This Sustainable House

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As regular readers of this website will be aware, I like to periodically venture into unchartered waters through experiments. The latest ‘experiment’ at TSH is to develop a biodigester to take waste products, such as food stuffs, manure, etc and turn it into a useable resource… energy!

The video below outlines the first steps on the road to creating a highly explosive and smelly gas. Male readers will understand…

Well it’s certainly not just ‘another Sunday’ at TSH, rather this morning I was awoken to a very pleasant sight… a new calf! Welcome to Grazyna.

Grazyna was born at approx 6am being the daughter of Julia and Congo. Actually I shouldn’t be too quick to say ‘she’ as Mum won’t let me close enough yet to be sure, but by all indications it appears to be a heifer calf. Interestingly she is a red calf which would suggest that the red colouration is a recessive gene in the Dexter lineage. I have to admit that I know very little about Dexter genetics, but clearly there is more for me to learn.

Anyhow, the short video below talks more about this and, more importantly, introduces Grazyna to the world.

I’d like to wish everyone a very, very merry Xmas and a wonderful new year!

It has been a big year for This Sustainable House and I’ve throughly enjoyed the interactions I have had with so many of you. Thank you!

2011 is already shaping up to be an even bigger year but more about that as the year rolls on…

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

Unless I am mistaken, I thought that the fairy tale involved 3 little pigs, not 5 not so little pigs. However, it was 5 little pigs that arrived at TSH today.

New Garden Area prior to Pigs

The concept behind the arrival of the pigs is that we are planning on building a new vegetable garden. However this area is currently significantly overrun with grasses/weeds as well as being extraordinarily uneven. In short, this area needs to be dug over and manured before it can be used. The problem is that I am a lazy sod, and am not overly keen on digging over some 500m2 on my own.

The solution… Pigs!! Read the rest of this entry »

One of the major tasks on my plate at the moment is to clear a section of scrubby land for use as paddocks for cattle, and perhaps free-range chickens. When I say I need to clear the land, I’m not talking about wholesale tree removal, rather I’m looking at clearing the area of debris to allow the natural grasses to establish.

A decision that had to be made in this instance was to burn or not to burn….

Traditionally a farmer would get all this scrappy stuff together and set it on fire. This would turn most of the wood to gas (releasing it to the atmosphere) and the remaining ash would be scattered over the paddock area. Doing this has the advantage of dealing with this debris rapidly, leaving a nice clear paddock.

However I feel it has two important disadvantages, the carbon that has been locked up by the plants is lost to the atmosphere (rather than being broken down for inclusion in the soil) and this material offers some very useful ‘stuff’ to form a mulch layer.

So at TSH the majority of this debris has been put to use as a mulch in the tree corridors between the paddocks.

The video below explains the concepts involved, and provides a sneak peek into how these paddocks will be managed. Enjoy!

…but thankfully it didn’t the cow!

One of the things I love about having cows is their curious nature. Whenever you are doing anything around their enclsures it is almost guaranteed that they’ll be there trying to work out what you are upto. And no-one epitomised this more than little Fryderyk this morning.

The pictures below are of little Freddy after I gave his mother, Dalila, her bail feed. Each of my cows get a twice weekly bail feed in which I place a mineral supplement mix, some apple cider vinegar, and a few other bits and bobs. The mix is carried up in a large yellow bucket, and then feed out into a ‘tyre feeder’. Of course little Freddy couldn’t help but check out this strange yellow bucket…

He’s so cute!

Note: For more information on the bail feed my Dexters receive, head over to Stadnina Dexters.

Freddy: "Is he looking?"

Freddy: "I guess not... I'll just have a bit of a look."

Tree down over the driveway

Since moving to the ‘country’ I have heard the rural life described in many different ways… peaceful, relaxing, satisfying, etc. However no phrase or concept sums it up better for me than, “No rest for the wicked!”

As some of you may be aware, over the past couple of days Canberrra and surrounds have been innudated with a steady drizzling rain combined with high winds. In fact, wind speeds approaching 70km an hour have been recorded. However when you combine such high speed winds, and a sodden ground, you are bound to get trees coming down… and unfortunately that is exactly what has happend.

Overnight I have had 2 large trees and 1 large branch down in the surrounds of the house. One feel across the driveway, not causing any damage, but the other tree ‘collected’ the shed. Fortunately it didn’t do any significant damage to the structure. Read the rest of this entry »