Its time to bring the honey in

We were given a hive and a swarm by our wonderful friend Hans, who for many years now has been building up his knowledge on natural bee keeping.  He has about 18 hives on his 12 acres and sells his excess honey (which as you could imagine is quite a lot). He gave us a top bar hive which consists of a box with just the wooden bar sitting in the top of the frame (inside the lid of course).

How things have grown

I've been very focused on fencing and sheep for a while now and its amazing to see how fast thing grow when you don't watch them. Below is the swale that I cleaned up and planted out in February.

New additions

So after a little fence teasing in my last post, here are some pics of our newest additions

I know, I know, its been a while

Its been a very busy first quarter now that I'm back at work.  Having said that, there is still some movement on the property.  Big things are afoot.

What's coming to a table near me

Whilst most of my attention has been gonig to clearing new areas of the food forest, other plants have still been busy doing what they do.  So here's a glimpse of what's on the way. We've got five banana circles now with four hands of bananas busy ripening and getting fat.  Three are in the first circle I put in - can you spot them in the first photo below?

A la carte dining

The more we put food plants onto our property, the more visitors we have that come and enjoy what's on offer.  But this one is just for the birds

Little by Little

As I go back to work next week, its been full steam ahead in the garden. Thankfully we've had rain and cooler temperatures, but still, its dirty,sweaty work.  And the other gift is the help I've had from Beau and Greg, who are taking it in turns (wise men). So the top swale where the apple and macadamia trees are was next on the list.  The grass was as high as your shoulders and needed the same treatment as the lower swale had just had.  So we stockpiled manure and mulch and got to it.  Here's what it looked like when we started.

What's potting

I was out removing more grass today (surprise, surprise but more on that in the next post) and low and behold - apples

My new forest sprung a leak

I'm so pleased with the expansion of the food forest, but with the first rain came the first problem.  We'd taken so much grass away, which was great, but it left loose soil along the swale and especially where one swale drops into the one below, not so great.  So there was only one thing to do - slow the water down through the little gully so I didn't lose all the soil and mulch with the next rain.

I had read a post on Milkwood's blog about Yuni Bowls (http://milkwood.net/2011/11/04/making-a-zuni-bowl-let-the-water-do-the-work/) and whilst it wasn't quite the solution I needed, it gave me the blueprint of what I had to do.

The problem was a steep gully where the one swale tapered off and turned downhill to allow the rain to be captured in the lower swale )you can see the swale curving to the right in this photo).  A large tree stump stopped us continuing the swale straight along contour and so this seemed to be the best solution.  But with the removal of all the grass and the first dumping of rain, the problem became clear.  So I went to the local landscaping store and hand picked some cast off standstone and voila

 Well perhaps not quite 'voila'.  Those rocks were heavy! And rather than just laying the rocks down the slope, I dug three small pools to slow and capture the water as it moves down the gully.  The idea is not to create ponds per se, but just to slow things down and avoid erosion.

Creating more forest

Mad I know, but as I was taking some time off, the thing to do was obviously to work on my food forest in the height of summer.  Thankfully, I had help from my friend Beau and together over a few days, we cleared the next area of the food forest and since then, I've been busy planting and weeding as the area starts to establish itself.  The first thing we had to do was to remove all of this.

updates

When you're on five acres and fairly ambitious, you keep starting new areas of productivity and then realise you have to maintain them to keep them working for you.  So when I'm not watering (which is a lot as its still very dry here), I'm walking around all the newer areas I've given a make-over to and doing a it of maintenance on the weeds etc.  Eventually I hope the weeds will be overtaken by the ground covers I've planted.  Now I know some weeds are edible, but I'd still rather feast on sweet potato or pumpkin - call me crazy.  So of my projects in the six months, lets look at some before and afters

New entrants

A few things have aligned in recent weeks to allow some new entrants into our food chain here at Barefoot Cottage.  We've been working hard to clear and new areas of the food forest and we've been to two markets, one being the local market where they are a few store holders who breed local natives and the other being the Brisbane Organic Growers Inc (or BOGI) fair.  So we've been able to pick up a few additions and plant them out in our new areas of the food forest.
The first new face is a wonderful native elderberry or a honey bush.  After having seen many episodes of River Cottage, we are wondering if we'll be able to make elderberry wine or something similarly alcoholic from the flowers.

View from the verandah

For something a little different, I've taken some shots from the verandah.  As we live in a valley, the verandah gives us a wonderful aspect through the trees and out onto the property.  As I'm mostly in the garden, I don't spend as much time enjoying those views as I'd like, but I live under the fantasy that once the food forest is more established, I'll have more time to park off.  We'll see.

This is the size of the verandah and one of the things that attracted me to the house.  Some of the trees beyond are ours and others belong to the neighbour, whose boundary fence (but not his house) is quite close, and he took a barren piece of hill and turned it into a forest of his own.

Looking out in the other direction, you can see some of the trees that the birds love to pop into for a snack. You can also catch a glimpse of the pool in the bottom right hand corner, which is quite filthy right now as we let it go over winter.

Planting out

A few weeks ago I took some pics of the nursery.  Everything was thriving and so I've done a bit of planting out.  I also wanted more space to plant other seeds, so it was time, ready or not.  Firstly, the tomatoes went in.  They are a heritage breed called money maker.

A few surprises

In my last post I was talking about my cardamon and how much I love it.  I had heard, probably from the wonderful Jerry Coleby Williams, that we are too far south here in Brissie for the cardamon to ever flower and give us seeds.  But guess what??

I couldn't believe it this morning when I was giving the hedge a bit of water.  It was tucked away and the cardamon is now head height so it would have been easy to miss.  Well, I may not get seeds still, but I'm pretty happy just to see the flower.

Slow growing trees

I had some friends over yesterday that I knew when I was in Sydney.  They had been looking at my posts on facebook and when they were in Brisbane, wanted to come out and see what I've been up to.  As we walked around the property, we chatted about what I was trying to do and how much our food bill had gone down already.  When we got to the food forest, more for the mulberries than for anything else, my friend said "so you're here for the long haul." She was right.  The food that will be available to us in five years will be very different to what we've got now.  In the short term, its mostly the veggie patch that is feeding us, with a top up from the two citrus trees and the two mango trees that were already here when we arrived two and a half years ago.  Since then, we've put in well over a hundred trees and shrubs, none of which (except the mulberries) have given us anything to eat....yet.  But in five years, things will be completely different. We'll be able to add avocados, pecan nuts, macadamia nuts, peaches, pears, apricots, nectarine, plums, jack fruit, chocolate pudding fruit, jaboticaba, apples, chestnuts, figs and loads more citrus. But you do have to be patient.  I've also been patiently working on layering my food forest with other edible shrubs and ground covers which are faster to yield, as well as herbs and flowering plants to attract the bees.  So here are a few pics to show how things are progressing

The nursery

For my birthday last month, my sister-in-law and mother-in-law gave me a box of goodies from Green Harvest (the perfect present for me).  In the box where many packets of warm season seeds and sub-tropical seeds, so I ramped up the nursery and added a few more seeds that I'd saved from last season and got to it.  Three or four weeks later, its looking fabulous

Spring in the patch

I was made redundant a few weeks ago and so that has meant more time in the garden, which I'm really enjoying.  And now that we are in the dry season, its a good thing too, as the patch needs plenty of water.  Our soil is on the clay side of things and when it dries out, its not pretty.  But if you keep the water up to it, its beautiful.  So I've just come back up to the house after doing just that.  And here's how it looks

A big weekend - part 2

So here are the results of the second day of back breaking work

A big weekend

We have a section of the food forest  that the swales didn't extend to, as there was a large old wattle that needed to be taken down before it fell on someone.  So Shaun took care of it, cut up most of the trunk and branches but we didn't get around to taking them all away before summer and the dreaded plague - triffid grass.  Apparently the CSIRO did some research on a variety of grass for stock feed.  As it turns out, its good for cattle but dangerous for horses.  Not only does it grow head height in a matter of week, it also grows with a 20 cm matt of roots that chocks out everything else. And our property is covered with the stuff.  We have struggled to remove it in our veggie patch area and in the end need a rotary hoe to remove it.  But some still finds its way in.  On the swales, we put in a green manure cover crop and then put down sugar cane mulch.  After a great first season of nitrogen fixing plants, the grass started to come back.  In hind sight, I should have got on top of it them.  Live and learn.  The area that we hadn't touched is not only covered in this grass, it also was now thick with lantana.  But given that its still winter, when the grass is dry and the weather conducive to hard labour, we decided to give it a crack.  Two days and two ute loads of lantana later, here's how its looking