Quiet Garlic

A quiet week on the farm... we've finished planting garlic and are seeing the shoots emerge.

Raw Food

I had a very interesting experience over the weekend which completely debunked some of the preconceptions that I had about diet. I attended an "Awakening Warrior" workshop at Imago Forest and had some trepidation, not least because for two days we'd be following a raw vegan diet.
The diet meant raw fruit and raw vegetables only. Not only no meat, but no dairy, grains, nuts and no cooking!
As it turned out I felt so good that I kept going for another day, until vegetarians arrived at Imago and we started eating ... cooked food. I really noticed how the grains sat heavily in my stomach after the raw diet.
I think that I may have taken to the diet more easily because of the amount of fresh raw fruit and veg that I have available at Imago, but I'll still be reading a book recommended to me called "The 80/10/10 Diet" by Dr Douglas Graham. This will apparently give me the knowledge to know why humans thrive on a low fat diet of whole, fresh, ripe, raw, organic plant foods in simple combination.

Paul and Hannah return!

So much has changed since we were last here with Julian at Imago Forest, firstly, everything seems to have grown and grown!
The fruit trees located throughout the Mandala garden are looking taller and wider, they’ll soon be providing more shade and some delicious fruit!
We’ve also been enjoying lots of healthy (and very tasty) leafy greens including Silverbeet, Tatsoi, Kale and Endive which are all popping up around the garden. It’s also nice to see tall bright-yellow sunflowers poking their heads up in the sunshine, the chooks are loving their seeds.
The next major change is the soil, there’s been a big improvement (it’s softer, moist and darker in colour), which makes bed preparation a lot easier. I’m sure the Italian Garlic we planted yesterday will do very well in such healthy conditions.
We were last here with Julian back in September/October 2007 and between then and now we’ve been busy WWOOFing up the coast towards Queensland and living with friends for 14 months down in Melbourne. Although we’re only here for a very short time (5 days), it’s wonderful to return to such positive sights and sounds around the farm.
Some of the other things we’ve noticed include:
• the dam is full to overflowing
• beds all look so much healthier after so much rain recently.
• Julian showed us the garlic he produced recently

From just a seed...

We've previously written about how the mandala garden makes some things easy. In this case we've got a picture of giant sunflowers that have gone completely to seed. Not only were they beautiful to look at, but now they will provide some welcome variety in the chooks diet. One thing that we didn't quite get around to was to also grow beans up the sunflower stalks as a natural bean pole.
Similarly, here is a picture of a carrot gone to seed. Carrots have been a bit recalcitrant until lately... i think the soil must finally be at a point to support carrots as some of them have been magnificent. What has been interesting to learn is just how huge the flower and resulting seed heads are from a single carrot. I'll be expecting many many carrots next year from this one plant!

Gorgeous Garlic

It doesn't seem like long ago that we pulled up last season's garlic crop and now it's time to plant again. I saved 3kg of the best and juiciest garlic from the last crop to plant this year. We'll be planting on Tuesday, so if you'd like to be involved then get in touch... we'd love to have you there.
Cold weather seems to develop the flavour and texture of the garlic, which is just as well as we won't be harvesting this crop until November. And the garlic will see quite a few days of frost between now and then.
Hopefully the vampire population won't have built up too much before the end of the year.

Extreme Vagaries

Drought, followed by flood, followed by locusts? After the scorching weather, the rain was extremely welcome, however 300mm later and even the zucchinis are refusing to grow bigger. You can see in the picture to the left that the leeches were having a field day! With a bit of sun this coming week, we're expecting to see some rapid growth, however there will be a bit of a reduction in Imago produce until this happens.

Robin’s Final Post

Well, the time has finally come for me to wave goodbye to Imago Forest. I’ll be leaving shortly to continue my world tour (next stop Auckland) so, sadly, this will be my final post on the farm blog.

So how has it been living off the grid out in the bush, eeking out a living as a WWOOFer for the last three months? The highlight has to be seeing nature at work in all its beauty and ruthlessness. I’ve witnessed a few things that many Aussies never get to see, let alone Pommy backpackers: I’ve seen a snake devour a mouse; a huge swarm of bees descend on the farm in search of a new home; countless wallabies foraging for food (and trying to sneakily steal our crops); lizards sunning themselves here there and everywhere; and spiders the size of small dogs on the hunt for their dinner. I’ve also been rudely awakened in the middle of the night by a frog jumping up and down on my head, and been attacked by leeches and ticks countless times, but the less said about that the better.



Animals aside, Mother Nature has served up some spectacular weather for our delectation on this hilly outcrop. Being able to peer out over the mountains from the comfort of the yurt and witness some magnificent electrical storms has been a joy. Possibly the most impressive of nature’s feats to this city slicker however has simply been the rate at which our veggies have grown. I had no notion whatsoever of what went into cultivating those juicy veggies that are on offer in abundance at the supermarket, so seeing our crops go from seed to plate in a matter of weeks – powered by nothing but sunlight, rainwater, well-prepared soil and bit of good old fashioned hard work – has been fascinating.

Living the sustainable lifestyle out here in the bush has also been an experience and a half. In all honesty, I’m looking forward to getting back to the creature comforts of city living (such as not having to bury your own sewage every few months), but I’m going to make a renewed effort to cut down on wastefulness and keep an eye on the old carbon footprint. One things for sure, I’ll have a whole new appreciation of being able to take a hot plumbed-in shower, pick up supplies from a shop within walking distance and amble down to the local pub for a cool beer. Cheers! I’m off to sleep for a week.

No Vampires Here

The garlic harvesting and plaiting was a great success! Earlier in the month Robin and I pulled the garlic from the ground. It was very satisfying to see 18kg of garlic come from only 3kg planted.

To develop the flavours fully and ensure the garlic keeps well, the bulbs with stems were laid out in the sun on the ground. Of course with all the rain we've been having up here, this meant moving them in and out of shelter between showers.

As the stems dry out, they turn into a raffia which will use to braid them together.

But before we can do this, we cleaned the garlic up by cutting the roots off and peeling off the outermost layers of dirty skin, revealing the beautiful clean stems and lovely variegated purple heads.

Finally, we sized them up, took eleven each and plaited them up. After much trial and error, we got them into neat double rows. And with 18kg of garlic, we won't be seeing the vampires around here for a while!

Back on the farm : )

Coming back to the farm was a very pleasant experience, with the tremendous job Robin had done in looking after it.
Compared to a mere three weeks ago, the farm looked like a tropical jungle! The warmth and rain has certainly made a difference.
It was a great pleasure to be able to pick Strawberries, Bok Choy, Tatsoi, and Imago Mixed Salad as well as our regular eggs to have for you at the shop last week. And right now the zucchini and cabbage are working hard on their development too!
And of course we've just pulled up all the garlic in readiness for the field day next weekend.
Hope to see you there,

Julian.

Plain Old Farm Hand

Today marks the end of almost three weeks of flying solo here at Imago Forest, while Julian's been away at the Slow Food Conference in Italy. What I've learnt is that trying to keep the garden under control while running the shop once a week is absolutely exhausting. The satisfaction that comes with looking back on the garden as the shadows lengthen and reflecting on a good day's work is quickly tempered by the realisation that there's still a big list of jobs still to do. I guess that's just the way it works: You can spend all day mowing the lawn, but there'll still be plenty of weeding and pruning waiting for you tomorrow, and then there's the fertilising to be done and a few more beds to be planted... But on the plus side, the reason that the garden's been a bit overwhelming is that there's plenty of growth going on. We've got bok choy coming out of our ears, the silverbeet and lettuce are coming along, the potatoes, pumpkins and zucchini's are steadily improving and we've even got some small fruit developing on the trees. I'm off for a well-deserved weekend break to Sydney, but am looking forward to hanging up my farm sitter hat when I get back, and getting stuck into work as a plain old farm hand again.

Wild weather

Today I write to you from a cold, wet and windy Imago Forest, where it seems that somebody has forgotten to tell Mother Nature that Spring has sprung. It almost reminds me of home. Needless to say, my grand plans for a couple of weeks of pottering around in a garden bathed in glorious sunshine while Julian's away on assignment in Italy have been well and truly scuppered. Instead, my gardening stints have been punctuated by numerous trips back to the yurt for a cuppa and to warm my hands by the fire. I'm beginning to gain an appreciation for how much the unpredictable wild weather can play havoc with the Aussie farmer's plans. On a lighter note, it was nice to meet you all at this week's shop. It was my first solo effort, so I hope the service was up to scratch. The bok choy was fresh from the garden this week, so I hope that it goes down well with those of you who took a bunch home. There's plenty more where that came from, as well as a few other leafy greens that are just a few weeks away from hitting the shop table. Other veggies that have been showing good progress this week include zucchini, potato and pumpkin. Now it's my job for the next two weeks to make sure that they continue to thrive in Julian's absence, as well as planting a few more beds to keep the garden ticking over. I just hope that the Sun decides to make an appearance sometime soon.

Slow Food

Well, I’m almost half way through my three-month stint at Imago Forest, and I feel that my contributions over the last six weeks are beginning to pay off, most notably at this week’s shop where the lettuce and bok choy on offer were fresh from the garden. Granted, I wasn’t involved in planting those particular crops, but there’s plenty more where they came from, so hopefully it won’t be too long before I’ll be seeing a few veggies on the table that I’ve helped to nurture all the way from seed to shop.
On the subject of the shop, Julian’s off to the Slow Food Conference in Italy next week, leaving me in charge of the farm and shop for the next two and a half weeks. My main priorities during this period will be not to kill anything on the farm (animal, mineral or vegetable), and successfully negotiate the next three shop days single-handedly.
In other news we now have 150 tiny new silver perch in the dam. Sadly I’ll be long gone by the time they reach maturity, but Julian’s promised me a fish barbecue next summer if I come back to visit. I’ll be sure to bring my fishing rod.

Abundance

This week we returned from a long weekend in the city to find a farm that had been pelted with 42mm of rain in the space of a few days. The good news was that the blooming garden clearly loved having a good drink. The bad news was that my now collapsed tent resembled a small swimming pool. But back to the good news, as we now have plenty of new shoots making their way out of the soil, with our salad mix of rocket, mizuna, mustard and other tasty leaves making an appearance. In the more mature beds it’s silverbeet galore, with bok choy, cos lettuce and coriander also thriving. These gorgeous locally grown greens will be coming to the extras table at the weekly shop, so keep an eye out for them. There’s plenty more planting to be done while we’re waiting for those crops to reach a sellable size, and of course there’s also the weed battle to keep us busy in the meantime.

Dirty Work...

This week’s been largely dominated by digging. We’ve done so much of it that I’m a little disappointed not to have unearthed a few fossils. Thankfully, with the help of our now exhausted Italian WWOOFer Jacopo, we’ve come on leaps and bounds in the space of a few days. Sadly he could only stay with us for a week before heading back to the real world in search of paid employment (and a few days’ rest), but with four more beds sown, two more well on the way, a batch of pumpkins and potatoes planted, two chook domes moved and the wallaby defences shored up, he should be more than satisfied with his contribution. Grazie infinite!

Hold your breath

This week we welcome Jacopo to our team. He’s a first time WWOOFer from Italy, which makes me feel like something of an old hand. I do have three whole weeks of farm work under my belt after all. My grand discovery this week is that herbicide-free organic farming means there’s a lot of weeding to be done. A lot. The garlic beds have been looking pretty crowded, so Jacopo and I have been hard at work pulling up all of that unwelcome greenery to give our garlic crops a little breathing space. Several hours later and, while my hands feel like they’ve seen a lifetime’s worth of weed-pulling, the garlic’s looking happy, healthy and all set to be dug up by your good selves at the Imago Forest field day at the end of November.

Bag of Bones

By Robin:
It’s hard work this farming business. I’ve been here for two weeks and every muscle, bone and sinew in my body aches, a lot. But enough of my whingeing, the good news is that all the hard work we’ve been putting in preparing those beds with pitchfork, mattock, rake and trowel is already starting to bear fruit (well, vegetable to be precise). The Bok Choy’s already sprouting, the Silverbeet’s thriving, and it won’t be long before the rest of the crops start to show signs of life. In fact, the garden’s looking so tasty that the chooks have staged not one, but two, jailbreaks this week. Fortunately, with a little gentle persuasion, we convinced them that they’re better off with the chicken feed back in the chook domes than they are with the garden’s sprouting greens. All we need to do now is persuade those pesky wallabies that the veg in our garden isn’t for them either - with a little help from a new electric fence.

Robin's first week

Hi, Robin here. I’m a Pom (sorry), and I’m Julian’s latest Wwoofer. For those of you who don’t know what that means, Wwoof stands for Willing Workers on Organic Farms. It’s a scheme that allows travellers to volunteer at organic farms across Australia in return for bed, board and a few new experiences.
I’ll be here for the next three months, and will be sharing some of my experiences with you through this blog. I’m new to life on the farm, so you’ll be getting my insights as a complete newcomer.
As an urbanite, this week has been something of a baptism of fire for me. Imago Forest is pretty remote, we live in a solar powered yurt, sleep in tents and shower under a hose (we’re hoping to get the new solar hot water system up and running shortly).
My first week here has been a real lesson in sustainable living. Virtually nothing is wasted. Food waste is fed to the chickens, weeds are pulled up and used as mulch for the trees and egg shells are crunched up and fed back to the chooks to improve egg quality. Meanwhile, us humans live off the grid on solar power and rain water.
The week’s been pretty hectic, what with having to deal with rain damage, trespassing cows and a huge delivery of gravel, but yesterday I managed to spend my first full day in the garden. We dug up a few of the vegetable beds, which are looking really healthy, and have planted zucchini, squash, silverbeet, broccoli cabbage carrots and plenty of flowers. Now the hard bit is waiting to see how they grow…

Putting famine behind us

With the weather warming up and the spring flowers coming out, it's hard to believe that this was the time of year when famine would often strike home.
With modern expectations and busy lives, we often don't get to experience the seasonal cycles... and in many ways this is a good thing!
For those growing food, however, they'll know that early spring is probably one of the most difficult times of year. Vegetables that were planted in late autumn for winter harvesting have been collected. And the spring plantings are only just going in and will be a while yet before they can be harvested. Historically people relied on stored food to tide them through this gap.
Today, we can ship in food from other parts of the country or world. This can be a doubled-edged sword, but at least we won't be starving!

Bigger Better Pantry

The soil test results are back and the good news is that the soil acidity is decreasing and the organic matter in the soil remains at a very healthy level. Unfortunately the available nutrients has not increased which I was surprised about as the CEC has increased.
The CEC is a measure of the soil's ability to store and exchange nutrients with plants. What this suggests to me is that the biodynamic practices are improving the soil such that it has become a larger potential store and more freely accessible store of nutrients, but that the nutrients are not there.
Or to put it another way, I've been making a bigger and better pantry, but now I've got to stock it up!
This is a relatively good position to be in, so I was inspired this morning to go out and transplant many of the small silverbeets and cabbages into newer beds and give them a good feeding. Previously I haven't been keen to do this as I thought the chook manure would be sufficient, but the soil tests indicate that a bit of extra feeding wouldn't go astray.
As the weather warms up, I'm expecting to bring to town some Spring greens.
Of course I'll have to keep the wallabies out! It only took a week for the wallabies to realise that the pup was no longer in the garden.

No-effort Farming - a few weeks on

I've had two very excellent people up here - Jim and Rob - and we've been powering through the bed planting. These are some of the first of many beds being planted out under the "new" no-effort method.
The beds at Imago Forest are all circular, so we've planted silverbeet, peas and spinach around the outside, broccoli inside that, and carrots and shallots in the very centre. Throughout the entire bed we've also lightly sown oats and spring flowers.
The reasons for this are to have a thick and varied bed to reduce weed and pest problems, to put often picked items around the outside, close to the path and to put infrequently and larger plants in the centre.
It's possible that the wallaby has been kept out so that all this hard work doesn't go to naught!