Not ‘if’, but ‘when’: planning for fire

07 Monday Jan 2019

Posted by nopalito 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.

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The Farm Year in Review: 2014

18 Thursday Dec 2014

Posted by nopalito in events, livestock, planning, regeneration

≈ 6 Comments

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design, ecology, events, farm, fencing, food, hiking, livestock, permaculture, planning, propagation, revegetation, seasons, sheep, southwestern Fleurieu, summer, tractor, water, winter, zones

2014 was a year where the dry season came early and stayed late. It seemed as if the rain barely had a chance to soften the ground and throw up some soursobs before our clay soils began to crack again and the pasture browned off. Despite this, after two years observing the rhythms of this patch of ground, I feel like we’re becoming more resilient and optimistic: where previously we despaired at every lost seedling, now we celebrate every survivor.

Summer: a shingleback lizard soaks up some sunshine.

In the spirit of permaculture, this year also marks a transition from our observational period towards beginning to implement infrastructure for a sustainable farming enterprise. With fencing and water infrastructure for livestock, our appreciation of the need for water only deepens, and despite its challenges, we’ve learnt to stop worrying and love winter.

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Fencing Phase 2: Rotational Grazing and Zoning

06 Thursday Nov 2014

Posted by nopalito in livestock, planning, regeneration

≈ 3 Comments

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design, farm, fencing, kangaroos, livestock, permaculture, planning, revegetation, sheep, southwestern Fleurieu, zones

A new fence and a kangaroo. Neither are particularly concerned about each other.

A year or so ago, we celebrated the first phase of fencing on the farm: defining our ‘wilderness zones’ by carving out seven-ish hectares of erosion gully, remnant vegetation and waterlogging for regeneration. We commented at the time at how much a few posts and wire redefines a sense of space. Now we’ve almost completed all of the major fencing for the property. What began as essentially one vast, 20-odd hectare paddock, has now been reshaped into 8 smaller paddocks, together with 3 revegetation zones/habitat corridors. Continue reading →

The Second Annual TBC Tree-planting Extravaganza

19 Saturday Jul 2014

Posted by nopalito in ecology, events, regeneration, trees

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ecology, erosion, events, farm, kangaroos, planning, revegetation, southwestern Fleurieu, trees, waterways, winter, zones

The ‘before’ photo: 800 new plants in position. Stay tuned over the next 20 years for the ‘after’ shot.

Over the weekend of the 12-13 July, around 30 dedicated volunteers descended on TBC for our annual tree-planting fiesta. Over two days, we managed to plant some 800 locally indigenous plants in the two ‘wilderness zones’, kick-starting their transition back to pink- and red-gum woodland. The first area was planted outwards from the former Bee House (currently tree-planter snack dispensary and rain shelter) with around 600 plants selected to address the water-logging in the area and to revegetate in and around erosion gullies. The second area saw the planting of around 200 plants, radiating from the existing remnant redgums. Once again these plants were selected to address water-logging and erosion as well as provide shelter to adjacent paddocks. Over the following week, we dodged thunderstorms and icy squalls to add another 150 or so plants, with about 200ish to go! Continue reading →

Fleurieu Stile

09 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by nopalito in diy

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building, design, farm, fencing, hack, reuse, southwestern Fleurieu, stiles, zones

Stile Design #1, the crossed tread option.

Fences are amazing things. They totally reshape the way you think about a landscape by cutting it into smaller, yet still expansive, rooms. They alter the movement patterns of humans and other animals and we’ve very quickly discovered the bits where, far from any gate, we’re regularly having to launch ourselves between strands of high-tensile barbed wire. With a bit of research, we came up with a couple of simple designs for stiles allowing easy pedestrian access at high-traffic points. Continue reading →

Travels in Inter-Tussock Space: Planning for Woodland

10 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by nopalito in ecology, planning, regeneration

≈ 3 Comments

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design, ecology, erosion, kangaroos, permaculture, planning, revegetation, seeds, soil, southwestern Fleurieu, trees, waterways, zones

We’ve seeded our last 150 tubes in preparation for planting in a few months time. When the rains come, we’ll have over 1000 plants ready to go. Most are destined for the regeneration areas we’ve fenced around the waterways, but a few others are non-indigenous livestock fodder plants, timber trees and food plants we’ve raised from seed and cuttings to begin developing other zones around the farm.

It’s a Pink Gum Woodland, it just doesn’t know it yet.

Late in 2013, along with a posy of other plant nerds, we attended a workshop with botanist Ann Prescott (author of It’s Blue with Five Petals) to explore ideas behind revegetation for habitat. We walked through remnant woodland in the hills above Yankalilla, and tried to imagine how our farm might have looked 180 years ago. Continue reading →

The First Phase of Fencing: Marking Zone 5

17 Tuesday Dec 2013

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

≈ 3 Comments

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building, ecology, erosion, fencing, kangaroos, livestock, permaculture, planning, revegetation, trees, waterways, zones

The gate into the top end of the northern revegetation area

While our impact on this landscape has been pretty minimal so far, with the completion of our first phase of fencing, we’ve begun more major infrastructure works. We’ve started by fencing off two big chunks of ground encircling the erosion gullies, surrounding them with a roughly 20-metre buffer zone for future woodland regeneration.

Neat knots

In a permaculture sense, these patches of ground will be our Zone 5, our minimal-management ‘wilderness’ zones, designed for habitat and ecosystem services such as erosion and salinity control and water filtration. Abutting our western boundary they form a link with the creeks and swamps that feed the Congeratinga River. With these zones now marked onto the landscape we can plan outwards towards zones of increasing management intensity. Continue reading →

Yarnauwi Farm

~ Fleurieu Peninsula, South Australia

Tag Archives: zones

Not ‘if’, but ‘when’: planning for fire

The Farm Year in Review: 2014

Fencing Phase 2: Rotational Grazing and Zoning

The Second Annual TBC Tree-planting Extravaganza

Fleurieu Stile

Travels in Inter-Tussock Space: Planning for Woodland

The First Phase of Fencing: Marking Zone 5