It seems like only yesterday that we updated the blog, yet October has been and gone. You wouldn’t think it was November by looking outside either; the weather has been dreadful, with the past couple of weeks only averaging about 15 degrees. Yet my back is sunburnt thanks to no ozone layer, nice. It’s been too wet to complete the earthworks around the house site, but we have at least surveyed the area and are ready to wave the green flag as soon as the sun dries the ground out. Next weekend’s forecast is in the mid-twenties, so we may be able to get things rolling soon.

It’s probably a good thing that the weather has delayed us, as I went on a strawbale working bee in Mountain River and came back wanting to make major changes to our plans (not the design, but the way it’s being constructed). When we arrived at the workshop the house frame and roof were already constructed; it was our mission to get the strawbale walls built and apply the first coat of render to protect them from the elements. You can see here that the posts are square, and are positioned right in the middle of where the straw bales need to sit.

So we spent a ridiculous amount of time cutting notches into the bales with a chainsaw so that we could position the bales around all the posts.

Materials for a strawbale building are much cheaper than the average home, however it is very labour intensive, and the labour ends up costing more than the materials. So we’ve been working with the designer and researching around the clock to come up with solutions to make the construction as simple as possible. Instead of square posts that get in the way of bales, we’re using wide posts so bales can simply be laid flat against them.

We also realised that the “Cell Under Tension” method of construction that we were planning to use was very risky, considering it relied on the bales being exactly 900mm long, and we discovered that the bales ranged from 800-1000mm when they came out of the baling machine. We’ve been reviewing our wall and window heights to try and ensure that an even amount of bales will fit, again to avoid spending lots of time making custom bales. We could give many more examples of the changes we’re making to our plans since attending the working bee, but in summary, thank god I went. We’re now hoping to finish the plans in the next few days, get them through the engineer and building surveyor as quickly as possible and into the council by the end of November, which would result in a building permit before Christmas. In the meantime, pray for sunny days so we can do the earthworks!

The property that the working bee was held at was beautiful, on the top of a mountain with 360 degree views of the valley. The house itself was designed to frame the “Sleeping Beauty” (the mountain in the centre which looks like the side profile of a lady’s face).

Eighteen people attended the workshop and by the end of the second day we had the first four courses of bales raised onto the walls, compressed and tensioned with wire.

Once each wall was finished a cob mix was pushed into the gaps.

The weather on day four was dismal, and we found ourselves working on cement mixers in the snow. It was actually quite soothing though, as unfortunately the owner of this house wanted a lime and cement render rather than earth, a concoction that gave us three degree burns on our arms after several hours of mixing. God knows what the powdered lime did to our lungs! Willem is pictured here, who built a large timber mallet for bashing the walls into place, and at the end of the workshop he handed it down to us to build our house with, and we’ll hand it to the next person, which was really special.

By the end of day four all the strawbale walls were constructed and the base coat of render was being applied.

We met a ceramics artist named Nana, who recently moved to Tasmania from Finland (only three days before the workshop in fact). Nana has since visited our property to test the suitability of the earth that we have to use for render, cob and poured earth floors. We couldn’t have asked for better results, we have extremely heavy clay, sandy clay, and sand with a rich colour pigment in it, so we shouldn’t need to bring any materials in at all for those parts of the build. Nana has also trained to do amazing relief work in earthen renders, such as the spectacular corner shown here.

On the garden front… we’re teaching another Introduction to Permaculture Course in November, but have re-designed the weekend’s agenda to spend the entire Sunday on the property doing practical demonstrations. So we’ve been working hard to get the garden in tip top shape, demonstrating as many examples of permaculture principles as we can.

First of all meet the boys; Tumble, Weed, Bumble & Bee. They are quite simple, yet simply adorable, and best of all… they love eating slugs! We dug a swale along either side of their paddling pond (which was a gift from Ben & Anna) to tip the murky water into each time we clean it, and the swales divert the water filled with duck poo to feed the fruit trees and raspberries.

So we don’t need to spend time ushering the boys around the garden when it’s time to go to bed, Karim set up these awesome barricades leading into their house, which makes rounding them up each night a breeze.

The green manures that we planted in the chicken run in September are thriving, and you can see in the background that the girls have nearly finished cultivating the other run. These green manures are not only building soil, fixing nitrogen and feeding the chooks, but they've provided ample mulch for the fruit trees so we don't need to buy straw. They also flowered before anything else, providing bee forage early in the season.

Btw the girls say hi…

The two fruit trees in this bed are surrounded by thyme, sage, coriander, rosemary, chamomile, parsley, beetroot, onion, parsnip, garlic, strawberries and a cabbage. The herbs on the edges have really benefited from the thermal mass created by the rocks, and have done a great job acting as a grass and weed barrier.

We are winning the slug battle and the carrot seedlings have emerged! This will be our third attempt at growing carrots, with the first two missions being unsuccessful, so here’s hoping that previous lessons learnt will result in a good crop this year.

The flowers are blooming, which delights the bees…

The tomatoes, capsicum and eggplant have been transplanted, surrounded by black plastic and rocks in an attempt to increase the soil temperature.

We’re also experimenting with black bin lids from the rubbish tip to increase the temperature around tomatoes and chillies, and as an added bonus they direct all the water to the root zone of the plant.

Evidence that lemon balm loves rhubarb…

Evidence that garlic helps prevent leaf curl on nectarine trees, as the nectarine tree behind the garlic in this photo was riddled with leaf curl last spring and there’s no sign of it now. We can’t wait to start eating that garlic next month. We’ve grown enough this time to eat all year and save enough to sow for next year’s crop (this is only one of the three garlic crops we planted).

These cabbages prove that the Albizia lopantha don’t compete for water and nutrient, they provide shelter and fix nitrogen in the soil, just like various layers in a thriving forest would.

We’ve constructed a trellis ready for cucumber and pumpkin to grow vertically, and have buried fermented Bokashi in the trench so that the earthworms and other soil life can turn it into perfect compost by the time we plant the seedlings.

We also built this container garden with used milk bottles to grow lettuce, coriander and basil without taking up space in the garden bed, and if it works we’ll make some more with the students at the course so the whole fence is lined with lettuce and herbs.

We let a few things go to seed last year, and now have dozens of new seedlings without having to plant a single seed, such as the coriander and radish below.

It’s hard to believe the frog pond was only completed last October...

We’ve been potting up succulents and other native cuttings with the aim of having some established plants ready to landscape around the house when it’s built, rather than live inside a beautiful home that’s inside a construction site for an extra two years. Let’s hope they surprise us next year like the plants around the frog pond have.

And last but not least, we’ve had a couple of naughty possum intrusions in the garden during the past few weeks, which has damaged a few of the fruit trees, so we’ve been altering the floppy fence at what appear to be potential areas of weakness. The last intrusion was about four days ago now, so we are desperately hoping that we have solved the problem.

So that was our October in Tassie Mania… Phew!

Bubbling Along

Tassie Mania generally experiences some crazy weather patterns in September, and this year was no exception with temperatures ranging from minus 1.1 to 22. We’ve never seen weather like it anywhere else in the world, where several times during the day the sky can change from bright blue without a cloud in sight, to being dark with sideways rain. Warmer weather is definitely upon us now though, as the Welcome Swallows have returned to their nest in the carport. We’ve witnessed a group of fairy wren chicks grow up over winter, and thought they were all female. However a few weeks ago one of them started looking “motley”, then we noticed a tiny glimmer of blue. Within two weeks he was a superb bright blue male, a remarkable development to watch. Now there is a second chick developing blue feathers, which is just wonderful.

The garden is constantly improving as we gain more experience and experiment with different techniques. Our neighbour taught us how to build our own compost tea brew kit, which we now have bubbling away every time the wood stove is on. You can sense the microbes having a breeding frenzy and it feels so great applying it to the soil.

With new spring seedlings emerging it’s crucial that the slug battle continues on a nightly basis. I’ve spent so much time planning the garden, sowing seeds, transplanting and feeding this season’s food crops that the war will be waged until there are clear signs of defeat, otherwise weeks of nurturing can be destroyed overnight. It’s so worth it knowing that what’s currently on this table will end up feeding us for several months.

I thought I was nearing the point of defeat (at least in the mandala garden), when a few nights ago dozens of eggs must have hatched that were left behind by the adults that I’ve been slaughtering over the past weeks. It sure is hard to stay positive when that happens, but I am winning and the front line is continuously moving forward. We did a controlled experiment to determine the success of yeast traps versus beer traps, and the beer traps won hands down (smart snails), so we’ve purchased a home brew kit (and the snails won’t be the only ones indulging).

A Permabee was held at Ben and Anna’s early in September, to help them build the paths and fence around their first food garden. These photos give you an idea of what they started with, as we look forward to sharing some before and after photos of an established and thriving edible garden in a few months’ time.

And thanks to a Permabee that was held at our property yesterday, we’re ready for the arrival of the (hopefully) slug eating Khaki Campbell ducks. A few of us erected a net across half of the garden to keep the ducks in their designated zone, while Ben finished building the quoll proof duck house.

Our house plans are really close to being completed, but it’s been surprising how many changes and difficult decisions we’ve had to make in the final stages. We were planning on poured earth floors throughout most of the house. However, because we are on highly reactive clay soil, the earthen floors can only be poured as “infill”, so require concrete strip footings under all the walls. You can see on the diagram below that this created extremely complicated footings that would have cost a fortune, as well as left us with a myriad of muddy swimming pools to work in during construction (because the earthen floors get poured at the very end). We’re still having the poured earth floors with hydronic heating in the kitchen, dining and lounge room, but the master bedroom will be a timber floor, and we’ve changed the back bedrooms, toilet, bathroom and mudroom to a concrete slab with floating timber flooring and tiles in the wet areas.

The hardest decision we’ve had to make recently is to forfeit the section of living roof. As magical as it would have been, the additional structural support required, the waterproofing and all the other layers involved would cost more than $20,000. This is an expensive garden to have on the roof, when we have 15 acres of garden and forest around the house. The fact that the roof would more than likely leak at some point in time also had a huge impact on our decision. There's been some nice improvements aswell though, such as a lovely curved wall through the hallway, and my stepmum Jen helped with the decision to render the clerestory wall rather than use timber cladding, which we think will look great. This is how the house is looking from the outside now, and at the end of the day, it’s still beautiful without the roof garden.

Because we thought of it well in advance, the engineer has allowed us to use green timber that’s being cut on a Lucas mill at a nearby property for some of the frame (instead of dried hardwood). When timber is cut it shrinks during the drying process, but by milling and racking it up now, it should have done all its shrinking by the time we use it. It’s saved us about $4,000, and it’s exciting looking at all this timber that we know we’ll be building our home with soon.

Well the sun is shining and the chooks are calling for their porridge. We need to break the news to them that it’s October now, so no more warm porridge for breakfast until next April. Have a wonderful month everyone…

It’s difficult to post a positive Tassie Mania update for August only a week after Sammy passed away, but he was a positive, happy person, so we know that he would expect us to. I realised during the week that during different stages of our friendship, through the ups and downs, Sammy never judged and only ever saw the good in me, so it’s no wonder he was a friend who I thought would be in my life forever. And of course he still will be… in a different way. Considering Sammy’s character, we thought it fitting to plant a lemon tree in his memory, and we will protect it from the frost and wind like there’s no tomorrow.

Karim was in Manilla for most of August, so I threw myself into the garden to make the time pass quickly, and we’re now fully prepared for spring. I started with a garden plan, listed each bed, what crops were in there before (or still are), what would be suitable to plant next according to crop rotation principles, the soil condition, any bed preparation required, and a calendar for when to sow the seeds and transplant seedlings.

These photos were taken today from the front gate, so we can gauge the progress each month over spring and summer. The front beds covered in manure and hay are ready for potatoes, which are being planted there specifically to build soil in what are currently very shallow, heavy clay beds.

The biggest challenge is clearly going to be winning the war against the slugs, which became a huge problem just prior to winter. I’ve now adopted several strategies… going out there at night with a head torch on and throwing them into a bucket of salty water (death rate = 300 in 30 minutes woo hoo); leaving small containers in the garden overnight filled with a mixture of yeast, sugar and water, then emptying them in the morning (death rate = 80 in 15 minutes); laying boards or cardboard down and removing the slugs from underneath the boards in the morning (death rate = 50 in 15 minutes). To raise the bar we’re also getting four Khaki Campbell ducks in October, which are not highly vegetative eaters but are renowned for eating slugs. And finally, when I plant out the seedlings I’m protecting them with milk bottles during the early stages of growth, which also protects them from frost. I’m determined not to use slug pellets, as even the organic ones also harm small birds, lizards and (no doubt) other soil life, so wish me luck!

The green manures which Carly and Dan helped sow and nurture in chook tractor #1 back in March grew perfectly over winter, and we’ve now given the chooks access. They’re foraging through the oats in there, heads down bums up like all their Christmases have come at once.

So we’ve blocked access to tractor # 2 now, which the girls have been doing a wonderful job scratching, weeding and manuring for the past few months, and have planted the next crop of green manure forage species. Dean, only 18 months after you and I filled massive holes with rocks, only you could really imagine my pure delight at this soil, it’s enough to promote tears of happiness!

All the fruit trees have been prepared for spring with tender loving care. As the orchard area is moving toward being a poultry forage zone and the vegetables are moving over to the mandala, we’re trying to maintain a slightly acidic environment through the orchard (low pH), which fruits thrive in. To achieve this naturally, we’re working on the principle that slightly acidic soils have higher fungi to bacteria ratios. So firstly I pulled all the old mulch back, naturally collected dozens of slugs that were enjoying its shelter, then laid wattle kindling on the mounds and covered it with mushroom compost (the wattle provides a surface for the mycelium to attach to).

A generous layer of fungal biased compost was then applied, which we created several months ago using the ratio of 25% nitrogen (chicken, horse and cow manure), 30% greens (weeds, grass, food scraps, urine, coffee grounds, azolla from the frog pond), and 45% woods (fire ash, wood shavings, shredded paper and hay). Of course other household waste such as hair from our brush and vacuum cleaner dust was added to the pile, along with several fruiting mushrooms.

Finally a very thick layer of barley straw was added for mulch, hessian was tied around the base of pear and plum trees as a trap for the cherry slugs, and Bordeaux was applied to the peaches, nectarines, plums and apricots to prevent leaf curl. The trees are budding now and we look forward to an array of pretty flowers through the garden soon, then hopefully our first fruit!

Anna and I have been eradicating a ridiculous amount of Spanish Heath from the forested areas by digging it out at the roots. We’ve contributed over 100 man hours to the task and burnt millions and millions of seeds before they release in summer, which is very rewarding. It’s time to get back on to the blackberry now. Anna has also been helping me get fit and strong ready for the house build, through our own boot camp sessions, ab blast workouts and swimming. Every time it hurts I just tell myself that I’ll be lifting over 400 straw bales soon, so as Ben would say “drink a tin of cement and harden the *$#! up”!

As the weeks fly by the fact that we’ll be building soon is becoming more of a reality. Karim enjoyed building a loft and shelving in the sea container so we can access things easier, and it’s ready to accommodate more building materials…

We’ve stored the outdoor setting in the container to clear the carport as a work zone, and Karim made this wonderful workbench using second hand timbers from the tip.

I realised that we’ll need to plant out the living roof as soon as it’s constructed (hopefully by next May before winter hits), and it’ll require over 500 plants, which would cost at least $1500 to buy. So I researched plants that have been used successfully on living roofs in Melbourne and found similar or equivalent Tasmanian native species that I could grow from seed. I also purchased just a few of each plant that I couldn’t buy seed for, and have been propagating those by root division and cuttings. If successful, the whole roof will be planted for less than $150, all native and even some bush tucker. Here’s the first lot of babies that will eventually end up on our roof…

We’ve also completed the lighting and electrical plan, met with the electrician and booked the excavator driver to start in October (praying for good weather). The camera tripod is set up above the house site ready to take snap shots. The first stage will be constructing a carpark, curved terraces and drainage along the slope above the house (where the green survey tape is), then removing the old cottage slab, crushing the concrete to use as fill, and cleaning the stones so we can build the lounge room wall with them.

Hopefully the building plans will be ready to submit to council by the end of September, then it’s all systems go! Sunny days please weather gods… but not too sunny (I’m a redhead remember)!

Sam Rodda Extraordinaire

We received shocking news this morning about the passing of our dear friend Sammy, aged 31. We met on the streets of London in 1999 and bonded immediately. Over the following years our friendship grew stronger, and I was privileged to share many great journeys with Sammy… to have met his beautiful parents and little dog with the cutest skull in the world in Cornwall England, for him to have graced our presence in Australia and met my family.

So many words come to mind when I think of Sammy… kind, sincere, loving, caring, honest, thoughtful, appreciative, generous and so much more. I was so proud of his achievements, becoming a renowned teacher in Hong Kong. Obviously his students felt the same way about him, as a news article reported that “As the news spread in the international school community yesterday, more than 600 current and former KGV School students joined a Facebook page titled "RIP Mr Rodda". On a separate page created in his memory, one student posted: "You made house assemblies bearable. You made everyone laugh. We were always predicting what colour shirt you would be wearing. You were a teacher, a mentor and a friend." Another student told the Post: "You would see him as a friend, but respect him as a teacher”.

Sammy, I’m glad we spoke recently, you were so happy, but I would give anything in the world for the opportunity to say goodbye. I will miss you dearly, will always love and remember you, and cherish the times we shared. You are an extraordinaire my friend, loved by many, and will always remain in our hearts xox

Rest in Peace Sweet Nekbet

We had a bit of a tragedy in July; one of our chickens Nekbet was killed by what we believe was a quoll in the late afternoon. We always have a big smile on our faces when we go to put them away before night fall, because we find it awfully cute how they put themselves to bed on the perch and wait for us to close the door. So it was a huge shock when they weren’t on the perch. The first place I looked was the large bush they perch in during the day, and I could tell that there was a dead chicken in there. Unfortunately Karim was away so I called Anna, who drove straight down. We found three of the other chickens, but one was missing. Ben arrived soon after and got Nekbet out of the bush so we could bury her, night fell and the three of us searched the forest and garden in the rain with torches for an hour looking for the missing chicken, but couldn’t find any sign of her. I continued the search at sunrise the following morning, with a faint glimmer of hope that she was alive and ok, and incredibly I found her at 2pm that afternoon. She had a small amount of her comb bitten off, but was fine, and the joy of finding her outweighed the sadness of losing Nekbet so she was obviously meant to go missing for a day. It has taken them two weeks to gain their confidence back and venture out into the runs, but they are doing well now. Rest in peace sweet Nekbet…

There is a lot more wildlife around at the moment, searching for food during the colder months, so it’s not surprising. The wallabies are out earlier in the morning and afternoon, and don’t seem to be phased by us. Two ducks have visited the dam a few times, eagles have been circling quite low, and a flock of black cockatoos flew around Karim, Anna and I, and led us into the forest on a bush walk. A possum has hung out with me in the carport three times now, becoming more and more curious each time. Anna and I were fortunate enough to not only see, but actually watch a platypus in the creek for over five minutes. It rolled on its back a few times, had a scratch, and we even saw its tongue licking its bill! It was so special. There’s also a gorgeous Bettong that sits in front of the garden gate at night, looking in at all the tasty delights, no doubt wishing he could gain access.

The house plans are on track and are with the engineer now. The exciting news is that we received our planning permit, so the property is now an official training facility and we can use the shed as a classroom once the house is built. Our designer left on a five week holiday yesterday, which gives me a break from working on the house and allows me to spend most of my time in the garden getting ready for spring, which is perfect as I can keep a close eye on the chickens.

We’re having several early signs of spring; bees, daffodils, blossoming acacia’s… it’s such a lovely time of the year. I’ve completed the spring garden plan, taking into consideration crop rotation and companion planting. Most of last season’s crops in the mandala have been harvested, the beds prepared for the next crop, and one bed already planted, with the seedlings protected from the frost and slugs by milk containers.

Two blueberry bushes, two grape vines, six raspberry, more strawberries and three kiwi fruit vines have been planted. We buried Bokashi in all the holes several months ago, which will hopefully give these fruits a magnificent start to life.

We made a really cute trellis, which I think we’ll cover with blue and purple podded peas for a splash of colour.

We’ve been hot composting like crazy, and are pretty happy with how much compost we have ready to feed the garden and fruit trees before spring.

The garlic is progressing nicely

The female flowers and male catkins have appeared on the hazelnut bushes

And the broad beans should be ready soon, which is great as we only have one more serve in the freezer from last year’s crop

On the permaculture front, we ran our third Tasmanian Introduction to Permaculture course in July, for Adult Education, and met some more wonderful people. We also attended the Permaculture Tasmania annual general meeting, and I was nominated as Secretary, so look forward to sharing the work load with Celia, who has pretty much carried the Association on her own for the past few years.

Before we sign off, here’s wishing Mumsie a speedy recovery after having her appendix removed last week.

We hope you all have an awesome August :o)

To Flush or Not To Flush?

It’s really exciting to see the Council’s development notice on the top of our driveway, advertising our application to build a house as well as turn the property into an accredited education facility.

We’ve had so many decisions to make in the past few weeks; heating systems, interior wall and ceiling materials, electrical and lighting plans etc. We’ve found that Google isn’t really your friend in Tassie Mania when it comes to sourcing local suppliers, you need to resort to the trusty old Yellow Pages. It’s not a bad experience actually.

Confirming our window sizes, positioning and type has been an important process. Initially we didn’t like the idea of thermally broken aluminium windows because we thought that timber would be more aesthetically pleasing, though the maintenance of timber windows was a bit scary (especially with clerestory windows on the roof). Then we noticed our outdoor setting, which is a combination of ironstone colour aluminium and dark timber. We love that look, that’s why we bought the outdoor setting for our house in Pymble, and remember saying at the time we’d like to carry that theme through the house. So that was a huge milestone.

Our friend Anna generously spent most of the day with me (when Karim got stuck travelling due to the ash cloud) helping to survey the windows to make sure they offered views of the forest, river, mountains and sky. Admittedly without the guys it took us a couple of hours just to get the hang of the dumpy level, but hey, we got there in the end! Handy tip: it helps not to cover the lens with your finger.

The software that Graham uses (and Graham himself) is so clever. He can actually import the exact view that we will have through our chosen window sizes. Check out the view from our bed. We’re already anticipating the first morning we wake up to this. Ok it might be in 2013, but hey…

Then of course there are other big decisions like the wastewater management system and toilet. Why do we want a wetlands system rather than a simple septic system with trenches? Predominantly to re-use all the water that goes down the drains in the house, as well as the other benefits such as habitat for frogs and aquatic invertebrates, an environment to grow reeds that are useful for basket weaving and many more benefits.

Why do we want a compost toilet? A typical reason is to save water, however our rainwater catchment roof area, as well as our dam and other water harvesting features, means we have an abundance of water, and new 5 star toilets only use 2L each flush. Then of course there’s the policy of “if it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down”. So the minimal water saving aspect is not a compelling reason for us. Our main reason for having a compost toilet is for the compost. But you know what, we have dozens of hot compost piles in the garden containing a variety of organic materials and animal manures, we really don’t need to, and I haven’t been particularly enjoying, handling the human waste from our compost toilet in the shed. We’re also not happy with any of the so called “accredited” compost toilets. They are anywhere from $3-6,000, are made of cheap plastic, have travelled miles to get here, have mechanical components that rely on electricity to run fans and heaters, and rely on people with composting experience to keep them healthy (which is a problem if we go away). And to add to the debate, we’d have to dig a 1.4m deep x 1.6m wide trench under the house with a floating slab and retaining walls to accommodate the chamber.

So I’ve worked out how we can connect a flushing toilet to an affordable wetlands system. Rather than an expensive BioSeptic system that contains three stages (settling of the waste, an aeration process and the addition of chlorine to kill any pathogens), we can install a basic septic tank that purely settles the waste, connected to a gravel red beed then pond, where plants, bacteria and the sun can perform the aeration and cleaning processes. The pond can overflow into our dam, which is hooked up to the garden irrigation system, so the plants will still receive all the nutrients they would from a compost toilet, but in liquid form accompanied by other nutrient it picks up through the system (without us handling the shit or having to empty a grease trap).

So the question is, to flush or not to flush? Considering we can still recycle the water and the nutrient, flushing appears very compelling. We have a feeling that Mumsie, Kat and Craig would vote for the flushing option.

Apart from working on the house, there was lots of permaculture action during the month. We had a wonderful meeting about the future of the Permaculture Association of Tasmania over a candlelit dinner in a friend’s humpy in Mountain River, during which a baby wombat sat on my lap! It was the most incredible experience. I think the expression on my face looked like I had just won the lotto, that’s certainly how I felt. We also held an Organic Orchard Care workshop on the property. Well two actually, because 44 people registered!

And for a bit of fun we went to Cirque du Soleil, which was awesome and very inspiring in terms of athletic ability. We certainly need to start pumping some weights as before we know it we’ll be lifting 500 straw bales and rendering for days on end. Did I say we? I meant I… doh!

Home Sweet Home

After a wonderful holiday it was really nice to land back on home soil in Tassie Mania. Carly and Dan did a wonderful job of looking after the place while we were gone; the cats were clearly spoiled rotten and didn’t seem to miss us at all. Dan chopped lots of firewood for us to survive the approaching winter, and they looked after the chooks so well that they grew their new feathers and started laying eggs again.

It was amazing to come back from a four week holiday and still be able to harvest more than 10kg of food; it really is turning into a permaculture garden. Things are slowing down in there now, and thanks to all the help from Carly and Dan, it’s really just a matter of maintenance while we shift our focus to the house build. We remember saying to Al in January “we can’t wait for the day that you can’t see the back fence”, and can’t believe that day has already come, considering the first seedling was only planted last July!

We’re fully emersed in the house design phase now. Graham has been doing an amazing job (as both designer and marriage counsellor), and has showed an incredible level of patience to ensure that the internal measurements of every single room (after rendering) are in sacred geometric proportion to us and the earth. I’ll be hand rendering for many weeks, and if Karim gets out the tape measure to ensure that the walls are in haromy by the millimetre I think I will literally kill him!

It was exciting to get the first glimpse of what the house will look like from the outside. The curved section of green roof in front of the curved clerestory will hopefully be an earthern roof, these being two main features that are outside our budget restrictions (which we’re chosing to ignore for now).

It’s difficult for the computer software to generate the “organic” feel that the house will have with round timber posts, natural stone, earthen render and tapered windows, however this gives us a pretty good idea of what the view from the sunken lounge will be like, looking over the half height feature wall to the dining room and up to the kitchen. Of course if we turn 180 degrees, we’ll see the Huon River. The high ceiling over the lounge is the shape of the golden spiral and will be a major feature, possibly with exposed beams.

Here is Eva and James admiring the river views from the future dining room, which is also the view we’ll have from the lounge, kitchen (looking over the lounge), master bedroom and outdoor deck. We can’t wait to start enjoying this view more, and should be able to see the dolphins swim down the river like our neighbours do.

An interesting part of the process for Council planning approval was designing our Bushfire Hazard Management Plan, which is something we take quite seriously considering we don’t want to clear the forest that surrounds us, and Tassie Mania is well overdue for its cyclical bushfire. The plan has just been endorsed by the Tasmanian Fire Service, so we are ready to submit our planning application. We will also apply several design techniques to the house in order to protect it, as our strategy will certainly be “get the cats and go” rather than “stay and defend” if a fire storm is heading our way.

We hosted the second Permaculture Skillshare at the property last Saturday and Sunday, which was a wonderful distraction from the house project. Eva gave an amazing presentation of an old golf course that her and husband Drew have purchased in Brighton, which they are developing into a Permaculture property. Christian presented a Permablitz project that he designed in Melbourne, and being a circus trainer, he taught us how to juggle! We all watched some fantastic lectures and movies, held extremely beneficial conversations about training courses and the future of Permaculture Tasmania, and built a cage so we could trial a new method of hot composting. We chose specific ingredients to make this pile fungal biased, which results in an acidic environment that supports fruits and trees.

Lots of interesting things are happening in July too, but for now, nunoo nunnoo :o)