems & Recycling, Working Animals — by Marty Miller-Crispe January 28, 2011
Pigs in Vietnam
Photos © Craig Mackintosh unless otherwise indicated
I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals. — Sir Winston Churchill, British politician (1874 – 1965)
Like Winston Churchill, I also like pigs. They are intelligent, highly social, are fun to watch, and make awesome tractors!
The use of animals to clear and manure land in preparation for planting is a well known permaculture approach to agriculture that can reduce the need for machinery, eliminate the need for artificial fertiliser, and provide pest control. The classic example is the chicken tractor for preparing veggie beds or the use of ducks for pest control once the veggie garden has been established.
The use of pigs enclosed in a movable pen or ‘pig tractor’ is a great way to clear large areas of land, or help break up hard packed, or clay ground.
Comments (8)The Private Life of Chickens
Bird Life, Livestock, Working Animals — by Kelly Pagliaro
Have you ever wondered what goes on in a chicken’s head? Maybe you’ve pondered why humans have chosen chickens as the domestic farm bird of choice. You might think the chicken is a rather “bird-brained” animal, but in reality they are much more complex than we give them credit for. In a BBC documentary titled “The Private Life of Chickens” we follow Jim Doherty as he learns about chicken pecking orders, how chickens deal with predators, interactions between mother hens and their chicks, and much more. Watch the videos below if you too would like to delve into the private life of the world’s most populous bird.
Part I
Rob’s DIY Vermipod
Compost, Rehabilitation, Urban Projects, Waste Systems & Recycling, Working Animals — by Rob Avis November 10, 2010
by Rob Avis
For some time now I’ve been anxious to get a worm composting system for our kitchen scraps to turn our “waste” into a valuable resource – soil! Inspired by some pretty neat worm systems that I found on the web, I set out to design something that would work very well, yet could be built with scrap or easily available material.
Comments (10)How to Make an Egg Mobile
Animal Housing, Bird Life, Breeds, Building, Land, Livestock, Rehabilitation, Retrofitting, Waste Systems & Recycling, Working Animals — by Geoff Lawton September 3, 2010
So, we wanted to make an egg mobile for egg laying chickens to follow behind our dairy cows and fertilise the pasture while scratching the manure that the cows leave behind. The chickens also leave behind their own manure whilst free ranging across pasture. This technique allows the chickens to supplement their diet and produce some good eggs for us to enjoy.
So, first we started off with a 6 by 4 foot derelict old car trailer. Here is the trailer in our workshop with our current internship students learning how to do some metal recycling work to create a good solid egg mobile. This egg mobile is of minimal size to work on a small farm.
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