Six months ago my partner and I moved from Glebe, an inner city suburb of Sydney to an established/evolving permaculture farm in Northern NSW. We reside in the C1890’s farmhouse on 5 acres of gardens and pasture land. There are a number of roles we fulfill here. The property, called Mateatea (www.mateatea.com.au) is part of the Byron Hinterland tourist industry, in that it provides accommodation for guests who are interested in holidaying in an environmentally low impact, solar passive design luxury bungalow. We manage this business for the owner, my friend Michael, who has run away to the city for a while to run with the freaks! The other part of our life at Mateatea, and the part which we will attempt to chronicle here - part old school farmer’s almanac, part journal - is our farming life…
 
This blog is to chronicle the learnings and realisations that arise on a daily basis living on a permaculture farm. Written from the perspective of 1 city grrl and 1 latterly-city grrl, lost to her formative rural years. We are discovering how to make things grow, understanding systems of agri/culture, and discovering the very fundamental changes it can make to one’s person. We make lots of mistakes, but we honor the land and try to live by sound sustainable principles. We wake up smiling every day, ready to milk our cow, Maybe…

We are not vegan or vegetarian, so please be warned that there may be posts which disturb or offend.

We do, however, try to approach farming, our version, as a humane and loving way of growing plants and animals in an environment where respect for all living creatures is our number one priority. We try to approach the ideal of having a system where everything has its place and purpose and is a kind of feedback loop. The theory of permaculture is not part of our vocabulary in any formal way, but we read and experiment and take on the tasks of weeding, calf wrangling, castration, milking cows, creating gardens, building animal housing, sometimes killing animals (never gratuitously), rotating pastures, spring planting, cow shit collecting, mulching, duck-watering all with equal enthusiasm.

In the following post we will post a diagram of the farmhouse and its systems (established by Michael) and speak about how we utilise these systems.

Virginia and Charlene