Life on the Land

Finally some new photos

2011-07-31T19:00:00.037+10:00

Our calf down with paralysis tick

Maxine, Elisa, and Alessandro cleaning garlic

We do like our garlic

Yes, it was a bit overwhelming

Fredrik and Alessandro building a chicken shed

6 weeks old chickens get there own garden to run around in

Pepe (the dog) would love to play with the chicks

new born chicks

One of our bulls wondering what we are taking a photo of

Moving the whole herd

Cattle coming up to be moved into a new paddock

Rounding the cattle up in the yards

Alessandro testing the cattle scale

Giving them Vit. B shot

It sure beats mowing the lawn

They do have a good life

Alessandro, Elisa, Maxine, Pepe, and Fredrik

Ok, sometimes Liston is not big enough, so you have to go to Brisbane

Bob is admiring his work on the new stick rake

Bob cleaning out one of our many dams

The last year and a half - Part 1 - Sorry for the wait

2009-10-10T21:06:00.080+10:00

Starting the fruit tree orchard

The new dam is slowly filling up

Ripping the future vegie patch expansion

The new house fence

Landscaping around the house

The new fence along the driveway

Building the pergola

Dinner time

Yes, there is a goddess in the woods

Photo courtesy of Shakof

Hanging out on the balcony

Photo courtesy of Shakof

Our new mailbox

Photo courtesy of Shakof

She is life size

Undercliffe falls near where we live
Photo courtesy of Hanna

The local swimming hole
Photo courtesy of Hanna

Photo courtesy of Hanna

Local field day

Photo courtesy of Hanna

Hanging out after work

The wwoofers building the new landscape feature

Mushroom compost

New fence around house

Magnus, Amelia, and Hanna

It took a lot of soil to fill the center piece

We had a lot of helpers

Learning more about compost tea near Cairns

Our new solar hot water unit for the floor heating system

Moving 50 head of cattle from Ian Perkins place to the land - a distance of around 15 km

Putting down 2 " poly pipe to be able to pump up water from the dams and store it in tanks on the hills, and also to be able to have water spots for the cattle

It takes a big spinner to get the massive spools of poly pipe out.

The pipe laying plow

The new tanks

Gravity fed supply of water to stock

Mulching up the citrus trees for the winter

We have a great way to get mulch fast and easy

My Korean wwoofer putting down garlic to grow over winter

It doesn't look like a big spot of land, but it generated and amazing amount of garlic

We mulch it heavily to keep away the weeds and to create a good enviroment for the garlic

We have now jumped to August when I returned form overseas, and we are busy burning stacks of old timber

An old dead tree works as a chimney

A wild fire at a neighbors place which we helped to control

The wwoofers did a great job helping out

Seeding up potatoes

Louise preparing the seed beds

The yeoman plow heading out to the fields for another day of ripping the soil on a keyline system

The deep ripping action from the Keyline plow

It creates very little disturbance in the paddock

Well, spring is here

After a dry winter, all the growing action are in the gullies

Flooding the swale next to the house

Trying out a few other seeding implements for the future

Everyday we make new paddocks for the cattle with a single wire electric fence

In areas where we don't have gravity feed water we pump up to a trailer with 2,000 L. tanks

On one side we did some burning this winter and the other we didn't

Gathering around the water

Winter

2008-07-22T09:44:00.022+10:00

We use some of the silt and topsoil from the dam to create landscaping around the house site

The little red trailer that could

When the dam was built they just flooded a large section of land, so there are lots to dig out

Turf that has been submerged for 15 years or so

Our new stone wall curving around the house

The finished kitchen

Our solar system

Inverters, regulators, etc.

With a large battery bank comes the importance of ventilation

Since we are not connected to mains power, our battery bank can handle a few days of very little sunshine

It will be so nice to have green areas around the house instead of sand and clay

The last six months

2008-06-30T17:47:00.061+10:00

This guy comes every afternoon now

They are moving in on us

Trying out the Yeoman plow

Making a go with the forage harvester

A day on the land

Martina kicking back after have been planting blueberries

Our new blueberry patch

My harvest of sunflower seeds, and since they are non hybrids I plan on using them for the next season

Well, I just happen to like photograph flowers. Do you have a problem with that?

Since we were moving in to the house in late fall (April), the wood heater was a must.

Kelly and Brent finishing off the kitchen

Soon to be my bedroom, it needs a few more days of work.

Kitchen getting ready to get a spray of undercoating

So I am back with the flowers, I guess I was really impressed how much they took over the garden

Signs of a Yeoman plow

The big swale fills very easily

Sunset at Undercliff waterfalls 5 minutes from our house

The new tractor

Starting to see the finished layout

Hot water piping in the floor

It was a good year for blackberries

Kelly with his new fence posts

Tanya on the Machine

The next few photos are shot by Martina

Our new Biolytix sewage treatment system

Wow, anybody for indoor soccer

The gabions along the driveway doing their duty

Spraying the compost tea

We gravity feed it to the ute to take to the land

Brewing at the house we rented

Our own resident compost tea brewer - Jessie

Well, so much for the drought

Yeah, we did have some rain last night

Our small creek on steroids

Sorry for the delay - it's time to catch up

2008-01-27T20:17:00.002+10:00

Resident bird at the house we renting
Some of the new chooks and couple of pigeons

It's growing alright

We have put in a lot of walkways the last few months

Summer in Liston

The last week

2007-12-16T20:48:00.000+10:00

A sea of field peas
Using local grass in our gabions to control the flow of water next to the driveway
Getting help from the bigger artillery to make our swale a bit bigger

We had a farm track collapsing because of all the rain, more work to put on the listRemains of better days

Not on our land, we just went for a walk in the neighborhood

Some shots of everyday life

2007-12-16T20:16:00.000+10:00

All the Agapanthus are flowering at the house we are renting
Siphoning out the water from the dam to do some work on the wall

It is almost empty, but with all the rain we have been it has filled up again. We have decided to wait until February to do the work, it is just to wet right now

Deep down in the valley, below where we are building the house

Planting veggies into the cover crop of field peas

Jessie and Tanya at another one of our dams

There has been a lot of planting going on, and it is coming up strong

The small swales are doing their job providing water to the freshly planted trees

We got hold of some good clumping bamboo

A lot of trees

We are using some of our own timber for the garden fence

The House

2007-12-16T19:48:00.000+10:00

We are almost done with the outside shell

The view from the kitchen window

Some nicely framed shots

The windows and doors are being put into their place

A lot of bolts and nuts, and of course some steel

Looks a bit naked

Planting trees while the house is being built

2007-11-19T06:23:00.000+10:00

Just for Art
It is coming along nicely

Owen helping out

Nicely framed

The frames laid out waiting to be raised up

Martina cutting down the covercrop to plant the beds up with a selection of seeds

Some of the trees yet to be planted

A newly planted tree with the milkcarton to protect it

Another windbreak towards the road

It looks really cool with all the swales and newly planted trees

The veggie garden with two newly planted beds

Tanya's herbspiral is coming along nicely

Our new official address; 578 Rivertree Rd.

Our newest members to the workforce, but they tend to mostly inspect the work

We dug two shorter swales above our long one next to the house, to plant up with trees to block the view of the road

Lining up the contour lines

34 small swales with close to 200 trees

We "roto tilled" between the swales and seeded up with cowpea, which is coming up like there is no tomorrow

Owen surveying and Jesse driving the excavator, what a team

We planted only native; Eucalyptus campanulata - Eastern New England Blackbutt, Eucalyptus youmanii - Youman's Stringybark, Eucalyptus calignosa - New England Stringybark,Eucalyptus dunnii - Dunn's White Gum, Eucalyptus viminalis – White Gum, Lophostemon confertus - Brush Box, Grevillea robusta - Silky oak

The gully that we want to plant up with trees

Chooks, steel and garden stuff

2007-10-30T21:18:00.000+10:00

Our four newly arrived chooks - nice looking birds from the sunshine coast
Yeap, that's a chicken tractor
Putting a fence around the veggie garden, you do have to dig down the fence because of our friends the rabbits

Posts marking the corner of the raised beds in the garden - can be used for many things, but mainly so that the garden hose doesn't take a shortcut across the beds

Tanya's herb spiral of her own design

There are many walkways in the garden - which means a lot of effort to make them work properly

You gotta love that fieldpea - only $3.95 a kilo as seeds and it is the hardest working seed in the mix

It was only a couple of weeks ago we seeded up the swale

The second shed

We just had 25 mm of rain, so we got the tanks set up just in time

Well, that worked out good

Levelling the pad for the tanks

They are so fast getting the frame up - hours not days

Buildings!

2007-10-22T21:35:00.000+10:00

The making of a veggie garden - Part one

2007-10-14T20:40:00.000+10:00

Putting the gravel on top of cardboard with folded sides on to the bedsIt takes a lot of gravel and cardboard

A pallet load of sugar cane mulch standing by for future use in the garden

Things...

A lot of irrigation outlet points around the garden

All the walkways are dug down and are on level

It is hard work

Good gravel

The future center aisle

The excavator makes the work a bit easier

Jesse brings in goodies from the garden every night

We are already seeing growth from what we seeded the other week

The topsoil in place

The site looks really big now when all the topsoil has been raked out

Flooding the swale

2007-10-07T19:32:00.000+10:00

Deep ripping with the dozer

After we put the topsoil back and deep ripped

Loosen up the very compacted soil
You can see how the soil really soaks up the water

It almost looks like the swale goes uphill before the trees, but that's not the case

The water slowly soaks in

Flooding the swale

Pumping up water from one of the dams and letting it out at the culvert on the driveway

The swale snakes around the landscape

Veggies from the garden at the house

We use the "Canadian" seed mix - two part Field Peas, one part Wooley Vetch, one part Lupin

For Art

We did the last part with hand tools

Tanya having a go on the excavator

Working on the level sill, that will overflow when there is more then 10 cm of water sitting in the swale

I think we did a great job on the swale

Gathering some mulch for our composting piles - we will have a tractor soon!

Swales and logs

2007-09-30T21:03:00.000+10:00

The new "Mini Mill" to help us make lumber from the logs

Pretty good result
....... square
From round to.......

The garden at our house is taking off

Making the swale level - ever so gentle

The bottom of the swale is the size of the ATV or a small garden cart

The culvert drains into the swale, leading water towards the garden

Marking out the swale

It's almost rain forest down in the gullies

Our new ramp - which we seeded up

Starting to put the topsoil back and seed it up

It looks nice and it is very functional

Stone masonry among many other talents

Our new pump getting water up to our tank for gravity feed to our irrigation

Back on the land

2007-09-23T11:20:00.001+10:00

Pressure testing all the water pipes
The proposed garden area

J and T marking out the garden underneath the swale

We extended the area behind the sheds to the south

The new drain leading from the driveway to the future swale

A dam being born

2007-09-23T10:30:00.000+10:00

The level sill at the end of the swale is dug out
The swale will increase the catchment and also provide an area for slow soaking and a pathway to the level sill for overflow

Geoff instructing the driver on the swale

In the end it became quite deep

The back wall

A ledge for topsoil at the water level

Notice the change in the color of the clay

Marking out the swale

Geoff inspecting the work

It is a slow progress when you just observing

Getting started

The "Keyway"

Signs of burned clay from a fire in the past

Geoff Lawton pointing out different levels of topsoil in the gully

Removing the topsoil

E.J. and Jesse discussing the contour level

Getting the area ready for the dig

Clearing the area

The brains and the machine

A film crew was filming the event

Getting ready for the builders

2007-09-23T10:02:00.000+10:00

Jesse taking every chance he gets to do small botanical surveys around the property
Connecting all the pipe works

The man behind all the pipes (and Jesse)Jesse is getting good on the excavator (I have to watch it so he doesn't surpass me)

The water poly pipes lays in the same trench as the conduit separated by gravel

The conduit ready to be buried underneath good gravel

OK, me trying to be creative with the camera

A lot of conduit leading out from the battery room

Thank God for the excavator!

The last shed arrives

Cutting holes in the water tank for the fittings

Digging down the "Ag pipe" from the dam

Water intake from the dam

Surprisingly amount of meat from a small rabbit

The proud hunter

Concrete sweet concrete - finally

2007-09-23T09:25:00.000+10:00

The finished house block
Nice!
They worked fast - keeping up with the trucks

The trucks lining up

A concrete pumping truck makes a lot of sense

At sunrise before the crowds

The new footing blueprints meant more steel and deeper beams

Setting the boxing up

Our future work pit

Shed pad with the bolts for the frame set in the concrete

-in the correct spots (hopefully)

The "helicopter" makes everything nice

Nice day for concrete

"A picture is worth a thousand words"

Ice skating anyone?

Concreting is hard work

Finally, we are pouring concrete

10th Week - Back to normal

2007-09-06T11:18:00.000+10:00

Jesse assembling a garden at the house

Tanya using the laser level to map the upper swale to encapsulate our garden on farm

Jesse surveying the area for the best location for the swale

My new partners in crime - Jesse and Tanya

That is a lot of steel for just a shed

The new and improved slab

The rain is gone and the concreters are back

The resident wallaby at the house

A very wet 9th Week

2007-09-06T10:25:00.001+10:00

As soon as the sun came out after the rain, so did the flowers

Out future work pit looked like a swimming pool

I had to hook a inverter up to the ute to power the sump pump

The cattle watering hole that we cleaned out filled up in two days

The Bookookara creek even had some small rapids

All the dams filled to the brim

A lot of water coming in to the property from the culvert at the road

Yes, we had some serious wind gust - according to the news it blew hurricane force at the coast

The 7th and 8th Week

2007-08-19T22:48:00.000+10:00

Just another landscape picture
Digging down the water pipes

Putting some sandy gravel around the poly pipes

"The Alaskan pipeline"

It took me a long time to unwind the heavy poly pipe

Neat and tidy

75 meters from tanks to shed

6 electrical conduits coming out of the battery room - yeah, that is a lot of pipes

Digging the trench

This is when it is nice to have a small excavator on site

The new poly pipes for potable and irrigation water from the two top tanks

6th Week

2007-08-05T21:11:00.000+10:00

5th Week

2007-07-29T18:07:00.000+10:00

"Undercliff falls" near the property - bad picture, nice spot

While checking the fences I noticed that big branches had fallen down and taken part of the fence with it in a couple of places - more work to put on the list

The site is getting prepared for the concrete, that hopefully will be poured next week

It does become a lot of holes, as it is three fairly big buildings

A good machine for the job

Laying out for the exact location of the sheds

The concrete boys start the next major step in this journey

The cut next to the driveway

There is a total of three culverts in the driveway

Small watering hole for the future cattle

Blackberry that totally has taken over one of the many stumps

It becomes a lot of old wire from the old fence posts that we burned during the week - this is just the first load

We are trying to clean up the place while we are going along

It was great to be able to burn the old fence posts and then just drag out the old wire - I have no idea how we would have done it any other way

The new driveway entrance with culvert in place

Big pipes, but it turned out great

It is a lot of work if you want it to be done correctly

Culverts are a lot like men's "you know what" - size matters, and there is questions to what you want the head to look like, but in the end to do the job right they need to be put in correctly

There are so many different birds around during this time of year

Some of the dams do need some work to fix the erosion caused by the cattle

The new farm track along the fence line

We stockpiled some material to have handy for future project and to be able to finish of the site

4th Week

2007-07-22T17:57:00.000+10:00

The gullies are green and full of water even though we are in the dry season

Stumps pulled up with the excavator

We use a dump truck to move the stumps to the stacks for burning

My newly rented house gets very cold, so I better make sure I have enough firewood. I got lucky to have the excavator knock over an old gumtree that have been dead for years, but it still stood up and was dry as a sponge in the desert.

The shed pad ready for the concrete slab

We trucked in a lot of material for the driveway from a neighbour 10 km away

" Wide and High" is the mantra when it comes to the driveway

The new driveway entrance

The first steps to shaping the driveway

We were able to save the big trees that makes the entrance so powerful

3rd Week

2007-07-15T10:28:00.000+10:00

The work on the 3 major dams are to follow the house site and driveway

Making the opening for the new driveway

Dumptrucks brings the material up from the damsite to spread it on the house pad

Two trucks shuttled material all day - 15 to 20 min. return trip

It's good stuff, we are lucky to have a patch of it not to far away on our own land

While we getting the material we need for the house pad and driveway, we also digging out an old dam site that needs repair.

The driveway leading away from the house

We have done everything to make it as gentle of a slope as possible
The whole site sits on a slope, so we have had to "cut and fill" to make it level

Fairly gentle slope leading down to the shed area
The colour of the clay makes a nice contrast on the landscape
The cut for the retaining wall that will separate the house from the "parking lot - turn around area

Cold morning with frost in the gullies
I actually had to scrape the ice of the windows on the truck that morning

Making sure the site for the two big water tanks are level
Lawrence spreading out and level the site
We want the tanks to sit as high as possible, because we will gravity feed to house and shed. The site is the highest spot in the surrounding area.
After clearing the area it is time to build it up with material
The future water tank site
Playing with the laser level to plan for future contour swales and maybe another dam. It is easy to go crazy with the permaculture ideas, but it does make me see the landscape in a more dynamic way.
Rock and Roll
Whenever David has a moment to spare on the excavator he is busy pulling up old stumps

These we got out with the dozer, but we had to call in the blaster the next day for two even bigger ones.

We did run into a few big boulders

2nd week

2007-07-10T20:55:00.001+10:00

a nice evening shot to finish the week

the shaping of the site

the morning after

one tiny flame gets it all started

the clearing for the tank site

the stack

like a symphony

the dozer

the scraper at work

planning for the driveway

the big boys arrive

the man with the plan has arrive

hungry for more

"you tree, me excavator"

what would have taken me 5 hours takes him 5 seconds

the cavalry is here

just to show you the size- that's a full-grown ax

That's how it's done

My partner in crime - Mr Excavator (or Bertha as he likes to be called on his nights off )

Cleaning up all the timber

The first week

2007-07-10T20:43:00.001+10:00

Give the gloves a rest after a hard week

A bad tree meets its fate

The new house site

Checking out what the neighbours are up to

Checking out the dams

Checking out who checked out