Honk if you're happy!

Bernie the Permaculture Sage came and looked at the properties today (ours and next door). We're bringing him back in next week for a longer consult, but got some good ideas already. The best one it seems is to forget our plan to get Dorpas (a breed of sheep) to manage the fire hazard of grass in the bottom paddock and instead use geese! I didn't know they were such effective grazers but Bernie reckons a dozen or so would easily maintain that area. Worth a try - despite the advantages of Dorpas over other sheep (no shearing, muelsing etc) they do require pretty rigid fences and ours aren't the best on one side. Apparently you can train them to follow you too, so bringing them from the bottom paddock up to the orchard is feasible and it sounds like geese are lower maintenance than chooks - which we can handle.

This permaculture thing is really starting to move along. I walk around our property now and can really see some progress. Tonight we ate Tuna fishcakes (with heaps of herbs) and a side of freshly picked Bok Choy (which is growing madly). Hywel as we picked them said he actually wasn't a fan of Bok Choy - and changed his mind completely after we'd eaten it. Fresh tastes so much nicer than anything. The only thing in dinner that didn't come from our place was the tuna and potatoes. Next year it'll only be the tuna. How good does this feel!