Kia Ora!
Well it's been a busy few months here at the farm, the jobs board is (almost) full with many projects on the go, including a new website and Facebook Page to help us reach out to more of you! The garden has been pumping as the days grow longer, and the transition into spring has seen us taking our super fresh produce to market to share with the good folks of Gympie. The feedback so far has been overwhelming, it seems the locals had forgotten what real snow peas and carrots taste like! We even had 2 ex-beekeepers come back the following week just to tell us they hadn't tasted honey like that in years!
Talking of bees, they never took a break over winter and have been giving us a strong flow of Melaleuca honey, and with the Blue Gums in full flower this year there's a lot more to come. We are currently gearing up to split the hives and start some more boxes, so we'll hold off on harvesting more just yet to allow the bees to build up their numbers again and breed new queens in the new hives.
Mulberry is a tree that grows well here in the sub-tropics, and from the one tree in our veggie patch we have propagated over 70 progeny across the property, many of which are setting heavy loads of fruit already, Yum! The new seed raising benches have been getting a workout by our American helper Ben, and we've been propagating many nitrogen fixing species such as Leucaena, Pidgeon Pea, Moringa, and Brisbane Wattle, as well as bee forages such as Manuka, Tea Tree and Callistemon. We've also acquired some Mexican-Tree-Fern-Tree seeds, the worlds fastest growing tree*, which should give the Northern side of the house a tropical facelift!
We're slowly working our way through the woodlot and forest, pruning and thinning selected trees to allow others to flourish into future lumber. With what we have down already, there's a good case for purchasing our own mill and cutting boards and beams for lumber, effectively locking up quite a few tonnes of carbon in furniture and house frames. Somewhere in there I managed to find some time to begin laying out the existing farm on Google Earth, with an eye to redesigning some of the systems, infrastructure and orchard layout more in line with regenerative land practices. Stay tuned on this one.
If you haven't already, please LIKE and SHARE our Facebook Page (I know I know, you must get this ALL the time but this is US and we only post good stuff!) and head over to the Facebook Page and have a poke around. Any feedback or questions you have please drop us a line or leave a comment below, and we'd love to see you at the farm if you're in the area!
Cheers, Ben.