Daily move

I love watching these guys every day. What herbs or grasses they eat first, how they dance into the next paddock all this knowing daily moves mean regeneration of soil systems.

Detectives

We have been exploring our land in places we have not been before. Finding clues. Still to find out who has been living here.

Lettuce flowers

Lettuce flowers with a Blue butterfly pollinator.

The whole ecosystem benefits from plants going to seed (if it is not an noxious weed).
Flowers for pollinators, seed for next year, soil shaded and fed by living plants for longer, higher proportions of carbon for compost and as the leaves can die back an opportunity to plant your next crop as an understory.

Bonfire charcoal

After the bonfire is charcoal!!

This charcoal is mostly bamboo so should be nice and dense. I will inoculate it and turn it into bio-char before I spread it around.

3erd hay

This paddock was compacted and waterlogged. Not much grew and it was hard to find a worm.

We cut down tall kanuka for our winter wood and then;
-pulsed chickens through with bales of hay for fertilizer, seed and organic matter.
-made a giant carbon rich compost (after turning once we added a lot of leaf litter from our bush). To bring back a diversity of microbes and fingi.
-planted the drain with native stock fodder, plums and tagasaste for diversity, shade and ramial wood.
-replaced an old blocked drain.
-put on some lime for calcium and to flocculate soil (soils are very high in Magnesium).
-annually we add a compost tea/slurry.
-managed the animals with portable netting so that they were only in a 'paddock' for one day at a time, let the pasture recover for longer, left more residue behind animals.

We still have a way to go but it is so amazing now!!
We have gone from  2 days grazing to 8. Residue, diversity, recovery and worm numbers are all up. It is also very easy to put in standards now.

As life is I cannot wait to see how much more this paddock will improve?

Kibbler

This grinder saves me so much time.

It kibbles my chicken food, and grinds up charcoal for bio-char and pigments for paints and plasters.

This dry clay is being ground for seed balls.

Pototoes

Dreaming or potatoes. Step one broad fork. Step two add compost. Step three roll out straw. Step four wait until the weather warms. Step five add the chickens (this was not planned but the slugs loved the straw soo much -and the chickens loved the slugs).

Step six will be plant the potatoes under the straw.

Edible weeds

We grow sorrel in our garden but this wild sheep sorrel has a muck more intense flavor. It seems funny calling it an edible weed when it is such a beautiful plant.

Garlic

My garlic is growing up through its blanket of mulch. Nice and early so it is well established before rust.

Mulch

Whether living or decomposing (living in a different way) mulch cloaks the soil. These mulches will protect and feed our soil over winter. As well as providing us with fresh greens. In between the plants are lupin seeds that will be pruned back so they do not shade out the edibles.

Turning compost

And the compost gets turned.

Each time you can see the amazing mahi of the invisible and then visible composters all working for us. Breaking down plant material and then each other into a beautiful mix of soil food ready to me turned back into the system.

Fungi flower

Mulcher

We sold our van and brought a mulcher.
It has been so good to have our own.
We are mulching everything; apples for cider, fish for hydrolysate, garden materials and loads of great ramial wood for mulch and compost.

Vermicast

Vermicast -or some would say liquid gold.
I am adding more and more carbon to my worm farms to try and encourage a much more fungal dominated cast.
From this I then make, seed treatments, compost teas and slurries, potting mix, and compost for planting.

Sunflowers

I am loving sunflowers.

In summer whenever I have a spare bed I sow them as a part of a diverse cover crop.

We have beautiful flowers to share, food for pollinators, petals to eat, are deep rooted for loosening soil, create mychorrizal connection, create a great nursery for winter kale and spinach and grow lots of carbon for compost.

Living Design

What an amazing few days with some amazing people.

Living Design is a way of designing modeled on the beautiful unfolding of nature.

Plastering

I love the curves and contrasts of these walls.
The first coat of plaster seems to highlight both.

This is the first layer of plaster on our earth bricks. There is minimal cracking so we will use a fine sieve for the next layer and that may be our last.

Our mix for this layer is;
-4 parts clay.
-1 part aggregate; 1 part sand, 1 part pumice, 1 part fine pummice
-3 parts straw

All put through a 1/4 inch sieve pre-mixing.

And the tiles go on

We were lucky enough to be gifted these tiles about a year ago now by our good friend Mike O'Donnell.

It took a whole evening of mocking (participators included; sink, toothbrushes, table/bench, mirror, tiles, and a good group of people) up to decide on the final tile positions (they are going to frame a sink and mirror). The language used to define the layout was amazing. The arrangement/form emerged slowly with some tiles being fixed quickly and others as the evening rolled on.

The next morning we did a final mock up on the wall (sink and cabinet included) before setting them into a layer of earthen plaster.

Broad sowing

This bucket of potential is going to be broad sown in a paddock I am working on at the moment. 

It is full of winter legumes, mustard, wheat and some flowers that may take.

In the spring I will sprinkle another mix before pulsing the sheep through the paddock.

Plaster mix

The ingredients for our plaster mix. We are still playing a little with proportions but at the moment we are going with 1/3 clay. 1/3 agregate and 1/3 fibre.
These small batches are mixed in the wheelbarrow easily.

Bonfires

To celebrate the solstice we have an annual bonfire.
We start by sharing food from this land to honor the abundance.
We then make and shoot fire arrows with the memories of a year past.
This year a phoenix flew through the flames and then went up in flames as we set our intentions for the new year and then cooked sausages in the coals before making charcoal with what was left to return to the land that supports us.

Sausage sticks

As the nights get longer and air cooler bonfires on the beach a great evening activity.

This year there is an abundance of sausage cooking sticks.

Rainy day seed sort out

A rainy day is the perfect opportunity for a seed sort.

All of the old ones from the seed drawers will be fed to the chickens and replaced by new -which have been hanging above the fire finishing their drying.

This years labels are blue so it will be easier to see at a glance how old they are.

Beans

My four new types of beans -thanks to Setha's seeds.

These guys are dried threshed and ready to be stored for winter stews and soups.

View from the shower

The taro for giant umbrellas above your head -great for when it is raining.

The shower water drains into a shallow swale that starts under your feet. There are also tamarello, banana and assorted native shrubs and ferns creating a beautiful guild and privacy.

Bringing in the sheep

Bringing the sheep into the yards is just a call away. Because I move them most days they will follow me quite a way (as long as they are not too hungry and there is not too much food along the way).

Convolvulus Hawk Moth Caterpillar

This guy is so beautiful -found it on my kumara. Hopefully it pupates in time for winter. I am harvesting my kumara now so will need to put it next to some Convolvulus. 

Kaanga Ma

Winter goodness waiting to be hung from the roof.

Seed sieves

Just showing off a new toy from Crafty Gatherer. Thanks Tess and Marco.

It has made sorting seeds much easier.

Winter cover up

As I harvest in the autumn a cloak of green manure is sown to cover any bare earth.

This cloak will;
-out compete weeds,
- keep fungi strong (as the mycellium can only stay alive for a short time in the soil without their host -plants),
- maintain a good soil structure by stopping weathering, holding soil together with roots and those of fungi they host,
- providing shelter for soil insects, food for decomposers like worms when mulched and provide nutrients/mulch for next springs plantings (this green manure is lupin and broad beans for corn crops).