Tenderbreak Permaculture Farm

Goodbye 2011. Hello 2012.

2012-01-29T20:14:00.000-08:00

Twelve months ago, we set out our dream list of projects that we hoped to complete during the year. It was a big list but we got stuck into it and are happy to report that most of the projects were either completed, or at least a start has been made.

The new steel garage is up, but still needs a concrete apron to make it easy to get into it (there is a 100mm step up which needs fixing). However, even if we did this, we would still be unable to use it as intended (to house our car) because as soon as it was built, it somehow managed to fill up with a whole lot of other stuff (mainly materials for building and future projects). It seems that there is some law of nature that says “create an undercover area and it will be filled”!

The garage has the new woodshed built on one side and this is not only finished, but we have started filling it up with firewood. We have divided it into four bays. Two are for short lengths of wood for our wood fired stove and two are for longer pieces for the heater and steam engine (when installed). The two bays of each, allow one stack of wood to be built up and seasoned while the other bay is being used. Usually we don’t start filling the woodshed until Easter, but because we have to fill the lot from scratch, we are getting an early start this year. This woodshed is also about 50% bigger than our old shed so it will take longer to fill.

Our seedling white sapote in front of the hothouse has put on a lot of new growth

We managed to shift the hothouse to its new location and used the opportunity to improve the design at the same time and change the layout. One improvement was sitting the walls on top of some free pavers that we picked up. This stops weeds from growing against the metal walls and should reduce corrosion at the base.

Our solar system batteries and inverter are now much more accessible in their new location in the house. We also made some minor changes to the system to boost output. Unfortunately the shift gave our old petrol generator a “heart attack” and it “died”. The good news is that we are now 100% solar (at the moment).

We put a new access track in to our solar panels, which also provides a firebreak to southern side of our clearing. This project still needs a fair bit of work because the wet weather earlier in the year made it impossible for the machines to do their thing. Hopefully we’ll finish it off this year.

After a seven year break, we finally managed to get back to house building. We put down a concrete patio, added a verandah and have now completed painting and staining a third bedroom. This room, which is a spare room for visiting friends and family, looks so good we may even spend some nights in it ourselves. They say a change is as good as a holiday!

So, what have we got lined up for 2012? For a start there’s dozens of smaller finishing-off jobs like drainage pits that need to be built, more tree planting, bird netting to go over the orchard, seven more rooms of the house to complete, some fencing and some more pipes and taps to go in. Plus there is our bed and breakfast building to finish, the steam engine and boiler to install, as well as a new doorway to be cut through the garage mudbrick wall. We’re exhausted just talking about it. I don’t think we will be getting bored for quite a while yet.

Helpers from China

2012-01-08T23:33:00.000-08:00

We recently joined a website called Helpx, which links people who need volunteers, to other people who are prepared to offer their help in exchange for board and cultural exchange. Since joining just over one month ago, we have received many requests from travellers visiting Australia from around the world including France, Germany, Italy, Finland, Taiwan, Spain and China. The process involves trying to coordinate dates when we need help with the dates that the helpers are available.

Jodie, Valencia and Tia having a break

Our very first Helpx friends came from China. Jodie, Valencia and Tia originate in different parts of China but are all students at Hong Kong University. During their term break they decided to see a little bit of Australia and contacted us through Helpx. (http://www.helpx.net/)

Checking for eggs

After a short stay in Sydney, then Melbourne, they came out to our place. We all got on really well right from the start. Our place must be the complete opposite of Hong Kong. We are relatively isolated, surrounded by bush, and at night time it is very, very quiet (when we are all in bed). It must have also been a bit scary with large and strange insects, the occasional growl from a wombat, croaks from frogs, shrieks from parrots and being surrounded by evidence of our recent terrible wildfires. Then there were our stories about snakes, crocodiles (not around here) and swooping magpies.....

Cooking a barbecue

Most of our meals were typical Aussie meals and the girls happily ate these, even though the food was often different to what they were used to. However they were not keen on porridge (oats) and that Aussie favourite, vegemite.

Collecting firewood

One of the highlights of the trip for them was seeing our wildlife. We managed to catch a glimpse of a wombat and a couple of kangaroos, but it was not until the night after the girls left that those “devious” animals came out into the open. That night we saw half a dozen kangaroos and two wombats, including one near our house.

The girls spoke English really well, which was fortunate because we have no knowledge of Chinese at all. The only tricky bits were our crazy sayings like “we all got on like a house on fire”, which must sound like a very weird thing to say if you are unfamiliar with Australian idioms.

Tia weeding the celery

The stay was not all play of course. The girls were excellent workers and eager to do whatever jobs needed doing. They helped us get what would take us a week to do, done in two days. They weeded most of our main veggie patch, carted firewood, fed the chooks, decorated the chookpen, cleared a mass of vegetation that was growing over the driveway, helped remove a large fallen tree that we had sawn up and they joined in the preparation of meals.

Jodie weeding the carrots

It must have been a big adventure into the unknown for these three 19 and 20 year old young ladies. Travelling outside of Asia for the first time all the way to the other side of the world to a strange land, dealing with the complexities of a different culture, staying with people they didn’t know and coping with our boisterous dog, Bluey.

Valencia weeding the celery

Apart from benefiting from the work they did for us, we gained a new insight into life in China that is quite different to the view we get in our mass media and most valuable of all we got to spend some time with three wonderful people who we hope to remain in contact with in the future.

Leaving messages on the chookpen wall

Solar Upgrade

2011-11-27T23:24:00.000-08:00

The students begin disassembling everything

Earlier this year we did a blog entry looking back at our first ten years with solar power off the grid. We reported that we were very happy with our system overall, but highlighted a few improvements that could be made. These mainly related to the fact that our solar panels, batteries and inverter were located some 40 metres from the house. Over the past few weeks, with the help of our friend Jerry, (www.solarquip.com.au or email jerry@mooramoora.org.au), we have redesigned our system so that it is much improved.

Jerry checks the connections to our new smart regulator

Jerry is an experienced solar installer with wide experience in solar and small wind installations. He also teaches an off grid renewable energy course at Swinburne TAFE, and used our job as a practical exercise for his students. This meant that all work was of the highest standard and we were able to “sit in” on the teaching which allowed us to expand our knowledge at the same time. Many thanks to Jerry and his students for their excellent work.

Over 2 days we:-

• Moved the batteries and inverter into the back part of our workshop, which is attached to the house. This is a much better location because the batteries are protected from the elements (rain, sun, humidity) and are subject to a more or less constant temperature. As the workshop is part of our house they are also more secure and we no longer have to pay extra on our insurance policy because they are now covered by our contents policy.

Those batteries are heavy!

• Built a battery box to house the batteries. This prevents unauthorised access to batteries and allows any fumes to be exhausted through a vent in the wall to the outside.

• Laid new thicker cable underground to carry the DC current from the solar panels down to the house

• Reconfigured the solar panel connections so they are now arranged in 3 panels per string (480w each) with a voltage of 110v DC. The higher voltage and thicker cable reduces losses in the system.

Reconfiguring the panel connections

• Installed 1 extra 160w panel which boosts the capacity of our solar array by just over 10%

Making full use of the machine!

• Installed an Outback maximum power point tracking (MPPT) or smart solar regulator. Our old regulator was a very basic “not very smart” device. Our new regulator is programmable and can monitor current flows to maximise solar gain in the system. It also allows us to program regular equalisation charges and provides a host of extra readouts including a 180 day history of how much power has gone into the batteries

• Upgraded all connections to current installation standards. Our initial setup was done prior to solar becoming “mainstream” and before installation standards had been set at a high level. The previous system had a proliferation of wires, little to no labelling and minimal protection fuses in the system. Jerry ensured this was all rectified, leaving everything clearly labelled and neatly set out.

• While we had the machinery here, we took the opportunity to run underground 240v cabling to our new garage for power points and lighting. We also installed a large pipe under the drive so that we can direct water from both sides of the driveway into our dam.

The new setup

We thoroughly recommend Jerry if you have the need for someone experienced in alternative energy installations . Apart from the quality of his work, he is happy to work within a budget, can sometime’s source quality second-hand equipment and is happy for clients to contribute some of the labour to reduce costs. Although based in Healesville, he does installations all over the state.

When getting quotes for a renewable energy system, there are huge benefits in choosing an installer with whom you can form a working relationship. Someone who not only has the expertise, but uses quality components, is reliable and whom you can call on for help if necessary. If you go for the cheapest quote or one of the larger alternative energy companies you may not get this.

Long Overdue Chai Recipe

2011-11-18T15:44:00.000-08:00

So many people have asked me for the chai recipe that I use at the Healesville Organic Market and on our tours at Tenderbreak. I am more than happy to share it.

The amounts of ingredients I have written here are for quite a number of people...say at least 14 people, so adjust amounts according to roughly how many people will be drinking it. You can probably tell that I’m an “add a bit of this and add a bit of that” person!!!!!

My chai recipe doesn’t have any tea in it so it is caffeine free. Not all chai recipes have tea in them anyway.

Ingredients

· Sticks of cinnamon

· Green cardamom pods

· Star of anise (whole)

· Cloves (whole)

· Bay leaves (your own tree or someone else you know may have one)

· Fresh ginger (organic from our Organic Healesville market )

· Chilli or cayenne (use own if you grow it)

· Soy milk (Organic)

· Water (we use our own tank water)

· Honey (we use local Cathedral Valley honey from Healesville Organic Market.)

· Piece of vanilla pod (if desire)

WHAT TO DO

Grab a reasonably large stainless steel saucepan or pot.

Throw in:-

· 5 or 6 cinnamon sticks (broken up a bit with your hands),

· One and a half handfuls of green cardamom pods,

· a handful of star of anise

· a sprinkling of cloves....say about a dozen or so

· 3 bay leaves (fresh or dried),

· 6 cm or so of fresh ginger root sliced.(if you are a ginger lover like me then adjust amount to your taste)

· Pinch of chilli or cayenne (be careful with the amount of this as too much will overpower the brew and the tasters may gasp, choke and try to hide their streaming eyes!!)

Now, cover the ingredients with water so that the water level is about 4 cm above the ingredients.

Bring to the boil and simmer with the lid on for 15 to 20 mins.

Turn the stove off. Leave the pot with lid on to cool down for a few hours or at least an hour. This will allow the flavours from the spices to infuse into the water.

When ready to make the chai, bring infused water back to the boil with added soymilk. Add enough soymilk (about 1 litre) to the water to make a nice milky chai. I haven’t made this chai with cow’s milk but I’m sure it would be just as fine. When you add the milk, DO NOT put the lid on the saucepan, as it will froth up and boil over making one big mess!!

Don’t forget the honey!! I add about a good heaped one and a half tablespoonfuls to the brew. It’s up to you if you are more or less a sweet tooth. The chilli or cayenne can be added now or left out whichever you wish. Grating a little bit of whole nutmeg on top of the cup of chai adds that last exotic flavour!

As you may already realise, this recipe is just a guide for you as far as amounts go but with a bit of twitching and adjustment you will come up with your very own favourite version. One of the lovely things about this recipe is that you can keep topping up with more water and milk if people want more and your brew is running low. Remember to add a bit more honey if you are doing this.

Another great thing is that if you want chai another day from the same spices (say 3 or 4 days later) then drain off all liquid (don’t waste it ...drink it). Wash the spices in the sieve under cold running water, then store in an airtight container in the fridge. When you next want to use them, put into the pot, bring to boil, simmer for a while , let cool naturally for spice flavours to infuse ,then follow the original recipe as above.

A handy hint for pouring chai into your cups is ...use a soup ladle and pour through a tea strainer that you can perch on top of the cup.

Happy Chai drinking with family and friends!!!!!!!

Claire and Graeme enjoying a cup of chai at Healesville Organic Market

I wish to thank Linda George for happily allowing me to play around with her chai recipe.

Would you like a “Tenderbreak Experience”?

2011-11-04T04:43:00.000-07:00

Over the past 12 months we have had many queries from people asking if we take on WOOFERS (Willing Workers on Organic Farms). So far this year we have been unable to take people on because our “WOOFER room” has been occupied by a friend. As our friend is moving out shortly, the situation has now changed. If you are interested in visiting for a few days (up to a week) have a look at the details below and contact us (tenderbreak@bigpond.com) for more information.

We are located at Dixons Creek, 65km from Melbourne. Our WOOFER room has a double bed and is suitable for a single person or a couple. Our usual arrangement is that board and meals are provided free in exchange for around 4 hours help daily (with occasional days off). Of course there will be plenty of opportunities to learn about permaculture and how it helped us design our property. Other areas that could make it a valuable learning experience include passive solar house design, sustainable living, off grid solar power, gardening, bushfire behaviour and much more. There are also opportunities for walks in the adjacent Pauls Range State Forest, bird watching and learning about our native wildlife.

This opportunity is definitely not a holiday and we are only interested in people who are genuinely interested in helping out and learning new skills as well as sharing their experiences with us. We always try and fit in with the interests of visitors. At this time of year the list of potential tasks include:-

· Garden type tasks- weeding, planting, composting, watering etc.

· Fire prevention activities and setting up our new woodshed

· Small building jobs

· Harvesting, cooking and preserving

· Helping out with our tours and on our market stall

· Looking after our chooks, ducks and dog

If you are interested, send us an email with some background information, your interests and what you would like to get out of a stay.

We are 20km from Lilydale Railway station and can arrange pickup/drop off if you don’t have your own transport.

PS. You can find out a bit more about our past WOOFERS by clicking the WOOFER link on the right side of our web page (www.tenderbreak.blogspot.com ).

Yarra Organic Coffee

2011-10-18T03:26:00.000-07:00

A good friend of ours, owns Yarra Coffee (www.yarracoffee.com.au ). Helen and her family work hard to keep it going, and at the same time have a real commitment to sustainability and ethical business practices. She was really enthusiastic and supportive when we asked if we could utilise her spent coffee grounds. We now have an arrangement where we collect all the grounds from her Lilydale cafe each week and use them on our garden.

Coffee grounds are high in nitrogen, and make an excellent fertiliser for fast-growing vegetables. They also contain calcium, magnesium and potassium and can be lightly raked into the soil, or added to water and used as a soluble plant food. They are particularly good to use with plants that prefer slightly acidic conditions such as blueberries. In the general garden, spread small amounts in each application and avoid plants that don’t like acidity.

Coffee grounds may also help reduce damage from slugs and snails. Apparently they are repelled by the grounds and if the caffeine is absorbed through their skin it has fatal results. We’ll do a post reporting on our experience later in the year. Some people go even further and mix up a special batch of strong coffee for use as a foliar spray to protect plants. There would have to be a lot of plant damage for us to give up our cup of precious Yarra Coffee to use it as a spray. We’ll probably stick to using the coffee grounds in the garden after drinking the coffee ourselves. Perhaps we are too addicted?
Like humans, worms also like coffee, and it promotes worm activity in both the compost heap and in the garden. As worms have no teeth they need to grind their food up, and use the coarse grounds as “grinding stones” in their gut.

A final benefit of coffee grounds is you get one last whiff of that tantalising aroma whilst you work in the garden. Unfortunately it doesn’t last all that long, before the coffee starts to break down.

PS: If you happen to be in Lilydale and would like to try one of Helen’s coffees or buy a bag of roasted beans, her shop is at 182 Main St., Lilydale- just up from the railway station. If you have a local cafe, try asking them if they would like to decrease wastage and recycle their coffee grounds.

Time for a Coffee Break

2011-09-19T05:05:00.000-07:00

Morning Coffee Time

We have become rather addicted to coffee. Not in a “can’t do without sense” but in a “once a day, mid-morning coffee break” way. In fact it is more of a ritual than anything else, which we miss if we happen to be somewhere else. This is how it goes...

Freshly ground coffee beans

About mid morning our inner metabolism will use a subtle urge to prompt the brain that it is time for a break from whatever project we are working on. Heather will go inside and measure out the required amount of organic and fair-trade Yarra Coffee beans into our hand-cranked grinder. She will spend a minute or so grinding the beans into a fine powder, inhaling that irresistibly inviting aroma that freshly ground beans give up. In fact the gorgeous smell of freshly ground beans is as “heady” as the taste.

Percolating on the wood stove

She will then pop the coffee grounds into our percolator and place it on the hotplate of our wood stove for a few minutes. When it is suitably brewed she will pour out two cups and then we will sit for 15-20 minutes under our verandah. We sip, inhale the aroma, observe the world in front of us, chat, dream, philosophise and generally send out good vibes to the world. All this in no particular order, but in the main, it is an opportunity to stop and quietly enjoy those few minutes in time. Then with renewed vigour and inspiration we get back to our project.

Watching the world pass by as we enjoy our coffee

Yarra Coffee sell a wide selection of coffee beans. Our favourite is the certified organic and fair trade coffee from East Timor. Apart from its superb aroma and flavour, it has reasonably low food miles compared to Africa or South America. And, after what the East Timorese have been through in recent years, they probably can do with all the support they can get.

Our hand cranked grinder

In the News Again

2011-09-12T05:02:00.000-07:00

A few blogs ago we talked about reporter Natalie and photographer Lucy producing an article about our place to promote Sustainable House Week. Although they were confident the article would make it to the printing presses, we realised that other stories may take precedence on the day. Up until last week we had heard nothing so assumed our doubts were correct. That was until the phone started ringing, with people letting us know that the article had indeed been published. In fact it had been published in three different local papers (in the Fairfax Media Group) and what’s more we featured on the front page (in full grey haired glory)!

One result of all the publicity is that our tour on September 11 quickly got booked out, and we had to set up two more tours. The first of these on September 18 is now full and the one on September 25 has only a few places left. Let us know if you are interested in joining one of our tours and we will email all the details.

Our "Steamy" Adventure begins

2011-08-24T03:01:00.000-07:00

Our “steamy adventure” is all about our desire to use a steam engine to provide backup power for our solar system. This dream began in our heads about 30 years ago but at last the real thing is getting underway.

Heather first became fascinated by the power of steam energy in her childhood. On holidays in the 1950’s, her family often set up their caravan near country rail lines. From these locations they frequently encountered steam locos being used to haul freight. Often, the family would make detours just to catch sight of a huffing and puffing train hauling its load along.

Much later (in the early 80’s), we read articles about innovative people using steam technology to generate electricity. A few years later, whilst visiting an alternative energy display, we came across Rod Mueller with a working version of his “Liberty” Steam Engine. By then we had purchased our bush block at Dixons Creek, and the dream of using our wood to drive one of Rod’s engines to generate power took shape.

A Liberty Stream engine in action

During this time, Heather and her friend Jean, decided to do a boiler attendant’s certificate with volunteer workers at the Puffing Billy Railway Society, in Belgrave. This involved hours and hours of theory as well as doing 300 hours of practical work operating steam engines to put the theory into practice. Although it was hard work, Heather enjoyed working with a variety of locos as well as the “Wattle” steam boat and steam engines being used for other purposes. Eventually we found out that Rod’s boilers did not need a qualification, as they had a surface area less than 40 square inches. But at least Heather developed a good understanding of how these machines work.

Rod builds the units at his engineering works in Goolwa, South Australia. Originally he started making boilers and engines for people who wished to install them in boats. Soon he was getting orders for machines to be set up to generate power, when people realised this potential use.

Our boiler (with door) in Rod's workshop

Over the past 30 years we have not lost sight of our dream- however a multitude of things needed to be done first (building our house and setting up our gardens for starters). In more recent times one of the factors that held us up was the fact that setting up steam engines is quite complex and we were waiting for someone else to do it so we could call on their expertise if needed. Then last year some people in Healesville (about 30 min away) set one up. They kindly showed us their system and offered to help us if we needed it. At last we were ready. We took the plunge and ordered our very own steam engine. Over the next few months we will record our “steamy” story on our blog. Hopefully it will not take another 30 years to get it all set up.

For more information about Strath Steam’s products their web address is www.strathsteam.com and Rod is very helpful.

National Sustainable House Day

2011-08-18T03:32:00.000-07:00

National Sustainable House Day (NSHD) is celebrating its 10^th birthday this year on September 11. This annual event is held Australia wide and gives people the chance to visit houses that have been designed, built or fitted out with sustainability in mind and talk to owners, receiving unbiased advice.
For the first time we are running a tour of Tenderbreak Permaculture Farm as an ancillary event to Sustainable House day. This occurred quite by accident. We had already set September 11 as our next tour date and a friend suggested we link up with the local Sustainable House Day activities. We followed up this great idea and this lead to one of the local papers (Yarra Ranges Weekly) asking if they could include our place in a promotional piece they are putting together. So last week the reporter, Natalie and Lucy, the photographer came out and had a chat, a coffee and a short tour. The article should appear in the week prior to September 11.

If you would like to join our tour on that day you are very welcome. Bookings are essential as we have a limit of 20 people. The tour runs from 1:30 to 4:30 and the $15 per adult cost includes afternoon tea. Email us for more information at tenderbreak@bigpond.com. If you cannot make it on that day email us and we will let you know when the next tour is on

Of course there are plenty of houses open on that day in every state in Australia. Details of open houses can be found on NSHD website www.sustainablehouseday.com. If you live in the western suburbs check out Gavin’s house, which is a terrific example of how to incorporate sustainable ideas in housing, the backyard and most importantly in the way we live. See Gavin’s blog at www.greeningofgavin.com for more information about his place.

For more details about the tour of Tenderbreak see the “Ancillery Events “ page of the Sustainable House Day website.

Solatube skylights

2011-08-03T04:27:00.000-07:00

It lights up the stove area

As mentioned in the last post, our verandah works well, but it does reduce the amount of light coming in through the kitchen window. We deliberately chose narrow strips of opaque laserlite for the verandah roof to make sure we were not going to get too much heat in the summer. We have overcome the decrease in window light by installing a “solatube” in the kitchen ceiling.

This clever device “captures” light in its dome on the roof, and efficiently transmits the light through the roof cavity into the kitchen. We placed the solatube above the stove so the cooking area is now bathed in good light even on a dull day. The kitchen has ended up with about the same amount of light as before, but more strategically located.

Excuse the mess but look at the light

We installed another one in the garage and it lights up the area in the middle, that doesn’t get much window light. Solatubes are so good they even capture enough moonlight (when the moon is bright) to bathe the area in subdued light in the middle of the night. This is handy because we store firewood in the garage and do not need to turn the light on some nights.

The dome looks small but provides plenty of light

The solatube works so well, it took a few days to get used to the amount of light that came through the diffuser that is mounted on the ceiling. At a glance it looks like someone had left a light on, and our first reaction was to “turn off the light”. But of course the solatube is completely passive and works purely by capturing sunlight. If you are interested in looking at their display their website is www.diamondskylights.com.au .

A New Verandah

2011-07-11T03:27:00.000-07:00

We always intended to have an undercover area outside the kitchen door. It is shown on our original plans as a future sunroom. However, time and money constraints meant it was put on hold when we started constructing our house in 1999. So up until this year we have existed without this key part of our house design.

Over the past 12 months we have focussed on developing a design for this undercover area that meets our needs (described in a previous post). The result is a multipurpose verandah (and pergola- yet to be built) attached to the northern and western walls of the house. We decided on steel construction largely because of the reduced fire risk but also because of the low maintenance, the wider spans that can be achieved and the ease of getting permits.

The verandah looks like it was always there.

As owner builders of our mudbrick house we gave serious consideration to doing the construction ourselves. However after thinking it through, we eventually decided to use a company that specialises in steel verandahs. Mike and Ken from Custombuilt Verandahs in Bayswater, did a great job. They worked with us to solve some of the complexities of the job and completed construction in a week (whereas it would have taken us several months). We are happy to recommend them.

We are now enjoying the benefits of the verandah (and wished we had built it years ago). Even now, in the middle of winter, it is very enjoyable sitting outside eating lunch or having a cup of tea as we look out over our garden and dam. The thermal mass of the mudbrick wall and the concrete patterned paving keeps the temperature mild (unless it is a cold wind). There are always dozens of birds to attract our attention in the garden, and our dog “Blue” enjoys watching them too as he reclines on the front door mat.

It looks spacious - but we have lots of ideas for using the area

The large undercover area has already proved to be quite handy as the weather gets colder and wetter. We have rigged up a temporary clothes line for drying sheets and given Blue plenty of exercise playing “fetch” with his ball.
We know that our verandah design works well in winter. We are now looking forward to seeing how it works in summer when temperatures climb to over 40 degrees. In the meantime we are working out the detail of the other ways to put this new space to work- but we will take our time doing that (between tea breaks).

Good ideas badly implemented

2011-06-04T03:57:00.000-07:00

Over the past few years we have been trying to get a new project off the ground. We are trying to convert our partly constructed barn into an “Interpretation Centre”. The term “Interpretation Centre” is not of our choosing. Construction projects in Victoria can only proceed if they are a “permitted use” within a particular land use zoning. We want to use our project to promote and teach Permaculture (topics to include energy efficient buildings, renewable energies, growing food, designing fire defences, sustainable behaviours etc). However, teaching facilities are not a permitted use in our particular zone, nor are host farms. After some searching we found the only heading that vaguely covered what we wanted to do, and that was “Interpretation Centre” – so that is what the project became defined as- on paper.

The planning scheme concept is an excellent idea. It aims to avoid inappropriate development eg. factories in residential areas, or high rise buildings shading out neighbours, or high density housing in conservation zones etc. To make sure clever developers do not “bend the rules”, all terms and concepts are precisely defined, and this has the unfortunate result of “locking out” good developments that do not fit the mould. Luckily for us there was an escape clause in the bureaucratic jungle and that was the magical term “Interpretation Centre”.

Of course bigger developers can often get around these restrictions because they have the resources (money) to spend on lawyers and planning staff who specialise in searching for ways to get around restrictions or know how to get them overturned.

The lesson we took away from this exercise was not to be put off by what looks like a barrier- dig deeper and you may find a way past the blockage.

The next hurdle we came across was Victoria’s 5 Star Energy Rating Scheme, which aims to ensure all new buildings reach minimal energy standards. Our planned “Interpretation centre” uses the same construction as our passive solar house, which has excellent thermal performance. Right now I am writing this at 10pm in June (early winter). The temperature inside is 19.8, whilst outside it is only 9 and we have not had our wood heater on for several days now. Even when it drops below zero outside, it never falls below 15 inside.

Generally we use our wood heater occasionally in May, more frequently in June, July and August and hardly at all in September. When we do use it, it is often just in the evenings and usually to create a cosier atmosphere when it is very bleak outside. The house does not need a lot of heating because of its large amount of thermal mass. The stored “heat” in the slab and internal mudbrick walls keeps internal temperatures from varying a great deal.

Our experience and the widely known performance characteristics of buildings of this type show that our “Interpretation Centre” will perform equally well thermally. We will be using very little energy to warm it (compared to conventional houses) and that energy will be renewable (using a wood heater) with fuel sourced from the forest area around our house (thereby reducing fuel levels for potential future wildfires). In summer, cooling will be via cross and stack ventilation. A well designed energy rating system would give our project full marks for its thermal performance and bonus marks because our systems are based on renewable sources. Not the Victorian system though. Its computer model takes into account the separate thermal performance of each type of building material, but gives very little consideration to the value of thermal mass. Nor does it appear to give adequate credit to other ways of reducing non renewable energy use such as shading of walls in summer, natural ventilation, using renewable fuel, gravity water systems, etc.

A quick way of evaluating whether the 5 star rating scheme is effective, is to measure the real life performance of some 5 star buildings. If they are using heaters frequently during autumn and spring or if they have an air conditioner, their thermal performance is questionable and so is the scheme.

So there we have it, two good ideas in principle but not always working too well in practice.

Getting the Timing Right

2011-05-19T04:00:00.000-07:00

The last few blogs have outlined our dreams for 2011. Over the past few days we have learned how important “timing” is, to successfully completing complex projects. Saving up the pennies, developing a design, planning the details and organising different facets of a construction are important steps, but when the work actually starts, timing can be a critical component too.

At the moment we are focussing on building our verandah, and setting up a clay pad for our garage slab to sit on. All the contractors (concreters, excavator and builders) were lined up well over a month ago, but our bad timing started months earlier. Foolishly we thought that if we put our planning application in at the start of summer, we would be working on the projects in autumn (normally a dry time of year). However the wheels of the planning bureaucracy move very slowly. When we finally obtained the “magic piece of paper” 4 months later, each contractor then had to slot us into their work schedule. The builders were able to start quite soon, but the concreters had a backlog of jobs. Day after day of fine weather passed by, until at last the concreters were ready to do their thing.

The weather on 11^th May, 2011 made it a memorable day. As storm clouds gathered, light rain began to fall. Kevin, our excavator driver, was going flat out to finish the clay pad before it became too sticky. Whilst trying to retrieve a log for part of a retaining wall he discovered a boggy patch that quickly turned into a substance like quicksand. The more he tried to “claw” his way out with the machine, the deeper it went. Using all his skills with the scoop, and by embedding the sought after log under the tracks of the machine, he managed to avoid becoming a permanent feature of our landscape. After this lucky escape, he did a bit more work to make sure rain would drain off the site and then shared lunch with us before packing up for the day.

The concreters turned up late (during the earthmover drama) because of two flat tyres on their machinery. They got to work setting out levels and using an electric jackhammer to chop back excess bits of the house slab that were in the way. As the cloudy conditions were putting very little solar power into our system we started up our generator. Unfortunately there was so much noise from the jackhammer and the excavator that we did not notice the generator cut out (due to low oil levels). For the next hour or so, the jackhammer happily ate into our precious store of power until the rain got too heavy. By now the concreters had had enough. So they packed up and went home too and we had to run the generator all afternoon to get some power back into the batteries.

The third minor disaster occurred in the afternoon. A glazier arrived to repair the windscreen (broken on another job) of Kevin’s Drott. He not only accidentally broke the new sheet of glass, but due to the wet slippery conditions dropped the original badly cracked pane on our drive. It took about an hour for us to pick up all the small slivers of glass.

By now the rain had really set in. We had also had enough of the conditions and retreated inside. Three days later it is still raining and work has ground to a halt.

The moral of this saga is to try and make allowances for all the potential holdups that could delay a project. In other words, “get the ball rolling” early, so wintry conditions won’t throw a whole lot of “spanners into the works”. With a bit of luck and good timing, holdups and muck-ups won’t be a big problem. At least for us, current predictions are for reasonably fine weather for most of this week before the next weather front moves in with an extended period of heavy rain. We’ll be flat out making the most of the blue skies if they do come our way!!!

2011 Dreaming -House Progress Report

2011-05-04T02:11:00.000-07:00

This year we were going to get back on to the job of finishing off our owner built house. We have half-heartedly said this a few times before, but this year we have actually started. The first room to get the treatment was our bedroom. The job turned out bigger than we expected (don’t they always), because a close look our timber beams and wall cladding revealed that they needed further sanding before we could get underway. A full day was spent rectifying this situation before we could start the main game. Choosing colours is not one of our strong points so our bedroom was to be the site of the great colour “experiment”. We had a long chat with the folk at Grimes & Sons who are well known local manufacturers of stains and paints with a particular knowledge about mud brick construction.

We started off with a range of several “off the shelf” colours and these worked well for most of the room. However, it was not quite so easy choosing the wall colour and we ended up developing our very own tinted colour with the help and expertise from Alan Grimes. Our rather primitive method involved measuring out a quarter litre of the base colour and then adding drops of tint with an eye dropper until the colour was just right. The magical number was 50 drops. After that we used an old medicine glass to work out how many ml equalled 50 drops. As the final colour was a result of Heather’s experiments we have christened this colour “Heather”. Another colour that had a great name was the one that we used for the upright posts and main beams. It is called “beer”. We did not choose it because of its name, but because it is a rich mellow colour that makes the timber grain look really beautiful.

We have now finished our bedroom and are really happy with the result. Unfortunately the cooler weather is not conducive to painting and staining so we will try the next room when the warm weather returns. It is great that at last we have made a start.

Grimes & Sons have a web site www.grimesandsons.com

2011 Dreaming PART 2

2011-04-11T03:35:00.000-07:00

The dreams described in the previous post continue here with a focus on the house

Verandah

We have always intended building an undercover area on to the front of the house where we can store boots, coats and umbrellas and enjoy a morning coffee or afternoon glass of wine when the weather is conducive. We have chewed over many different possibilities, and decided on an open sided verandah area that is roofed over with materials that let enough light in, without it getting too hot in mid-summer. This construction will extend around the side of the house and also provide space for the steam engine, boiler, heat exchange tank etc. This area will also have a small kitchen garden and an outside cooking area for those very hot spells we sometimes get in summer. We may even explore the idea of a wood fired pizza oven!

Our rough model of the shape of our verandah

One reason why our projects take so long, is we spend a lot of time mulling over different possibilities. It has taken us around 2 years to come up with the final concept. One of our problems was to come up with a design that fulfils all the functions we have in mind and at the same time fits in aesthetically with the house. This latter point is quite complex because where the verandah adjoins the building there are 4 different roof levels, 3 different wall corners and 2 different levels on the ground. Our solution is a bit complex so to make sure in our minds that it would work we constructed a rough real sized model. The model gave us the confidence to take the next step- which is to start getting quotes for the job.

The house

We moved into the house in 2001, so it really is time to finish off the sanding and staining of exposed timber beams and ceilings, sealing windows and rendering the mud brick walls. This will be our first project for the year. Hopefully we will report on our progress in a month or two.

Obviously we will not get every one of these projects completed by the end of the year (in fact we may not even get them all started). However we will be working on them as time and finances allow. By doing many of them concurrently we can maximise the use of machinery whilst it is here. Sometimes the hardest part is just making a start, and in a way, putting down our intentions in writing is the very first part of that. Anyway, it will be very interesting to see how far we get by this time next year.

2011 Dreaming ...

2011-03-30T01:40:00.000-07:00

This year we have been dreaming of taking our permaculture design to a new level. We spent most of the last 12 years putting the core of our design in place, but there were several large elements that we didn’t get around to starting, and many, many details were left unfinished. This was not a bad approach as it gave us time to observe and assess how everything worked so far. We have now developed quite a large list of modifications and new projects that we are planning to start in 2011. It will be another busy year but we are excited by the thought that more elements of our permaculture plan will come to fruition. (Many of these projects were on our drawing board back in the 1990’s, so we have been very patient.)

Somewhere to park the car

We have a garage attached to our house. However for the last 10 years we have used it for a multitude

of other uses and the car only ever got a look in once. The garage space is just too convenient a workspace, so it has become a workshop where we house our tools and the materials that we need on hand. Our solution is to build a steel shed where we can keep our car and trailer parked undercover. However like most of our infrastructure it will have many more functions as well. We will attach our woodshed to it (see below), have extra storage areas and in the future we may use part of it for milking goats. The fact that it is 20m from the house and made of steel, means that in a fire situation, our cars will be under cover and we can store fuels away from the house. The cars will also be protected from hail damage. We have applied for the planning permit (a ridiculously convoluted and complicated process) and hope to commence building in the next few months.

The garage turned into an Art Gallery

New Woodshed

We have a wood combustion stove and wood heater, and soon will be the proud owners of a stationery steam engine that runs on wood fuel. (More on this in a future post.) Our existing woodshed is not quite big enough to develop a system where we can continuously store enough dry wood to run these three appliances. At present when we add more wood to our woodshed we have to shift the existing pile forward so we can add wood at the back, which gives it some time to completely dry out before we use it. We will relocate the woodshed to the side of the above garage and develop a system that ensures a continuous supply of dry wood.

Our existing woodshed

Hothouse

The hothouse will be relocated north of the new garage. This site is a bit more protected from wind, and allows us to water the plants with rainwater collected off the new garage roof. We can use the existing hothouse site to grow more nut trees and/or create an area for goats to graze.

Relocation of our solar system

The panels will stay where they are but we will shift the inverter and batteries down next to the house. This will necessitate the laying of a heavy cable but we will maximise the use of the trench digger, by laying electric cables to outbuildings so they can have an electrical supply.

Having the batteries and inverter under shelter and close by, will enable better monitoring, ease of maintenance, better security and should ensure they have a longer life. They will also be adjacent to our new steam engine setup, allowing for 24v input directly into the batteries.

Access Tracks

Our 400m driveway has coped very well over the past decade, but after the recent heavy rains it is in desperate need of rejuvenation. The main need is a grading of the surface to reform the camber and clearing out the gutters on each side. Regrowth after Black Saturday is seriously encroaching on both sides of the drive. Whilst we have the equipment on site we will also upgrade the access track to the solar panels. A non-flammable driveway surface will create a firebreak around the solar panels and improve our ability to hold back a fire on this side of the property should we ever need to do so again. This track would also provide vehicle access to our zone 2 gardens.

Interpretation Centre

We originally obtained building and planning permits to redevelop our old barn several years ago, but other events prevented us moving ahead with the project. So this is probably the biggest of all the jobs we have on our list and this year we hope to get the concrete slab in place and perhaps start infilling the mud brick walls.

Our list of dreams continues in the next post.....

HEALESVILLE AUTUMNFEST IS OVER FOR ANOTHER YEAR

2011-03-23T01:40:00.000-07:00

All the planning and hard work was rewarded by perfect weather and a beautiful and very successful day with over 2000 folk turning up.

Crunchy Love Mobile Woodfired Pizza - YUM!

Zaar Belly Dancers

Edible Weeds from Hello Little Weed

The moonlight walk was magical

Seed Savers

Solarquip had all the up to date info about alternative energy

Autumnfest had a huge “growth spurt” this year. It has matured into a celebration of the wonderful community that exists in Healesville and the Yarra Valley and is a result of the cooperation, help & support of hundreds of people. It aims to promote a healthier food supply system, display the work of community groups, showcase local talent, raise awareness of future alternatives & possibilities and of course to provide a pleasurable day of activities for everyone to enjoy. The highlight was the grand opening of the magnificent Healesville Labyrinth.

The "Smoking Ceremony" to open the Labyrinth

During the day we spoke to hundreds of people and were delighted by the positive feedback and happy responses. Thank you to all participants and all the visitors for helping to make it a lovely and special event. The photos show some of the day’s activities.

The colorful scarf run

Tenderbreak's colourful stall

The best news of all is that it will all be happening again next year on March 24. If you want to join in as a stallholder or volunteer or just be kept informed about the event, keep an eye on this blog or send us an email and we will add you to our mailing list.

Autumnfest and the Labyrinth Opening on Saturday, March 19

2011-03-06T02:18:00.000-08:00

A few months ago we mentioned that we are once again involved in Healesville Organic Farmer’s Market’s Autumnfest. This year’s event will be bigger than ever because it is combined with the opening of THE BRAND NEW Healesville labyrinth. For a peek at the concept plan see http://www.healesvillelabyrinth.org.au .

March 19 will be a huge day in Healesville because Healesville Music Festival is also being held on this day. Both events have free entry and we are hoping to have a shuttle bus available to ferry people between the venues.

There will be a variety of entertainment, informative displays, art and craft demonstrations and stalls selling good tucker for one and all from 9am through to 4pm. Apart from an expanded organic produce market, there will be many other stalls selling/displaying eco friendly products and some that focus on domestic animals such as goats, pigs and chooks.

SUSTAINABILITY TALKS & DISPLAYS

There will be plenty to learn about on the day: edible weeds, permaculture, local plants, heritage fruits, solar energy, bee keeping and more.

MEDIEVAL TROUPE
Days of Knights will dance, hold tug of war competitions and have craft activities children. Swords and chain mail will be on display in this interactive fun for kids of all ages.

CHILL OUT TENT
The Chill out tent will provide a shady space to sit and connect with others. Songwriter’s and Poet’s Breakfast from 9am provides an opportunity for aspiring writers, poets and musicians to share their words with a supportive audience.

PERFORMANCES
Performances include music composed for and inspired by the labyrinth, ZAAR tribal bellydancing and a mass choir performance.

Autumnfest is located outside the old Healesville Railway Station. Food stalls will include pizzas, barbequed free range pork sausages, and other delectable foods as well as chai tea, organic coffee, Mexican hot chocolate and more. Bring your friends and tell your neighbours. Come along, enjoy the festival, say hello to us and eat with your friends at the market.
PS: Photos were taken at previous Autumnfests

A Decade with solar power

2011-02-26T15:35:00.000-08:00

We’ve been meaning to write a blog looking back on the first ten years of living with solar power. We had intended saying how satisfying it was, to look in the “Electricity Bills” file and see nothing there, and to tell how smoothly everything has gone. These things still apply, but we do have to report that we did have a significant glitch late last year.

Our solar system is about 40m from the house (to get more sun exposure). Our batteries and inverter are located under the panels and are not well protected from the elements. This arrangement is not the best, for a number of reasons.

Although we have a keypad in the kitchen which gives us data readouts from the inverter we still have to go up the back to check specific gravity levels occasionally and top up the batteries with water. We probably don’t do this as often as we should because of distance (out of sight, out of mind)

Also the batteries would perform better (and probably last longer) if they were kept at a more constant temperature. In their present location, prevailing air temperatures vary from around zero in winter to close to 50 degrees in mid-summer (in full sun).

However the biggest disadvantage is that water could get into the system and cause damage. We found this out in November when someone accidentally left the lid of the inverter “weatherproof” box open. We won’t name names, but Andrew’s red complexion is not a result of sunburn. One morning we awoke to find ourselves without power. There had been some drizzle overnight and this had upset the inverter. Nothing we tried, would convince it to get over being a little damp, so we called on our friend, Jerry from Solarquip in Healesville.

Jerry came to the rescue that afternoon with a spare inverter (we were extremely lucky he was free and had a spare inverter on hand). After a quick “medical” he determined some specialist work was needed. We took the machine down to the manufacturer, Selectronics (conveniently located about 30 min away) and left it with them. As it turned out, it wasn’t too expensive and our system was back to normal not long after.

However, this event and our experience over the decade have highlighted a few important points. When buying a solar system, do not just select the supplier on price. Consider whether they are a reputable company that is likely to be around in decades to come and whether they will provide backup and service when needed. There is also an advantage in using a locally manufactured inverter. By the way Solarquip installs systems all over Melbourne and in some regional areas. See their website at www.solarquip.com.au for more information

Housing the inverter and batteries in a building attached to the house is more secure, guarantees protection from the elements and is more convenient. We are planning to do this in the near future for these reasons.

Solar Power doesn’t need a lot of maintenance or management and is very reliable. Our system is fairly small as it was originally envisaged that it would serve the needs of 2 adults. As it turned out we have had an average of 5-6 people using the system over the decade, so we have stretched it to its capacity and it has performed admirably (only failing through our carelessness). Mind you, we do have to be mindful of our energy use in winter and do have a petrol generator as a back-up (We plan to change this in the near future).

We have no regrets about going solar and having no electricity bills for ten years is very satisfying!

Behind the scenes of a Photography Exhibition

2011-02-11T01:43:00.000-08:00

Midway through last year our daughter Sally, was invited to exhibit some of her photography in the gallery at Yering Station Winery. Sally is quite an accomplished nature photographer and has worked in the field as a hobby for around 10 years. As you would know, cameras, tripods, mounting equipment, and other accessories soon add up to a substantial investment. To recoup some of this money Sally has sold many of her images as photo gift cards at local markets.

This exposure (no pun intended) lead to her work being published in local newspapers and one small exhibition. An invitation to mount a major exhibition at a well known gallery was quite a thrill. With some trepidation she accepted and assumed, with many months to prepare, everything would run smoothly.

Of course there was no rush, Sally already had most of the images needed in her portfolio, and all that was required was arranging for them to be printed, getting frames organised and typing up background notes about herself and each work. The gallery had asked that the photos be mounted in rustic recycled timber frames as they fitted the exhibition’s theme (events during and after Black Saturday) and would sit beautifully with the old barn type decor of the hanging space. Heather and I were happy to get to work and build and stain the frames. So the weeks went by, life’s events occupied time and then suddenly there was the realisation that there were only 5 weeks to the installation date.

We had built timber frames before, but had always had trouble with our old mitre saw- its angles were never accurate. As there were around 40 frames needed, we decided to upgrade our equipment. After a search we settled on a very impressive Bosch Mitre Saw which would also be very helpful with all the timber work we needed in the house and our other building projects.

We had plenty of old timber scavenged when people were cleaning out their properties, so we carefully picked our way through the collection, choosing bits with suitably attractive grain & knot holes. (Bits that had “character” as Heather would say.). A week later 40 frames were ready for the next stage.

While this was going on Sally went through her portfolio selecting around 40 images that were suitable. It took several trips to the photographic shop to get them printed. Some had to be printed more than once to get the most suitable size and others had to be repeated because of faulty processing. Of these Sally chose 37 photos to include in the exhibition. They were all given suitable titles and priced. If only that was all that was required, but of course the real work was just about to begin.

Although Sally usually does her own mat board (the background card around the photo) we talked her into getting them professionally done. This would not only be quicker, but it would take some of the pressure off her shoulders (or so we thought at the time). The frame shop were very good in that they went through each image and made helpful suggestions as to the best colour for the mat board and because of the quantity, were prepared to give Sally a substantial discount on the cost. However, that was when we learned an important lesson in making frames. Our frames all differed slightly in size, due to the varying length of each piece of recycled timber. As a result, each mat board had to be individually measured and cut, hence no bulk discount available. We will know better next time.

We usually get our glass cut by a local glazier. We left the frames with them (in the knowledge that all frames were different) and picked up the glass the next day. Things were going well (or so it seemed).

When we had all the glass and mat board at home, we did a match up exercise to make sure every frame had mat board and glass that fitted. That was when we discovered that 7 mat boards had been cut wrongly and 3 glass sheets were too long. Back we went to the frame shop and the glazier. Both businesses were very good. They happily replaced the faulty material and did a few extra jobs free of charge. Still the delays were raising stress levels somewhat.

The staining process took some time to get going. We started using some old stains we had used before, but these were not dark enough. We bought some black stain to mix up our own colour and started experimenting on off-cuts. Eventually we hit on a mix that seemed to work well on the various timbers used for the frames. Whilst Sally cut the foam board backing that held the mat board in place we did the final sanding and staining of each frame.

Our lounge room was starting to resemble a small factory with piles of empty frames and glass sheets, folders of photos, piles of mat board and tools and equipment spread around. The next tasks were cleaning the glass (removing every single fingerprint and mark), attaching the photos to the mat board, fitting them into the frames with the foam backing board and screwing on the turnbuckles which held everything in place. We soon learned that black mat was very “unforgiving” in that it immediately showed up the tiniest mark or stray piece of sawdust. Each frame had to be meticulously vacuumed and checked.

Then Sally taped up the backs giving each frame a very professional finish. Finally ‘D’ screws were inserted in each side, the hanging wire was attached and an individual i.d. sticker attached. Of course these last few tasks did not go completely smoothly; largely as a result of the irregular sized frames. As a particular piece of glass and a particular mat board would fit an individual frame, each had an identification number. Occasionally numbers would disappear leading to cries of “I cannot find the glass for this frame” etc. Another problem that sometimes occurred was the discovery of a stray fingerprint on the glass (on the inside of course) after everything had been put together.

The final step was to transport the 37 works over our rough dirt road to the highway and then to Yering Station. Unlike our usual driving manner we took this trip with great care at every pothole to limit the chance of a potential disaster. We arrived at the gallery with everything intact and helped Savaad (the gallery manager) sort out and hang the work. Everything was now ready for the official opening on Friday.

The Opening

We were expecting around 40 guests for Sal’s official opening of the exhibition, but the numbers were a bit rubbery as not everyone RSVP’d. In addition people moved between the three exhibitions that occupied the gallery spaces so around 100 people would have come through on the night. Although the weather turned out a bit stormy, the night went off without a hitch and a great time was had by all.

It was only on the night that we realised that the arrangement of Sal’s work on the walls, told the story of Black Saturday. As visitors ascended the stairwell they were confronted by the dramatic images of the fire and the burnt landscape. Once they circulated around the upper floor they would have been heartened by the photos of regeneration and return of life. The positive comments and feedback was overwhelming and Sally was thrilled with the support of so many people.

Media

The exhibition is to be well publicised in the local media. The Lilydale Leader took photos on the installation day and interviewed Sally. Healesville Mountain Views paper did an interview on the morning of the opening. Remarkably, during the photo shoot, two of the fire fighters featured in one of the exhibition photos arrived to see the exhibition. There was quite a bit of emotion as Sally was reunited with these two brave ladies for the first time since the fires.

And then Celeste from Yarra Ranges & Valley Magazine came to the opening to write up an article about the three exhibitions. Hopefully the two newspaper articles should be in print next week and the magazine article will appear in the autumn edition (out in March).

We have learned a lot from this experience- mainly related to frame size and setting up more efficient processes for getting everything done. If we are involved in helping with another exhibition we will certainly be doing things differently. We have also learned that putting on an exhibition is much more than just selecting a few photographs and mounting them (especially if you are making the frames yourself). It is a huge undertaking with many complexities, but after seeing the final stunning result it is certainly worth the effort. Your work is brilliant Sally and what a fantastic journey it has been for you!

If you are interested in catching a glimpse of the exhibition, it is in Matt’s Bar at Yering Station Winery, Yarra Glen, is free and runs from Feb 4 to March 20, 2011.

All our family made it to the exhibition

Our Latest WOOFERS

2011-02-01T20:13:00.000-08:00

Last week two young Swedish WOOFERS visited Tenderbreak. Their trip was partly a study tour, and partly a brief backpacking holiday and they were keen to find out more about Permaculture. They had already visited quite a few properties around Melbourne and surprised us when they commented that they thought our public transport system was pretty efficient compared to Sweden’s.

Back home, Erikka works for a non-profit organisation that combines rehab programmes with professional gardening and wood work and Maria is a volunteer at a children's gardening project. They had both studied horticulture in Sweden and were now travelling on a grant, to learn more. Unfortunately due to busy schedules they were only able to spend one night with us but it was a very enjoyable evening.

Erikka and Maria are easy going lovely people and it was a real pleasure meeting them and spending the evening together. Thankyou both for sharing your journey with us and we hope you can return at some stage in the future.

Dearth of Blog Entries

2011-01-15T14:13:00.000-08:00

We have been a bit slack with putting up blog entries for a while. Our excuse is that other activities have filled our time and taken up our energy. Spring and early summer are always the busiest periods of the year for us. This year even more so, because of the rampant growth we have experienced as a result of all the rain and the humid conditions. We don’t know how people in tropical areas cope in normal years, let alone with this season’s tragic events.

Apart from dealing with planting, summer pruning, bushfire readiness, managing rampant growth, harvesting early crops and dealing with issues that crop up in life we have been doing a lot of plotting and planning. We will detail some of our ideas for 2011 in a future blog entry, but here are a few things that happened towards the end of 2010.

Gardens

We have had a late planting season due to the weather and some replanting has been necessary where small seeds were washed out. Lots of growth and although some vegetables have been slow to harvest, others have been prolific. For example we have had loads of huge, delicious cucumbers. Apart from eating these in salads Heather has made a delicious Cucumber and Apple Chutney.

Tomatoes in the garden have been a bit slow, but those in the hothouse gave us a Tommy Toe on the last day of November (our earliest yet) and we had a steady supply all through December.

We have tried Blueberries bushes several times before, but each time our northern exposure and hot dry winds have ruined the experiment. This year we tried again in a very protected position and (fingers crossed) they are doing well. One bush was even kind enough to grow a berry for us to share. One shared blueberry is not much, but the taste was superb.

Orchard

Most of our fruit trees were planted in 2005 & 2006. This year is their first prolific fruiting year. The mulberries and red currants bore plenty of fruit and the birds were kind enough to leave most of it for us to enjoy fresh or in jams. Most apple, pear, plum, nashi, quince trees are loaded with fruit. The almond crop is a bit light on- possibly because of the wet conditions. All four avocados (including our 7 year old seedling) had masses of flowers. Unfortunately most of these came to nothing, except for our Bacon avocado (4 years old) which has about a dozen marble sized fruit. We didn't get anything off our white currents, but the red currents more than made up for it with their brilliant colour display.

Chickens

Many of our hens went broody in early spring so we let one sit on a set of eggs. We have a very fast and lively Bantam rooster as well as a big handsome, slowish Australorp rooster. We were hoping to get some new Australorp chicks by crossing the latter with an Australorp hen. The result was not very spectacular with only 4 out of 9 eggs hatching out, and these all appear to be fathered by the bantam rooster. Then things got worse when the Isa Brown mother proved rather careless with her little ones, leaving us with only one chick surviving. Hopefully that one will be a hen!

Next time we try for chicks we will isolate the Australorps first to increase our chance of getting their offspring and we will use one of the bantam mothers to raise them.

Garlic

This year we grew our biggest crop of garlic yet. The photo only shows our first barrowful. Normally garlic doesn’t involve a whole lot of work, but this year the continual wet weather in late spring meant it was a real battle to collect the bulbs when they were reasonably dry and before they started splitting open and shooting again. Before Heather could plait them they had to be dried under cover, their condition checked and sorted according to size. We harvested about 20 kg and these are now safely hanging and airing in our barn.

Autumnfest

We are heavily involved in helping to organise Healesville Organic Farmer’s Market’s 2011 Autumnfest and the seventh market birthday. Apart from an expanded organic produce market, there will be entertainment and displays and talks relating to sustainable and environmental issues. The afternoon will culminate in a grand celebration of the opening of Healesville’s new Labyrinth. For a peek at the concept plan (It is under construction now) see http://www.healesvillelabyrinth.org.au . This year’s event on March 19 (mark it in your calendar) will be the biggest yet, because Healesville Music Festival is also being held on this day and we are working with their team to meld the events into one big day of celebration in Healesville that runs from around 8am to 9pm at night. More about this event in the coming weeks as details get finalised.

Out of the Black

Our daughter Sally has been invited to exhibit her photographic work at Yering Winery (Matt’s Bar). “Out of the Black” is her response to the physical and emotional trauma of Black Saturday and its aftermath, in photos. She has had several small exhibitions already, but this is the biggest yet. Our involvement apart from being in her support team, revolves around making 35 recycled timber frames to mount her work. We will do a separate post on the exhibition, but if you are interested, it is a free event and opens on February 4 and runs till March 20, 2011. If you would like a digital flyer or are able to advertise the event, email us and we will send one to you. Yering Winery’s web page is www.yering.com

Hothouse Makeover

2010-11-14T02:17:00.000-08:00

Last year we built our hothouse (See it here) and for the most part it worked really well. We had early tomatoes (they grew phenomenally), capsicums and cucumbers and were able to get seedlings up earlier for planting out when the weather warmed up.

As we were away for much of the winter we needed to have a hothouse makeover day to get everything going again. We used this opportunity to make some improvements using found and recycled bits and pieces.

The fairly flat roof rain allowed water to form pools and the weight of the water would cause the plastic to droop. Each day after rain we would have to push the plastic up to empty these pools, and this would create a waterfall of water running down the side (which could soak someone if they were too close). We solved this problem by stretching chicken wire tightly across the roof under the plastic. This supports the plastic and prevents pooling of water. An added advantage is that the tightness braces the whole structure preventing it from wobbling so much in strong winds.

We have also added guttering on one side to collect rainwater. This is fed into a 44 gallon drum and allows watering cans to be quickly filled with fresh rainwater which is preferable to using dam water.

We have finished planting in the hothouse and have rotated plants so they are not in the same spots. We have 6 tomatoes, 12 capsicums, 2 eggplants, 4 climbing cucumbers, 12 basils, 2 lemon grasses, 2 perennial climbing chillis (from last year) and heaps of lettuces. We also have numerous plants and seedlings in pots.

Having a hothouse is particularly good this year as it has turned out to be quite a cool start to spring. At least we should be able to get some early vegetables on to our table, even if the cool days continue.

The Big Wet gets even Wetter

2010-10-31T18:02:00.000-07:00

2010 is set to be our wettest year for 30 years. Over the weekend we had over 150mm of rain which makes it our wettest October since we started keeping records. Although this has delayed our spring planting for a few days, it has given us many exciting (and sometimes amusing) sights.

Not only are our tanks and dams all overflowing profusely, but every depression in the ground is now full of water and creating little streams of runoff. As our son Greg commented, there seems to be water seeping out of every nook and cranny. Our wheelbarrow gets extensive use shifting all sorts of materials and this weekend we even had barrowfuls of water to shift (but nowhere needed water).

Our jetty nearly went underwater

When we were first looking for a property to purchase, one of our dream criteria was a permanent stream or natural spring. Tenderbreak has finally given us our springs (temporary we think?? ). They are popping up everywhere, as water seepage follows channels below the ground till it eventually comes to the surface. These are feeding our gullies which have turned into small streams, our main gully has turned into a fast flowing creek, Pauls Creek has turned into a raging river (nearly washing out our access road and the Yarra River has turned into an inland sea down at Yarra Glen.

When the dam outlet pipe couldn't cope, the overflow went over the driveway

Now we have a new range of adventure activities on our property.....white water rafting, surfing, canoeing, riding barrels over waterfalls or for the more fearful having “boat” races using leaves, sticks or bark.

All this beautiful water has given us an opportunity to flush water out of the dam. We opened the gate valve on the outlet pipe open for several hours allowing stagnant water sitting at the bottom of the dam to flush out. The fresh, nutrient filled rainwater then topped up the dam. The fish should find this very refreshing.

Releasing water out of the gatevalve

Some more photos that give an idea of the sights that behold us.

Emergency road repairs!

Rapids in Pauls Creek

Horse "float" Parking

Yarra Glen Race Track

Surfs Up as water enters the Yarra River

Pauls Creek is now a river

Murray and Vicki

2010-10-14T19:26:00.000-07:00

Murray & Vicki have been staying with us since May. At the beginning they helped manage the place while we took a break, but once we returned home were happy to stay on (like long-term WOOFERS).

Whilst at Tenderbreak, they have been extremely busy gathering firewood, weeding, planting hundreds of onions, bushfire prevention work, helping out with tours, renovating our extensive network of garden paths, mulching and many other tasks. They have also used their culinary skills to create some wonderful meals and edible delights for us, including the Midnight Xpresso Chocolate Cake for Heather’s birthday and a wonderful cheesecake for Kathy and Sally’s birthday. On top of all of that they have entertained us with their recorded and live music.

Murray is a bit of an “ideas man” and came up with a unique way of using saplings. We laid them in a tight parallel pattern to make a raised footpath over a boggy area that had formed near the gate that leads to the chook pen. As you can see in the photo, it is not only very practical but also quite aesthetic, low cost and has low embedded energy.

Dedicated cook Vicki out in the rain collecting lemons for making lemon butter.

Vicki loves cooking and quickly mastered the subtleties of managing a slow combustion wood stove. She also “harvests” weeds with great thoroughness- our garlic patch has never looked better.

However what makes these long term stays memorable and special, is the bond that develops between hosts and visitors. As with our earlier guests, Murray and Vicki are easy to get along with, they blend in so well they are like part of our family. It is a real pleasure to sit around the dinner table eating delicious home grown meals with a glass of wine (or home-made ginger beer) and enjoying each other’s company. Thankyou Murray and Vicki, for sharing our journey with us.

PERMACULTURE IN ACTION” TOUR OF TENDERBREAK

2010-09-28T01:41:00.000-07:00

After a long break over winter we are recommencing tours of Tenderbreak Permaculture Farm.

Bookings are required for tours on:-
Sunday, OCTOBER 24th, 2010 &

Sunday NOVEMBER 14th, 2010

Both tours run from 1:30pm to 4:30pm and include afternoon tea.

Our tours are suitable for anyone with an interest in permaculture, organic gardening, passive solar house design, tank water, mudbrick building, property design and layout, chooks and ducks, solar power, grey water systems and sustainable living. In fact our tours are a bit like doing a mini Introduction to Permaculture Course.

Although our property is a large bush block, we provide information and ideas that are suitable for both rural and suburban dwellers. The size of the groups is limited to ensure there is plenty of scope for questions and discussion. Contact us for more details or for bookings at tenderbreak@bigpond.com

The Big Wet

2010-09-23T05:40:00.000-07:00

2010 will be remembered by us as “The Big Wet” after “The Long Dry Spell“. We have been keeping rainfall records since 1995 and this year we have already had more rain than the annual total in each of the past 4 years. We are on track to match (or possibly surpass) the annual rainfall total of our last “Big Wet” which was way back in 1996 (It’s a long time between wet years).

All our tanks and dams are full and overflowing., which means we will have plenty of water for the coming summer should we need it.

The rainfall is also just what our bush needs. Steady, consistent rain soaks down deep into the ground for the trees to draw on in dryer years. It is also providing essential moisture for the massive amount of regrowth that is occurring after the fires. Many of the saplings have grown at remarkable levels. In just over 18 months they are well above my height (some are 5m).

Along with the massive amount of green at ground level there are plenty of other surprises to be found. At the moment the purple flowers of the native Hardenbergia are at their peak, along with the yellow flowers of the various wattles. We have even found two Hardenbergias which differ from the hundreds of others in that they have pink flowers.

Our property has several gullies running through it. These usually only flow with water after heavy rainfall and this year (for the first time in ages) they are running most of the time. Our main gully is very pretty with its winding stream, especially where the water drops over a rock ledge creating a beautiful waterfall over 1m high.

Although more than half of the bigger trees in the forest are now dead, there is a huge amount of life at ground level. Perhaps the saying “You can’t see the forest for the trees” should be changed to “You can’t see the forest for the regrowth”.

I Can See Clearly Now

2010-09-20T03:24:00.000-07:00

Up until now this blog has been fairly factual and mostly focused on our ideas and work on our Tenderbreak property, but this entry is different in that it covers an emotional journey we have been on.

It all started when we returned from a 9 week trip which involved exploring my family roots, meeting a number of wonderful permaculturalists and plenty of walks through open spaces and to the tops of mountains to let the fresh air blow the cobwebs away. After 9 weeks of pure bliss we returned home.

Blue skies

Instead of waking up invigorated and ready to fire on all cylinders I found myself in a place I had never been to before. After a very relaxing holiday with nothing more to think about than what to do the next day, there was suddenly so much work to be done and things started looking very bleak. This was made harder by the fact that this year was the cloudiest and wettest one for many years, so it was a battle to even start outside jobs. Then on top of all of this, was the return to our fire ravished bushland with thousands of dead, blackened tree skeletons with bare arms stretching skyward.

Even though I was quite aware of the fact that I had so much to be grateful for, the negative stuff started taking up all the room in my head. For the first time ever, I began to wonder about other “roads” we could be on. Growing most of one’s own food and running a house with independent services and planning new projects requires constant management and lots of hard work. On top of this, the forest which was one of our key attachments to this property had (like us) undergone major trauma. It would remain black for many years to come. It wasn’t only the forest that was black however. I knew I could choose to look at the half empty or the half full glass, but it was the empty half that filled my mind and dominated my thoughts.

The forest starts to heal

As I sank deeper into this horrible space it was Heather that kept me afloat. She knew how debilitating depression could be after a serious and painful back injury severely reduced her mobility for most of 2001. She gave unending, loving support and using her wisdom, worked at lifting me up to a brighter place. She put up with my constant negativity and guided me along the rocky path that I was following. I won’t go on about the detail too much, but the trigger which finally helped me get out of the dark hole, was a song. The song that I will be forever grateful for, was Johnny Nash’s “I Can See Clearly Now”.

Heather and I were sitting down having our morning coffee, and she had put on a CD. As I sat there gazing sadly out of the window, the words floated across the room and went straight to my heart. They completely overwhelmed me.

Thinking about it now, I know it was a combination of a relaxing moment with a steaming cup of freshly ground coffee, a nostalgic song with words that were speaking directly to me and most importantly, the company of a beautiful and loving partner. It was the perfect coming together of all those magic elements that gently lifted me up and opened my eyes.

For those that don’t know the words they go like this:-

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone,
I can see all the obstacles in my way

Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It's gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright) Sun-Shiny day.
It's gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright) Sun-Shiny day.
I think I can make it now, the pain is gone
All of the bad feelings have disappeared
Here is the rainbow I've been prayin' for
It's gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright) Sun-Shiny day.

Look all around, there's nothin' but blue skies

Look straight ahead, nothin' but blue skies.

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone,

I can see all obstacles in my way

Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind

It's gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright) Sun-Shiny day

Up until now, I thought this was just a lightweight bright and breezy tune, but now I feel every line was written specifically for me. Since that moment I really can see more clearly. I have re-found my enthusiasm and drive. My head is filled with plenty of things to write about, and this blog will blog along again. Of course there’s suddenly so much else to do as well, so entries will have to wait till I have time to spare.

Inspiring Events Coming Up

2010-03-26T03:30:00.000-07:00

Our calendar is chock a block with interesting, inspiring and interesting activities over the coming months. You may be interested in joining in too.

PETTY’S ORCHARD HERITAGE APPLE FESTIVAL

This Sunday... March 28th

The annual Petty's Orchard Antique Apple Festival is on Sunday March 28th. There will be over 200 varieties of apples to taste, heritage orchard tours, local produce stalls, cooking demonstrations, great organic food & cider, Rare Breeds BBQ, educational presentations from Vasili (Vasili's Garden - SBS), Peter Allen (Heritage Fruits Society, Mountain Districts Permaculture Group), Adam Donaldson (Snake Gully Cider) and more. The photo shows the "Apple Tasting tent". Thankyou to Belinda ( http://belindas-simple-life.blogspot.com/ ) for providing this photo.

The address is the corner of Homestead & Monckton Rd, Templestowe . For more information phone 0407860320 or email meggshp@gmail.com

CONVERSATIONS ABOUT LIVING SUSTAINABLY
Eltham College Training Services have put together this series of talks, which start next Tuesday and run to June the 8th. The program is :-

March 30 “Securing Our Food Supply: Who needs Supermarkets?” With Graeme George
April 27 “Surviving Black Saturday with the help of Good Planning and Design” with us (Andrew and Heather)
May 11 “Focus on World Poverty: Feeding the world” with Rick Coleman
May 25 “Fish into Food: Unusual Edibles and how to grow them” with Stephen Onions
June 8 “ Being Really Water Wise: using your water twice” with Rory Fort

All talks will run from from 6pm to 8 pm and will be held in the Eltham Professional Learning Centre (Eltham College), 1660 Main Road, Research. $5 entry also includes a tea or coffee.
To book a seat or for more information contact ECTS, ( ects@ Elthamcollege.vic.edu.au) or Ph 03 9433 9859 or check out their website www.ects.vic.edu.au .
ALTERNATIVES IN FOOD GROWING COURSE
We are helping to present a course called “Alternatives in Food Growing” at Selby Community House. Topics include grafting, composting, bee keeping, fruit tree pruning, harvesting/storing, preserving, tips on vegetable and other food growing. Site visits to be scheduled.
The course is held on Wednesdays 7 to 9.30 pm and runs over 8 weeks
Our presentations are as follows:-
• Wednesday 24th March – Introduction to Compost, Basics of Seed saving and general growing tips
• Wednesday 14th April – Amateur Bee Keeping, Pest management, Choosing & Managing fruit trees
• Sunday 18th April – Site visit – Tenderbreak Farm – Dixons Creek 1.30-5.00pm including Afternoon Tea
For bookings and more information email Tracy at Selby Community House selby@selbyhouse.com.au
Perhaps we will see you at some of these events.

Autumn Equinox

2010-03-22T18:37:00.000-07:00

The autumn equinox has passed, and so has our annual Autumnfest celebration described in our last post. The weather was kind, the music was great, the displays were interesting and informative, the food was tasty and the products were of great quality. In short, everyone did a wonderful job. We had a great time and we hope you did too. It was a wonderful day with around 35 displays, stalls and entertainers and hundreds of visitors (many of whom had not been to our market previously).

There were many highlights. The music, song and dance lifted the spirits and was very entertaining. The crowd particularly enjoyed our own little Riverdance performance by Irish Dancer Kate Bilton and her pupils (appropriately in the vicinity of Healesville’s River St.).

Another highlight was the songs of the Mountain Country Carol Singers. Their hilarious song about “Fluff” really resonated with the listening crowd. Performances by buskers representing the Healesville Music Festival (to be held in May) also added to a day of relaxing entertainment.

There were many displays focussing on the environment and sustainablity. Kurt van Wyjk’s electric car drew plenty of interest; especially the development cost of $15000 and the extremely low running costs.

The solar and wind power display by Solarquip reinforced the advantages of generating your own power, and Glen was able to give an update on what the Federal Government is now offering by way of financial assistance.

Art, craft and jewellery stalls provided a wide range of decorative items and plant stalls had a good range of garden and herb plants for sale.

The animal displays always attract interest and Amanda’s gorgeous goats certainly did that. This was the first time they had made a public appearance off their Steel’s Creek farm and they really took it in their stride and lapped up the attention. Many children enjoyed the hands on experience of giving them a pat.

The youngsters also had fun joining in the activities organised by the Arts Council.

The food supplied by our catering stalls was delicious.

There was food for every taste and enough for breakfast and lunch. We could choose between mouthwatering crepes and quiches, exotic Middle Eastern dishes, freerange beef and pork sausages (from the Yarra Valley) and drinks such as hot chai and Mexican hot chocolate (to die for).

All these stalls used organic and free-range ingredients and the aromas from everything being cooked or baked on the spot was so tantalizing to the taste buds.

Of course our regular stalls selling local produce allowed everyone to go home with armfuls of organic locally grown food that they could eat during the coming week.

If you missed this year’s festival, don’t despair we’re going to it all over again next year. However in 2011 it is going to be bigger and better. We are going to apply for a grant from the shire that will enable us to advertise our festival much more widely to attract more stalls and more people.

We intend making Healesville's Autumnfest the "must attend" festival in this area with more entertainment, informative speakers and a focus on preparing our community for the environmental and social changes that are going to affect us in the next few years.

When we have more information we will post it on this site. If you know of anyone else who would like to be kept informed about next year's event please tell them to get in contact. If you like to be super organised you might like to mark next year’s date (Saturday March19, 2011) in your diaries.

Hope to see you then (if not before).

Healesville Autumnfest 2010

2010-02-27T04:21:00.000-08:00

Healesville Organic Farmers’ Market presents

Autumnfest, 2010

Saturday March 20th, 8 am to 2pm

@ the Healesville Railway Precinct

Our annual festival to welcome the arrival of autumn also celebrates the Market’s sixth birthday. Over the past 6 years, stallholders have battled rain, hail, wind, scorching temperatures and the stress and fear that came with Black Saturday. No matter what nature’s challenge, your loyal stallholders still keep coming week after week. Thank you to all our customers for your support through purchases and friendship. Without you the market could not keep going.

The Healesville Autumnfest grew out of the Healesville Organic Farmers’ market. It embraces the philosophy that human beings need to feel connected to the earth in their daily lives. The autumn festival is a way of reminding us that the seasons shape our lives and our activities. The date for the Autumnfest is the closest Saturday to the Autumn equinox.

Bring your friends and tell your neighbours. As with past Autumnfest celebrations, the usual stallholders will be joined by plenty of extra stalls. There will be a variety of entertainment, informative displays, art and craft demonstrations and stalls selling good tucker for one and all. Some stalls will focus on domestic animals such as goats, pigs and chooks and will provide information about these animals.

Food stalls will include crepes, organic pork sausages, chai tea, Mexican hot chocolate and more. Forget breakfast at home. Come along and eat with your friends at the market. Afterwards you could shed those calories by walking the Healesville Labyrinth which is in the adjacent park and history buffs can check out the Healesville Tourist Railway.

Entry is free and you could make a day of it by visiting other attractions in the Healesville area in the afternoon.

A project of Yarra Valley Permaculture Group

Permaculture Resources & Courses

2010-02-18T23:05:00.000-08:00

If you are interested in finding out more about permaculture consider joining a group (there could well be an active group in your area). For details of groups and events see the Permaculture Melbourne website (www.permaculturemelbourne.org.au) or search the web for a group in your area

Most groups offer informative newsletters, a chance to network with people who are happy to share their skills, visits to properties to see what others are doing, and access to a host of free or low cost workshops on topics like grafting and pruning.
The best way to “get into permaculture” is to do a Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) course. Now is the perfect time to check out what’s available because there are many courses getting under way in the near future.
If you would like to do an “Introduction to Permaculture” or a Permaculture Design certificate (PDC) course we particularly recommend those run by:-

• Graeme George PH 5962 5070 Courses in the Yarra Valley, Croydon Hills & Brunswick Email: earthcarepc@virtual.net.au

• Peter Allen (http://www.petethepermie.com/) Courses in the Dandenong Ranges & Eltham PH 0418665 880

• Cam Wilson http://www.forestedgepermaculture.com/ Course at Heathmont
Many people do not realise that Permaculture is much more than organic gardening. It is actually a design system that can be applied by anyone whether they live in the suburbs or the country. Permaculture designs take the total picture into account, including food systems, water supply, energy use, building design, fire defence, waste minimisation, maintaining environments, diversity, urban solutions and much more. After the course, you will be in a position to draw up a design for your own property from scratch, or if infrastructure is in place, “retro-design” the property to make it work better. Some of the courses are subsidised and offer excellent value for money.

There are many websites with information about permaculture and sustainable living. Here is a selection that we recommend:-

• http://www.seedinternational.com.au/pc_principles.html Great site for information regarding permaculture concepts

• http://www.petethepermie.com/ Pete runs a whole range of courses & sells fruit trees & shrubs. He has a wealth of knowledge about fruiting plants, which he is happy to share.

• http://www.permaculturemelbourne.org.au/ Information about permaculture & groups around Melbourne

• http://communityharvestproject.org.au/ Great for information about events relating to local food production from backyards to larger operations

• http://www.holmgren.com.au/ David Holmgren is a co-originators of permaculture and his website contains information and publications relating to the subject

• http://belindas-simple-life.blogspot.com/ Belinda lives in the Dandenong Ranges and produces an informative blog which covers a wide range of topics

• http://greeningofgavin.blogspot.com/ A suburban journey towards sustainability that started after Gavin’s green “epiphany” (a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into reality). Gavin’s blog is very readable and informative. He is passionate in his beliefs, and entertaining in his delivery. Once you start reading you will find it hard to resist joining his blog as a “follower” and checking in on his journey

Tenderbreak is in the News

2010-02-07T04:21:00.000-08:00

Tenderbreak is in the news again. Earth Garden Magazine has published an article about our Fire Bunker in its latest edition (Summer 2009), which is available at newsagents now. The latest issue also contains articles about aquaponics, quince trees, a DIY electric bike conversion and much more. EG comes out quarterly and has a focus on articles relating to sustainable lifestyles.

The inaugural summer edition of Yarra Valley & Ranges magazine also contains an article about our place. Celeste, who took the photos, manages to make the place look very classy. This new publication promotes the unique food and wine, people, places, gardens and art and culture of our region (The Yarra Valley and surrounding area). If you cannot find it at your newsagent their website is http://clpublishing.com.au/ .

Insulation Rebate Program

2010-02-02T21:28:00.000-08:00

At the moment the Federal Government is offering a subsidy to existing home owners to help them insulate their roof space. The program has been so popular that the government has scaled back the amount offered from $1500 to $1200 and it may be dropped altogether when allocated funds run out. The scale back means that in most cases the rebate will not completely cover the cost of insulation, but for a medium sized house it will only involve a small outlay.

If your house lacks adequate insulation we reckon it would be worth checking out this program. Details can be found at http://www.sustainability.vic.gov.au/www/html/1517-home-page.asp.

Our daughter Kathy and husband Steve did just this in November, and are very happy with the result. They now have R3.5 insulation throughout their house and have already noticed the difference on hot summer days. They are looking forward to seeing how much difference it makes to winter temperatures.

We do not usually advertise businesses, but we were so impressed with the service offered by Janelle Murphy and her partner that we are happy to recommend them. They are a small business and we found them to be very ethical, knowledgeable and to offer good service and value for money. Their company is called Australian 5-Star and is based in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne (email australian5star@hotmail.com).

Janelle is also an accredited and very helpful energy rater (she does 5 star energy ratings of building plans) and is an accredited Home Sustainability Assessor. This latter qualification enables her to evaluate the energy use of a home and is aimed at providing home owners with ideas on how they can reduce their energy and water bills, increase the comfort of their home and help reduce damaging carbon pollution. The assessments can also be used to obtain a no interest “green loan” for sustainability measures. See http://www.environment.gov.au/greenloans/assessments/index.html for more information.

Tenderbreak Permaculture Tours

2010-01-25T01:12:00.000-08:00

After a short break over summer we are recommencing tours of Tenderbreak Permaculture Farm. Over 1000 people have attended one of our events. Some have even been twice. Bookings are required for the tour on:-

Sunday, MARCH 7th

It runs from 1:30pm to 4:30pm and includes afternoon tea.
Our tours are suitable for anyone with an interest in permaculture, organic gardening, passive solar house design, tank water, mudbrick building, property design and layout, chooks and ducks, solar power, grey water systems and sustainable living. In fact our tours are a bit like doing a mini Introduction to Permaculture Course.
Part of the tour looks at defensive strategies against bushfires. The fires of Black Saturday burnt most of our 96 acres, but we were able to save our house and most of our infrastructure. We can now give an account of what aspects of our fire plan worked well and what needs to be improved.

Although our property is a large bush block, we provide information and ideas that are suitable for both rural and suburban dwellers. The size of the groups is limited to ensure there is plenty of scope for questions and discussion.
Other dates are available for group bookings.
Contact us for more details or for bookings at tenderbreak@bigpond.com

2009 The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

2010-01-12T01:10:00.000-08:00

Personally we are glad to see the end of 2009. It started off badly with horrifically dry conditions which put our gardens, the bushland and us, under great stress ....... and then came Black Saturday. Although we came through it relatively unscathed, the damage done to Victoria and Victorians that day, left its scars on us. Even now almost one year on, reflection about what happened can bring on lumps in the throat, tears to the eyes and an overwhelming feeling of sadness. Each summer for quite a while, (if not forever) we are going to be very much on edge during high risk days.

The year continued badly on the personal front, with the deterioration in health of Andrew’s Dad. Just when we thought he had stabilised, he went downhill and passed away on Boxing Day. Although we knew he was at risk, it still came as a shock.

The year has not been all bad though. We have had many enjoyable experiences, met many, many wonderful people and have learnt much about ourselves and aspects of the journey we are on.

On the people front, we have met hundreds of wonderful people on the “Permaculture in Action” tours we run, and at our stall at Healesville Organic Farmer’s Market. We also greatly enjoyed the company of Emily and Tim and Shelly who stayed with us for extended periods during the year. (See earlier posts). The highlight for Andrew was his surprise 60th Birthday party. We also enjoyed setting up and hosting Sally’s Yarra Valley Open Studio in September.

On the gardening front our fruit trees are one year older and bearing more fruit, we expanded several of our veggie growing areas and built our wonderful hothouse. Our animal flocks have increased in number. We searched high and low for a source of Khaki Campbell ducks, and found a breeder (by chance) within 5 minutes of our house. Our drake is very happy with his four wives. We have also added 4 bantams to our collection of chooks.

We are now looking forward to the new year and the positives which will come with it. Hopefully we will get our next construction project moving, do some more work on the house and of course we have plans to plant more fruit trees and bushes.

Roll on 1010 - we are looking forward to carving 10/10/10 in a mudbrick when that date comes around.

Our New Hothouse

2009-11-06T02:55:00.000-08:00

For many years we have been intending to build a hot house. Up till now we have made do with plastic bags and bottles over seed trays and we have kept vulnerable plants in the house during cold spells. But now we can look after our more sensitive plants in style- in our brand new hot house. Well it’s new in that it has just been erected, but in fact it is actually quite old as it is made from reused materials that we have gathered from a variety of sources.

The hardest part was levelling the site. It didn’t look much work when it was staked out, but it took 2 full days to cut the area level, and drag over logs to make a retaining wall for where the ground has been built up. The photo shows our Heather and our friend Ilya helping us do the lifting of the wall frames.

The walls came from an old poultry farm and have sheet metal on their lower half and wire netting fabric on their upper half. We used old recycled timber to build the frame for the roof, and the doorway. Covering the whole lot is solar weave plastic.

We have chosen this type of structure because we had most of the materials on hand. It also enables us to make the hothouse rabbit and snake proof (the hot conditions could be very attractive to our reptile friends). Having the metal part at ground level is advantageous because this is the area most vulnerable to damage from tools, mowers etc.

We’ve connected the plastic in such a way as to be able to roll up the sides so we can moderate temperatures as the weather warms up. In summer we will take the plastic right off so plants can keep growing without being “cooked”. This should also extend the life of the plastic.

The hothouse is quite big, measuring 3.6m x 7.2m and enables us to use it for a variety of purposes. We are using half of it for growing plants in the ground and the other half for growing our own seedlings and cuttings. Two old discarded portable BBQ’s put out for roadside collection have made good potting benches. Half of the floor is paved with old pavers (free) from a nursery that was putting down asphalt instead. These provide some thermal mass which should moderate temperatures on cold nights.

In the earthen area we have planted 6 tomatoes, 8 basil plants, 8 egg plants, 6 bell peppers, 6 long sweet yellow capsicums 2 German pickling cucumbers and one perennial chilli. We have also planted a cool climate banana and half a dozen lemon grasses.

The whole design was a bit of an experiment and has required many minor adjustments as the project has proceeded, but seems to be working well now. It even withstood gale force type winds that blew through Victoria in early spring.

Who knows, we may even set up a couple of deck chairs and enjoy the warmth ourselves on some of those freezing Victorian winter days.

Tim & Shelly

2009-10-04T00:55:00.000-07:00

This year has been the first time we have formally taken on helpers at Tenderbreak Farm (like in the woofer program). Earlier in the year Emilie stayed with us for 5 months, then Michelle and Ilya came for short stays and now Tim and Shelly have been staying with us since early September. All of these young people have been a joy to be with, and have helped out with a multitude of tasks.

Tim and Shelly are from the “Land of the Long White Cloud” (New Zealand), and have just started out on an Australian adventure. Whilst at Tenderbreak, they have been extremely busy planting potatoes, native trees and other plants, gathering firewood, weeding, fencing, helping out with tours and at our market stall, renovating our garden paths, setting up for the Open Studios event, mulching and many other tasks. They have also used their culinary skills (they dream of opening their own magical cafe one day) to create some wonderful vegetarian meals and delights for us, including the Midnight Xpresso Chocolate Cake –for Andrew’s birthday (See recipe below). On top of all of that they have entertained us with their music (recorded and live) and with their incredible fire dancing skills (See last post).

However what makes these visits memorable and special is the bond that develops between hosts and visitors. As with our earlier guests, Tim and Shelly are easy to get along with, they blend in so well they are like part of our family. It is a real pleasure to sit around the dinner table eating delicious home grown meals with a glass of wine (or home-made ginger beer) and enjoying each other’s company. Thankyou to Tim and Shelly for sharing our journey with us.

MIDNIGHT XPRESSO CAKE
Ingredients (Dry)
3 cups plain white flour
1½ cups cocoa
2½ cups sugar
3 teaspn baking soda
3 teaspn baking powder
Ingredients (Wet)
500ml soy milk
1 cup frozen berries
2 tablespn Instant Coffee
1½ cups olive oil
1 tin coconut cream

METHOD
Mix all dry ingredients together in one bowl and all wet ingredients in another bowl
Unify all ingredients in one bowl
Line tin with tin foil and grease with oil. Ensure there is enough room for the cake to rise as this mixture can rise more than other cake recipes.
Put into oven (160⁰C) for around 45 min or until a knife comes out clean
Decorate with cocoa icing and banana or berries in the middle. Once cool the cake can be sliced in half to make 2 cakes or stacked to make a delicious tall cake. Yum Yum!

Sixty Years Young

2009-10-01T17:44:00.000-07:00

August to October are celebratory months at our place. We have 9 birthdays to celebrate within a six week period. Luckily it’s spring time and there’s lots of work required in the garden to burn up some of the calories we put on over this time.

This year was a particularly big one, with Andrew joining that illustrious group known as “seniors”. (This term applies to citizens over the age of 60.) Andrew actually has been looking forward to reaching this milestone, partly because he reckons he is now an “elder” of the tribe and his wisdom, advice and opinions should be sought after, but mainly because he can now take advantage of low cost public transport, free events for the elderly and discounts all over the place.

This year there was a little (not so little actually) surprise that came along with the annual celebration. Normally in our family the big joy of such events is the right to select one’s favourite selection of edible and quaffable goodies for a celebratory meal and enjoy these in the company of the family. On the actual day everything went as normal and a great time was had by all.

However on the following Saturday with great secrecy and stealth, Heather had arranged a much larger gathering of friends and extended family to gather. With all watches synchronised, this group waited down the drive, whilst Andrew was lured down to the dam on the pretext that a turtle had been spotted on the edge of the water. As he searched in vain for the little reptile, a long line of cars wound its way up the drive. His first reaction was that somehow he had posted a wrong date on the web for one of our tours. Then when they got close enough to recognise faces, he put one and one together and realised it was all part of some secret plot. By the time everyone made it up into the house, furniture had been re-arranged, tables had been covered with food and drink and instead of having a rather dull afternoon (it was a wet and cold Saturday) in front of the fire we had a thoroughly enjoyable time with great company and a wonderful feast.

When night fell we were entertained by some spectacular fire dancing by our woofer friends Shelly and Tim. It was certainly a birthday to remember. The big question is “What are we going to do about Heather’s 60th next year? Hmmmmmm!

Tenderbreak Permaculture Tours

2009-09-27T02:31:00.000-07:00

Monthly tours of Tenderbreak Permaculture Farm will continue for the rest of the year.

Bookings are required and tours will be held on:-
Tour 1 Sunday, October 18th
Tour 2 Sunday, November 8th
Tour 3 Sunday, December 6th
Tours run 1:30pm to 4:30pm and include afternoon tea.

In the past 12 months over 1000 people have attended one of our events (Some have even been twice.) Our tours are suitable for anyone with an interest in permaculture, organic gardening, passive solar house design, tank water, mudbrick building, property design and layout, chooks and ducks, solar power, grey water systems and sustainable living. In fact our tours are a bit like doing a mini Introduction to Permaculture Course.

Part of the tour looks at defensive strategies against bushfires. The fires of Black Saturday burnt most of our 96 acres, but we were able to save our house and most of our infrastructure. We can now give an account of what aspects of our fire plan worked well and what needs to be improved.

Although our property is a large bush block, we provide information and ideas that are suitable for both rural and suburban dwellers. The size of the groups is limited to ensure there is plenty of scope for questions and discussion. Other dates are available for group bookings.
Contact us for more details or for bookings at tenderbreak@bigpond.com

YARRA VALLEY OPEN GALLERY WEEKEND

2009-09-25T02:41:00.000-07:00

The wonderful Yarra Valley Open Studio inaugural weekend event has now come and gone. Considering it was the first time, it all went very well and smoothly. Although Sally’s Gallery was one of the more distant of the galleries we still enjoyed visits by dozens of people who were exploring the work of artists in this region. The many enthusiastic and supportive comments, made all the work and preparation worthwhile. The positive reaction has inspired Sally to keep the gallery open for a while longer. At present Sally has decided to open the gallery on the following Sundays (and other days by appointment).

Mustang Sal Nature Photography Studio will be open from 10am to 5pm:-
Sunday October 25th
Sunday November 1st

If you are up this way on the above dates you are welcome to drop in and enjoy Sal’s photograhic display of over 50 framed photos plus hundreds of photocards. We’ll have the kettle on and you can also join us for a hot cuppa, and if you are interested have a wander around our permaculture garden. If you have the time, you are welcome to bring a picnic lunch and enjoy the peace and tranquility down by our dam.

We are located at Dixon’s Creek, in the beautiful Yarra Valley (about 60 km from Melbourne GPO). Email us for a map and directions if you need it. If you know of anyone else who might be interested please pass this information, (or our blog address) on to them.

Mustang Sal - Nature Photographer

2009-08-26T04:51:00.000-07:00

If you have been reading this blog for a while you will have noticed that many of the photographs are outstanding. Most of these were taken by our daughter Sally. In 2001 she did a short photography course and enjoyed it so much, it became a passionate hobby. After a while she developed a special interest in nature photography and soon amassed a large portfolio of photos taken around our place or on some of our camping trips. In recent years she has started turning her work into photo-cards which she sells at the Healesville Organic Market and our open days. They are also available from http://www.redbubble.com.au/.

Sally joined the Yarra Valley Photography Club and won several of their club competitions. Her work has also featured in our local newspaper. This year Sal was invited to become part of the Yarra Valley Open Studios project which runs from 18-20 September. On this weekend each artist will open their “studio” to the public. Visitors can travel from studio to studio and view artists in action or see their work. For further information see below

If you would like to view Mustang Sal’s cards visit Healesville Organic Market (outside the railway station) any Saturday morning from 8.30am to 1 pm.

OPEN STUDIOS WEEKEND September 18, 19, 20
More than 40 artists in the Yarra Valley area are opening their studios to the public over this weekend. Visitors can spend an afternoon, a day or a whole weekend exploring the rich diversity of art as it is made by Yarra Valley artists. The program includes artists working in a diverse range of mediums, from painters to potters, from goldsmiths to photographers.

For this weekend we are setting up a gallery here at Tenderbreak to display Mustang Sal’s Nature Photography. Mustang Sal’s Studio will be open from 10am to 5pm on each day, and entry is free. Sally will have handmade cards and framed and unframed photos on display and for sale. You are welcome to come along and see her work and make purchases if you wish.

If you have got enough time you are welcome to enjoy one of our “Tenderbreak Teas”. We will have a range of teas (regular, chai, hibiscus, herbal and others), freshly brewed Yarra Organic Coffee and scones/cake available for purchase. You are also welcome to bring out a picnic lunch and wander around our permaculture garden.

More details including descriptions of all artists, their location and a map are available at http://yvopenstudios.net.au/. To reach our gallery, travel north from Yarra Glen along the Melba Highway. After DeBortoli Winery turn right into Old Toolangi Rd., and follow the Open Studios signs. Email us at tenderbreak@bigpond.com for a map showing exactly how to get here.

COMMUNITY SUPPORTED AGRICULTURE (CSA) SCHEMES

2009-08-23T20:17:00.000-07:00

In our last post we had a bit of a rant about the incredible amount of wastage in our food supply system. There are alternatives out there (perhaps even close to you) that restore ethics into food supply. One of these is Community Supported Agriculture (CSA).

CSA’s are designed to restore fairness, health and quality to our food growing systems. Most farmers have a “boom or bust” type existence. In good years there is an abundance of food (farm prices are reduced because of an over supplied market) and in bad years there are crop failures (and income is reduced accordingly).

Farmers have to pay their costs up front (seed, water, ploughing etc) using borrowed money which eats into whatever profits they make. On top of this, the big buyers (supermarkets and processors) play farmers off against each other to gain the cheapest price possible. Whilst this may lead to cheaper prices (but not always) at the checkout, it has many serious negative effects. Farm incomes do not provide a fair return to the farmer and this can lead to economic, social, environmental and personal problems.

Many farmers are forced to use farming methods that lower costs or increase size, but result in poor quality food, soil depletion and environmental damage. There is also a huge amount of waste from the large farms that supply the mass market. Supermarkets demand that produce be of a uniform size, shape and colour. Of course nature doesn’t work like that, so vegetables that do not meet the required “standard” are often discarded. When food is wasted we are also wasting all the resources (water, fuel, labour etc) that went into producing it. The overriding concern of factory farm type production is not so much on quality and flavour and service to a local community, but on quantity and appearance (this is what modern consumers supposedly demand) and on profits.

How CSA's Work.
Members of the CSA pay an annual membership fee to a local farmer to cover the cost of production in advance, and in return they receive an equitable share of the farm’s harvest via a weekly box.
Both grower and consumer benefit from CSA's:-
• Consumers share the risks with the farmer. Communities are more resilient when consumers and producers understand and support each other
• The relationship allows feedback so that the farmer responds to the needs of members
• As the food is locally grown, it is fresher, and has very low food miles embedded in it (refrigeration, transport and storage).
• Consumers have a direct connection with their food supply, ensuring the use of ethical organic methods
• Many CSA’s encourage consumers to participate in the growing process. There may be opportunities for low income families to obtain their food at a cheaper rate in exchange for labour.
• Food security is enhanced because the community is not dependent on some distant supplier who has no obligation to maintain supply. Costs cannot be manipulated by profiteers whose only interest in food supply is making as much money as they can.
• CSA’s lead to far less waste in terms of packaging and selection of only uniform sized products
• CSA’s bring ethics, community, relationships and quality food back into the food supply chain

CSA related Websites
If you would like to know more here are some starting points:- http://www.organicfooddirectory.com.au/general-issues/community-food-systems/community-supported-agriculture.html has an excellent summary of how CSA’s work and lists benefits for consumers, farmers and the environment

http://www.abc.net.au/rural/telegraph/innovators/week5.htm In this interview the farmer outlines the benefits, particularly for the community as a whole.

We know of 3 CSA’s operating in Yarra Ranges Shire. These are:-.
• Little Feet Farm CSA run by Stuart and Luna (pictured above) in the Yarra Junction Area and can be found at http://littlefeetfarm.wordpress.com/
• Amy & Luc operate their CSA in the Healesville area. Contact Amy or Luc at lucamy@mooramoora.org.au
• Darryl runs Callavale Farm Fresh CSA at Monbulk. You can contact Daryl at mailto:darylknoll@gmail.com
If you know of schemes in other areas we would be happy to publicise them.

FOOD IS TOO VALUABLE TO WASTE

2009-08-11T03:03:00.000-07:00

Here are some shocking statistics!Australians throw out three million tonnes of food every year – the equivalent of 145 kilograms for each and every one of us.
A 2005 study by The Australia Institute estimated that food waste was costing Australians $5.3 billion per year.
Environmental advocacy group Planet Ark looked at how much food was being wasted by Australian households. They found as much as 25 per cent of food ended up in the rubbish bin.

Food waste:-
• Is a waste of money
• Is a waste of all resources that went into producing, packaging, transporting and storing the food - water, nutrients, labour, electricity and oil
• contributes to landfill, and greenhouse gases as it breaks down
• from supermarkets is often quite edible- either has damaged packaging or past a use by date
• is unethical

There has been a recent tendency for households to purchase supersized fridges. At the same time the number of people in each household has been gradually shrinking. As with many developments in our society, it just doesn’t make sense. Admittedly Australians are eating more than they ever did, but that’s causing many of us to be overweight. Having a bigger fridge full of tempting treats does not help one little bit. Of course having a bigger fridge also means you need a bigger kitchen and ultimately a bigger house. As these monoliths are on 24 hours a day, they use up enormous amounts of electricity giving us a bigger electricity bill. And that also generally means more coal being burnt to generate that extra power.

Do we need a big fridge?
Possibly, if you have a very large number of people to feed, but if you have an average sized household I have my doubts. My guess is that the bigger fridge just means more food gets lost at the back. Most people shop on a regular basis and really do not need to keep masses of perishable food on hand for weeks at a time. Storing food for weeks in the fridge or freezer adds to its cost.
In our situation we have a limited supply of electricity (solar power) so we have opted to go with a relatively small gas fridge, and it serves our household of 5 adults very well. It enforces a discipline of common sense. We have found alternative ways of storing perishable foods. Here are some of them:-
• Roots crops such as beetroot, carrots, parsnips store really well for many months if left in the ground- they even continue to grow
• Onions and garlic store well if hung in a dry coolish place
• Pumpkins and potatoes once harvested will keep for many months if cured well and are stored in a dry cool dark place.
• Lettuces, silver beet, celery and other greens can be harvested a few leaves at a time when needed
• Most fruit will keep for a while on the tree and then for several weeks if stored well
• We collect fresh eggs from our chooks and these will keep for several weeks if stored in a cool pantry.
• Many foods are easily dried, bottled or preserved.
• Another option for food that just needs to be kept cool but not cold, is a “cool cupboard”. This is a well insulated cupboard with a pipe bringing cool air from under the house into the bottom. At the top is an outlet pipe allowing air to be vented. Warmer air rises out of the top vent drawing cool air in at the bottom. The continual movement of cool air keeps food cool.

An ACF study found that food consumption is responsible for 28% of the average Australian's greenhouse gas pollution, whereas personal and public transport accounts for only 10.5%. So, growing even some of our own food can make a great a contribution to reducing our carbon footprint.
There is much publicity about big picture items such as turning off lights and appliances when not in use, but there is much to be gained for our hip pocket and the environment by just being a bit more thoughtful with our food purchases.
Let's all minimise food waste. If there is leftover food, feed it to chooks so it can be converted into eggs, or compost it so the nutrients can enrich soils, but please do not throw it into the rubbish. Food is too good to waste.

PERMACULTURE TOURS STARTING AGAIN IN AUGUST

2009-07-23T02:22:00.000-07:00

After a short break over winter we are recommencing monthly tours of Tenderbreak Permaculture Farm. In the past 12 months over 1000 people have attended one of our events (Some have even been twice).

Bookings are required and tours will be held on:-
Tour 1 Sunday, AUGUST 9th
Tour 2 Sunday, September 6th
Both tours run 1:30pm to 4:00pm and include afternoon tea.

Our tours are suitable for anyone with an interest in permaculture, organic gardening, passive solar house design, tank water, mudbrick building, property design and layout, chooks and ducks, solar power, grey water systems and sustainable living. In fact our tours are a bit like doing a mini Introduction to Permaculture Course.

Part of the tour looks at defensive strategies against bushfires. The fires of Black Saturday burnt most of our 96 acres, but we were able to save our house and most of our infrastructure. We can now give an account of what aspects of our fire plan worked well and what needs to be improved.

Although our property is a large bush block, we provide information and ideas that are suitable for both rural and suburban dwellers. The size of the groups is limited to ensure there is plenty of scope for questions and discussion. Other dates are available for group bookings.
Contact us for more details or for bookings at tenderbreak@bigpond.com

Fires Aftermath

2009-07-20T05:50:00.000-07:00

It’s now 5 months since Black Saturday, but it still seems like a bad dream. It is hard getting used to the blackened trunks, bare branches and a cooked landscape. Every time we return home, a sense of sadness arises within us when the burnt forest comes into view. This feeling is only partially offset by the gradual rebirth of our environment.

Recovery of bush/animals
The tenacity of Australia’s forests is amazing. The tree ferns and grass trees were sending out new shoots within a couple of weeks and the green really stands out against the black backdrop. Many of the eucalypts are now sending out side-shoots, with some clothed in green shoots from top to bottom. Of course there are many that will never recover and will stand for years like black sentinels reminding us of Black Saturday. The forest floor is gradually turning green with a carpet of mosses and young shoots starting to hide the ash.

Amazingly some of the wildlife managed to survive, but they are not out of the woods yet (pun intended). They survived the fire, but can they survive the loss of habitat and food source? We are doing our best to help by doing regular food drops of approved food around our place – hopefully it will get them through. So far we have seen a few wombats, a couple of echidnas, one baby snake, a small mob of kangaroos, a handful of wallabies and two lyrebirds.

Odd stuff
Many people have commented that at least we now have tons of firewood. Strangely this is true for next year and into the future, but the bulk of blackened wood on the ground is green- that’s why it didn’t burn during the fires. Any dry wood (including a few piles we were saving for future firewood) burnt very well when the fires arrived. Fortunately we managed to locate enough seasoned wood to get us through this winter, but many other people may have found it more difficult.

Flue Cleaning
One consequence of using wood stoves/heaters is the need to keep the flue clean. We have aimed to do this annually, but for various reasons have left this messy job for two years. So in May we donned our overalls, dragged out the flue brush, climbed onto the roof and gave the flue a brushing. We were pleasantly surprised by the relatively small amount of soot that dropped down. Our guess is that due to the very dry nature of the wood we use (usually it’s been seasoned for 2 years or more), it burns very cleanly leaving little residue behind. From now on we’ll clean out the flues before winter every odd numbered year.

Wood Fired Appliances
Winter has well and truly arrived and with that, the need for heating. Over recent years wood has received much “bad press” as a use for fuel. In the suburbs a poorly operated system or one not using dry fuel can cause discomfort for neighbours, but in rural areas there are many advantages over other fuels.
The Australian Greenhouse Office, in their brochure "Global Warming Cool It!" lists the following Greenhouse gases (pollution) per unit of heat
• “Natural gas produces 0.31 kg.
• LPG gas produces 0.34 kg.
• Electricity Aust. Average 1.00 kg...
• Wood produces 0.00 kg.”

The article continues: "Carbon dioxide from burning wood is not counted, as wood is a renewable resource: a natural cycle exists in which carbon is captured by growing trees, then released by burning or decaying and again captured by growing trees." Our energy utilities would have us believe that are at the forefront of environmental protection. The truth is fossil fuels are ruining the environment and our health........ This site also outlines some serious health dangers related to the use of gas fuelled heaters. See www.woodstoves.com.au for more information.

Wood is the perfect fuel if you are replanting trees to replace the wood you use.

Winter at Tenderbreak

2009-07-10T04:13:00.000-07:00

WHAT HAVE WE BEEN UP TO?
We cleared vegetation off our dam wall and resolved to keep it free of trees. Roots from large trees can penetrate the wall in search of water and this could lead to an empty dam. At times we have made attempts to get the job done, but it was just too big.

However this year the fires did half of it for us. The photo shows a small section. All we had to do was grub out the burnt trunks of perhaps 200 saplings. It still took two full days but at least it’s done and all we have to do is to regularly cutback growth to prevent trees getting established. Time will tell if we can keep up our resolve to keep regrowth down.

Whilst doing this job we took the opportunity to create a meandering path which leads to the gate valve (previously we had to battle through dense vegetation to get there). It also leads to the gully below the dam providing a pleasant bushwalk.

Hothouse

Another job we have been intending to do for many years was to build a hot house. We have now collected a pile of second-hand material for this purpose and started excavating the site. Hopefully this project should be completed in the next few weeks.

WINTER GARDEN NEWS
We’ve harvested around 70kg spuds and 80 pumpkins (Butternuts, Jarrahdales, Queensland Blues and a handful of unknown heritage). We continue to pick lettuce, celery, carrots, beetroots, turnips, silverbeet, wong bok, chicory, parsnips, daikon and many herbs. The brassicas are all doing well. We are enjoying the taste of freshly picked brussel sprouts and will soon be able to tuck into caulies, cabbages and brocccoli. Our focus in winter is on garlic, onions, (both planted in May) and broadbeans (for food as well as a green manure crop).

Our passionfruit gave us a pleasant surprise. This was the first year it provided a crop and we have been patiently waiting for them to turn purple. In the end we gave up, tried one and found it to be ripe and sweet. Apparently we have a yellow fruiting variety and are now enjoying them “passionately”.

In the orchard we have started pruning fruit trees, divided and transplanted some rhubarb plants and have prepared spots for a few more fruit trees. We’ve also cut down a few older acacias, cut back others and used our mulcher to turn the prunings into a big pile of mulch.

GREAT NEWS FOR CHOOK OWNERS

2009-07-05T01:57:00.000-07:00

David is a woodworker friend of ours, who manufactures and sells a variety of wooden toys and other products. For some time he has been working on a chook feeder design that will prevent birds, rats and mice from stealing the chook food. We are pleased to announce that he has now developed a bird, rat and mouse proof Contented Chook Feeder.

The chook food is placed in a hopper which is covered by a lid. When the chooks step on a flat plate, a clever lever mechanism lifts the lid giving chooks access to the food. The storage hopper is large enough to store several kilos of food, allowing owners to go away for a weekend in the safe knowledge that their chooks will have a supply of food available. Of course they will also need a supply of clean water.

It takes around 2 weeks for chooks to learn how the feeder works and to get comfortable with the device. Two or three chooks can eat together, but it is also suitable for use with larger numbers of birds. We use our unit to feed 12 hens by having at least 2 days supply of feed available in the unit. The result is that hens go to the feeder when they are hungry- usually one or two at any one time.

The feeder needs to be kept under cover. This is partly to preserve the timber components, but also to ensure dampness does not get into the chook food. If feeders are left exposed to the elements the chook food can absorb moisture and go mouldy.

The units are individually handmade and there is quite a bit of work in each one. For these reasons David can only make a limited number each week, subsequently there will a short wait for orders to be filled.
David has just commenced manufacturing these units, and orders or expressions of interest can be placed with us at our Healesville Organic Market stall (Outside the old railway station every Saturday morning). We have a demo model on display at the market. If you would like more information contact us, at tenderbreak@bigpond.com and we can email more details and extra photos. Another alternative is to ring David on mob. 0420 528 606.

Some of his other great products include possum boxes, a great little art stool with built in blackboard, wooden hobby horses, and many other educational toys

Would We Do It Again?

2009-05-25T01:31:00.000-07:00

Would we do it again? No, not at our age now. We have done it once, enjoyed the journey and now we are happy to live out our days enjoying the fruit of our labour. However if it was a question of the clock being wound back would we go down the owner builder path again? We certainly would. We thoroughly recommend that everyone at least consider the owner building process. If you do, we found the following helpful

· Undertaking some major renovation tasks at our previous house provided us with some building experience
· Choosing subcontractors wisely (recommendations are useful). The cheapest is not always the best. Look after subcontractors (cups of tea etc). A good relationship will often yield good advice and valuable information. We may have just been lucky but every one of our subcontractors did an excellent job, fitted in with us and were very helpful. Many contractors are happy for you to reduce costs by doing some of the work yourself.
· Having access to paid long service leave enabled a lot of work to be completed in a shorter period of time
· We contracted a qualified builder (Rod Sheppard) to help us erect the frame, and we worked as his labourers. This saved us money, gave us the chance to learn skills on the job, and meant this complex stage was completed in a quarter of the time it would have taken us to do by ourselves.
· Attend as many house tours as you can, to get ideas for your own project and to learn from other people’s experiences.
· Publications such as Earth Garden, Renew Magazine, Grass Roots and Owner Builder frequently have useful articles and useful contacts. These and many helpful books can be found in local libraries.
· Improve your bbq skills so that friends look forward to visiting (and helping when you need an extra hand). This doesn’t always work, but it’s worth a try.
· Learn as much as you can about good design. By this we don’t mean the so called “good style” demonstrated in coffee table magazines, but design that works for you and the planet over the long term.

In conclusion we recommend the completion of a Permaculture Design Certificate. This course introduces all the basic principles and concepts needed to develop plans for an energy efficient, environmentally friendly house which integrates with other infrastructure.

Here is a list of tradesmen/contractors we used or know, and whom we would happily recommend:
· Rod Sheppard - Marysville –survived the fires (Builder, building designer, draughtsman, building timber supplier) Top photo
· Kevin Jones -Chirnside Park (Very skilled and knowledgeable. Did our excavations, driveways and dams) Bottom photo
· Bill Hayes -Lilydale (Plumber & House fire defence sprinkler systems)
· Stephen Cook- Glen Iris (Top class Electrician)
· Glen Morris of SolarQuip Healesville (Solar Supplier & Installer)
· Regis Bezencon Healesville (Solar Supplier & Installer)
· Janelle Murphy of Australian 5Star -Bayswater (Energy Rater who will work through the process with clients, and Insulation consultant)
· Alan Duke of A&A Wormfarm Waste Systems - Hastings. Disposal of all grey and black waste water. Middle photo

Owner Building - Does it save money?

2009-05-16T05:51:00.000-07:00

Building your own home can save a lot of money, but there are pitfalls and traps for the unwary. Many houses have been seriously damaged because of inadequate termite protection. Poor foundations or mortar mixes have caused brick walls to crack. Financial institutions may make life hard for owner builders. Subcontractors can be a wonderful help or they can cause a myriad of problems. There are dozens of things that can go wrong with such a large and complex undertaking. Even professional builders occasionally end up in disastrous situations.

We have learned a couple of big lessons on our journey. Building a house is a far bigger project than we imagined. Instead of taking 1 or 2 years, it is now 10 years since we began and we are still finishing the place off. We completed 75% of it within 2 years (enough to get our occupancy permit) and then got distracted by our real love- developing our gardens, orchard etc. From this though, we learned that enjoying the journey is far more important than reaching the destination.

Building is also much more expensive than we thought. As owner builders there is no fixed price contract. Generally you pay as you go, and boy do you pay. Perhaps we were naive, but our total costs were over double what we imagined they would be. This was partly because of lack of knowledge (lack of research). What is particularly easy to overlook is the myriad of small things that by themselves don’t seem much (eg bolts, tiles, taps, nails, paint, door knobs, locks, window furnishings etc.) Budget increases were also partly due to inflation. Our plans were approved in 1997, but by the time we started building in 1999 inflation had increased prices. On top of this, the newly introduced GST increased prices a further 10% by the time we were ready to purchase most of our major fittings.

Obviously owner building has potential to save the cost of all the labour that owners put into the job. There are also other possible savings to be gained from paying as you go. If you can get away with a lower (or no) bank loan, you avoid paying large amounts in interest. The downside is that if you lack tradesman skills, the job takes much longer.

ARE OWNER BUILT HOUSES CHEAP?
As described above, savings are possible, but total costs depend more on the size of the house. Labour costs are only a small proportion of construction costs. However I have read articles in Owner Builder magazine where people have built small cottages for under $20,000. These people have usually used second hand and lightweight materials in their construction. Although mudbricks can be low cost if you make them yourself, your pocket suffers when you pay for the slab, which needs very strong beams to support the weight of the walls.

The cheapest form of owner building is to buy an established house, get it transported to your land and then renovate and retrofit it to meet your needs. A friend of ours did this, used contractors to do most of the reconstruction work, and saved a good deal of money. We’ll do a post on her experience soon.

House Design Details

2009-05-05T02:32:00.000-07:00

Once we had decided on a mudbrick house, the next stage was to sort out the nitty gritty of design. We drew up plans ourselves, taking care to integrate as many of our criteria as possible. The whole process was a matter of compromise and adjustment and aimed at reaching a final result which would best meet our needs, taking into account factors such as cost, personal preference and perceived significance, to reach what we considered the best acceptable outcome.

HOUSE LAYOUT
The house is basically rectangular in shape with kitchen, lounge and master bedroom to the north with large windows giving a view over our front yard, dam and down the drive. On the southern side are 2 other bedrooms, family room, laundry, bathroom and toilet. There are cathedral ceilings throughout, except for the utility areas which have a lower ceiling to allow for an attic space above. The kitchen, lounge and family room are open plan, which has proved very useful when we are hosting large groups (we’ve had up to 80 people inside).

SOME PARTICULAR FEATURES
THERMAL MASS
Thermal mass provided by mudbrick walls, concrete slab and earth sheltered eastern wall heats and cools slowly, acting to moderate the internal temperature and making the home comfortable to live in all year round. The wood heater is only necessary on the coldest of days, but is used to create a ‘cosy’ atmosphere on other days.

VENTILATION
Cross ventilation is obtained via windows to south and north in our open plan design. Vertical ventilation is created by low air intake from vents and windows and high air exit points in the clerestorey and high vents.

STOVE & HOT WATER SERVICE CUPBOARD
A Stanley Wood Stove is our main cooking appliance, heats all our water and provides some heating to the house. The flue passes through the wall into our HWS cupboard. This reduces the amount of heat coming from the stove in summer and makes the HWS area ideal for use as a drying cupboard. The hot water supply is gravity fed to taps using a 5m head from the header tank located within the ceiling space.

RENEWABLE TIMBER
We’ve endeavoured to use natural materials to minimise chemical release from glues, plastics etc. Radial sawn timber is used extensively internally and externally as a wall cladding above windows and doors. The curves of the boards are perfect match for the flowing lines of the mudbrick. Radial sawn timber is a renewable resource, aesthetic and the milling process uses the whole log with little waste (unlike square cut boards).
Cypress macrocarpa is used for the frame. This is a plantation grown timber which is easy to work with, comparatively light, and contains oils that give it some resistance to insect attack.

EXTERNAL EAVES
These have been constructed to exclude summer sun but allow deep penetration into the house by the lower winter sun. They also protect the mudbrick walls from excessive rain.

STORAGE AREAS
Large built-in-robes provide storage space in each bedroom, a walk in pantry will have extensive specialised shelving and storage areas (for storing produce, home-made products etc.) and the roof space above wet areas has been built into an attic. We plan to build a cool cupboard in the pantry to negate the need for larger refrigerator.

GREY AND BLACK WATER WORM PROCESSING SYSTEM
The “A&A Wormfarm Waste System" processes our “grey and black” water. The water and solids flow into a below ground tank by gravity. A filter in the base holds back the solids which are broken down by aerobic microbes and worm activity. Liquids containing worm castings and minute particles of solids are pumped to absorption trenches. In the future, the liquids will be filtered through reed beds. The captured nutrients will be used to grow biomass as an additional source of composting material and the filtered water will irrigate fruit and nut trees.

IS THE DESIGN EFFECTIVE?
After chatting to a qualified energy rater, we believe that our design would not reach the 5 star energy rating that has been in use for the past couple of years. If this is the case, it is proof that the current computer program used to rate houses is unsatisfactory as its calculations rely too much on insulation qualities and do not consider the full benefits of thermal mass.

The thermal mass in the house maintains comfortable temperatures year round. In winter, it rarely gets below 16⁰C, even when there are frosts outside (the Yarra Valley is known for heavy frosts). We generally start using the wood heater occasionally in May. It gets more use from June to late August (usually just in the evenings) and we only use it in spring if there happens to be an extra cold snap.

In summer, the temperature rarely gets above 30⁰C, and this should be improved once we install a vine covered pergola along the northern wall. Most of the time house temperatures hover around 20º. In terms of function and pleasant living environment the house performs extremely well. Every room is well lit and “airy” and the aesthetic qualities of the building materials are pleasant to the eye. All living areas have good outlook over surrounding gardens and bush allowing us to enjoy the natural attributes of our environment.

A Mudbrick Adventure

2009-04-26T03:14:00.000-07:00

We promised to do this post about our house design way back in October last year. (Recently Geoff from Flood Street Farmlet - http://floodstreetfarmlet.blogspot.com/ reminded us about this.) It's a convoluted tale so we will start at the beginning and spend the next few posts filling in details.

We spent several years pondering our house design and considered a wide range of materials and housing styles, ranging from the traditional Australian homestead with verandas all round, through to concrete earth-covered domes. To help us clarify our ideas, we spent about 12 months going on every alternative house tour we could find. This was a great way to explore possibilities. During this period we drew up the following criteria that we wanted our house to meet.

· Maximise our involvement by being owner builders to save costs and to maintain “ownership” of the process
· East-west alignment with large north facing windows to maximise solar gain
· Smaller windows on South, west and east to minimise heat loss
· Minimise fire risk by giving the house a low profile and by using low risk materials
· Eaves to exclude summer sun but allow winter sun to warm house and protect mudbricks from weather.
· Utilise at least some earth covered wall construction (a carryover from our earlier thoughts of building an earth sheltered house)
· Use thermal mass to maintain constant pleasant temperature (20 –25 degrees) and minimise energy use.
· Utilise natural ventilation and cooling pipes (stack and cross ventilation)
· Maximise natural lighting to all rooms avoiding need for lights during daylight hours
· Wet areas to be in close proximity to HWS to minimise hot water pipe distances
· Incorporate a window outlook that provides views of our bush environment
· Accommodate wheelchair access to most of house
· Plan to include provision for large concrete water tank, wood stove and wood heater
· Access between garage, pantry and rest of house
· Cathedral ceilings and exposed beams
· House to have appearance of being part of the environment- not alien to it
· Rooms to be reasonably spacious and Incorporate plenty of storage space
· Use plantation timber (not old growth forests)
· Minimise “wasted” space eg. halls
· Use materials with a low “embodied energy component”
· Adequate insulation using natural non toxic materials
· Use physical termite barriers- no poisons
· House plan to incorporate 3 bedrooms, a study/office/spare room, lounge, family room, kitchen, walk-in pantry, bathroom, toilet, laundry and garage/workshop.
· Deciduous vine covered pergola along northern wall for shade in summer but light in winter

OUR SOLUTION
Our solution was a mudbrick house (external and internal mudbrick walls), built on a slab with one earth sheltered wall (built with “normal” fired bricks and back filled with soil). The house and garage area is around 25 squares. A clerestory is used to bring light into the back of the house. We are very happy with the design we came up with, which meets 99% of our initial criteria.

WHY MUDBRICK?
We decided on mudbrick because:-
· They have low embodied energy
· We were planning to make the mudbricks ourselves. After we had made 80 bricks (out of the 4000 we needed) we decided to buy the rest from Barclay Bricks in Hurstbridge. Back in 1999, puddled clay bricks were only $1.65 each delivered- a very reasonable price we thought.
· They do not require great skill to lay. Slight irregularities in levels add to the “rustic charm”. We use this excuse all the time to explain imperfect lines etc.
· They have good thermal mass (but not good insulation)
· We love the texture of mudbrick wall surfaces
· Laying a few bricks puts the wall up a fair bit because of their large size
· They are fire reistant
· The density of the mudbrick adds an element of sound reduction so that activities in one room have less impact on people in another room
· By building a post and beam frame and later filling in the walls with mudbrick we could put the roof up first and then work on the walls under cover in rain, hail or shine.

In the next post we will get into the nitty gritty of construction and layout.

2009 At Tenderbreak

2009-04-25T04:52:00.000-07:00

Most of our posts focus on the development of our permaculture property, but every now and then we’ll add more personal bits and pieces to give a better understanding of what it means to live in this magical place.
Last year ended well with a joyous Christmas. We knew a place in the bush where escaped pinus radiata trees were growing wild. Each year we do our civic duty and remove one of these weeds for use as a Christmas Tree. Our cathedral ceilings allowed us to use trees over 5m tall. This creates two difficulties. They do not fit inside the car so they get strapped to our roof rack for the ride home (luckily not on major roads). In the photo, Heather and Sally are getting ready to lower last year’s selection to the ground. The next problem is getting them through doorways- but we solved this with some judicious pruning.

Once the tree was inside it would be placed in a pot and fastened in place with some fishing line. Then the fun part came- adding decorations. The challenge with large trees is to obtain enough decorations so that the tree doesn’t end up looking half naked. This year we were helped out in this regard by some kind people who left a large box of decorations (in very good condition) out beside the road for hard rubbish collection. Thanks to those unknown people our trees will always be superbly decorated.

Unfortunately this happy anecdote has a sad ending. Our supply of “Christmas” trees that we thought would supply us forever, were burnt out on Black Saturday. At least when the bush recovers it will not have to compete with these invasive introduced plants. But now we are on the lookout for another source of trees!

After Christmas we harvested our onions and garlic. The garlic harvest was very good. To solve the storage problem, Heather decided to plait the garlic together into long strings which we hung in our barn till needed. She wasn’t quite sure of how to plait them securely, so she checked out some websites which explained step by step how to plait a horse’s tail. This technique worked really well. She became so absorbed in the process that one plait ended up over a metre long! Now whenever we happen to pass a horse, her hands start twitching with the urge to start plaiting. (Just joking!)

Our onions were equally successful- particularly the red onions. As the photo shows, they were huge and they tasted delicious. Even if we were eating onion each day, one onion would last a week.

We grew sunflowers in our pumpkin patch to attract bees and provide some shade to the pumpkins on hot summer days. We reckon every garden should have at least 1 or 2 sunflowers- they brighten up the garden and radiate happiness. They are also a very useful source of seed for chooks- ours love them.

Most of our visitors arrive by car, because we are many kilometres from most places. A month ago though, our friend Sean decided to ride his bike over from Healesville. That’s about 20 km away over some quite steep hills and windy gravel roads. However Sean regards such a trip as just a warm up ride. He is quite addicted to long and difficult (to us) trips on his bike. Anyway Sean is a bit of a coffee aficionado, so Heather brewed him a freshly ground cup of Organic Yarra Coffee as a reward for his effort. After morning tea he hopped on his bike and rode home to his partner Leah –the long way!

In early February, Victoria was under the spell of a heatwave. Our way of turning those oppresive nights into a bit of fun was to camp down by the dam. We were in one tent, Sally was in another and Emilie was camped up closer to the house. (She may have been nervous about the wildlife moving about at night.)

We just used the inner part of the tent, which meant we could see the stars above, and because we are far from the city lights they twinkle very brightly- always awesome. We slept so well we have no idea whether kangaroos or wombats passed by- perhaps they were on tiptoes.

In this post we’ve avoided talking about Black Saturday (almost). But on two weekends in April we hosted small group tours of Tenderbreak and part of the tour involved explaining to visitors what happened, what our defences were and what changes we intend making. The photo above shows Andrew explaining the role of the dam in our permaculture design to one of these groups.

These tours have been so popular (78 people have booked so far) that we added several more dates. If you are interested in joining one of our tours, the two dates currently available are May 3rd and May 24th. Send us an email if you would like more information (tenderbreak@bigpond.com) .

Tenderbreak Has a French Connection

2009-04-14T03:42:00.000-07:00

Emilie (originally from France) has come to stay with us for a while. She is helping us out with the many tasks that need doing and from time to time treats us to the taste of French cooking. (She bakes a very tasty quiche.) This is a great way to learn about other cultures and their view of the world. In return we provide accommodation and share our knowledge and skills- just like the WWOOFER program.

During our dry summer Emilie helped us keep the water up to all the plants. Each morning we were up early, trying to get it done before it got too hot. I am starting to sweat just thinking about it.

The combination of heat and damp promoted rapid plant growth, but the weeds enjoyed these conditions too. The mulch kept most of them down, but occasionally pulling by hand was required to stop them overtaking the crops. The photo shows Sally and Emilie getting stuck into the weeds around the corn plants in January.
Of course the day is not all work- there is time for relaxing too. Emilie enjoys artistic pursuits and decided to decorate the egg cartons that we use for our eggs that we sell at the Healesville Organic Market. We tell customers that they are paying for the classy egg carton, and we‘re throwing in the eggs for free. Each week we quickly sell out of eggs- we are not sure whether its because of the artistically decorated cartons or the quality of the eggs inside.

A box of our potatoes can also be seen on the table. We had a bumper harvest this year. We dug up around 70kg of mostly goodsized spuds. The ones in the box were mainly Ruby Lou.

Emilie also enjoys nature and quiet contemplation. Here she is having a nap down by our dam.

Petty's Apple Festival & Tenderbreak Tours

2009-04-08T04:26:00.000-07:00

Like hundreds of others, we attended the annual apple festival at Petty’s Orchard in Templestowe on March 31st. There was a wide variety of stalls, displays and activities for people to view. Some of the highlights were tours of the heritage orchard with hundreds of varieties of apples, very informative talks by Freddie the “Snake Man”, talks about heritage apples and the yummy tasting tent where you can “taste test” a whole range of apples. This enables you to choose varieties to plant that you know you like. There was plenty of healthy organic food available for lunch- our favourite was Janet’s large plate of delicious organic pasta with pesto.

There were several displays by permaculture groups and stalls selling plants. We couldn’t resist buying a cool climate banana plant for our sister-in-law who uses the bananas and leaves in her Thai cooking. Snake Gully Cider had demonstrations of cider making and for those with a sweet tooth, John the ice cream man sold delicious organic ice creams. The photo above shows our stall (the one with the yellow and red flags). Thankyou to Belinda ( http://belindas-simple-life.blogspot.com/ ) for providing this photo and the one at left of the "Tasting tent".

As we have done for the past few years we had a stall selling some of our veggies and our friend’s bird & rat proof chook feeder (We’ll do a post on this great product soon). Our daughter, Sally (Mustang Sal’s Nature Photography) had a great display of some of her framed photos and the photo cards that she creates.

It was a very successful day with Sally selling quite a few cards and we sold most of the veggies. We also had a chance to speak with dozens of lovely people, many of whom had already been on one of the tours we run at Tenderbreak Permaculture Farm. This is the main reason we go to festivals and markets like this. We love chatting with people about the social, environmental and economic issues that have arisen over the past few decades and discussing what we can do to resolve these. We share what we have learned on our journey towards a more sustainable life, and love hearing about other people’s experiences.

The markets also provide an opportunity to promote our “Permaculture In Action” tours. Our April 5th tour was booked out with 15 people attending. Although we advertise the tours as going from 1:30 to 4:00pm there was so much to see and talk about, we finished up around 5pm. Our May 17th tour is close to being booked out, so we have decided to add additional tours on MAY 3rd and MAY 24th. If you would like to attend one of these tours contact us and we will book you in and send you a map showing how to get here. If these dates are unsuitable send us your email address and we’ll put you on our mailing list and keep you informed about future tour dates. If you would like more information about the tours we can send you a pamphlet with all the details.

Congratulations to Pete the Permie and the other organisers for a wonderfully interesting and informative day at Petty’s. We are looking forward to next year’s festival on the last Sunday in March- make sure you put it in your calendar now.

More Thoughts for the Royal Commission

2009-04-02T04:07:00.000-07:00

As we explained in our last post, we are being dogged by questions and thoughts about the fires. There is no way we can prevent wildfire events. They are integral to this part of the world and will continue to occur, possibly more frequently and with even more ferocity.

In our submission to the Royal Commission we painted a picture of a potential scenario that could easily occur if the circumstances of Black Saturday were just a bit different. What if it had happened on a week day, and spot fires (or arsonists) had lit fires closer to outer suburban areas like Lilydale, Wonga Park or towns around the Dandenong Ranges. The fires in Canberra a few years ago set a terrible example. If the fire had taken hold in a suburban area it would have spread from house to house with dire consequences. Apart from the flames, residents would have to cope with massive amounts of dense smoke. The roads would be clogged with panicking people trying to get home, others trying to flee, parents collecting school children and all this happening during peak homeward bound traffic. Fires in industrial areas could add explosions and poisonous fumes to the mix. Power outages would cause traffic lights to fail, gas lines could ignite and water pressure would drop dramatically. Would people know what to do and where to go? Emergency services would be stretched to the limit.

Some people may think we are being over the top, but we believe this scenario needs to be carefully thought through. If we do not develop strategies in readiness for such extreme situations, the results would be too terrible to contemplate.

One strategy that would allow communities to be better prepared is for the government to declare extreme days (like 7th February) an “Emergency Situation Day” on the prior evening. Like an advanced level fire ban day, this would trigger certain behaviours in fire prone areas and suburbs. Schools would be closed, businesses would be asked to consider closing, companies would be asked to provide leave to employees who live or work in the affected areas or who are CFA members. All this would happen early in the day. Residents could follow a generic fire plan which lists steps and precautions they need to take and the location of the nearest safe haven.

An emergency declaration would enable people to arrange their day without panic. Those leaving could leave early. Those staying to defend could stay home and prepare. Volunteer fire fighting personnel could ready themselves. The fact that this would happen only occasionally and normal daily life is disrupted would be a clear signal, that that particular day is considered extremely dangerous. It would force people to at least seriously consider their situation and hopefully make some sensible decisions early in the day.

In our society we have lost touch with the environment and its warning signals- cocooned in our homes with air conditioning and electrical entertainment and connected to the world via a computer. We need to regain the ability to be aware of times when nature is setting up a disaster scenario and to take action to protect our loved ones and our communities before it occurs.

EVACUATIONS.
Some people have called for forced evacuations in times of extreme crisis. We object most strongly to this idea. There are a myriad of problems with this approach. Forcing people onto roads in a continually changing wildfire event is far too dangerous. Often the people organising the evacuation are not familiar with the local area. Lack of local knowledge can lead to dangerous advice.

In these highly emotionally charged disasters the last thing anyone needs is conflict, which is what would result if police tried to evacuate residents who were determined to stay. In the days after Black Saturday, Heather was told she could not pass a police roadblock on the Melba Hwy to return home. She was 5 km from home, had travelled out along our access road an hour earlier and knew it was safe. The police officer did not know the area and did not fully understand the intent of his orders which was to prevent people travelling up the highway. Our side road was perfectly safe at that stage. His obstinacy caused her much distress and she was at the point of driving through his roadblock. Fortunately he listened to reason in the end. By all means give warnings to people, but in a free society we must retain the right to make our own decisions.

We Can't Stop the Fires, But We Can Be Better Prepared

2009-03-27T03:40:00.000-07:00

One of our delayed reactions to Black Saturday, has been that we constantly relive what happened in our minds and conversation. Not from the ‘wasn’t it terrible” viewpoint, but more in a questioning way. We are trying to understand exactly what happened and why. We were too busy on the night and in the days after, to do anything but deal with the emergency.

The sorts of questions that are preying on our minds are:-
· How are the many people who lost houses, precious possessions, pets, and worst of all their loved ones, coping? We are reminded of their loss every time we go past the wreckage that was once somebody’s home. This brings tears to our eyes as we feel a small part of their pain.
· Will the bush and its inhabitants return to something resembling what it was before the fires, in our lifetime?
· Why have we no recollection of radiant heat or the sound of the fire?
· How could so much lovely bush (whole forests) be transformed in such a short time?
· How fast did the fire spread? It seemed to arrive and the next thing we knew, it was all around us. How long did this process take?
· How much luck was involved in our fire fighting efforts?
· Would a fire driven by a north wind be worse than this fire that came from the south?
· How is it that the legs of the wooden stands that support our beehives started burning, but the fire fizzled out and the hives survived without our intervention?
· Where did the lyrebird go to survive? Did more survive?
· Did any goannas survive? These massive (2m+ long) ancient looking reptiles always gave us a thrill as they stomped their way through the forest.
· Why did a particular tree or small area of bush not burn?
· Why did the fire come to our place? It travelled 10 km over undulating grasslands burning much of the Pauls Creek Valley, but missed some areas altogether. Was this chance, or were there reasons for the path it followed?
· Was there more that we could have done on the night? This question haunts me (Andrew) in particular. Understandably I was preoccupied with fighting the fire and continually checking out everything, but if only I had spent 10 minutes letting a substantial amount of water out of the dam outlet. This may have created a less intense fire in the gully below our dam.
· What can we do to be better prepared in the future?
· What strategies would be valuable in future events?
· How do you get the message about really basic preparations and behaviours through to everyone in fire prone areas? Some people appeared to be completely unprepared, were not alert on the day and when the fires came many made some really dangerous decisions.

These last three questions have prompted us to put in a submission to the Royal Commission. We don’t expect much attention to be paid to our thoughts (amongst the thousands of pages of expert comment), but we are doing it because we would like to do what we can to help avoid such a massive loss of life in the future. Victoria is certain to have more fires- possibly even worse ones, but we must develop strategies to keep people safe. We are also hoping that by doing this, all the questions that keep popping up in our heads will be put to rest.

Here are two of the ideas we have come up with:-

CLOSURE OF FORESTS
There is a need for the introduction of a state wide “Closure of Forests” on total fire ban days. That is all National Parks, State Forests and Forest reserves where possible should be closed to public access on fire ban days. The benefits include:-
· Closing forests would make it more difficult for arsonists to access isolated bushland roadsides.
· Apprehension/identification would be easier because forest staff and the general public would know that those entering the forests are doing it illegally.
· Less people in the forest means less chance of fires being accidentally started from cigarettes, bbq’s etc
· Forest closures would reduce the need to rescue people who get trapped in the forest by fire.

DEMONSTRATION SITES
A way of helping residents improve their fire defences would be to run demonstration days. Selected properties could be used to provide real life examples of fire defence strategies. Many people cannot /will not read the very useful material put out by the CFA, however they may be prepared to spend a couple of hours looking at what others are doing. This works for open gardens and farm demonstration days- why not for fire defence education?
Most of our ideas are “concepts” that would need a lot more work to make them feasible. Some may be impractical and financially unviable. The thing is, we need every idea on the table, even ‘way out ones’, so that the best can be selected for follow up. We welcome your comments-perhaps you would like to make a submission yourself. The Royal Commission website has all the details on how to make a submission. See http://www.royalcommission.vic.gov.au/Submissions
In the next post we will describe a couple of other thoughts we have had.

Concrete Bunkers in Bushfire Prone Areas

2009-03-07T02:46:00.000-08:00

Property design, planning and preparation are keys to saving life and property in a wildfire. However it is almost impossible to be 100% ready- there is always the chance of unexpected factors arising. These could include the fire being worst than expected, trees falling across exit routes or on top of houses, cars not starting, having a bad fall etc. In case a worst case scenario arises, having a backup plan is good insurance and provides a greater sense of security.

Our backup plan (which we fortunately didn’t need to resort to) was to shelter in our concrete bunker. It is an adapted concrete water tank with strengthened walls and roof so it can be earth covered. A metal door in the side allows access and there is provision for a vent in the roof. We installed this in 2000 and have been progressively getting it ready. Two years ago we backfilled earth around it, but have not yet covered the top with soil.
The bunker is located just metres from our back door allowing quick access in an emergency. It is next to the double brick masonry wall of the house which should shield it from fire, if the house caught alight. There is a tap located on the corner of the house to provide a water supply. The plan is to use Besser type bricks to build a retaining wall on each side of the bunker entrance and then completely cover it with soil/gravel.

There is some concern about fires consuming all available oxygen. Although we have to do further research on this aspect, we expect that the oxygen available in the structure should be adequate for the length of time we would be in there. Experts generally say that it is best to focus on fighting the fire and putting out embers until it gets too dangerous. We would only need to stay in the shelter until the worst of the front has passed, and then it would be back outside to put out what we can.

Other considerations are:-
· If it gets too hot the metal door could expand, jam or buckle. There will be no flammable material near the bunker door so this should not be an issue.
· Sprinklers could be used to continually soak the area with water.
· We will have a supply of water for drinking and fire fighting equipment inside the bunker including damp towels etc.
· Filters could be installed to prevent entry of smoke.

This view from the north shows our white 7,500 gal. water tank with the fire shelter behind. This arrangement was part of our permaculture plan. Rather than just having a water tank and a fire refuge we have achieved many extra functions from these two pieces of infrastructure.
Apart from use as a fire shelter, the bunker has an everyday use as a cellar for storage of pumpkins, spuds, fruit, wine, ginger beer etc. It has been sealed with a coating of water proof material and backfilled with gravel on all sides to ensure water drains away without causing dampness. Once it is finished it should maintain a reasonably constant temperature in winter and summer.
The backfill against the water tank helps keep the water cool and means the tank is less susceptible to damage in a fire.
The fact that this wall is largely earth sheltered sets the house down low, so embers and heat largely pass overhead.
The setup provides easy access to the roof without ladders. (Of value whenever roof access is required but particularly in emergencies.)
The earth sheltered house wall adds extra thermal mass to the house, helping to keep temperatures in the house comfortable all year.

Hopefully a concrete bunker would never be required for emergency use. However it is a good investment because, apart from providing some piece of mind, it has potential to fulfil many other functions.

Healesville Organic Market

2009-03-02T21:25:00.000-08:00

This market is quite different to most of the so called “farmers markets’ that have sprung up around Melbourne. It was an initiative of the Yarra Valley Permaculture Group as a way of improving the quality and security of our food supply. Five years ago it established the market, aiming to encourage locals to produce organic food for sale to their community.

Over the years it has steadily grown and become a main source of local organic food in the area. Although only a small market, there are a wide range of products for sale including seasonal vegetables and fruits, honey, compost worms, garlic, bees wax, pottery, nature photographs, juices, breads, seeds, plants and more. Some weeks we are joined by extra stalls selling wooden toys, chook feeders, soaps, chai tea, jams and preserves and delicious food for morning tea. There is also a stall that supplies organic food from Victoria Market that cannot be grown locally.
The concept of keeping food miles to a minimum is more important than ever as oil becomes scarce and global warming worsens. Apart from its environmental benefits there are economic, health and social benefits as well. Shoppers are supporting local growers, the organic food is free of pesticides and other chemicals, and often picked the night before or that morning- we are REAL fresh food people. The market has become a regular Saturday morning social occasion. Unlike many other markets the focus is not so much on making money but on enriching and supporting the community.

Growers and buyers usually know each other by name and spend time chatting and sharing news, gardening tips or networking. On fine days customers sit and have a bit to eat or drink as they catch up with friends. The market is held every Saturday morning from 8am to 1 pm outside the Healesville Railway Station.

As our society has become more complex and more interlinked globally, it has also in some ways become more fragile. A natural disaster, accident, a poorly thought through government or business policy or terrorist attack can have terrible consequences for large numbers of people. In the last 10 years we have seen the effects of company crashes, gas plant explosions, oil shortages, energy shortages, water shortages etc. We can build some protection from these events by developing resilient communities. Communities and individuals are starting to take on responsibility for the necessities of life by generating their own power, storing their own water and growing their own food. This concept can be taken further through projects such as the Transition Town concept. Gavin's (http://greeningofgavin.blogspot.com/ ) latest blog entry describes in great detail the exent to which our society has become dependent on oil and how the transition Towns model may hold many of the answers.

Although our organic market’s focus is on food supply we are doing our best to promote other elements of community resilience. The market offers opportunities to network, share ideas and promote community activities and hopefully provides a model that can be taken up by other communities.

If you are up Healesville way on a Saturday morning, drop in to the market and say hello to us at the Tenderbreak Permaculture Farm stall and the other stallholders. Most of us have been through the fires or been very close, so seeing faces not covered in soot makes a pleasant change.

Preparing for Wildfire

2009-02-26T00:00:00.000-08:00

This post focuses on the factors that we believe helped save our place and includes aspects of our permaculture design intended to reduce the threat, as well as what we learned from our recent experience. Comments relate specifically to our location and personal observations, and may not apply under different conditions.

House designOur house is mudbrick with small amounts of exposed timber and built on a slab. Embers blown up against the exposed slab are easily spotted and extinguished. Exposed timber surfaces are smooth so embers blow off. We kept the house profile low so that a firestorm’s embers and radiant heat would largely pass overhead. Before and during the fire we continually wetted down external surfaces-especially vulnerable parts of the roof structure. The eastern wall is earth covered, giving that wall more protection and allowing us to gain quick access to the roof.
On the northern side (the most likely direction of a firestorm) the bulk of the forest is 80m away. We located our dam and vegetable patch between us and the forest to create a low risk buffer. As fires tend to race up slopes we built our house on an area with a low gradient. Our orchard is located to the northeast of the house providing another green buffer and a wide driveway with cleared sides provides a firebreak to the west and south. This photo is taken from our roof looking north. The burnt forest can be seen on the other side of the dam.

Breaks in vegetationWe do have extensive areas of native plants including some eucalypts close to the house. However these plants are broken into groups with breaks between them and we have generally focused on low risk plants like grevilleas, wattles etc. We mow under the bigger trees and remove potential fuel such as sticks. These areas are thoroughly wet down during risky periods.

The Bush
We gather fallen timber for our wood stove and wood heater and burn fallen timber in areas close to the house, to reduce potential fuel levels.. In our experience trees were not a major problem. The fire raced along at ground level with an intensity related to the amount of fuel available on the ground. It did tend to race up trees with fibrous bark (stringybarks), but if there was not a lot of heat generated from fuel at the base it tended to fizzle out once it reach 8-10 metres without igniting the canopy (see photo). We put a lot of effort into hosing or bucketing water onto tree trunks, because most wind-blown embers came from up higher up the tree trunks.

Many native plants did not readily burn. These included wattles, tea tree and smooth trunked eucalypts. These plants were only vulnerable where there was a build up of fuel on the ground. This photo shows how the fire burnt all around a patch of titree without igniting it.
Some people advocate the removal of all trees in the vicinity of the house. This may have several detrimental effects which should be taken into consideration:-
· The fire travelled fast across the open grasslands, but seemed to slow down once it arrived at our heavily treed block. Perhaps the trees and thick undergrowth slowed the wind.
· Trees may provide a shield against radiant heat and deflect that heat upwards.
· The foliage of trees can catch embers, perhaps reducing the amount being blown at the house.
· Trees have many benefits for humans and the environment, unrelated to fire.

The other point we would like to make in regard to people who wish to remove all trees from their land is, why are they buying bushland properties in the first place? Surely if they have a desire to live in a cleared area that’s the sort of block they should be buying. They should also be aware that many houses located in paddocks burned to the ground.
Bare earth, paths and tracksThese proved to be very valuable in stopping the spread of the fire. Our drive sweeps around the edge of the bush providing some protection on the west, south and east of the house. As our soil is very poor, there are various areas where there is no vegetation at all. (Poor soils have their benefits.) One of these areas is where we built our solar array. Of course it is wise to ensure grass is mown short in critical areas such as around tanks, pumps, sheds, the house etc. Surprisingly a sawdust path was enough to stop the fire creeping along. (see photo).

Water supply
Adequate water and a guaranteed supply are essential to defend a property. In a firestorm, town water is likely to be unavailable so an independent supply is required and preferably from two or more independent sources. Mains power is likely to go off so pressure pumps may not work. All pipes must be safely buried and protected where they come to the surface.
We have two independent water reticulation systems with multiple water sources supplying each system. Our large dam feeds into our garden watering system via fire pump. Above the house a small header dam feeds into the same system. In all, the two dams hold 5 megalitres of water when full, and we used only a fraction of this to fight the fire.
Our other water system is 80,000l of drinking water held in four tanks. An electric transfer pump (powered by our independent system) is used to shift water to a header tank giving us good pressure in our house taps. If the pump should fail, we still have a low pressure supply from 2 tanks that are positioned higher than the house giving us a head of about 5 metres.
We saved the header tank in the bush by keeping fuel loads around it low and by pumping till it overflowed dampening the area around it.
Taps
Thirty taps are located strategically around our infrastructure. One set is close to the house, another set is about 15m away and a third set provides water to edges of the area we intend defending. Most of our taps are fed by 50mm pipes with 25mm rises, reducing friction and maximising flow rates.
Hoses
We have a mix of hoses that we have collected over the years. We are gradually switching to 20mm diameter hoses and standardising fittings to make it easy to switch hoses between various taps. We do have 2 fire fighting hoses which are very useful for delivering large quantities of water or throwing over a distance. Having at least one very long hose (30-50m) allows the fire to be attacked well before it gets close to the house (if it is safe to do so). Having plenty of hoses is useful because shifting them around is time consuming, risks damage and is hard work.

Power supplyIn an emergency, mains power is likely to be lost, so this should be taken into consideration. Having our own solar supply was useful, but it meant we had an extra asset to protect. We also used our petrol generator because we were running our electric transfer pump for extensive periods. As this photo shows, the fire came to within 10m of our solar panels and generator.

Fighting the fire
Fortunately there were four of us fighting the fire. This allowed for two to protect the house and two to focus on further out areas and to look after anything else that cropped up or needed doing (eg supplying drinking water to people on hoses). Less than four would have made it a more difficult job.
Speed of ApproachFires can move quickly. Even though we had an hour's warning, we did not have enough time to fully prepare. Everywhere we looked, there were jobs that needed doing. Jobs that we had been intending to do, but never got round to doing. Some that come to mind are raking up leaves in vulnerable areas (leaf build up occurs every few days in dry conditions), fixing a broken hose, weeding around taps, buying extra smoke masks and having standardised hose fixings.
Prevailing windAlthough it was the wind (southerly change) that brought the fire to our place, in some respects the wind proved helpful. Once the fire had passed the house, the wind pushed the fire front northwards. It kept expanding on the sides but at slower pace, that was easier to fight. The other advantage of the southerly change was the fact that it was cooler. In fact, none of us have a clear recollection of overbearing heat- although it must have been hot at times.
In southern Australia the hot blustery northern winds are usually the cause of destructive fires, and this was the direction we expected the fire to come from. However our plan also considered fire coming from other directions, as was the case this time.
Broad Scale CalamityThe speed of the fire combined with the fact that dozens of fires were erupting concurrently, meant that no matter how efficient the emergency services and media were, there was no way they could provide 100% accurate local information in real time, nor could they help every property owner. Do not expect emergency services to help you- of course if they do that’s a bonus.
Protective clothingWe had the following in our “Fire Fighting Box”.
· Several pairs of cotton overalls and hats
· Masks designed to filter out smoke particles (P2 paper masks with valves). Have enough spares in case they break or get clogged.
· Goggles- smoke in the eyes is blinding and particles become painful
Boots- strong lace up leather boots are also desirable. Gum boots can melt on hot coals.
Preparation
The CFA have excellent guides listing jobs that need doing. As well as the obvious stuff, a regular inspection of infrastructure is wise. Check out all pipes, taps and dam stop valves, clear around tanks, pumps and other critical infrastructure. Have generators, chainsaws, pumps etc all fuelled up and test run them on high danger days. Plenty of fuel and spare spark plugs are a good investment.
Wet down and keep wetting down critical areas but take steps to stop dam water contaminating drinking water. Have a plan of what you are going to do about animals and do it early. We brought our dog, corella, guinea pig and some chooks into the house. Apart from the dog they were safely shut up in suitable boxes with feed and water.
Fire PlanWe had a carefully thought out fire plan. Each year we revised it, to take into account new factors. The plan details what needed to be done and when. Although we hadn’t completed 100% of our tasks, once the fires started we knew exactly what needed to be done.
Stay and fight or Evacuate?The key question in a fire plan is whether to go or stay. We had always planned to stay, but as it turned out, we had no choice on the day because the fire came from the south- the only escape route we had. This highlights the importance of leaving early if that is the chosen option, and early means the night before a dangerous day or early morning at the latest. We know neighbours who had intended leaving, but the speed and ferocity of the fire prevented them. Although they lost their house they were able to shelter in a wetted down area and were eventually rescued by the police.
The choice to stay should not be taken lightly, and only if adequate preparations have been made and the property is defendable. See other notes for our ideas on what we believe is necessary to defend a property. We are still horrified by talk back radio callers saying that they intend leaving early - "as soon as they see smoke". This is far too late. There are numerous instances of people being caught on the roads. Even a distant fire can reduce visibility to dangerous levels.
GardensGardens were part of our defence plan. Our large well mulched veggie patch is to the north. This was kept wet during the whole ordeal and the dampness caused any embers that landed here to quickly extinguish.
The house itself is mostly surrounded by areas of mown grass and our gravelled drive so there was very little fuel near the house.
Property designWe were fortunate in that we had completed a Permaculture Design Certificate Course in 1995. Although this is fundamentally aimed at developing a property plan for sustainable and energy efficient living, it also covers consideration of defence against wildfire. As we developed our property plan, fire defence was a significant factor in our decision making. Improving our PreparednessNow that the fire has passed through, fuel load in our area has been massively reduced and the risk of wildfire should be low for a few years. However each year after that, the risk will increase. We have already started planning on how we can make this property even safer. Our ideas include:-
· Extra taps in some areas, and a sprinkler system on the house
· Expand the clearing around our solar system
· Replace 12mm hoses with large diameter hoses and position at least one extra long hose on each side of the property
· Remove all sticks and sapling growth within 30 metres of areas we wish to protect, before summer and maintain this during the fire danger period.
The CommunityAs the saying goes “no man is an island”. We are all part of a community and if our community is better protected, then our risk is also reduced. Our local fireguard group under the guidance of Serafina (CFA representative) helped us develop awareness of fire behaviour and helpful strategies. We also gained a better understanding of the broader risks and Serafina (just a few weeks before) took us through what happens in a wildfire situation, which meant we were much more prepared mentally for such an event.
Another aspect of community, is the risk posed from neighbouring properties. Our fire came via the surrounding farmland. Perhaps strategically ploughed firebreaks may have slowed its progress. In built up areas, if one house catches fire it would be very hard to protect other houses close by. Hopefully when communities are rebuilt, communal strategies will be developed that protect groups of houses (eg a large communal store of water with a reliable fire pump)

In summary, we consider these factors to be critical before staying and defending property
· Ensure children and others who are not capable of actively fighting the fire evacuate before any risk arises. (eg day before)
· Adequate independent, fail proof water supply available on all sides of area to be defended
· Develop fire breaks and green buffers around each side of the house
· Independent power supply, if power is critical
· Protective clothing for everyone
· Prepare the property before the fire season, keep it prepared and be on guard on high risk days
· Have a carefully thought through fire plan with back-up plan for a worst case scenario
· Join a local fireguard group and/or liaise with the local CFA. Knowledge is power.
· Minimise fuel loads at ground level in areas to be protected.
· Protect vulnerable parts of the house- eg build on a slab and close up points of entry to the roof space.
FOOTNOTE We run regular small group tours of Tenderbreak Permaculture Farm. See our Blog post dated Jan 9, 2009 for more details. After the fire danger period is over (hopefully very soon) we will start running these tours again. On the tour we normally explain our bushfire preparations, but this year there will be an added dimension- detailing what worked and what could be done better. If you would like to be kept informed about dates for these tours or would like more information, email us at tenderbreak@bigpond.com.

After the Big Burn

2009-02-18T02:35:00.000-08:00

Monday started out like the day before. Our son Greg had gone off to work and we were going to take it easy. By lunchtime, new fires had started up in the region and were raging in areas that had escaped Saturday’s inferno. One of these blazes was burning on the other side of our valley, but we had some protection from it because the area between, was already burnt. However a second and bigger blaze was working its way along Pauls Range towards our place. Suddenly a number of spot fires erupted in the vicinity of our solar panels. Some of these set the fibrous bark of gum trees alight and with the wind fanning them, the flames were quickly getting beyond our reach.

Just as this second dose of hell was getting out of hand, the cavalry arrived. Greg had come home early and had brought our older daughter Kathy and her husband Steve with him. The three of them joined us bucketing and hosing down fires. Within a couple of hours we had them back under control. The photo shows our new look driveway.

Tuesday through to Friday were spent continually patrolling the burnt edge. This formed a line that encircled our house at an average distance of about 80m out. It seemed that no matter how much we mopped up, new outbreaks were still occurring. They began from smouldering roots under the ground or from burning trees and branches that came crashing down. If we didn’t get onto these within minutes, the flames would quickly race up the nearest tree. Bits of burning bark would then be blown into unburnt areas igniting new fires. Constant vigilance was required.

We cannot explain how we managed to save ourselves and our infrastructure. Was it luck, knowledge, our fire fighting skills, property design, fire plan or the specific conditions relating to this fire. We will never know for sure, but it was probably a combination of all of these. Certainly one of the core considerations in our permaculture design for Tenderbreak was minimising the risk from fire. One day we’ll do a post detailing the fire defence elements of our property plan, all of which worked magnificently. Mind you, as we are still in the process of developing the farm, our plan was not fully implemented (eg our Interpretation Centre is still at the frame stage and is quite vulnerable). In the future we will be even more prepared than we were this time. However, I doubt whether you can ever be 100% ready for wildfire.

The knowledge and advice we obtained from the local brigade and our local fire guard group was also extremely valuable. Serafina (the CFA liaison person) had spent many hours over the past few years guiding us in our precautions and understanding of fire behaviour. A testament to the value of fireguard groups is that not one of the ten active members lost their homes. One effect of this tragedy is that it has brought us closer together in a bond developed from facing a common danger.

Whilst on the subject of the CFA, we must mention that the volunteers that make up this magnificent organisation are heroes. We knew it was too dangerous for them to come to our place along our narrow bush access track, but they did not forget us. As soon as they could, they chain sawed their way through to us, and we were saddened to find out that one of the Dixons Creek members lost his own home while he was out protecting others.

Trucks from various brigades made their way up our drive each day to check on us. On Tuesday the Olinda crew spent some time putting out some of our hotspots that were of concern. The sight of a bright red fire truck certainly lifted our spirits. Luckily there was plenty of water left in our dam and they were able to fill up their tanker.

The other emergency services were also magnificent. We had several visits from the police, the army, a chaplain and Yarra Glen Relief Centre to check that we were coping. The latter group kindly supplied us with supplies for our animals and the surviving native wildlife.

Although we made it through this disaster with comparatively little in the way of losses, the experience has still taken its toll emotionally. We feel pain for our friends, neighbours and fellow Victorians who experienced the devastation of losing family members and their homes and are sick with worry for those people who are still facing the raging fires. We are physically exhausted and our bodies ache. We are suffering from lack of sleep and stressed from living on the edge of disaster for so many days and not knowing when the danger will finally end.

This is an old car we had parked in the bush. The fire was so hot here that the window glass turned to liquid and flowed down the side of the car.

All that is left of our two wheelie bins. Glass bottles inside melted into strange shapes.

Added to our stress, is concern for our wildlife. One of the joys of living here was daily contact with wombats, wallabies, goannas, kangaroos, echidnas and a myriad of birds. We know three wallabies, an echidna, two kangaroos and possibly a wombat survived and have made it to our small oasis surrounded by a 10,000 hectare black desert. We are caring for these survivors but what of the rest. Will some make it back in our lifetime? We are particularly concerned for the lyrebirds. Their winter morning singing performances were a joy to hear.

The one thing we know we can look forward to, is the recovery of the vegetation. Fire is part of the natural cycle of the Australian bush. Our plants are adapted to cope and once we get rain there will be a flush of new growth. The forest will never be the same, but it will return to a different form of beauty. In the coming months we will report on the rebirth of the Pauls Range forest and whatever wildlife returns.

Victoria Burns

2009-02-16T22:49:00.000-08:00

This is the blog entry I hoped I would never have to write. The one that tells you, that our lovely piece of paradise came face to face with Victoria’s worst wildfire. Along with thousands of acres in the Yarra Valley and elsewhere, our bush block was turned to charcoal. Still we consider ourselves very lucky. With the help of our family we were able to save our house, outbuildings, solar system and infrastructure as well as a small area of bush. The smoke was the first indication of what was brewing.

Saturday, February 7th, 2009 will forever remain seared in our memories. It started ominously with warnings that this was to be the most dangerous day ever for wildfire. Virtually no rain had fallen for over 2 months, temperatures were going to be the highest on record (47 degrees in parts of Melbourne), and these combined with strong winds would make up the perfect conditions for a firestorm. The day was hot and windy but went well to mid-afternoon. Then we received news that fire had broken out in Coldstream (20 km away). We sprang into action, making preparations to defend our place, still believing that it wouldn’t actually happen. However, within the hour, a strong cool change (normally good news) had caused the fires to spread across farmland to our local town- Yarra Glen. Now we could see huge billowing clouds rising into the sky.

Soon after, we had a telephone call from Heather’s brother Graham, who had been following the news reports, telling us that fires had started along our road. Greg and I ran through the bush to our fence line to see how close it was. Across our neighbour’s paddock we could see flames rising up tall gum trees licking the sky. We ran back to warn Heather and Sally that the fire was nearly upon us.

We had already spent the last two hours putting the final pieces of our fire plan into action. We had all put on protective clothing, started up the fire pump, put pets inside the house, pulled things away from windows and thoroughly wet down the house along with a 20-30m radius around it. Sally manned the hose at the rear of the house and watched for flying embers which were landing like a meteorite shower. Greg did the same at the front of the house. Heather and I double checked everything and then grabbed our hoses in readiness.

Our first view of flames on our property was 100m down our drive – entering like an unwelcome monstrous visitor. Initially the wind drove the fire across the drive where it stormed up the wall of our dam into a huge fireball. The dam water temporarily stopped it in its tracks- but not for long. The flames worked their way around the edge on the far side and then took off to the north away from the house.

The two photos above show the view over our dam.

Just as we were thinking the worst may be over, another front developed behind us on the southern side threatening our solar power system. See photo at left. We raced over and started hosing down the approaching flames and bucketing water around the array.

By the time we had reduced this threat, the fire had continued expanding until it had completely encircled us forming a ring of fire with us in the centre. Fortunately our driveway runs around the outside of the clearing containing our house, outbuildings and orchard and this formed a valuable firebreak. The fire ran out of fuel once it reached the drive giving us time to catch our breath.

We spent the next 10 hours fighting back flare-ups, and checking for spot fires started by flying embers. During this period a fire fighting helicopter appeared and flew low over our neighbour’s place. We later learned that it had dropped loads of water, but had been unable to save their house. On the left I am placing buckets of water on the drive ready for dousing spot fires

By 4am, the edge of the fire had been beaten down to a smouldering line. Individual tree trunks, stumps and logs were still burning fiercely but the wind had died down and danger had temporarily reduced. Our adrenaline had run out and our limp bodies were numb with exhaustion. We were sick with worry for dozens of beautiful friends who lived within the danger zone and had no idea how they had fared. As there was nothing we could do, we decided to get some sleep while we could.

An hour later we were woken by the sound of a fire truck coming up the drive. The Dixons Creek brigade had found our neighbour’s house destroyed, and wanted to know whether the family escaped. We didn’t know and feared the worst. Later we discovered that they had been rescued by police in the early morning. Still it was good to know someone in the outside world knew that we were still alive.

We cannot tell you about the heat and noise of the fire because we have very little recollection of these. What we can describe is the dense smoke and its acrid smell. The smoke is deadly. Breathing becomes impossible and lack of visibility leaves you blindly stumbling about. Smoke masks and goggles are an absolute necessity for fire survival.

Sunday was a day of respite. There were hundreds of trees still on fire and logs smouldering. Moving about the forest was very dangerous, as huge trees would suddenly topple over and others would drop branches without warning and without a sound. We spent the day putting out small spot fires and smouldering patches that we could reach. However our ordeal was not over yet - it will have to wait for the next post.

Seed Amaranth trial

2009-01-26T02:06:00.001-08:00

Michele from http://www.landforveggies.blogspot.com/ visited us in November last year and kindly sent us some amaranth seed that she had harvested from her crop. Heather sowed a patch measuring about 1.5m x 2.5m following the recommended method of scattering seed by hand. The results were amazing- every seed must have germinated because the area soon became a carpet of red and green. It needed a severe thinning to give plants enough space to develop. From some reading, we found out that half a kilo of amaranth seed is all that is needed to cover a whole acre- so only a handful was needed for the space we had in mind. This was followed by a second thinning a month later and they now have nearly reached the stage of developing flower heads. We can’t wait to harvest the crop and add this grain to our expanding list of food crops.

We grew the crop in our orchard with a rough chicken wire fence around it to prevent the chooks from scratching the seed up. A few plants have grown outside the fence and many of these have leaves that seem to have been nibbled on by the chooks- providing another source of chook food. We’ve read that the leaves are edible (young leaves for salads and older leaves steamed like a vegetable). The leaves are high in vitamins (especially calcium and iron) as well as minerals and protein.

Seed amaranth appears to be an ideal grain crop for this climate. It doesn’t require much water or maintenance. Next time we will sow it more thinly to reduce the amount of thinning required. We will keep you up to date in future posts. Check out Michele’s very informative and interesting blog for lots of information about her food growing experiences.

More about snakes

2009-01-17T21:06:00.000-08:00

Addendum to the last entry. After reading it through, Heather says I’ve created an inaccurate portrayal of our snake interactions. She says it reads like we are stumbling across snakes every few minutes. I can see her point, so to clarify the situation I had better point out that the snake stories mentioned, happened over a number of years. In fact on average we might see around five or six snakes per year and only a few of those will be anywhere near the house. We often will see one or two in early spring when they are coming out of hibernation. During the summer we will occasionally see a few more- usually when they are peacefully sunning themselves or occasionally when they are searching for food. In autumn they return to hibernation until the weather warms up again. So there you have it. Any readers who were getting worried- it’s not so bad after all!

PS. Credit for the "snake in the dam" photo (another one accompanies this post) goes to our daughter Sally who is a wildlife photographer. If you wish to purchase some great wildlife photos you can catch them at Healesville Organic Market, held every Saturday morning outside the Healesville Railway Station. Soon I will do a post on this small but ground breaking market-keep an eye out for it.

Living with wildlife-Snakes

2009-01-16T23:35:00.000-08:00

Living in or near the bush is likely to lead to interactions with wildlife. In the past many people have resorted to shooting, poisoning and trapping as ways to control these so called “pests”. Others inadvertently terrorise their local wildlife (and possibly their neighbours) by allowing their pets to roam freely. Our attitude is, that we are caretaking this bushland for the period of time we are here and have a responsibility to minimise impact on the long term inhabitants.

The previous owners of our 96 acre bush block, bulldozed 12 acres with a presumed plan of developing grazing areas. Apart from the fact that this land is unable to maintain even small numbers of grazing stock we felt we could get by with around 5 acres and the balance would be better used by allowing regrowth to return it to bush (forest).

The development of gardens, orchard and buildings lead us on an adventurous journey full of opportunities to observe and learn about our fellow creatures. There have also been many challenges to be met, considered and solved.

Snake Adventures
We have so many snake stories, I wanted to call our place “Snake Gully”, but Heather objected feeling that some people may be less inclined to visit. We settled for the less phobic name “Tenderbreak P.F.”

So far, we have come across snakes in the house (whilst under construction), under the dog’s bowl (a baby), in the chookpen (he cleaned up all the rats), in the corella aviary (only seen above the entrance door after I had passed a few cm under him), in the dam (see photo), under bark in our garden retaining walls and dozens more around and about. However it was the sight of a 3 foot tigersnake leisurely sliding under our thick, water conserving mulch, that led to the idea of building a “snakeproof” fence around the veggie garden.

In the winter (2005) when the ground was softer, we built our 1500mm high weldmesh fence with 12mm holes for the first 900mm. The lower edge was buried to depth of around 150mm giving the fence the multiple functions of excluding snakes, rabbits, wombats, kangaroos, deer and any other veggie munching neighbours who wandered by. It was also designed to keep the dog away from those aforementioned neighbours. It would bring harmony to an area of possible conflict- our veggie patch.

We felt pretty proud of ourselves during that first spring, and were looking forward to our first bumper harvest of veggies, where we got to eat the bulk of them. We had to reassess our cleverness when a few days later Heather was surprised to discover a metre long tiger snake slipping around our corn stalks. We carefully guided it (from a safe distance) towards the gate. At the last moment however it slid under a large log that bordered our zucchinis. When I carefully pulled the log back (after demolishing the zucchini plants) we suddenly found ourselves confronted by two snakes. We reckon they had hibernated under that log over winter, as we were carefully building our supposed “snake proof fence” around them. They had accidentally been locked in!

Since then there have only been two other breaches of our fence. Heather found a baby snake (30cm) under the dog bowl. He may have fitted through the small holes in the weldmesh or been dropped by a passing kookaburra. The other occasion was when out daughter saw a snake “climb” the diagonal brace on the timber gate and slip over the top. Once he was in, she opened the gate and guided him back out. Later that day I reversed the gates to ensure diagonal braces were on the inside. (See photo of reversed gate). These events have caused us to use the term “snake deterrent” rather than “snake proof” when describing the fence. We also realise more than ever that part of the deal when living in a bushland setting is the possibility of coming across a snake. Being aware becomes a way of life.

WARNING
The snakes that we have come across are either red bellied blacks (photo) or tiger snakes, both of which are venomous. Snakes are beautiful creatures that have no intrinsic interest in humans. Their sole aim in life is to feed themselves and go about their business in private. However if they feel threatened they will use their instinctive defensive strategy which is to rise, flatten out their neck and if necessary strike. A bite can be dangerous. Always be wary if near bushland, and keep well back from snakes. Never try and corner or catch one. If left alone, they will invariably disappear back into the safety of the bush.