Matthew Pethurst

I like to use an orbital sander / belt sander, whatever you have available. Sit the sander on my lap, upside down so that I can squeeze between my legs. Hold the knife with two hands, knife, chisel, hatchet, anything you wish to sharpen, to whatever degree bevel you require, and sand away through the different grits of paper. Start with an 80, move up to 120/180/240/400

Hi Anne,

Thanks for the welcome. I shall try to put together a series of photos so that you can follow along. Will respond back with the link when done. Always nice to look back at the work we've accomplished thus far. Can often be looking forward to the work we have to do rather than enjoying how far we've come.

Have a lovely day  

I think chickens are a great way of starting with animals. We are very excited to get our laying hens but it's still a bit too early for us at the moment, thankfully my mother in law has some. Have you built any fly larvae traps to get some free proteins for the chooks?

Thanks Tim, hopefully see you around!

Timothy Norton wrote:Welcome to Permies!

What an exciting adventure, I'm envious. I'll be sure to check out your videos as they come out.

What kind of animals do you envision having?  

Hi Timothy, Thanks for a positive first response! - A little nervous sharing our project so appreciate that. I recently killed my first batch of chickens, with the help of Carolinas Mum. This is something we would like to do, for eggs and meat. We like the idea of ducks as they are more gentle to the land than chickens, and in some years when our forestry has established, some sheep for milk/cheese. I've also been toying with raising rabbits for meat. But they are rather cute haha! Do you have animals?

Hi All,

I'm Matthew and my Wife is Carolina. We have finally embarked on our homestead journey after purchasing roughly 1.3 acres of Eucalyptus and Australian Acacia forest. We are currently felling the trees and will be using the timber to build everything from our house, the barbeque area, mushroom houses, workshops, animal houses, fencing etc. I took my first PDC in Thailand in 2017 and spent several years travelling and working on others projects before moving back to UK to learn Carpentry and Construction full time. Here I met my Carolina and we saved enough money to purchase some land here in her native island of Madeira. We are re-planting the forest with a mixed species food forest, on contour following keyline design. We aim to run animals through the tree lanes, grow mushrooms and create some guest housing to teach others in person.

We have been documenting our journey on YouTube and would love if you joined our community, learn from our failures, jump with our triumph and provide us plenty of tips along the way! I shall post the link below.

With Gratitude,
Matthew & Carolina

https://www.youtube.com/@NotQuiteOffGrid