Hello from Australia

I've been reading the forums and daily-ish email for a while and thought I should join up here and say 'hello'.

I've been studying and practising permaculture for the past 10 years or so in a few different places, doing what I could on rented land, mostly learning useful kitchen skills for preserving food, cooking seasonally and from scratch, making cheeses and so on, along with raising goats, chickens and some vegetables.

Last year my family moved on to some land of our own and are in the process of observing and slowly making changes to turn a few acres of east-facing old logging land into a productive and sustainable food-producing system. We are off the grid.

So far we have continued to keep goats and chickens, and are growing some vegetables. I am experimenting with producing more calorie crops, working with what grows easily here, and experimenting with some small scale grain raising using chicken tractors and broadforking. We hope to start building ponds to capture runoff water and to make a duck and paddy rice growing system in the next few years, along with doing some fencing and growing some grasses to raise more animals.

I have a blog at thenourishinghearthfire.com where I post recipes and homesteading things, and generally try to make a nice space online without ads and clickbait.

Here is a photo of some beautiful baby goats born here a couple of weeks ago!

Welcome to Permies, Kate.  Sounds like you have a great thing going on down in Tas.  good luck on your projects

Thank you : )

It is an exciting time! We love it here and we have lots of ideas for the land, and just have to focus on getting one thing done at a time, which at the moment is finishing a fence for the home garden and getting more seeds and seedlings planted.

welcome and happy spring from another antipode on the other side (Brazil). My mulberries are done this go-round but when I get round 2 in the fall I'll make your crumble recipe.

Thank you!

I miss having a mulberry tree. Here they start fruiting in late December and provide good fruit all through January and some of February.

The crumble topping also works well with stewed apples, berries, or feijoas.

Howdy Kate.

Good to see another Aussie here.

Thank you : )

Welcome to the forum Kate.

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi :-)

Thank you!

Gurkan Yeniceri wrote:

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi :-)

Trans-Tasman cultural differences defined in one post!

Welcome Kate! What part of Tassie are you in? I've visited all the AUS states/territories except TAS and NT, must get over to your island one day!

I'm on the edge of the Great Western Tiers, in the central north of the island.

Where abouts in NZ are you?

I have never been to NZ but would like to visit one day.

Welcome! I don't live in Australia, but I do live in an unrelentingly hot and drought-stricken part of America where many native Australian plants perform exceedingly well.

Welcome to permies, Kate! Aaaah! It makes me so happy to see and hear about what you are doing with permaculture! I look forward to seeing more of your posts and hearing about your journey!

Thank you both!

It is nice to be on a site full of people with similar ideas doing great things on different land all over the place.

Hopefully I will soon have good things to post about this years gardening... Just need to finish my permanent fence to keep these naughty possums and wallabies out. We're getting some pigs again soon too, which is always exciting.

Kate Downham wrote:I'm on the edge of the Great Western Tiers, in the central north of the island.

Where abouts in NZ are you?

I have never been to NZ but would like to visit one day.

Hi Kate,


I'm in coastal Hawkes Bay, on the East coast at just shy of 40 degrees south (roughly the same as you)..  Here's an indication of what I'm up to;   https://permies.com/t/90726/mid-winter-farm-pictures