Chicken Run

We've had the guys from VEG around the last few days building a chook run and strawyard. The chook run is divided into three sections and encloses most of our fruit trees. Once built we plan to add some polypipe and bird netting to protect the fruit and help keep the chooks on the inside.
Last weekend Natimukjen and I rode over to CERES in Brunswick for the Autumn Harvest Festival, stopping for lunch at Foxy Brown cafe in Westgarth. At CERES we had a look at the chooks and pretty much decided against Isabrowns. Adam Grubb was there and gave a tutorial on keeping chooks.

Draggin the Fly

My nom de plume derives from the genteel art of fly fishing where one aims to land an artificial fly, made of fur and feather, onto the surface of the water, and have it drift naturally with the current in the hope of deceiving the wily brown trout into thinking it is an insect on the surface that would make a delicious snack. However, varying currents in the river act upon the line and fly causing the fly to drag across the water's surface in an unnatural way that scares off any fish in the vicinity. So a dragging fly is something the fly angler uses all their skill to avoid.

Today I made a trip towards Flowerdale and the King Parrot Creek for one of my few angling outings this season. The creek and surrounds have recovered well since the 2009 bushfires and the preceding drought that caused part of the creek to dry up completely. The flooding rains of the past two La Nina years have scoured the creek bed and improved the habitat for the aquatic insects that form the trout's diet.
So despite my lack of practice it turned out to be a good day on the water. Four trout caught and released of which two were considerably larger than the norm for "The Parrot". Possibly due to the abundance of food. I also hooked and lost another two trout but had the pleasure of watching each one inspect the fly for a few seconds as they drifted downstream with the current before deciding it was the genuine article and snatched it into their mouth.


Dragginfly

A quick update

A quick update on what we've been doing since our last post on the house. Our permaculture garden is well underway courtesy of the team at Very Edible Gardens (VEG). The former pool now has six raised beds on top made of cypress and another one above the underground tank. We planted them out with a variety of vegies including silverbeet, brocolli, leeks, beans etc...

 

At the eastern end of the pool we have a timber ramp for wheelbarrow access and a pergola on the balcony which one day will have grapes.

 

We also have a pond which will hopefully attract some frogs.

At the front of the house the paling fence has been removed and replaced with the old pool fence. The garden has been terraced with more vegie plots and a gravel path of lilydale toppings leads from the gate to the front door.

 

Inside we have fitted most of the windows with cellular (honeycomb) blinds with double cells. These are effective at insulating the windows even more. One cold night recently I was adjusting one of them and could feel the cold air trapped between the window and the blinds. They also help keep my office cool on hot days.
We recently used the cooling system and it worked a treat. It cooled the house several degrees very quickly. The temperature of water coming from the pool was 12 degrees and it returned at 15 degrees.
Our nett electricity usage is less than half what is was even though we now have a household of five and lots of cloudy days. On a per capita basis our total energy usage looks to be less than half what is was.
Inside the temperature is considerably more stable and the combination of double glazing with low-e glass and cellular blinds makes the house feel more comfortable for the same air temperature inside - the result of reduced radiant heat

Experimenting with starch crops

I took a week off work to get some recreation, and spent it helping my parents tidy up some areas of their large garden. First below is the frame for their poly-tunnel, which is one half of a recycled commercial growers tunnel relocated to this part of their land.

Next is this portion of my parents veggie patch, where I planted millet (top left) amaranth (top right) and buckwheat (bottom right)

 

Here is the same patch a few months later with the millet (top left) and the buckwheat (bottom right) doing well. The amaranth never came up.

And finally a potatoe patch where I planted 4 rows of 4 different varieties of potatoes, including 'eyes' cut from potatoes consumed in the kitchen.

 And now here a few months later with the potatoes all doing incredibly well:

Sustainable House Day

Sustainable House Day today and our house was open from 10am until 4pm. We had visitors arriving from 10am sharp and the last ones arrived just before 4pm.There were 150 lines of names listed many of which were multiple so at the moment we think we had 200+ visitors.
We got fantastic support from Pati, Judith and Neville from NowArchitecture; Lex and Sassy from Very Edible Gardens; Aunty G and friends John, Louise, Samantha and Nate.
There was huge interest in the all aspects of our renovations: solar wall, pool conversion, permaculture garden, fibreglass windows and hydronic heating. Some people were puzzled how the hydronic heating works when the panels were cool to touch. Despite the wintry conditions outside (max 13 deg) inside the house was a balmy 19 to 20 degrees due entirely to passive heating, even with doors being opened frequently as visitors circulated around.What better demonstration of sustainable design!
Dragginfly

Many thanks to all our volunteers who made the day a complete success. My role was to talk about the passion and the philosophy behind what we are doing, while the architects gave technical detail about the building, Dragginfly was able to discuss energy issues with his Electrical Engineering background, and Lex explained the thinking behind the garden design. Many thanks also to our visitors, who were on the whole informed, knowledgeable, sympathetic and eager to learn about our journey so far and our plans for the future. We were a little nervous - would someone fall and hurt themselves, would something get damaged, would we have no interest, or people hostile to our vision? None of that happened. I'm very glad we did it even though the project is still clearly not complete - the house is mostly finished but the garden retrofit has only just begun and the fences all need to be replaced. We intend doing it again next year and hope that many of our visitors will return next year to see the progress over the 12 months.
Natimukjen

Now with plants

Jen planted the first seedlings in the raised garden beds today. Lettuces, silverbeet (chard), onion, leeks, brocolli, eggplant (aubergines) and bok choi

Today was weekly reading day. This week we generated almost as much electricity as we used and gas usage for heating was way down from previous years. 

We spent our day tidying up in preparation for Sustainable House Day.

Garden beds

The garden beds are nearing completion. The lads from VEG came and installed 7 raised garden beds made of Cypress pine. The base covering the old pool consists of small stones, a layer of geotextile and mulch.The raised beds are then filled with soil and a cover of pea straw.