Part 2 - Resilient Surprises

A fruitful exercise

So the drought broke in late Spring. However, there wasn't enough rainfall, over a 12 month period, to stop the death of several of our fruit trees. For the most part, they have to cope on natural rainfall. Thankfully, the Lazarus Mulberry, came back from the dead, as I described earlier. Yet there were a couple of pair trees, which not only managed to survive the drought - they bore fruit for the first time in a decade, since planted.

Resilient Surprises

Early Autum (March 27) the rain came too late

RIP mulberry tree, down in the main gully. I thought of all the places you would thrive, it's where all the water flowed. You grew faithfully, like a weed, for many years. But we were about to learn something new in this landscape together. When it doesn't rain for months on end, then summer comes and we miss our usual rainfall too - well, the gully doesn't capture water. At all.

Fluff 'n Stuff

The three clucker'teers!

There's nothing like motivating the building schedule, than having baby chicks, waiting in the wings. Sorry, an obvious pun. But our chicken coop should be ready for these three, to eventually migrate into. Even if renovations have just barely begun.

Creative destruction

Behind the chicken coop - can you see the swale?

If you remember this image, from the "Do nothing" post, I said we were in the midst of making some creative destruction, in this area too. Part of the reason it's overgrown at all, is due to poorly designed access. It was started many moons ago, when we first dug the swale, but never finished properly.

Do nothing

Nature is knocking at the door

Born out of a lack of time, too much land and aspects of weather, I don't always get outside when I need to. Some weeks, months or even years later, I return to particular  locations, and find an overgrown jungle. In the past, this frustrated me. Only because of the thought of having to pull it all out, and starting again.

Update on Compost

New structure, next to the bridge

I first introduced our new compost gully, on the other website, over a month ago. You would have seen it posted on this blog, just yesterday though. I wanted to update, how we're still tweaking the design using more sapling trunks. David installed a teepee structure, to help support the pumpkin vine. It's still growing quite well, during winter. I think the warmth from the compost breaking down, helps.

Compost gully

June 2008 - first bin

When we started composting on our land, we thought a large standing compost bin, was the way to go. The kind with multiple bays. We built three, out of recycled pallets. It was appealing, because we had the opportunity to make a large batch of compost, in one go. Unfortunately, we weren't generating enough of all the different ingredients to make a substantial batch.