Week 5 -- 03/03-03/10

Week 5

Well the PDC was in full swing which meant there were an extra 12 people on the farm. An interesting change and I enjoyed that the students get to do the clean up, but I frequently found myself looking for a quiet spot. On 66 acres thats not really an issue thankfully. Geoff was still away as he had to go to New Zealand to help teach a PDC because his friend died who was supposed to teach it. The students weren't particularly happy to not half geoff for the first week but they seemed to understand the unexpected situation. Anyway Geoff's sin Daniel cam down to help teach. He's basically been doing permaculture since he was a baby. So between Daniel, Nadia (geoffs wife) and Justin from down the road. They had it pretty well covered.

I talked with Nadia about what project I wanted to do for my internship so after discussing it I decided to do a bed in the kitchen garden and a small pond above the asian garden. So it felt good to have something to focus on and I can just concentrate on that for the next two months. The kitchen garden is a good thing to start with because that is where the majority of the food should come from. Also the knowledge gained will be easily transferable to a garden somewhere else.

We had two ducks sitting on eggs very close to hatching time. The ducks we have are muscovy ducks, which is like a cross between a duck and a goose. Anyway one of the momma duck's eggs hatched and we quickly had 16 extra ducks on the farm. They are funny little things, little fuzzy balls of feathers running around.

quack quack



So now we had one duck on eggs when another one decided to sit on eggs, but instead of using any of the duck houses we set up she decided to lay her nest in the pumpkin patch. Nice one. So we had to put a duck house over her to protect her while she sits on the eggs.

Sink and I got some seeds together to plant in the kitchen garden. We had to select crops for the winter. Mostly onions, cabbages, and root crops.

Sunday was market day. And They decided to have a booth at the market to Talk about permaculture, the school, and the plans for the new buildings which need to get council approval. Which means you have to make nice with the locals before they let you build anything. But building community is one of the main priorities in permaculture. It's a lot easier to get your area on point environmentally if the community is involved. Also it a clever way to get agendas through if you have yourself or friends in positions of power. Hey its what the scumbags do that ruin everything in the first place. So why not make it easy for ourselves.

The drum circle was in full swing and before it went off there was a sweet little jam session with 2 drummers and a violinist.



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