Nick Ritar

Hi All,

Just wanted to give you a heads up that Kirsten Bradley co-founder of Milkwood permaculture and previous long time resident of Melliodora (David Holmgren's 30+ year-old permaculture property in Victoria, Australia), is doing a free live Q&A on Facebook in about one hour from now. Tune in and ask your questions here. https://www.facebook.com/events/276582666841573/

We have also made a free video outlining the basics available here https://www.milkwood.net/2020/04/26/seed-saving-basics-how-to-start-your-own-seed-bank/

What is your best seed saving tip?

Peace, peas and parsnips
Nick

Vale Bill.

Local media in Australia has been covering Bill's passing"

The ABC (The Australian Broadcasting Corporation our main public broadcaster) had this article the day after he passed.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-26/tributes-flow-in-for-permaculture-father-bill-mollison/7878118 and http://www.abc.net.au/site-archive/rural/legends/stories/4_1.htm

It was also covered on Radio National with this interview with David Holmgren.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/blueprintforliving/vale-bill-mollison/7887872

I feel for you guys... we used to deal with all the time at Milkwood Farm... we tried lots of different policies and none of them really worked... just like in the US of A drinking happens alot in Australia.

To put us into context we our farm had an average population of about 12, but with regualr coruses hosting up to 40 extras for up to 2 weeks at a time. Courses were generally alcohol free, but we didn't "CSI" empty bottles if we found them.

We tried banning it, but the cost was just too high.... a few people sharing a drink in the evening can be a great social experience. We also had a weeknights ban (to try and reduce instances of alcoholism) but I felt like a school teache enforcing that..

Eventually we just let it be known to the crew that intoxication was unacceptable and dealt with it on a case by case basis... that worked best... but was still hard work.

One of the best Permaculture Design Courses you will ever do. I've seen dozens of people teach PDCs... most of the big names included, but after doing this course I was so impressed by Dave Jacke's design process that I incorporated it as the central design process I teach in my PDCs.

Dave is the most considered and student focussed teachers in the business and understands more about perennial plant systems than anyone I have ever met. If your permaculture is focussed on creating perennial poly-culture plant systems then Dave is your teacher.

Excellent.. thanks Eric... I hadn't seen that collection before... I'l add a link to it

I keep getting asked what the best tools are to do this.. so i wrote a blog post. I think I got everything, but I'd appreciate it if you could point out any I missed.

http://www.milkwood.net/2015/06/01/design-basics-mapping-the-sun-on-your-site/


Cheers
Nick

I keep getting asked this question, so I decided to do a blog post on the subject and list all the tools, both online and off that can help people map the sun on their site. Please let me know if I've missed anything.

http://www.milkwood.net/2015/06/01/design-basics-mapping-the-sun-on-your-site/

Cheers
Nick

I bought it second hand locally.. it was a simple wood fired water heater where the fire was built in the centre of the jacket.

It's basically just a box in a box. the inner box has the fire in it the space between the two boxes is full of water.

Just letting you know the link for the rocket stove article on our blog changed

http://milkwood.net/2009/07/12/the_rocket_powered_shower/

We have 25 PDC students who are using the rocket stove to heat their hot showers at the moment.

I just asked the room and they estimate it takes 20 minutes of burning to get the first 5 minute hot shower then 5 to 10 minutes of burn time shower after that. They are collecting a small barrow load of sticks each day. The ambient temperature here at the moment is 16 to 25 degrees celcius, but the water is coming from a deep dam that is at around 12c.

We have a Mediteranean to cool temperate climate here with minimums as low as -12c and maximums in summer of +38c we use the shower all year round.

http://milkwood.net/2009/07/12/the_rocket_powered_shower/

Clearly there is more we could do to make it more efficient such as:

[li]increasing the size of the heat exchanger - a lot of hot gas escapes from the to[/li]
[li]raising the storage tank higher than the heat exchanger[/li]
[li]insulating the heat exchanger[/li]

but it works and it works a heck of a lot better than any other wood fired water heater we've tried