Hi Giselle. Thanks for the nice comments about the soil and farm here. The top soil is about 20cm deep in some parts and probably averages about 15cm across the farm. When I bought the block 7 years ago, there was no top soil at all and rainfall used to literally run over the sun-baked clay which was as hard as
concrete. Digging holes for the original fruit trees was a seriously hard task.
Not to scare you, but I reckon that I've probably brought onto the farm about 450 cubic metres of woody mulch,
compost and rock dust during those years (mostly woody mulch). It sounds like a lot, but is actually only about 1 or 2 cubic metres per week and it all disappears into the top soil. Most of it is sourced from composted green waste collected by the councils from gardens in Melbourne. The deeper the top soil, the more water that your soil holds. It was all moved by hand too. A cubic metre just doesn't go very far.
Launceston has a great climate and you will find that you can grow pretty much the same sorts of plants that I grow here. If the cold air drains away from your property during winter and also assuming you are not in the bottom of a valley, then you will easily grow sub tropical fruit trees such as citrus and loquats. I'm experimenting with
coffee shrubs, tea camellias, babaco, white sapote, macadamia nuts and plenty of other plants that are supposed to not grow here. I'm sorry, but I don't know of any suppliers of heritage plants around that northern area though. Have you thought about
http://www.diggers.com.au/ (I'm a member and they provide great plants) as well as Strezlecki heritage apples? I recommend both suppliers. The lovely lady at Strezlecki heritage
apple trees actually grafted up trees for me on the spot on very vigorous
root stocks and those trees have been exceptional performers. The lady williams
apple in the video was from that supplier.
As to the wildlife, the wombats, wallabies and kangaroos all have free access to the farm here. They convert the grass and herbage into manure, saving me the problem of mowing. Mowing is a once a year activity in December as a result (they can't keep up with the growth). The wallabies are the serious problem here as they will break young fruit trees. Those young fruit trees are all individually caged in a heavy gauge
chicken wire (1.4mm). Once the trees are about 3m tall with a fairly large trunk, the wallabies can't seem to damage them, so I take off the cages at that point in time and they prune all of the lower branches keeping the walkways clear. It is a trial and error system which works more often than not. It has just taken a long time to understand all of the different interactions between the animals and work out how to get an advantage from that knowledge.
Bushfires are part of life. It is possible to reduce your properties risk, it is just a lot of hard work and there are a lot of competing viewpoints some of them have legal backing. I volunteered in the CFA (Country Fire Authority) for a few years so have seen all sorts of viewpoints on the subject, but tested by the realities of the local ecology. I try to observe what works and what doesn't work and then concentrate efforts on what does work. The CSIRO studies into the fires here during
Ash Wednesday in 1983, indicated that a fires burnt particularly hot when the soils and vegetation were lacking in minerals. I bring in rock dust and spread it around as well as planting species that mine the soils for minerals (eg comfrey and borage)
So many great questions. I have a lot of different fruit trees because the climate can vary so much between each season. It is part of hedging my bets, in that I'm guaranteed to get some produce out of some of the fruit trees. Different seasons produce different outcomes. Very wet seasons promote citrus growth, but are hard on stone fruit for example. Pears, seem to be consistent from year to year, but different varieties of apples produce differently from year to year and so on.
No, I do not have woofers here. All of the work including building the house from scratch was done by myself and my lady. I occasionally open the farm up for a visit by some local groups that I'm involved with.
With the changing environment, we all have to keep an open mind on things. Who would have thought that coffee could grow here for example? By the way:
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/melbourne-warms-into-record-books/62503
Hugelculture is a great idea, well done with your experiments. The trick here was starting the system in autumn so that the fungus can get to work in time and the plants
roots can also establish before the summer. Other than that watering is a good idea during the hot and dry spells. Spring is probably a bit late unless you have access to water the system over summer?
Tassie is a beautiful place and well located to survive any future warming.