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Commenced:
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01/06/2012 |
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Submitted:
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15/06/2012 |
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Last updated:
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07/10/2015 |
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Location:
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Parkes, NSW, AU |
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Climate zone:
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Mediterranean |
A city girl learns how to grow her own food sustainably with no prior experience. Be prepared for occasional funny failures and hopefully a steep learning curve!
Around Christmas 2010 I, former resident of Munich, Germany, home to around 1.3 million people, purchased some land near the small rural community of Parkes, NSW, with a shire population of some 14,ooo.
I'd been involved in horses for most of my life, and finally purchased the land that would allow me to feed and keep my horses without the need to agist on someone else's property.
The land was cheap and useless to almost everyone else due to a rather hilly nature, large amounts of native vegetation and relatively unproductive pasture, erosion problems and limited access from main roads. I, however liked it, it was secluded and serene, just what I was after!
It kinda-sort-of fed the horses for part of the year and the dams provided muddy but drinkable water and for the first twelve months or so not much happened to the actual property. But the thought of improving my pasture to reduce or completely eradicate the need for additional hand feeding and also feeding myself with all this land which was, up until now, just kind of sitting around uselessly and unproductively, soon entered my mind and has prompted me to do some research and finally start improving this place!
There is not much here yet, some old fences that severely restrict my horses' access to grazing due to their hazardous nature, some small-ish dams, some of which have silted in when the dam wall on the single large dam broke during the floods, just after we signed the paperwork for the place and some pasture with lots of erosion problems, oh and not to forget, some remnant native forest and weedy regrowth.
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Horses
I spend a lot of time with them and my main reason for buying acreage was to enable me to keep my horses at home. Here they are.
Roastie... I mean, chick update!
Not much new, just some more photos and thoughts on chickens.
More Peafowl Photos
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Peafowl
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Raised Beds
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Mulch
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Impulse Buying: Ooops
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Things to do on a rainy day
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Fodder Trees
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Trees
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