Spring is here and it’s time to get busy, I have been asked for tips on getting a Herbal Ley established in existing pasture, a good question at this time of year.
I am just starting to organize my herbal leys for both of my pastures, just waiting for the rain to ease off!! So how do you get the pasture ready for sowing and how do you protect the seeds from free range chickens and birds?
Well, let me tell you how I am going to do my herbal leys…
For years, the human race has been removing bits and pieces from the eco-system, the result has been a catastrophe.
The whole commercial agricultural world is suffering from a huge imbalance, this has been caused by the excessive use of chemical fertilisers and more harmful the huge amounts of chemical pesticides.
I think it is useful if you know a little bit about what goes on under your soil, after all, the main stay of organic gardening is feeding the soil to nourish, the plants and vegetables you intend to grow.
And, if you are not aware of the micro-life that has to exist in the dark depths of your soil to achieve this, then to put it bluntly, it would be like when you were a kid, and your parents used to say ‘If Dylan jumped off a cliff, would you follow?’
Referring to doing something, just because you thought it was the right thing to do, or doing it, because you were told to, without any thought to why you were doing it.
Organic gardening for me, is about a balance between the plants and nature. The balance of healthy soil, to grow healthy plants or vegetables and working WITH nature to provide that balance.
There are some ‘experts’ that would have you believe, organic gardening is complex, swapping one zap commercial spray for another home made ‘green’ spray. This approach, is missing the point of organic gardening, which is to let nature do its own job. She will help you create a garden of eden, in your own piece of paradise, she will do it gently and all for a little bit of effort on your part.
Organic Gardening is very ‘chic’ at present, I think we are all a little fed up with rising food prices and decreasing the quality of our supermarket selections.
Nearly gone, are the days when ‘sliced white plastic’ bread was considered the best invention since the wheel.
We are beginning to understand the impact of chemicals on our environment and we are seeing the effects in the changing weather patterns and its getting a little bit scary.
The storms have not left us alone for long, a few hours at the most, and things are really bad for the little lambs being born and indeed for all animals in general, except for ours, who have meals delivered twice a day and dry warm shelter. Lucky things!!
Others are not so lucky, rivers have burst their banks and whole paddocks and farms are under water, there has been SO much rain the houses are slipping into big holes in the earth and roads are disappearing the same way.
Read the rest of this entry →
Apart from the weather, things have been going pretty good here on the block. I have had to move inside so the kitchen renovations are progressing.
It is hard work sanding the huge floor, but, little by little I’m getting there, just a few more hideous plastic tiles to remove and then sand off all the glue and a beautiful wooden floor is revealed, then the dogs come running in from bounding wildly in the paddocks and bingo, that beautiful wooden floor I mentioned is no longer!! 
The torrential weather continues, flooding is rife and the animals are suffering. It breaks my heart, the scrawny animals we see in the paddocks all around are a sorry state, and to think it lambing season. No, I cannot think about that too much.
On the block, our animals are in fine fettle. However, the strangest thing happened the other day, looking back it was all my fault, but still it gave me a huge shock, the second one in as many days.
Before we begin, this list is a ‘living’ list, by this I mean, things will be added or taken away when I have sufficient evidence that things are no longer poisonous or I find new things that are.
Please if you think you have an animal suffering from poisoning RING THE VET AT ONCE
I am exhausted, I have been hard at work building the bamboo fence in a section of the Kitchen Garden. Phew!! it is hard work, but I had all ‘my workers’ with me, especially Mia.
She was feeling very lonely today, Ursula and Izzy have gone walkabout, so the poor dear only had me to talk to and did she talk!!
She is not called Mia Moo Cow for nothing..my ears are ringing!! I am convinced ALL our animals have worked out the acoustics on the block. They can bark, woof and moo in a certain direction and it will come back to them!!!
