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Milkwood
Milkwood
Details
Commenced:
01/01/2007
Submitted:
26/01/2011
Last updated:
19/09/2016
Location:
107 Redfern St , Sydney + Surrounds, NSW, AU
Phone:
+61 2 5300 4437
Website:
http://www.Milkwood.net
Climate zone:
Mediterranean





Followers
Aaron Jerad Abdur-Rahman McCausland Adam McShane Adam Shand Adrienne Wimbush Alan Stuart alex jackson Alexandra Berendt allie godfrey Alper Can Kılıç Amanda Eurich Amanda McLennan Ana Garcia Andrew Sutton Anthony Andrist Bar Shermeister Ben Hamley Benjamin Humphrey Benson Anthony Borja Diaz Brendon Farlow Bron(wyn) Elliott Campbell Burns Carlo Makhoul Chowgene Koay Chris Wallis Christian Douglas Coralie Tate Daniel Gair Daniel Halsey Daniele Longo Darren Roberts Darren J.  Doherty David  n Abigail David Perry David Williamson Deborah Willis Denise Grant Deniz Ucok Desmond Ford Dilek Sezgin Dilek Yalcin Demiralp Duygu Baslican EBRU VURAL Edmond Chow Edwin Clarke Elena Parmiggiani Eliza Brazel Eliza Corona Eva Mader Fabian  Torres filipa leal Fiona Campbell Fiona Hasselman Fiona Plsek Flordeliza Harris Floyd C. Constable Fraser Bayley Fred Tanner Gemma Hurst Geoff Capper Gordon Williams Grant Wilson Grifen Hope H. Mine Benligirayoğlu Harry Wykman Helder Valente Holly James Hubert de Kalbermatten Hui-i Chiang Hunter Lydon Ian Trew Ida Chittenden Imogen Semmler Ingrid Pullen James McCann James Reid Jan Zijlstra Janice Little Jarod Santana Jean-Luc Henry Jeremy Yau Jessica Stirling Jo Darvill Jo McLeay Jodie Lane Jonathan Oehm Jose Dib Josef Blümel Julie Pagliaro Kalinya  Farm Kate  McQuiggin Kelly Pagliaro Kent Fordham Kenton Zerbin Kerri Paine Kerry Given Kerry Ann Ennett Kim Pagliaro Kirsten Bradley Klifford J Fyshwick Kyle Tengler Landcraft Permaculture ...... Paul Boundy Laura Mathias Leisa Cox Leita Lord Leon van Wyk Liam Dolan Lilly Zeitler Linda  Chan Linden Gerstel Line Marie Elkjær Johansen Loren Taylor Luyendyk Lucia Gibson Lucie de Framond Marcello Bianchi Marcelo Bueno Maree Beveridge Mari Korhonen maria baltazzi María Luz Cardozo Mark Brown Mark Brown Marty Miller-Crispe Matias Pajulahti Matt Luthi MAUD LAMBERT Megan Bridge Megan Gonzalez Michael Vyse Michel Thill Michelle Dallas Michelle Stephenson Morag Embleton Mustafa Fatih Bakir Mystee Unwin Natasha Giddings Neil Silverhair Nick Huggins Nick Ritar Owen Hablutzel Paloma Correa paul barker Paul Ciaramitaro Paul Murray Paul Tan Paul Young Paula Mendes Pedro Franco Pedro Serpa Pete Blake Peter Hipe Peter Koll Rachel Nagle Rafaela Tavares Régis Grosset Rene Michalak Rhonda Ayliffe Ricardo Vieira Richard Telford rob durham Robert Grau Rubén Navarro Russell Mudge Ryan Rutley Saenz lma Salah Hammad Samantha Lau SELAHATTİN GOKHAN ERYILMAZ Seneca Haynes Seval Ebru Yıldız Şevval Nur Kütük Shelley McClure Sheree Ogden Silvia Floresta Stephanie Ladwig-Cooper Stephanie (Vetiver) Blennerhassett Steve Hanson Tanya Mendija tia liem Todd Ross Tom Kendall Toni Wells Turgut  S. Yildirim Valentin Grasso Valeria Andrews Vanessa Witt Vanessa Monge Augusto Fernandes Vic Gaffney Victor Barahona Virgínia Walton Warren Clendenning Wen Rolland Wendy Howard Will Borowski Willi Paul Woody Meyer Xavier  San Giorgi yagmur kutlar
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Milkwood

Project Type

Urban, Rural, Residential, Balcony Garden, Commercial, Community, School Projects, Demonstration, Educational

Project Summary

Milkwood is a crew of doers and makers, dedicated to skills for smart, simple, regenerative living.

Project Description

 

Milkwood is a crew of doers and makers, dedicated to skills for smart, simple, regenerative living.

We're a social enterprise based south of Sydney, Australia.

We thrive on sharing practical skills and knowledge that can help individuals and communities move towards a mode of living that’s ethical, abundant, and deeply hands-on.

At the moment we do this in two ways: with short courses held in both in Sydney and nearby farms, and with free online how-tos and resources.

We work with the best teachers we can find. People who are not only walking the talk, but are also skilled, humble and awesome communicators, who can empower folks to make the most of their new knowledge.

What do you want to learn today?

 

Updates

Upcoming Earthship Talk with Michael Reynolds in Sydney!

Guess what? We’re hosting a great evening talk with Michael Reynolds, that world-leading sustainability pioneer of Earthship Biotecture, in Sydney on the 26th Feb. Do you want to come?

Posted over 12 years ago (0 comments)

A Way Through the Woods: Designing the Paths in our Forest Garden

when you think of a forest garden, do you think of paths, their construction, and their capabilities? Or do you just figure you’ll wind your way through the green herbage as you see fit?

Posted almost 13 years ago (1 comments)

Nick Ritar’s TEDx Canberra Talk: Two things you can do Every Day to save the world

Recently Nick gave a talk at TEDx Canberra. He talked about stewarding nutrients, how we can solve the problem of peak phosphorous, and about how to grow the best cumquats ever.

Posted almost 13 years ago (0 comments)

Rocket Stove Water Heater Redux

Rocket stoves are awesome, experimental, and a knowledge stream in flux. Or ours is, at any rate. Our rocket stove water heater has been doing its thing for nearly 3 years now, so we decided to take it apart and do a full examination of how it had fared.

Posted almost 13 years ago (0 comments)

Funky Urban Permaculture Designs by VEG

Adam Grubb and Dan Palmer are some of the most accomplished urban permaculture designers I know. Aside from being the founding forces of the Permablitz movement, they also design professionally – creating functional, edible awesomeness in small suburban s

Posted almost 13 years ago (0 comments)

Top tank overflow: design + implementation

On occasion, our two big water tanks at the very top of Milkwood Farm overflow. What to do with the intermittent extra water? It’s too precious to just drain away. Time to design a water catchment and planting plan to make the most of it.

Posted almost 13 years ago (0 comments)

Eating out of the garden – finally!

Thanks to the amazing efforts of many forces, I can officially say that we are now feeding everyone at Milkwood Farm from the Organic Market Garden each day! Starting with feasts of fresh rocket, lettuce and pak choi.

Posted almost 13 years ago (0 comments)

Forest Garden Blooming

Spring is slowly but surely springing at Milkwood, and our new forest garden is beginning to wake up from the cold and grow, grow grow!

Posted almost 13 years ago (0 comments)

Growing Annual Vegetables CD Rom: review

So we’re sitting at the kitchen table, planning our market garden with Joyce and Mike from Allsun Farm, and Joyce suddenly looks at me sharply: “you’ve seen our vegetable growing CD ROM, haven’t you?” Erm, no?

Posted about 13 years ago (0 comments)

Our forest garden design: the future is forested and foodlike

Over the last couple of months, we’ve been cooking up a re-design of our top food forest with Harris. Once we move into our tinyhouse, this food forest will be right outside our back door. So we want to get serious about making it a gorgeous place that dr

Posted about 13 years ago (2 comments)

Joel Salatin: debt-free farming for beginners (video)

Last summer, when Joel Salatin was at our farm, we asked him a question or two. The first one was: what’s your advice for young-uns who want to farm but don’t want to get into debt?

Posted over 13 years ago (1 comments)

Joel Salatin: how to chose farmland (video)

Where should I buy land? Where’s a good area? What should I be looking for in a landscape?

Posted over 13 years ago (2 comments)

Rocket stove roundup

At Milkwood Farm we love both our rocket stove water heater and our mini rocket stove, but with winter taking hold I’m dreaming of new ideas, so I thought I’d review what else is out there.

Posted over 13 years ago (0 comments)

PDC week 1: Permaculture Ethics and History

It’s sometimes a bit hard to explain to people just what a Permaculture Design Course entails – the scope is both broad and intricate – but in it’s essence it’s ecological systems theory, applied to an everyday context.

Posted over 13 years ago (0 comments)

Joel Salatin: debt-free farming for beginners

Last summer, when Joel Salatin was at our farm, we asked him a question or two. The first one was: what’s your advice for young-uns who want to farm but don’t want to get into debt?

Posted over 13 years ago (0 comments)

RawBale Chicken House Design

Within the Gravity Chicken Run, we needed a place for our chickens that was warm in winter and cool in summer. We also wanted it to be super easy to clean, cheap to build, and easy to keep our chickens healthy long term. So we came up with a design called

Posted over 13 years ago (0 comments)

Permaculture School Garden: Cringila Public School

Cringila is one of the most culturally diverse suburbs in NSW, and so the school garden chatters with many languages, with permaculture and gardening as the common tongue.

Posted over 13 years ago (1 comments)

Kids in the Garden: our pick of School Garden books

School gardens are enjoying a growing revival currently, which is great because they have the power to be pretty transformative places.

Posted over 13 years ago (0 comments)

Joel Salatin returns to Australia

To call the Salatin’s farming practices at Polyface Farms in Virginia USA ‘innovative’ is a bit of a massive understatement. Joel’s unique approach to productive small-scale farming, that focuses on great ideas, biomimicry, and what can only be called tru

Posted over 13 years ago (0 comments)

Survivalism is the new black

I am not a survivalist. Really I’m not. I refuse to concede that my family’s future may involve turning our farm into a stockade or living in our root cellar.

Posted over 13 years ago (4 comments)

Gravity Chicken Run Design

Gravity and chickens are two of our favorite natural forces at Milkwood. Enter the Gravity Chicken Run!

Posted over 13 years ago (0 comments)

DIY Aquaponics Designs

Recently we ran our first Aquaponics Workshop in Sydney, and it was a very enlightening weekend.

Posted over 13 years ago (2 comments)

David Holmgren in Sydney

We’re bringing David Holmgren to Sydney shortly as a guest teacher on our Winter Part-time PDC. So we thought we’d offer up a dinner while he’s here. Would you like to come?

Posted over 13 years ago (0 comments)

The walls they rise

We don’t know of any precedents of doing walls with wattle-and-daub (at least in the recent past), but multiple natural builders have assured us it should work. Hmm!

Posted over 13 years ago (1 comments)

How to make a wicking box (mini wicking bed)

A wicking box is a contained, portable way to grow vegies (or anything else) with very little water. Essentially, it’s a wicking bed in miniature. Very cool.

Posted over 13 years ago (0 comments)

Rock Science: building our gabion wall

I am now fully convinced of the glory of gabions. Not only can they create leaky weirs in dryland gullies, they can also liberate courtyards. Like ours, for example.

Posted over 13 years ago (2 comments)

Urban Beekeeping: checking a Warré hive

No stings, no angry bees, no belching smoke everywhere to drive the bees off – just gentle, bee-friendly behavior of a beekeeper who, frankly, knows better.

Posted over 13 years ago (0 comments)

Earthbag dome, happy home

We’d always wanted to try earthbag building, but where do you start with such a venture?

Posted over 13 years ago (0 comments)

End of the Season and an Open Day

At the end of this week we will be closing the gates of Milkwood Farm until next Spring. It’s been a massive year of building, growing, learning and doing. But now we’re about to go into winter mode here at the farm.

Posted over 13 years ago (0 comments)

Araucanas and Rabbit Stew

Easter on Sunday. Check. Our Araucana chickens already lay blue eggs, so that’s those sorted. Now all we need is a rabbit or two, and we’re ready for an upside-down Easter.

Posted over 13 years ago (0 comments)

Permaculture at Kiama Public School

School gardens have incredible potential to provide experiential learning. But what’s the best way to go about setting one up? I’ve been wondering this for a while.

Posted over 13 years ago (0 comments)

Compost toilet specifics: the bins

Wendell Berry once said 'if you eat, you’re involved'. He was talking about agriculture, but if you ask me, he really meant humanure.

Posted over 13 years ago (11 comments)

Why pasture cropping is such a Big Deal

Col Seis has been ‘doing thing a bit differently’ on his farm ‘Winona’ for decades. About 15 years ago he started fiddling with an idea he had called pasture cropping – sowing crops directly into pasture, without first tilling the soil and turning it over

Posted over 13 years ago (0 comments)

Design for Life: the Food Forest DVD

I desperately want to be Annemarie and Graham Brookman. Not right away – maybe about 30 years from now.

Posted over 13 years ago (0 comments)

How to make a mini rocket stove (mark 1)

Rocket stoves have become a part of our lives at Milkwood Farm. They’re hyper energy efficient, can be built out of rubbish and result in more usable heat that any other wood-burning system we’ve come across. Big love.

Posted over 13 years ago (2 comments)

What we’re reading: Monsanto + Mushrooms

In our reading room this week, it’s all about interconnection. The vast, unseen webs of mycelium running through the soil, and the tangled and huge implications of Genetically Modified Organisms.

Posted over 13 years ago (0 comments)

Combining Two Warré Honeybee Colonies

This year has been a tough one for our new Warré beehives, and for bees in general throughout the central west. How to get the colonies through the winter?

Posted over 13 years ago (4 comments)

Sydney Winter PDC with special guest David Holmgren

The aim with this format is that our students are supported and challenged in their learning every step of the way, while being able to continue their normal lives at the same time. Huzzah!

Posted over 13 years ago (0 comments)

The saga of the middle dam

First off, i would like to make an important point: we are yet to meet a challenge at Milkwood Farm that we could not fix with careful thought, good advice, relentless research, a strong dose of creativity and a stronger dose of humor. That said, the saga

Posted over 13 years ago (5 comments)

My land is your land: the Landshare concept

Landshare is a concept we’ve been excited about for a while. It addresses the huge (and getting huger) issue of land access in an immediate, accessible fashion.

Posted over 13 years ago (2 comments)

Visiting the Marrickville Food Forest

Deep in the heart of Marrickville, in a little street of workers cottages, right under the flight path to Sydney International Airport, there is a food forest.

Posted over 13 years ago (1 comments)

The basecamp kitchen garden explosion

During the Spring Permaculture Design Certificate here at Milkwood, a funny thing happened to our basecamp garden. Somehow, it quadrupled in size. It was the most un-anticipated permablitz i have ever been a part of...

Posted over 13 years ago (2 comments)

Earthbag workshop Limerick comp winners!

Thanks to everyone who entered to win a spot on our EarthBag Building Workshop. Here are the winning limericks!

Posted over 13 years ago (2 comments)

Bringing home the bees

Much excitement this week as the bees finally arrived at Milkwood Farm. Tim Malfroy, Australia's premier natural beekeeper, brought around 3 Warré beehives, complete with bees, to come live at our place...

Posted over 13 years ago (3 comments)

Crash-grazing the creekflat: an experiment

Flat ground. Seemingly simple, but oh so full of implications. We didn’t really think about how cool flat ground was until we calculated that it made up exactly 10% of the total landmass of Milkwood. That means 90% hilly bits. Hmm.

Posted over 13 years ago (1 comments)

EarthBag Building Workshop at Milkwood Farm

The idea that you can build a structurally strong house with nothing more complicated than a bunch of bags, earth, clay and lime, plus some basic on-farm materials and plenty of hands on deck is pretty exciting for a lot of people, including me. Earthbag

Posted over 13 years ago (0 comments)
Courses Taught Here!
Project Badges
Urban Rural Residential Balcony Commercial Community School Demonstration Educational
Administrators
Kirsten Bradley - Director, Education, Marketing Nick Ritar - Director, Education, Teacher
Team Members
Floyd C. Constable - Garden Manager 2015 season Michael Hewins - Garden Manager 2015 season

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Community Project

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