Ok, that title was vague!
Due to the impending state election, we won't know the outcome of our EcoTender bid until later this year. Damn politics!
Our composting toilet has arrived and been shipped via efficient courier (aka Tom) to the farm and is awaiting installation.
I'm growing some oak trees from seed and have 15 shooting so far - they are so cute in their infancy :) Small Boy is very proud of his acorn collecting efforts and may even have some more respect for plant life as he sees the progress of what we started. No, oak trees are hardly native, but given we'll have a few acres to play with, I want to have some shady oaks and pretty Euro and Asian trees to look at!
So, that's farm changing, thus far...
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
EcoTender bid is IN!
I got the tube stock quotes, found a supplier for tree guards, got the fencing quotes...the bid is good to go! Wish us luck, cos any funding we can get to start revegetating is going to help get our block healthier sooner. If we succeed in our bid, not only will I be very excited, but I'll be very busy - I didn't quote for labour costs or machine costs...cos we'll be planting 982 plants...by hand...!
Friday, October 8, 2010
Practical arrangements
Well, another piece of the puzzle is falling into place. Toileting facilities!
Very soon, we will be the proud owners of a Nature Loo Compact 3. It's a composting toilet, and will make our time in the caravan very comfortable...cos it won't be in the caravan, for one, and two, it won't impact on our waterway.
The strawbale home we will build will also have composting toilets, albeit upgraded versions of what will be in the shed.
This is what you can expect to use when you come visit our new farm enterprise:
I'm easily pleased, and I'm really looking forward to having this most basic 'mod con' at the farm!
Very soon, we will be the proud owners of a Nature Loo Compact 3. It's a composting toilet, and will make our time in the caravan very comfortable...cos it won't be in the caravan, for one, and two, it won't impact on our waterway.
The strawbale home we will build will also have composting toilets, albeit upgraded versions of what will be in the shed.
This is what you can expect to use when you come visit our new farm enterprise:
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Regrowing the removed
We're going to do some regeneration on our place.
The creek area already has some great pockets of native flora and even though it's a crown grazing title, there's no reason we can't lock up some areas to get more plants happening, and going some way to restore the indigenous natives that once lived along there, before European settlers decided they knew better what to do with that land (only, they didn't, they actually raped the land and then left it because it was no good to them with the consequence of land slippage).
We're applying for any and every grant available to help us regenerate, and the current one is EcoTender, through the DSE, though there are many other avenues to follow, especially as we have a waterway.
Whether this bid goes through or not will not prevent me from sectioning off other areas of our acreage to create pockets of regeneration and a haven for the bird life.
At the moment, the creek area is really it for native habitat - wombats, koalas, kookaburras, bellbirds, whip birds and the like. And that's great, because it's near where the caravan is! One day, though, we will be living at the top of the hill away from my beloved creek line, and I will NEED to hear birds! The wombats I can do without...
So, ever since the day we signed for our new farm, I have been fuelled by a growing passion for restoring some of our tenure to its former glory. It may take all of our lifetime. And I don't mean 'tenure' for just the grazing lease. I consider the whole property a mere 'tenure'. Yes, most of it is 'freehold' and 'ours' in a Euro-centric, economic, legal and administrative sense. It's ours on paper.
I prefer to acknowledge that, according to some circles, we're just borrowing it. Borrowing the stolen, in addition. However, as my family arrived here in Australia after the fact of Invasion, we live within a system, whatever its merits. I acknowledge the traditional owners, the Bunurong People, as the original custodians of 'our place'. One day it may revert to them. Who knows? Aboriginal people have the skills to survive and thrive in environments 'we' believe to be uninhabitable, and only because we don't have the intelligence about our environment than our predecessors did and still do. They could well outdo us in a resources crisis, and environmental crisis...climate change, for instance.
Anyhow, my aim is to establish some contacts with the Aboriginal community in our new locality (via membership of the South Gippsland/Bass Coast Reconciliation Action Group) and see if I can extract any knowledge about our specific location for flora and fauna. That's the plan. Of course, I'll keep you posted!
For now, we will start work on the 'ferals', such as Holly, White Willow and the Hawthorn trees. The White Willow, in particular, galls me. It's choking up the creek and whenever there is a flash flood in the creek (such as would have occurred today as a cold front passed through the state) debris becomes entangled in the elbows of the creek where the willows are. Broken limbs collect and end up looking like a half-arse beaver dam, where the beaver just knocked up a dam from the hard rubbish collection the night before...it looks choked. In a couple of years I hope to see a vast improvement, if I have to harness my horse to pull out the larger branches that impede water flow! I know that not all debris is bad, and if you saw some of these choked up elbows in person you may come to agree with me that it's not the way the creek was meant to be.
Grand plans, noble plans, human plans. All I can do is give it a red hot go, and hope that Tom feels the same way, because I will need help for these greening ambitions of mine for 'our' place that we are looking after. I've got a lot to learn, a lot of truths to accommodate and will need a lot of energy to fulfill half of what I've resolved to do. Energy I have. Time, I'm not so sure. But what's the hurry? We're moving to the country! That's a lot of peaches :)
The creek area already has some great pockets of native flora and even though it's a crown grazing title, there's no reason we can't lock up some areas to get more plants happening, and going some way to restore the indigenous natives that once lived along there, before European settlers decided they knew better what to do with that land (only, they didn't, they actually raped the land and then left it because it was no good to them with the consequence of land slippage).
We're applying for any and every grant available to help us regenerate, and the current one is EcoTender, through the DSE, though there are many other avenues to follow, especially as we have a waterway.
Whether this bid goes through or not will not prevent me from sectioning off other areas of our acreage to create pockets of regeneration and a haven for the bird life.
At the moment, the creek area is really it for native habitat - wombats, koalas, kookaburras, bellbirds, whip birds and the like. And that's great, because it's near where the caravan is! One day, though, we will be living at the top of the hill away from my beloved creek line, and I will NEED to hear birds! The wombats I can do without...
So, ever since the day we signed for our new farm, I have been fuelled by a growing passion for restoring some of our tenure to its former glory. It may take all of our lifetime. And I don't mean 'tenure' for just the grazing lease. I consider the whole property a mere 'tenure'. Yes, most of it is 'freehold' and 'ours' in a Euro-centric, economic, legal and administrative sense. It's ours on paper.
I prefer to acknowledge that, according to some circles, we're just borrowing it. Borrowing the stolen, in addition. However, as my family arrived here in Australia after the fact of Invasion, we live within a system, whatever its merits. I acknowledge the traditional owners, the Bunurong People, as the original custodians of 'our place'. One day it may revert to them. Who knows? Aboriginal people have the skills to survive and thrive in environments 'we' believe to be uninhabitable, and only because we don't have the intelligence about our environment than our predecessors did and still do. They could well outdo us in a resources crisis, and environmental crisis...climate change, for instance.
Anyhow, my aim is to establish some contacts with the Aboriginal community in our new locality (via membership of the South Gippsland/Bass Coast Reconciliation Action Group) and see if I can extract any knowledge about our specific location for flora and fauna. That's the plan. Of course, I'll keep you posted!
For now, we will start work on the 'ferals', such as Holly, White Willow and the Hawthorn trees. The White Willow, in particular, galls me. It's choking up the creek and whenever there is a flash flood in the creek (such as would have occurred today as a cold front passed through the state) debris becomes entangled in the elbows of the creek where the willows are. Broken limbs collect and end up looking like a half-arse beaver dam, where the beaver just knocked up a dam from the hard rubbish collection the night before...it looks choked. In a couple of years I hope to see a vast improvement, if I have to harness my horse to pull out the larger branches that impede water flow! I know that not all debris is bad, and if you saw some of these choked up elbows in person you may come to agree with me that it's not the way the creek was meant to be.
Grand plans, noble plans, human plans. All I can do is give it a red hot go, and hope that Tom feels the same way, because I will need help for these greening ambitions of mine for 'our' place that we are looking after. I've got a lot to learn, a lot of truths to accommodate and will need a lot of energy to fulfill half of what I've resolved to do. Energy I have. Time, I'm not so sure. But what's the hurry? We're moving to the country! That's a lot of peaches :)
Monday, October 4, 2010
Why South Gippsland?
I hadn't even heard of our district before going to see what was to become our farm.
We had been hoping to find a place between Gembrook and Warragul and quickly realised that we were priced out of this geographic range. We had gone to see a block in Strzelecki that had great potential, and I had gone alone to inspect a place in Mountain View, both south of Warragul, along the Warragul-Korumburra Road. I have family friends who live in Warragul on this road, and, in fact, my first horse lived on their property and it was where my horse owning journey began.
Not wanting to put in any offers too quickly on the Strzelecki place, we kept looking. Nothing was coming up in the listings, and the two places just mentioned had been on the market in various forms for months, so there was no rush.
One Wednesday night, whilst home from brigade training, I found a block that had just been listed and it sounded really ideal. I had to run it by Tom because it was further south than I had entertained. The listing said it was 5km from the nearest main town, which was attractive because the other blocks were at least 25 minutes from anywhere. So, I asked Tom what he thought of this location; "Hmmm, yeah?". So, the next morning I made us an inspection time with the real estate agent, who was so helpful and a genuine gentleman.
That Sunday we drove out, in the morning heat and drove down to park at the creek line to meet the agent. The further we got in the wider our eyes grew...only on the inside...I THINK we had our poker faces on...
By the end of it, and after parting with the agent, we hardly dared look at each other. Instead, a sideways, "So, do we make an offer today", sufficed to sum up where we were each at. The rest is history and we ended up in here.
A pictorial account of our purchase and first few months can be found here.
We recently took possession of our new, temporary abode; a 1978 Millard caravan.
The next installment will summarise what we've done so far to turn our former turnout block into a new farm. Stay tuned!
We had been hoping to find a place between Gembrook and Warragul and quickly realised that we were priced out of this geographic range. We had gone to see a block in Strzelecki that had great potential, and I had gone alone to inspect a place in Mountain View, both south of Warragul, along the Warragul-Korumburra Road. I have family friends who live in Warragul on this road, and, in fact, my first horse lived on their property and it was where my horse owning journey began.
Not wanting to put in any offers too quickly on the Strzelecki place, we kept looking. Nothing was coming up in the listings, and the two places just mentioned had been on the market in various forms for months, so there was no rush.
One Wednesday night, whilst home from brigade training, I found a block that had just been listed and it sounded really ideal. I had to run it by Tom because it was further south than I had entertained. The listing said it was 5km from the nearest main town, which was attractive because the other blocks were at least 25 minutes from anywhere. So, I asked Tom what he thought of this location; "Hmmm, yeah?". So, the next morning I made us an inspection time with the real estate agent, who was so helpful and a genuine gentleman.
That Sunday we drove out, in the morning heat and drove down to park at the creek line to meet the agent. The further we got in the wider our eyes grew...only on the inside...I THINK we had our poker faces on...
By the end of it, and after parting with the agent, we hardly dared look at each other. Instead, a sideways, "So, do we make an offer today", sufficed to sum up where we were each at. The rest is history and we ended up in here.
A pictorial account of our purchase and first few months can be found here.
We recently took possession of our new, temporary abode; a 1978 Millard caravan.
The next installment will summarise what we've done so far to turn our former turnout block into a new farm. Stay tuned!
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