We had a wonderful gathering at Oakdene in late Jan, 2018. Read more here.

Check it out!

Over the last few months we’ve planted rather a few trees. I mean we are always planting a little something here, a little something there. But this last round is the biggest planting since we kicked this whole project off 6 years back. Here’s what’s gone or about to go in the ground (excluding an extra 200 Cryptomeria japonicas that came first…):

And here’s some photos from planting walnuts yesterday…

The trick to happy gussies while daddy plants – a portable cubby!

First we dipped the walnut roots in duckweed for a nitrogen hit…

With five of these…

And five of these…

How exciting! Bring on 5 or 8 years from now 😉

So Kepop’s been following up our recent earthworks spree and getting seriously stoned around the path and veggie patch outside his and Sunan’s house. Stones, pavers, bricks, anything he can get his hands on, and what a lovely job he’s making of it. You can see the larger area he’s working above, and the details below…

So over the last few months Dan has been working with Kepop and Sunan on the design of their homestead and the surrounding common areas. We’ve also ordered about 350 new trees and shrubs and have a bobcat coming for some earth shaping in the next few weeks. It is going to be an action packed winter! Here is a vid about the process:

Permaculture Design Example with Dan from VEG

… and here’s a few diagrams we’ve been making along the way (not the banner diagram at the top is one Manda and Dan did years ago in Uganda – just to set the scene here ;-))…

Here we mapped the current flow patterns and frequencies of foot traffic, bikes, animals, light vehicles, and heavy vehicles (click to enlarge then use your browser’s back key to continue with article…).

Here are different microclimates, areas or what Christopher Alexander calls ‘centres’ across the site:

Also important to map desired and undesired lines of sight…

Here are some of the things Sunan and Kepop wanted their house garden to feel like

And the areas and subareas they wanted to lay out.

Concept design phase 1…

2…

3…

So for a year or two Kepop has been making noises about his cunning plan to build a footbridge over the creek, linking the centre and the forest park so you can take a stroll to the forest park without having to use the main driveway bridge. Over the 2015 christmas break his vision was realised, with a few of us about to help make it happen. The first step involved felling two beautiful eucalyptus regnans (mountain ash) trees we planted five years ago. With stems taller than 12m (yep, that’s 2.4m growth per year!), these made perfect main support beams for the bridge. We then banged in a few more eucalypt poles into the mud beneath the bridge as extra support, as it was very wobbly at first.

After lopping off the side branches we then dragged these into position with Kepop’s little blue tractor. Not without a few minor hiccups, but we got there after a while, and the Bran sorted two platforms at either end and lashed them in position with fence wire. The Kepop pulled out this drill that looks like it was made in the fifties or something!

The next step was to fell about 10 smaller eucalypts (as part of our thinning process), a combination of what Dan reckons were young E. nitens, E. ovata, and E. fastigata, for the bits of wood you actually walk on. Anyways the process, which resulted in a sweet-as wee bridge – bewdy!

So today we knocked up the beginnings of the Oakdene Forest farm website – yay! We don’t plan to tell anyone about it for a while, but if you do come across it please do give us any feedback – let us know what you reckon.