Permaculture class at my place

Lay awake listening to a night of heavy rain and mulling over a big day ahead, and woke to a drizzly morning and an early start to the day. There was the vegan cake recipe found online to try (with my own lemons and rosemary), the weekend’s pumpkin seeds and dried olives to prepare for snacks, and a ‘leftovers soup’ to make while clearing the fridge and tidying the kitchen.

The weather was good news for me ‒ just the loungeroom to tidy, a cosy place for a day around the big table ‒ but bad news for Chris, who was determined to fire up the pizza oven. And of course all that rain left the swales impressively full of water.

A day of lively discussion, lots of food, and much laughter ‒ business as usual. And Beck doing an admirable job of keeping us vaguely on track, with a particular focus on underlying ‘Essential Knowledge’ we need to tick off for our various competencies.

Having identified things we’re still a bit hazy about (and a confidence boost realising how many things we’ve now learned, to the extent of integrating much of it as just ‘common sense’ or ‘common knowledge’) we’re all to research and report on specific aspects next class.

My topic is ‘dynamic accumulators’. Sounds like a cool band name, but apparently refers to those plants that draw up hard-to-access minerals and make them available within the permaculture system. Given my fondness for weeds and the challenges of heavy clay, a mine of hard-to-access minerals, this should be something I can really use.

Other discussion explored the familiar acronyms (OHS) and introduced new ones (IPM), considered preserving methods and how long they last safely, looked at different methods of documenting what we do, and debated the teasing issue of when and how to move from the potentially endless cycle of design and research to diving in to the actual doing.

With the rain having dropped to a mist, there was time for a quick walk around the place. Great to have so many experts and enthusiasts to offer a fresh perspective. There were bouquets for the rocket (fast-growing, so sweet and delicious), and brickbats for the unpruned new fruit trees (destined for awkward shapes and straining the inevitably damaged roots), encouragement to accept the capeweed in the orchard and put a fence around the whole compact site to deal once and for all with animal damage, a positive spin put on the SEC pole issues given the fire-barrier potential for an alternate access road round the back of the property, and endorsement of the windbreak and swale system taking shape for the olive grove area (with the suggestion to aerate around trees with the pitchfork while ground is softer, and the observation that mushrooms as evidence of fungal activity are a strong positive for the new fruit trees).

Two great positives ‒ Beck is confident my dam isn’t infested with Spiny Rush (of the ‘noxious weed’ variety) but is surrounded by an indigenous rush; and no-one offered any reasons against using and spreading the amaryllis as a pioneer plant.

Finished up with a discussion of blogging, and an improvised tutorial, from Claudia and I, who both have blogs underway. (Claudia's has lots on vegan cooking, food generally, and their whole owner/builder experience: http://claudiasgreenacres.blogspot.com/)

Some quick foodie notes: the cake tasted delicious but wasn’t cooked in centre ‒ given our dodgy oven, perhaps spread in trays not tins in future, as more of a slice; the olives were a hit!; and the larger pumpkin seeds weren’t suited to roasting, though the smaller ones were delicious.

And one last lesson: design for the barbecue area behind the house needs to incorporate dry, safe storage for kindling and pizza wood!