Welcome to Tassie Mania

We started 2010 in true Tassie mania style, spending NYE on the land with Dean in front of a campfire. We arrived just before sunset and took a walk to the creek, meeting a wallaby, rabbit and kookaburra along the way. We got back to the campfire just before a major electrical storm, and spent the next hour sitting in awe watching the most amazing natural spectacle with the whole valley lighting up before our eyes. We thought we might get bored throughout the night, but were still there to witness the sun come up over the river and the myriad of birds waking for the 1^st day of 2010.

We spent the next couple of days doing some touristy things with Dean (thanks to the Lonely Planet guide that Col & Michael gave us). This included Mt Field National Park (note Dean at the bottom of the tree)

Mt Wellington lookout over Hobart city

Port Arthur

and a truly awesome 3hr jet boat ride around the southern coast line, where we saw spectacular sea cliffs, caves and fur seal colonies lazing on the rocks.

We were also lucky enough to witness the yachts in the Sydney to Hobart go past (well, it was more like us whizzing past them)!

Once the “holiday” was over and we waved goodbye to Dean, our main goal for January was to finish our Permaculture (PC) design before Karim went back to work, so I could start implementing it. We started by doing a tour of a nearby PC property, where we learned a lot about local suppliers, plant species and much more. We then spent a ridiculous amount of hours on brush cutters to tidy the cleared sections of the land so we could see what we were working with (it was covered with two years old thick overgrowth). Within a couple of weeks we came up with the following draft design.

Dean came back at the end of January as our first official WWOOFER, and together we achieved some incredible milestones, the most important being Dean’s Dunny.

We managed to turn our food production area (Zone 2) from this

To this

This wasn’t easy, and involved Dean and I filling massive holes with rocks before the topsoil was spread. Some of the rocks Dean lifted must have weighed at least 50kg. We then spread dolomite and gypsum, followed by sawdust and hay, then topped it off with a temporary irrigation system and some nitrogen fixing cover crop, broad beans and potatoes to start fixing the soil.

The existing driveway was a steep scar down the middle of the property, which was an eyesore, an effort to drive up, caused a lot of erosion and sent a lot of water off the property. You’ll see in the second photo that we filled in the bottom section of the driveway with topsoil and changed the shape so that it now wraps around the tree line to the right (you can’t even see the new driveway, and we’ve created an additional growing area where the old driveway was). We also inserted a drain and culvert to direct the water off the driveway toward the proposed dam site.

The other major milestone in January was preparing a level area for the Garage slab, complete with a rock wall garden to attract bees and slow the water down.

And it that wasn’t enough, we (I mean Dean :o)) carted about 100 tonne of tree stumps, did odd jobs like mulching, and managed to plant a few thousand tagasaste, albizia and acacia seeds along with a variety of other native ground covers, shrubs and trees.

Between all these Permaculture activities we’ve been fostering a kitten that we found in the gutter in Hicksville, who the vet estimated to only be about three weeks old. He was very skinny and sick and ended up in an oxygen chamber at the vet, but is now doing really well and nearly ready to go into a permanent home.

And last but not least, we started our new raw food regime (no cooking or heating food) with a juice diet at the beginning of January. We’re actually really enjoying it, and in only one month lost a whopping 6kg and a total of 20cm off our bodies! Dean also stuck to it for eight days and survived, losing over 2kg in that time.

Well that pretty much covers January (which feels like a year already)! Of course there’s a whole lot more photos on facebook too. We can’t wait to tell you what we’re getting up to in Feb :o)