This will be the last update for the year from me before we take a well earned break and concentrate our efforts on supporting our home food production system through summer, and continue our attempts to ‘fire proof’ the property. At least we face summer with more water certainty this year after such great rain in November, and some water harvesting work on the property.

November saw us offer a lecture with Peter Andrews, where he discussed his land restoration theories to a strong audience of 130 people in Geelong. His ideology is very simple but requires a complete mind shift from how we look at land restoration currently, and this is controversial to say the least! We personally gained much from having Peter stay with us, and we will take his advice onboard as we develop a whole of farm strategy over the coming months. Anyone who wishes to learn more about Peter’s ideas and how they can be put into practice is welcome to contact me.

The first PGP workshop was well attended and we heard inspiring ways to create an edible garden from Geelong Botanic Garden guru, Katie Gillett. We then moved on to our property for a ‘hands on’ no-dig garden bed practical, which has since been completed and planted out by my children! There was a lot of interest in the edible garden practical and more have been built into next year’s program.

On that, next year I will offer Introductory Permaculture courses on-site. There will also be many and varied workshops such as: keeping chooks, small animal processing, veggie growing, composting, propagation, seed collection, grafting, establishing a worm farm, preserving and drying foods, straw bale building, reed bed water treatment system, frog ponds, wetland creation, keyline farming practical and backyard bee keeping! And don’t forget the multi-day conference in March on Rehydrating The Landscape, with speakers including Colin Seis (pasture Cropping), David Marsh (Holistic Farm Management), Peter Andrews (Natural Sequence Farming), Tony Coote (NSF & Biodynamic farming), Darren Doherty (Permaculture, Carbon Farming & Keyline Agriculture) and many others!  This conference will involve practical workshops with some of these key speakers; sponsors are also sought for this event. A full calendar of events will be released in the January newsletter.

For further details or to be added to the mail list call Jo Klein 0438 828 042 or email joey-klein@hotmail.com