Tag Archives: design

“You’re just so far away”: A tale of a farm shed

19 Sunday Mar 2017

Posted by in building, diy

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The Yarnauwi skyline is changing: some is grown, some is constructed.

A ‘Grand Design’ it isn’t, but the Yarnauwi farm shed has seen enough delays to make even Kevin McCloud blush. After 14 months, our simple 4-bay equipment shed is finally done. Ordered in January 2016, with the shed company suggesting an initial completion date of June 2016, this modest structure was beset with delays ranging in scale from an apocalyptic winter through to urban tradies that couldn’t quite stomach the prospect of venturing beyond suburbia.

Done!

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Winter active

31 Tuesday May 2016

Posted by in diy, ecology, regeneration, trees

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Blue gum (Eucalyptus leucoxylon) seedlings ready for planting.

Before Yarnauwi, we never really appreciated winter. Now, through the long dry season, we find ourselves yearning for a chill edge to the wind, the moisture in the grass, and skies of dark clouds. We’ve tried to plan our year to mimic the lives of so many of the organisms that occupy our landscape: in the hot, dry times, we go into maintenance mode, watching and waiting for the first rains before we spring into action again. With the greening of the landscape, it’s all on: tree-planting has begun, shed sites are levelled, the grass grows. In winter, the kangaroos converge in clans numbering hundreds, displaced from the pasture, they lounge among the seedlings in the reveg areas while we look on nervously.

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Joel and Annika work on a rock dam to arrest erosion on a boundary before the rains hit.

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And then the rains hit.

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Now launched: Etsy shop

28 Sunday Feb 2016

Posted by in art & craft, history

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We are pleased to announce the launch of our Etsy shop! Here we will be selling Joel’s limited edition lino prints of Fleurieu landscapes, and Sophie’s one-off embroidery designs, as well as future art and craft concepts. Hope you can stop by, and of course feel free to give us any feedback!

We also still have a few sheepskins for sale, these are not on our Etsy shop, but can be found on our blog site under the top tab ‘Sheepskins for sale’. We hope to have more for sale later in the year.

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“Black-fronted dotterel”: embroidery for sale

The Black-fronted dotterel is one of our favourite Fleurieu birds. It’s commonly seen on the edges of dams, mudflats, freshwater swamps, and lakes, a tiny bird that runs so fast on twinkly little legs. We love watching them run around our dam, foraging in the mud. The piece is stitched freehand using some new techniques.

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“Good Intent”: new embroidery for sale

This work depicts the ship Good Intent, a wooden ketch that plied the Fleurieu coast during the 1850s, passing the iconic Norfolk Island pines of Lady Bay. At one point during the glory days of South Australia’s ‘Mosquito Fleet’, the Good Intent sank at the Second Valley jetty while loading wheat, but was able to be raised. Lady Bay, between Normanville and Second Valley, is a spectacular piece of Fleurieu coastline featuring these trees that were planted in coastal areas all around Australia for the tall, straight timber they provided for masts.

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In other news, an early break in the summer season has greened up our pasture nicely and our flock are happy and content (we’ve never seen green grass here in February!)

Exploring the Fleurieu’s climate future

20 Saturday Feb 2016

Posted by in ecology, livestock, planning, regeneration, reviews, waterways

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We’ve recently read a couple of books that have served as a catalyst to revisit what a future climate scenario might be like for the Fleurieu Peninsula, and how we can ensure the greatest resilience for our patch of ground. The books are two practical volumes on climate change, the first The Handbook: Surviving and Living with Climate Change, by Jane Rawson and James Whitmore, is a tour of practical household and community strategies for adapting to climate change in Australia. The second, Two Percent Solutions for the Planet: 50 low-cost, low-tech, nature-based practices for combatting hunger, drought and climate change, is a farming and land restoration-focussed collection of case studies collected by Quivira Coalition co-founder, Courtney White. For readers that may’ve grown weary of the political inertia around climate change, not to mention the vast scale of the problem, the practical, household-, community- or farm-scale focus of both books offers a practical way of re-engaging with the climate challenge. Two Percent Solutions serves as an optimistic companion read to the sometimes gloomy vibe of The Handbook, with its strategies offering scope for both climate mitigation and adaptation. Continue reading →

The Yarnauwi Farm Annual Report 2015

13 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by in diy, events, livestock, planning, regeneration, trees

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You can view a printable version of this Annual Report here.

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We’re now three years into the Yarnauwi project. With all of our major water and fencing infrastructure in place, 2015 was a year of consolidating and refining our planting and grazing systems, and continuing to restore habitat while also developing income streams. Once again, we thank you for your support this year, whether that’s been planting trees, purchasing meat, hauling junk, offering advice or just being generally encouraging! We feel enormously privileged to have such a supportive community of family, friends and neighbours contributing to the restoration and development of this patch of ground. Continue reading →

A new (moveable) sheep shelter

23 Wednesday Dec 2015

Posted by in diy, livestock

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The new A-Frame moveable sheep shelter, with its skillion-roofed predecessors in the background.

We’ve tried to structure our farm year so that summer is a time of dormancy, maintaining the property, but avoiding too many big jobs in the heat. With an historic heatwave across southeastern Australia, and four consecutive days over 40 degrees for South Australia, we thought we’d make an exception to construct another shelter for our long-suffering sheep.

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The triangular-prism rises, with gully tin in the foreground.

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New linocut print: Fear the deer!

26 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by in art & craft, diy, ecology, regeneration, trees

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“Fear the deer, rue the roo, but keep on planting!”, linocut inspired by efforts to revegetate the southwestern Fleurieu Peninsula, South Australia, by Joel Catchlove

After months of chipping away at this latest linocut in spare moments sprinkled throughout family life, I’m pleased to announce it finished! “Fear the deer, etc.” was begun earlier this year in the lead-up to the 2015 tree planting season and depicts the view looking west from Yarnauwi, with a selection of local birds eagerly awaiting the maturation of our and our neighbours’ revegetation efforts! In the meantime, they perch in the antlers of a red deer skull, one of the many voracious herbivores in the neighbourhood that present challenges for raising seedlings.

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The carved block, ready for inking

The birds shown are, on the left, a tawny frogmouth, a family of which we’ve spotted 500 or so metres from our back boundary, but our property still lacks the habitat to tempt them closer, a black-faced cuckoo-shrike (aka. shufflewing, due to its habit of shuffling its wings upon landing), common in nearby woodland but still only a passing visitor to Yarnauwi, and the Australasian Pipit, an enthusiastic resident of the farm.

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Ready for inking.

Special thanks to Jess S, patron of the arts, for donating part of her stash of lino for the creation of this particular piece! Thanks again to our community of friends and neighbours who continue to contribute to the broader effort of restoring habitat on our property and beyond!

The ground beneath your feet: resources for exploring soil

13 Sunday Sep 2015

Posted by in ecology, regeneration, tools

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Soils of South Australia, divided into 16 subgroups, from the 1986 Atlas of South Australia.

Recently we’ve been thinking a lot about soil. After all, it is the International Year of Soils, and really, without dirt, there’s not much else. Understanding how our soils work and how to restore them is an essential part of our regeneration project and their structure and composition help define the boundaries of what’s possible on our patch of ground. As Adamson and Osborn asserted in their pioneering 1924 study of the ecology of the eucalypt forests of the Mount Lofty Ranges, climate and soils are the primary factors in determining ecological variation in the region, so even where the scrub has long been cleared, soils can also offer a memory of past ecosystems.

However, it’s taken us a while to unravel meaningful information about soils. There’s a whole new vocabulary, and when you don’t yet know your Kandosols from your Kurosols the whole experience can be a bit mystifying. To make things even more complex, there are oodles of different technical terms for describing any particular soil type, depending on era or classification systems. So we thought we’d share some resources that we’ve come across that may be of use in working out what you’re sitting on. Continue reading →

Farm hack: Making a sheep working race

11 Saturday Jul 2015

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One of our hoggets, sizing up the new facilities.

We’re great fans of temporary. Not aiming for permanence tends to mean that ideas can be trialled inexpensively, can be easily changed and that learning from failure can be quick and low-impact. In that spirit, as we develop the sheep enterprise of the farm, we’ve tried to keep things low-key. For yards, we use locally-made portable panels, but when working closely with sheep, we found the mesh sides problematic due to the ease with which horns or feet can become entangled. In more established circumstances, yards would have a working race for such a purpose, but the cost of a manufactured race can be steep. It was time to get out the tools and make our own.

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The ‘new’ working race in position, with sheep, also in position. As a further refinement, we need to attach bracing to the far end to help it stand up to the inevitable knocks and bumps.

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New artwork: Second Valley coastline

04 Monday May 2015

Posted by in art & craft

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Second Valley, 2015, a linocut by Joel Catchlove

With the early mornings that come with babies and toddlers, I’ve been keeping a couple of squares of lino and some carving tools handy, digging around between bowls of muesli and naps. Here’s the latest of the coastline in our neighbourhood, from a view I’ve toyed with before. I need to work on my clouds, especially.

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The printing set-up. I’m very proud of the advances made in registration of different coloured prints!