A year after it began, it begins again.

And so it begins.  We are going to another WWoOF placement tonight.  This one is will go until the weekend after Easter, when we will start another one a little closer to where we want to look for a place of our own.

So what are we trying to find out?

1.  Is the average annual rainfall here in Huonville of 755mm (30 inches) enough for pasture and vegetable production?

2.  What water retention methods need to be practiced to make it work?

3.  Is the graph below a true picture of normal temperature variations?

4.  Are these temps warm enough to grow the varieties of fruit and vegetables that we want to grow?

5.  What are council rates like (though at first glance for the type of property we are looking at I think we will be hit up for $1500 - $2000 per annum)?

These are just a few of our questions.  We will fill you in on our answers.  Plus of course we want to learn as much as we can about farming techniques, the Huon Valley community and the potential to develop commercially-successful regenerative agriculture in the area.

As an aside we also popped into Matthew Evans' (of the Gourmet Farmer TV show) shop in Hobart.  We have also reached out to him in relation to volunteering at his operation, he has expanded his interests dramatically and sounds like he could use some help.  It seems according to his blog he has had some WWoOF- type help in the past and we could certainly use his knowledge.  Especially as he has run into problems with regulation surrounding small scale food production such as labelling rules, nutrition panels and the like.

He is appearing at the Writer's Festival in Hobart this Saturday, and if we weren't planning to be working we would pop in to hit him up for some info.  C'est la vie, some other time perhaps.

One other little bit of exciting news, we answered an ad in a local cafe for a property for sale not far from here and we are going to check it out on Thursday.  There seems to be quite a bit available around here but we didn't want to start dealing with real estate agents just yet.  As our internet access promises to be sporadic for the next couple weeks it may be hard to keep people posted on what we find out, but we will try.

Wish us luck!  Palya!