Tags
art, farm, photography, seasons, southwestern Fleurieu, water
Another thunderstorm passes by.
Passover
01 Monday Dec 2014
Posted in art & craft, ecology
Tag Archives: seasons
Farm hack: stock trough hose outlet
23 Sunday Nov 2014
Posted in diy
Every week or so we empty our stock troughs, sometimes for cleaning, sometimes to shift it into a new paddock or location to prevent the soil getting bared out. As dry springs like this one remind us, water is precious. The dam fills in winter, we pump up to the tanks, then try to gravity feed the stock troughs from spring until the rains come again. When it came to empty the troughs, we tried some judicious bucketing onto nearby seedlings, but that’s long and arduous when you have 450 litres to decant. Continue reading
Regeneration: Two years of practising patience
16 Sunday Nov 2014
Posted in ecology, planning, regeneration, trees, waterways
Tags
before and after, ecology, erosion, farm, fencing, kangaroos, permaculture, planning, propagation, revegetation, seasons, southwestern Fleurieu, trees, waste, waterways
Some might consider Shark-mesh overkill for allowing rushes to regenerate.
In our first year of working on the farm, we really tried to practise the permaculture principle of long and thoughtful observation, but it always competed with our own impatience to see change. In that first flurry of clearing gullies and planting seedlings, I remember trawling the internet for before-and-after shots of other people’s reveg projects: something to help imagine a future for the block. Seasoned tree-planters told us we’d see real change in five years, the optimistic suggested three, others, fifteen.
Self-regenerating golden wattle (Acacia pycnantha) after two years, and protection from kangaroos. This wattle was one of four trees present on the entire property in 2012.
Now at the two year mark, we are noticing change. Removing cattle and fencing sensitive areas has allowed a fuzz of groundcover to begin growing over the barest of gullies. Fences have reoriented deer and kangaroo movement and grazing patterns. Some seedlings planted in the cold, soggy winter of 2013 appeared to die, but then surprised us by resprouting and growing at a cracking pace the following autumn. Other plants that were repeatedly pruned back to their tree-guard height by roos have invested their growing energy into roots and woody stems.
How many swallows make a summer?
10 Friday Oct 2014
Tags
birds, ecology, farm, photography, seasons, southwestern Fleurieu, summer, water
Flocks of Welcome Swallows (Hirundo neoxena) have been hunting on our farm for months now, spiralling around us as we work, then resting as a group along the fences. They are amazingly acrobatic hunters, plucking insect prey from the air in circles and dives. Apparently, swallows need to eat their own body weight every day to maintain their health. While they weigh only 10 grams, this can mean they can eat up to 400 times a day (approximately every two minutes) to ensure their sprightliness.
Young welcome swallows huddle together at Seal Bay, Kangaroo Island (October 2014).
Over the last month or so, we’ve spotted swallows hunting over the dam on a couple of occasions. They circle, dive and appear to be plucking prey from just below the surface of the water. If they are hunting sub-surface prey, according to birder Jennifer Spry, this is a largely undocumented phenomenon. These photos are a little too indistinct to say for sure, but interesting nonetheless! Continue reading
Small mysteries: A year in bugs
27 Saturday Sep 2014
Posted in ecology, regeneration, trees
Tags
ecology, farm, insects, photography, seasons, southwestern Fleurieu, summer, trees, winter
As part of our record-keeping, in the almost-two-years since we bought Yarnauwi we’ve tried to document the natural phenomena we observe season by season. At the end of each year, we go back over our journals and add what we’ve discovered to the records of the previous year. Over time, we hope, we’ll get a much more complex understanding of the ecological patterns that occur in our landscape, as well as the changes that may occur as a result of our activities.
Already, in the short time we’ve been on the block, we’ve noted shifts in the populations and presence of certain plants and creatures. While we often overlook insects, when looking back through our photos and notes, we realised that we have actually been observing their more subtle role through the seasons: the sudden chorus of crickets after the opening rains, or the way the grass flickers with grasshoppers in late summer. In their honour, here’s a year in bugs. Representing less than a couple of years of observation, it’s far from authoritative, but perhaps it offers the beginnings of a pattern.
Autumn
Crickets sing from the cracked soil after the first flush of rains.
Bardi grubs (Rain moth pupae) emerge from the soil around the River red gums following the first rains.
Fleurieu Seascapes
25 Thursday Sep 2014
Posted in art & craft, ecology
Tags
art, photography, seasons, southwestern Fleurieu, summer, water, winter
Sun and rain, Winter 2014
Watching the light shift across the hills is one of the great pleasures of being on the South Western Fleurieu, and it’s further enhanced by proximity to the sea. On our journeys around the region, we’re regularly exposed to the changes of light over the ocean as the road hooks coastward at places like Lady Bay or Sellicks, or hiking along the cliffs and coast around Second Valley. Summer offers a starkness to the ocean and sky, but I’ve come to love the way sea and sky diffuse together in the winter. Here’s some of what we’ve seen.
Erosion control: 15 months on
22 Tuesday Apr 2014
Posted in ecology, planning, regeneration, waterways
Tags
design, ecology, erosion, planning, seasons, soil, southwestern Fleurieu, summer, water, waterways
One of the first interventions we made on the property was trying out some very rough erosion control on this scoured patch on our boundary. Earthworks from recent fencing had disturbed the soil and invited headcuts to form. With help from Pete and Freya, we tentatively set up a couple of lo-fi erosion strategies, informed by the work of Watershed Artisans (formerly Dryland Solutions) and Brad Lancaster, both of whom we’ve gushed about before. We reshaped the main headcut to soften the overflow, and positioned some kind of mutant One Rock Dam/Zuni Bowl at an intersection between two small headcuts – not something I’d do again. We also positioned a One Rock Dam on contour above the entire area in an effort to slow and disperse water flow.
A scoured, erosive patch, December 2012.
Pipe Dreams: How to set up a watering system for stock
22 Tuesday Apr 2014
‘Pipe Dream’: useful for passing time in the late 1980s, not that useful for planning livestock systems.
One of our key milestones in the development of the property this year was the establishment of a watering system for livestock. Having a watering system supports our fencing of the farm dam and waterways for habitat regeneration and also allows us to more intensively manage the movement and impact of livestock through rotational grazing. While we’re still the furthest thing from expert, with the advice and support of our neighbours, we managed to knock together a watering system that works. In researching and developing our own plans, we found an absence of basic information on setting up stock systems, so the ideas below are a few of the things we learnt or found useful in planning a system for our own context and landscape. They are just one perspective in informing your own planning, and shouldn’t be read as an endorsement of any particular way of doing things.
New artwork: painting summer
22 Tuesday Apr 2014
Posted in art & craft, diy, ecology
Tags
Second Valley causeway, looking towards Normanville.
A little while ago, it occurred to me that maybe I should give watercolour a crack. The theory was that I’d be able to work fast enough to bang out a painting during toddler naps. In reality, I’ve still only finished a handful of works over the last six months, and as a consequence my skill development has been glacial. That said, it’s still a pleasure to sit down with the brushes and attempt to wrangle the Czech-made watercolour set into South Australia’s less exuberant colour palette.
A One-Page Place Assessment for TBC Farm, Second Valley
30 Sunday Mar 2014
Posted in ecology, planning, regeneration, waterways
Tags
books, design, ecology, permaculture, planning, revegetation, seasons, soil, southwestern Fleurieu, trees, water, waterways
Brad Lancaster’s books on Rainwater Harvesting would have to be among the most consistently inspiring books we own. Two volumes into his trilogy on Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Lancaster combines accumulated community wisdom with permaculture principles to produce lavishly illustrated, practical and highly accessible manuals for managing water in urban and rural environments. Consistent with permaculture thinking, Lancaster urges land managers to spend time observing the season patterns of the landscape to more effectively design for sustainable, integrated water management. One method of doing this is to compile a One Page Place Assessment, drawing together essential climatic and ecological information about your particular location.
Our first year has been one of spreadsheets, mapping out our seasonal observations and activities, and the One Page Place Assessment concept is a elegant way of compiling climatic data from Second Valley and the surrounding area. We’ve finally completed the first version of a place assessment for our property, with much of the data drawn from Bureau of Meteorology stations nearby (Myponga Reservoir being the furthest). While we have tailored information to our particular location, we hope it will be of use to other landowners in the region. We have also referenced information sources so others can draw on the same resources in exploring their own area.
You can download our One Page Place Assessment here. Continue reading
Yarnauwi Farm 