We have been very busy lately on the farm and have three interns helping us recover from the June floods and preparing for a resilient future. Here is a picture of the largest slips on our property.

I have counted 13 dead sheep on the neighbouring farm, including these two.

The above slip was caused in part by water pooling up behind it. With a simple, shallow drain we are able to divert most of that water away from this vulnerable hillside.

The drain is less than 10 metres long and only about 10 cm deep.

The drain is just below this odd piece of geography on our farm. The fence goes up the hillside and then right back down.

We will fence off this hillside and plant it to manuka.

Elsewhere on the farm, we can see the second stage of ecological succession as ponga are growing underneath gorse, which stabilises the slopes and adds nitrogen to the soil. It will be taken over by native bush over time.

Here is a view down the valley.

Up the hill in zones 1-2-3, we have been busy propagating black currants…

… feeding lambs…

… brewing beer…

…sniffing plum blossoms.

Our mate, Simon, has brought this macrocarpa log over to mill into slabs.   

We were given this goat, Buster, on Friday.

Kelly the intern has drawn a zone 1-2-3 map.

Kaitiaki Farm.

Peace, Estwing

Although we have had a few more frosts this week, there are also signs of spring. There are buds on the plum trees.

The garlic is taking off.

New growth has appeared on the Chilean guava.

The winter veggie garden is picking up speed.

We have been busy planting vulnerable hillsides with trees.

In order to keep the sheep out of the trees we have had to add battens to the eight wire fences. I found totara battens to use instead of treated pine.

We have also begun digging a new pond.

We’ve also had some cool things arrive in the post that we will be selling locally at discounted prices. This rocket stove crossed with a thermette is pretty cool.

Iconic permaculture book for sale below retail price.

Get ready for summer with a solar cooker.

It’s here! The 2016 Permaculture Principles Calendar.

For the third year in a row, Verti has made the calendar.

If you are interested in any of these products, please contact us.

Peace, Estwing

We’ve been through a slow patch with cold temperatures and short hours of daylight, but now we are on the back side of winter. We have two lambs so far.

And some very pregnant ewes.

Kitchen garden ticking over.

A bit late when I took these photos.

Beautiful moonrise, though.

Poplar poles were delivered today to plant on the slopes.

Heaps of flax still to plant.

Garlic is pumping.

I built a new chicken tractor on Sunday.

 Flax windbreak growing steadily. 

Anyone want to buy a duck?

Or a car?  

Peace, Estwing

Eco design is a large field, and I spend almost as much time advising on land management as I do on healthy homes. In a nutshell, eco design is about working with nature instead of against it.

Eco design is the beautiful marriage of art and science. In the housing sector, the science is mostly physics, but when is comes to land management the science is mostly biology and hydrology, along with a healthy dose of chemistry. Whether it’s a residential section or an entire farm, ecological land management focuses on two goals: diversity and moderation.

Biodiversity simply means providing a wide range of living organisms. Moderation means buffering against climatic extremes such as drought and flood. Both of these improve the resilience of any piece of land, and for farms would more than likely ensure long term profitability and protect against short term volatility.

It was with this perspective that I registered for a presentation called, “Doug Avery’s Resilient Farmer: Innovate or Stagnate.” The large venue was packed wall to wall with stoic looking farmers. Being unfamiliar with Doug and his work I was not prepared for what first came out of his mouth.

For nearly an hour, Avery spoke almost exclusively about depression and suicide among farmers. From his website:

“In New Zealand, we are twice as likely to die from our own hand as in a motor accident. Men are three times more likely to die than women, and rural men are twice as likely again. Below the tragedy of suicide is a huge pyramid of depression. This is something we all have to work together to address.”

This message was echoed in a front page story on Monday in the Chronicle: “Don’t accept tough farmer myth.” Sam Kilmister’s article quoted Lyn Neeson of the Rural Support Trust:

“If we do perpetuate the idea that farmers are stoic and tough and can get through anything, when something like this does happen and they can’t cope they feel like something is wrong with them, which makes them very vulnerable.”

Within a week of attending Avery’s talk, I heard Tim Groser, National Party MP and Minister of Trade, on the radio warning that the nation’s farmers needed to develop better resilience to the expected impacts of climate change. I’ve been developing resilient properties for over a decade and a half, so I agree with Groser that a prudent and conservative approach to land management is best.

This makes a line in Kilmister’s article especially concerning: “The trust is an important part of shooting down the perception that resilience is the backbone of the farming community.”

The takeaway from all of this appears to be that the resilience within the farming community is low but it needs to be high. We have our work cut out for us, and just as eco design is the future of housing in New Zealand it is also the future of farming. 

Three concerns are identified by Neeson of the Rural Support Trust as especially worrisome to farmers: market prices, weather, and off-farm income. Eco design specifically addresses two of these factors, which are too often considered out of a farmer’s control.

Diversifying farm income is a critical step to developing resilience to price volatility. In nature, monocultures are vulnerable to insects and diseases, often with disastrous results. The same is true of farming.

Buffering against the extremes of flood and drought, while not changing the weather, can moderate the effects of extreme weather events on a farm and its income. The best time to prepare for the next extreme weather event is yesterday. The next best time is today.

We have been on our farm for less than a year, and I have already spent thousands of hours and thousands of dollars on drought-proofing, flood mitigation, and diversification. I have come to call this approach ‘presilience’. Some of the best eco designers around the world call it ‘regenerative design’ or ‘regenerative agriculture’. In a nutshell, it’s innovate or stagnate. I know which side I’m on.

Sidebar: 2021 Whanganui Flood Prelief Fund – Prevention is better than cure.

We have voluntarily reduced stocking rates on our farm and taken steep hillsides out of grazing to help protect the city from the next flood. This approach can be cheaper and more effective than building higher stopbanks.

You can help make our community more ‘presilient’. We are accepting donations of trees and of cash to go to the purchase of trees to plant on vulnerable slopes. Electronic donations can be made to this account: 38 9014 0367090 00

Here is another update on the development of our new property. The rains have brought some beautiful mushrooms up in our new vege garden, but we don’t know what type they are. We are playing it safe.

This should give you an idea of how much rain we have had in the last month. This tub was empty on April 7th.

The pond I have been digging is filling quickly.

We have lots of trees ready to plant out.  This is about half of the trees we will plant this winter.

I bought 10 olive trees for $4 each. I have transplanted them into larger pots and will let them grow for another year before planting them out.

I have planted about 100 Black Boy peach stones in these sand beds. They will germinate next spring after spending the winter outdoors. Then I will prick them out and pot them up.

We are preparing to plant a couple thousand garlic in late June. Here is a bed being prepared by killing the grass and managing a compost pile next to it for easy access.

We have a great source of wood shavings from our midwife who keeps fancy chickens. I can fit about his much in the back of my Swift on the way home from work each fortnight.

Speaking of chickens, our little chicks are getting their adult plumage just in time for the cold weather.     

Some friends dropped this Orpington rooster by yesterday. They live in town and only discovered last week that he is a and not a she. The neighbours were not impressed.

And speaking of midwives, we planted baby Manu’s placenta with this apple tree, which is one of the original root stocks of the Monty’s Surprise.

Yesterday I also got delivery of a broadfork that a friend welded for me. A broadfork is used to decompress soils. I’ll write an entire post on broadforks in the future.

Also yesterday I found this waiting for me next to the barn first thing in the morning.

Never a dull moment on a permaculture farm.  

  Peace, Estwing