Hey all, Just a quick g'day as I am new to this board. I am looking at purchasing a property of about 30 acres which has a couple of dams on it about 3 and a half hours from where I currently live. I am looking at using the place as a weekender/hobby farm and want it to be totally self sufficant. I am looking for some ideas/advice from you guys so don't be surprised if I start pming you. lol cheers STF
Welcome to the forum mate...lots of people here with heaps of experience/knowledge and words of wisdom. Unfortunately I'm not one of them, but I'm learning! Know the boat you're in....have been a free man myself for a whole 10 days now! Hope you're a dfrdb man!?
Yes - have a go mate... plenty of help around and quite a few good books & mags - try "Earth Garden" and other related products. This site is deep in information and knowledge... We've just moved to a rural place in the Adelaide Hills - got our first lot of chooks - 2 Silkies and 2 Isa Browns - combination of productivity and children friendly - plus the Silkies are just a fun piece of eye candy! Have fun.
Hi STF 3 1/2 hrs out would be near Dalby or Tara I suspect. The country out there is nice (brown is a nice colour) but can be hard with only a few significant rainfall events per year. I know because my place is a further 2 hours west. I attended a Drought Proofing workshop with Geoff Lawton and that was really useful. I'm still yet to put strategies in place but at least I know where to start. Leo Mahon is a PDC teacher and has a place near Jandowe, you'll find him via https://www.futuredesigners.com.au cheers derek
Hiya Welcome To Our board New Farmer Anything you wanna know bout chooks or anything,fire away.....oops just ask Tezza
Hahahahahahahahahahaahaha! Tezza! Welcome soldierturnedfarmer! It sounds like an exciting time for you! What type of climate? Tropical, temperate? Desert?
G'day STF Love your new profession! Welcome to the PRI forum. Totally self-suficient hey? Hmmm, best you be starting from the ground up then... and I mean the 'ground' up . What's your soil like? All good food starts with good soil, and if you think yours lacks even the basic nutrients, or if you think it will repell water or not hold onto it, or if you think it is too clay-like, or too sandy, then add organic matter! Heck, even if it is the best soil this side of the black stump, add organic matter anyway. One can never have enough humus . What are you going to do for water? Got any slope happening there? Something to run a bit of water off and catch in a dam? Water really is the essence of life and for this reason if one wishes to become self-suficient then one has to look very carefully at how one will hydrate one's self and one's food crops. Shelter? What are you going to live in out there in the sticks? What about energy? Plenty of sun up that way I reckon, maybe you might want to have a look at solar systems? And why your looking at all things solar, you might want to have a look at things like aspect and thermal mass when you start planning for your dwelling. Well, that's a few bits-and-pieces for you. Good luck with it, and don't forget to check in here from time-to-time and tell us how you are going. It really is good to have you on 'our side' . Cheerio, Mark.
Earth Covered Housing You may want to consider a part earth covered house out that way to shelter you from extremes of heat/cold in a desert environment. Or just go underground like at Coober Pedy if you're really enthusiastic. Bill Mollison reckons earth bermed houses are an unexplored area that deserves more attention.
umm, all in 6 days too. I saw Dalby & Tara mentioned. Was just going to note the amount of variation in land as you move east to west! There was some dodge subdivisions in the east half of Tarashire in the eighties. Thanks for the heads up, cornon Gnoll110
g'day stf, hope you are still around? might be some ideas help or other on our web site? do a search in back posts here or in the archive bound to be a few around. but 1 question are the dams carrying water? yep give it a go hey. len
G'day Gnoll When I was living in Brisbane I drove out a couple of times to the Tara area to look at places....then it dawn on me....why are there so many properties in this area being sold...that made me stop looking around there. It was very cheap back then, I wonder if prices have gone up much in the last 10 yrs? 6 Days, was that all it was? Hmmm, maybe he rested on the 7th and then wandered off. Pity....I could understand the change in direction he was making, and he sounded quite excited to have found the forum. Unfortunately I think the big wide world turned out to be a bit too different from his 'insulated' previous career. But what doesn't kill him.........
Don't think there's much left for sale in Tara Corn, they had a massive auction in the middle of this year...before that it seemed half the area was for sale. What is left would be a bit pricier I'd reckon. The pre-auction prices were around the $20-30K mark for ~30 undeveloped acres. I had a chat with a forum member whose mother lived there and she knew the area really well. Pretty harsh land for water, soil and climate apparently...plus a pretty dodgy area for people from what they said...fair bit of crime, people intimidatiing others etc.
Yeah...I didn't really like the look of it. I think when I was looking a lot of people brought there because of the cost....then quickly moved on!
yeh c.o.c, that was one part of our criteria that gave us an out when things went wrong privately. we had a budget which determined price, ie.,. we where looking for land up to a certain price per acre, but what we could afford was not going to influence us to be in the "we must buy something somewhere" mode. too often it is but we can only afford this, and oft' leads to an unwise decision, after living in rural we saw the end results of that often. the rule is buy with the 'head' and not the 'heart', so good criteria is imperative. len
Yeps totally agree Len...we actually halved the price we were prepared to spend to buy this place. We decided not only on what sort of place we wanted but also to 'scale' down so as to allow for lifestyle etc....the benefit is no mortage and a place that has so much potential. And with there being so many external influences on what we do we'd be crazy not to slow down and really think about it. We didn't buy paradise....but with time and effort who knows...we might just make it.
Hi Corn 6 days... look at the posting date on all the posts. Corn, the 'good' country is in the western parts of the shire. There is a strip of 'sh*t' country that run more or less north-south that separates the rotted basaltic red & black clay soils of the Eastern Downs (Toowoomba), Southern Downs (Warwick) and Northern Downs (Dalby) from the Western Down section (Goondiwindi, Western Tarashire etc.) of the Brigalow Belt clays. You needed to go farther west to see the 'good' stuff. The good stuff sale in blocks of several thousand arces. It's still in working farms. It has not been broken up by developers (1983 onwards) and sold to city people as weekender etc. Having used the terms 'good' and 'sh*t', I will add there is no such this as marginal country, only marginal land uses. Gnoll110