Back to school!

Palya folks!  How is it going?

Sorry for the lapse in posting, it has been such a whirlwind month, it has been a little hard to know where to start!

Since we last posted our plans we have had lots of support from our friends, and we have been hard at work trying to expand our knowledge before heading out and buying a farm.  This has entailed talking to lots of people, an appearance on community radio, reading lots of books, plus a stint volunteering on a small-scale farm to get some experience.

The main thing we have learned is that we are almost unique.  Most people buy a place, with all its problems and issues, and then try to figure out how to fix it.  We are trying to find out what we should be looking for, and what pitfalls to avoid, before we buy, as opposed to after.  This is not to say we will be able to avoid the problems, but we are trying to go in with our eyes as open to these as possible.

Eyes open, something like this.

So in this learning process we have learned a little something about permaculture.  When my sister went off to Costa Rica to start her “Permaculture Design Course”, I must confess I thought permaculture was some hippy-dippy word for what is essentially organic farming, with some grey-water recycling and straw bale house building thrown in for the smelly dreadlock crowd.  I have to apologise to her and the dreadlocked, because after doing our homework we have realised that permaculture covers a whole lot more, and doesn’t just apply to the tree-hugger set.  It is a system set up around a good yield/diversity/energy equation, among (many) other things.  For me its essence is lazy farming, building a holistic system to produce the best output for a given input of energy.

Now some perma-heads will disagree with my analysis, but I have only just started this journey, and that is my beginner’s interpretation.

Norman here was born the day before we left our volunteer farm.

So to give other budding treechangers/perma-beginners/suburban escapists a feel for the path that our learning is taking, so far we have read:

- Permaculture 1 by Bill Mollison & David Holmgren – good intro to the concepts, though 30 years old;

- Permaculture 2 by Bill Mollison – good expansion of some concepts, particularly structures;

- The Chook Book (1^st edition) by Jackie French – good no-nonsense book, 2^nd edition looks expanded and even more useful with photos and more illustrations;

- Natural Cattle Care by Pat Coleby – brilliant book, good ideas, and a great help with our first experience dealing with cattle while we were volunteering;

- Going Bush by Edward Mundie – a little disappointing, a couple of vital lessons and some useful tips but too dated to have just been written in 1994, ignores efficient systems;

- The Permaculture Handbook by Peter Bane – just started reading this, American based so not sure how useful it will prove in Tassie, but the principles are there.

I have the Permaculture Design Manual by David Holmgren to read, and Cor is halfway through Backyard Self-sufficiency by Jackie French, whose informal writing style is a joy to read.

At the moment we are at my sister’s place before starting a 3-day course this weekend at Milkwood Permaculture up near Sydney.  The course is called “You Can Farm” by Joel Salatin and should give us an opportunity to ask some practical questions of someone who is working daily with the principles that interest us.  Joel has appeared on shows like 'Food Inc' and in the bestselling book, Omnivore’s Dilemma.

Then we are heading to Tasmania on 25^th February, to do some more volunteering on farms via the WWoOF system as we begin to look for a place to buy.  A word of warning on WWoOFing - it appears to have become less about the "willing" workers on "organic farms" and more of a way for backpackers to see Australia on the cheap.  Not that there is anything wrong with this, but be prepared to find yourself in hostel-style-accommodation renovating the owner's house if you don't do your homework.

We will be crossing on the ferry with our new dual cab Ranger “Chuck” and a friend we met diving in Micronesia for a bit of road trip fun in Tassie before starting to work.  Not looking forward to the crossing – apparently it can be a bit bouncy!

If you are interested in hearing more about our motivations and what we want to achieve, check out the podcast of our radio interview here: http://podcast.3cr.org.au/pod/3CRCast-2013-01-29-61152.mp3.  We aim to do a regular bit with Jonathan on this program to keep folks updated on our progress.  Our goal with this will be to show people that if even a couple of putzes like us can make a go of a big change in their lives, then they can too!

Thanks going out to Jonathan and Jane, Barbara, Fleur, Anna and Dave, and of course my sister Elisa and her family for putting up with us whenever we are in northern Victoria.

Stay tuned!

The Crazy Plan

I hope everyone had great Christmas and New Years’ celebrations, and that now you are excited about what 2013 holds!  Every day is precious, make the most of it.

OK, now something that has been on my mind for a while (forgive the word-heavy post!).  I know we have set up this blog ostensibly as a place to talk about our journey to find our own corner of the world to grow our own food, and we haven't really been talking about it here.  But that doesn't mean that we aren't thinking about it.  And I mean a lot!

Plus, we haven't really told many people what we are planning to do.  Why?  Mainly because they will almost certainly think we are crazy for chucking a couple of well-paid 9 to 5 careers in for this madcap notion of growing our own food with any “real” work fitting in around this.  But then the people who read this blog have read the "why" in my Meaning of Life post earlier in 2012, so now I am going to put some of our ideas out there.

Here is the crazy plan:

1.  Buy a property with the qualities listed below.

2.  Get cracking growing our own food, focusing on heritage and heirloom varieties for a focus on the best taste (we are all about great-tasting food).

3.  Year one - chickens, a couple of weaner pigs and my personal challenge: bees.  Have a crack at making cider/perries with our first fruit harvest.  Start a farmer's market stall selling any surplus produce we don't barter away.

4.  Year two - a goat for milk, another couple of pigs, plus a beef steer.  Mead-making anyone?

5.  Year three - ducks, a sow that we will use for breeding, with a couple of pigs, another beef steer, and some lambs.

6.  Year four - sheep, and perhaps a heifer for milk and breeding (depending on how we go with the goat!)

7.  Year five - commence farmstay.  Actually we may start this sooner as we get going and need extra hands but growing enough food will be the focus.

We will supplement our food as much as we can with whatever we can get for free from nature - fish, venison, rabbit, duck, goose etc.

It is a very rough plan at the moment, and we have no idea whether we have enough cash to actually last that long, or whether we can make enough at farmer's markets to pay the bills that are inevitably going to arrive.  As an accountant I would do a budget, but I have no notion as to what things are going to cost, so it won't be that useful!

So, what do we want in a property?  We have quite a list worked up, and each point has been the result of much discussion.

In no particular order we want:

- lots of space.  We don't want to be able to see our neighbours and we need enough land to grow our fruit and vegies plus enough pasture for animals.

- a mix of native bush and pasture.  We want to have some bush that is suited for camping and generally giving the native fauna a place to live.

- our own water supply.  We know that water is precious, so a creek and a dam or two, or maybe a spring, would be ideal to ensure we can keep our garden growing and putting food on the table.

- established orchard.  It takes a long time to get fruit trees up to full productivity so an apple and pear orchard, with other fruit trees, already established, is a must.

- north-facing block.  Plants like sun.  We like sun.  Enough said.  Oh, and keep in mind we are talking the southern hemisphere here people!

- a house, of no particular quality.  We would like to build our own house.  I have a lot of ideas in mind for a very energy-efficient house that is incredibly cheap to run and is very self-sustaining.  But before we can build it we need somewhere to live, and we will also need a house or cottage for the farmstay business component of our plan.

- outbuildings.  No real rocket science to this one, if there is already a chicken coop that is one less thing for us to build, plus we will need somewhere for the vehicles.

- in the right area.  This should really be number one.  We need a place that is in an area where people are either doing something similar or have experience at doing it.  We don't want to reinvent the wheel, we want to use other people's knowledge as best as we can on our journey and also not try to do everything.  Why try to get into making goat's cheese if the family down the road are making award-winning stuff that they are happy to trade for some pork products?  Plus we need an outlet for surplus produce.  We need a town with a farmer's market or something similar within reasonable distance to allow us to shift all those things that you suddenly have a glut of. And we can't be an excessive distance from an airport.  When we progress to the aforementioned stage two this will be more important.

- reduced chance of bushfires.  We aren't spending years building a place and a business up to support us and then having it go up in smoke in 30 minutes and have to start from scratch when we are older and less able to do the hard physical labour.  This may be hard but we will be looking for properties with plans in place to manage this risk.

So that is it, pretty demanding I know but we can trade a few things about, and we will probably end up adding to this list.

I don't know where in here we would have time for anything like building a house, but we will see how it pans out.  We know that we are not really going to get vacations in the first few years, hence the massive trip now, but we have a few ideas for how we can get holidays once things are ticking along and I'll flesh these out in another post.

So what do you think?  Are we crazy?  What would you suggest we change or plan differently?  Would you pay to come stay on our farm and eat our quality food, and maybe help out around the farm if you feel so inclined?