July has been a very busy month for all at Maungaraeeda. End of June we started a 2 week PDC (Permaculture Design Certificate) course which finished early July. We were very blessed to have a group of wonderful people staying with us for that course, who all shared a variety of life experience with us and made us all feel richer for knowing them. The course was very successful, with a lot of wonderful comments and a great article written by one of the students.

Straight after the course we launched into our 10 week internship, with one student from the PDC staying on as an intern and another intern arriving from overseas. After being introduced to the farm's practices and routines, they got stuck into individual projects and day to day farm operations. Since the start of their internship and with the help of wwoofers and volunteers, they have harvested, prepared and bottled mandarine marmalade and yacon syrup. 

One of the interns wanted to learn more about building and he helped Tom build our new outhouse! We currently have composting toilets at the student space and the teaching space, but none close to our house. So we are very excited to have our own compost toilet shortly! We have Nature Loo compost toilets on our property, which we were lucky enough to buy second hand and have given to us. Nature Loo is a Queensland company and we are happy to support them. So far we have been very happy with their product. Once the inside is finished I will post more photos of the outhouse online. Beautiful work was done and a lot was learned by our intern, who has been enjoying the building process.

Our rocket stove project in the student space has been put on hold due to all the other jobs that have to be done at the moment, but has not been forgotten! Steps need to be undertaken to make the rocket stove produce heat more effectively, which is on the list of things to do. 

In the mean time we have been growing a lot of pumpkin, citrus fruit and self sown lettuce is coming up in our Permaculture kitchen garden. We currently have two cows in milk, and they feed their babies as well as give us enough milk for plenty of cream for our breakfasts and to make butter every week. We also make 2 batches of cheese with the (skim) milk, after we have separated the cream. At the moment we are getting between 1 and 1 1/2 litres of cream twice a week, which is just wonderful! The calves are growing extremely quickly too. We also have had one of our goats become mum again. We are not milking her at the 
moment, because we feel she needs to put on a bit more weight. Her baby boy is growing really quick, and one of our interns has fallen in love with him, spoiling both mum and son with regular forage and pats.

Coming up next month are our Earthworks course, the Urban Permaculture course, Paul Taylor's Sustainable Soil Management course and the next step in our Biogas project. At the end of August, Tom and the interns will head to Zaytuna Farm, where Tom will teach the Interns there for 2 weeks. A busy few weeks ahead, but then, what else is new? Life at Maungaraeeda is always busy, but it is extremely satisfying to live the journey of Permaculture!