Greetings from a cool temperate young food forest Down Under

Hi everyone,

I've been lurking and contributing here for a few years now and have also contributed plenty of articles to the permaculturenews website.

Well, there are over 300 fruit trees in two food forests here, herbs, vegetables, chickens and bees on 22 acres in the south eastern corner of Australia. I also built the house myself and am not connected to the electricity grid using only solar PV (with no generator).

About half a year ago, I committed to writing a weekly blog - with lots of cool photos - about living in and amongst a growing food forest.

If you're interested you can check out the blog: http://ferngladefarm.blogspot.com.au/

There is plenty of weird and wonderful wildlife here ambling their way through the food forest too:

Wombat eating the herbage above the worm farm

That photo is of a wombat!

Cheers! Chris

Hi Chris,

I've enjoyed your writing on PRI over the years. Looking forward to reading your comments here. I completed Geoff's online course earlier this year. Our place is in SE Alaska, off the road system, on a south facing slope with a shellfish flat out front. Lots of fruit trees, hazels, chestnuts, berries, sea buckthorn etc. . .

Hi Andy,

Nice to hear from you and many thanks! The online courses are a great idea, I hope you enjoyed it and got lots out of it too.

Very wise to be on a south facing slope at your latitiude and it would extend the season too. The shellfish flat out front sounds really nice.

You'll probably laugh about this, but I grow chestnuts and hazelnuts in the shade here and they do really well, although I killed a few trees before I understood them and their needs better!

The berries are growing strongly here at the moment and I've got a photo of the mixed collection for this weeks update.

Hope you enjoy it.

PS: I'm currently hiding from the afternoon sun until it cools down a bit outside.