For all the Coasties - this is what you missed tonight. Purple Pear you would have loved hearing Steve talk about the ups and downs of running an organic farm. He reckons CSA's are for mugs... He uses a really nifty system for growing tomatoes tied up to a string suspended from a wire in the top of his green house. He gets plants up to 7 feet tall.... Chris was inspiring. I HAVE to get Native bees now. He showed us through his website which is full of useful into. When he was them available he sells a live hive in a box for about $300. The queen bees make a central mass in the hive that is a spiral made out of hexagons. Very permaculture - like a herb spiral but for baby bees to grow in! After a year or so of settling in you can add an extra box to the top and the workers will fill it with sugar bag honey, and you get about 1 kg of honey each year from them. Mostly people are getting them as pollinators though. They'll only go about 500 m from the hive so you can pretty much guarantee that they'll pollinate everything close by. Now I just have to save up and find a good spot to put them.... Right you lot - you better turn up next month. The topic is edible native plants. I also scored a pepino and some kang kong to try out in my garden.
I just noticed that. Wasn't me! Unless I didn't by accident. I'll see if I can figure out how to unclose it....
I would have to agree with him Eco. Most of what I do these days is not because it is the smart thing to do but the right thing to do.
On the plus side he did say that he thinks CSA's will work once public opinions change and people see more value in food from the farm up the road, rather than the supermarket at the end of the street. Which with floods / cyclones / rising petrol prices is likely to actually happen sooner rather than later. Getting people to prepay for a season's planting will be the next challenge....
We are doing that as of this year. We offer a three, six or twelve month sub at various rates of course.
