31 Sunday Jan 2021
Posted in trees
We’re big fans of trees, and in parallel to our attempts to restore habitat with indigenous plants, we’ve also worked to establish a number of woodland plantings managed for firewood, timber and other uses. In the spirit of permaculture, these woodlots are designed to serve a number of functions.
Continue reading09 Thursday Apr 2020
Posted in events, history, regeneration, trees, waterways
Tags
ecology, erosion, events, farm, Fleurieu, Fleurieu Coast, permaculture, revegetation, soil, southwestern Fleurieu, tour, trees, water
There’s been so much growth and change at the farm over the last year that we really wanted to share with our team of volunteers and supporters. However, with everyone staying in their postcode this holiday weekend and farm tours suspended for the foreseeable future, we thought we’d put together a little video so you can still enjoy the big skies of the Fleurieu! Take care, and we hope to see you back under the trees soon!
27 Monday Jan 2020
Posted in ecology, regeneration, trees
Tags
ecology, farm, Fleurieu, Fleurieu Coast, insects, photography, revegetation, seasons, southwestern Fleurieu, spiders, summer, trees
New growth on a red gum sapling.
We’ve been talking a bit recently about when a woodland becomes a woodland. Asher suggested 500 years of growth, but was willing to settle for 50. Perhaps it’s a woodland when the birds think so, when the firetails and blue wrens jump the boundary fence from neigbouring scrub and decide they’re safe flitting from branch to branch. As our earliest plantings grow taller than humans, and the canopies thicken and throw shade, we started noticing an increasing diversity of tiny life. Insects for whom a gum or wattle tree is their universe are finding their way across the paddocks to settle in the emerging plantings. Despite the heat and dry of summer, the trees are heaving with insect life. We recently saw the documentary The Biggest Little Farm about an idealistic (and evidently well-funded!) couple who start a diverse 200 acre farming project outside of Los Angeles. One of the messages of the film is that when you create the right conditions, nature finds a balance. As we walked through the saplings, on one, the new growth and leaves were being systematically devoured by small copper coloured beetles. We walked to the next tree, the copper beetles were present, but as we watched, were body slammed by wasps and carried away. At the next, the beetles had been busy, but now a spider had arrived, and was meticulously wrapping the beetle population in silk. Perhaps these tiny communities are beginning to find the balance too.
Here’s a tour of some of the life on the trees – we’d love your help with identification!
Beetle eats leaf.
Spider eats beetle.
Ants farm aphids on an Acacia.
A huntsman and egg sac.
Leafhopper, with comrades.
Two-spotted cup moth caterpillar.
Case moth cocoon, constructed from silk and twigs.
Ants on twisty leaves. What’s going on?!
Wasp galls on a golden wattle.
27 Monday Jan 2020
Posted in ecology, planning, regeneration, trees, waterways
Tags
annual report, books, ecology, erosion, farm, Fleurieu, Fleurieu Coast, kangaroos, livestock, permaculture, photography, planning, revegetation, seasons, soil, southwestern Fleurieu, summer, trees, winter, yarnauwi
A melted tree guard shrink wraps a seedling after a fire move through part of the property in January 2019.
2019 began and ended in fire. In early January, some errant fireworks set off by passers-by landed in one of our front paddocks, burning across a couple of hectares of our property. We were lucky. There was little wind, and it was quickly noticed and contained by our amazing neighbours and the CFS. Meanwhile, in Tasmania, fires ripped through the forests, and by spring and early summer, vast tracts of the east coast and Kangaroo Island were catastrophically aflame once again. While we’ve escaped the drought and bushfires that have gripped so much of the continent, these phenomena have served to focus our goals and aspirations in 2019. It’s been a year of learning as we work towards a more regenerative approach: ultimately building soil and harvesting water and carbon in the landscape.
2019 had the dubious distinction of being Australia’s hottest and driest year on record. It got pretty warm in the shed.
Learning
Our regenerative aspirations have been focused by some outstanding events this year. In June, we attended the Deep Winter Agrarian Gathering in Willunga, drawing together 150 aspiring and established regenerative farmers from around Australia to share skills and ideas. Former CSIRO microbiologist and climate scientist Walter Jehne set the tone with a rousing and inspirational keynote on restoring natural processes through agriculture to cool the climate.
The Food Forest’s Annemarie Brookman with Gardening Australia’s Costa Georgiadis at Deep Winter, Willunga.
10 Monday Jun 2019
Posted in diy, ecology, regeneration, trees, waterways
Tags
design, ecology, erosion, events, farm, Fleurieu, Fleurieu Coast, nursery, permaculture, propagation, revegetation, seasons, soil, trees, water, waterways, winter
A serial tree-planter manages to synchronise his outfit with the colouring of Eucalyptus occidentalis.
A couple of days before this year’s tree planting, I rang our friend and regular tree-planter Jeremy, and told him that three out of four family members were sick with the flu and we were thinking of cancelling this year’s planting weekend. He didn’t accept that proposal, effectively telling us that tree planting would happen regardless of our involvement, that between his family and another they would take care of catering, rally the volunteers and get the trees in the ground.
It has always been an aspiration of ours that the farm might offer a place for people to be able to develop connection with the landscape through collaboration on land-based projects – “where people and the landscape can restore each other”. I hope that Jeremy’s response, and the support of our friends and community over the last seven years of tree-planting is an indication of this aspiration in development. In this spirit, this year we were also delighted to host regenerative side projects such as Steven Hoepfner’s seed ball regeneration experiment, and provide a waterway for Sue and David Speck’s sedges, and a forever home for Greg Wood’s trees.
Steven’s seed ball project: local provenance bundles of seed and nutrients distributed across revegetation zones to germinate when the conditions are right.
08 Saturday Jun 2019
Posted in art & craft, ecology, exploring
Tags
camera, ecology, farm, Fleurieu, Fleurieu Coast, fox, kangaroos, photography, seasons, southwestern Fleurieu, trees, wildlife
A little while ago I received a motion camera, triggered by movement and able to shoot in complete darkness with an infra-red flash. I mounted it on a fence post, scattered some food scraps in front and left it for a week. Over the week it’s offered us a fascinating window into the life of the farm.
Curious kangaroo
Boxing match
The fight gets out of hand
Persistence is rewarded
Very curious kangaroo.
Unsurprisingly, the hordes of kangaroos feature heavily. They graze through the day and night, occasionally box, and one problem-solver has multiple attempts at reaching the enticing leaves of a mesh-guarded sapling. Continue reading
07 Monday Jan 2019
Posted in ecology, planning, regeneration, trees
Tags
bushfire, climate change, design, ecology, erosion, farm, fire, Fleurieu, Fleurieu Coast, permaculture, planning, resilience, revegetation, seasons, soil, summer, trees, zones
Melted tree guard on a eucalyptus seedling.
A few evenings ago, someone set off fireworks on the road beside our property. Embers from the fireworks landed in the grass on the property boundary and quickly took, spreading through the dry summer grass along the fence and down a drainage line. Thankfully, our neighbours quickly noticed and set to work with their own fire unit while awaiting the arrival of the police and Country Fire Service. The blaze was contained with minimal damage, but it’s stimulated us to revisit our property plans and consider how we’re designing for the inevitability of fire.
Scorched earth and singed trees.
11 Saturday Aug 2018
Posted in ecology, exploring, regeneration
Tags
ecology, farm, Fleurieu, Fleurieu Coast, fungi, mycorrhiza, photography, revegetation, seasons, soil, southwestern Fleurieu, trees, winter
Getting excited about fungi on a wet day at Hindmarsh Falls, Fleurieu Peninsula.
In the last year or so we’ve really begun to appreciate the importance of fungi in a living landscape. The fungi (toadstools, mushrooms and so on) we see pop up after rain are the fruiting bodies of sometimes vast underground fungal networks. Some of these fungi form relationships with plant roots that are often mutually beneficial and enhance the plant’s ability to access nutrients and moisture. The Australian National Botanic Gardens suggest that some 80-90% of Australian plants form or benefit from mycorrhizal networks (fungal associations), and may derive up to 30% of their food through this symbiotic relationship. Continue reading
11 Monday Jun 2018
Posted in ecology, propagation, regeneration, trees, waterways
Volunteers planting at the very first Yarnauwi tree planting extravaganza, 2013
The work continues in 2018 with new plantings amid established trees.
Six years ago we first invited friends and family to come and plant trees at Yarnauwi. They came, dug holes in a windswept paddock, hunched their shoulders against the cold and ate lunch beneath one of the property’s two big old red gums. That first year most of the plants were devoured by kangaroos and deer. Amazingly, our friends and family came back the following year and every year since, with the tree-planting weekend growing into an annual celebration of moist ground and hope for the future.
Loyal volunteers work on a windbreak
01 Monday Jan 2018
Posted in ecology, livestock, planning, regeneration, trees
Tags
books, ecology, farm, future, holistic management, kangaroos, planning, revegetation, trees
Western Grey Kangaroos fight it out in one of our revegetation habitat zones
One of the most persistent challenges in our work to revegetate areas of the farm has been managing kangaroos. Despite its previous status as woodland, for decades the farm has been an enforced grassland as hay paddock and pasture, the preferred environment of Western Grey Kangaroos. While early accounts of the region describe the southwestern Fleurieu as “kangaroo country”, land clearing, the elimination of predators such as dingoes, reduced hunting pressure, and in our case, the provision of year-round green pick in the form of a nearby irrigated golf course has contributed to a steady increase of kangaroo numbers.
We’ve observed that the kangaroos follow a seasonal rhythm of converging on our property in numbers during the cooler, wetter months, before dispersing into smaller family groups as the weather warms and dries. During this time, they typically move into the neighbouring golf course, and because of the constant availability of fresh feed it is rare to see a female kangaroo without a joey. While most species of kangaroos typically prefer grass, the Western Grey is also noted as a browser of shrubs and seedlings. Continue reading
