Planning Our New Zealand Property - The Journey So Far Part 2

In planning our New Zealand property we had some specific ideas about what we wanted long term both in terms of the life we want to live and how we want to use our land.  I was also focused on how the principles of permaculture could be applied.  When we were looking for land we kept these goals in mind which helped us decide which block of land to purchase.


We previously had 3.5 acres of land here in Australia and we knew that it was not quite big enough to support a variety of livestock plus veggie garden and orchard without having to bring in a lot of inputs.  So we wanted a bit more land but our budget dictated that we would not be buying a large farm as we also wanted to be able to pay off the land in 3 years so that when got to New Zealand we would just have to budget for the house, out buildings and infrastructure which is the most costly part.
Some of our priorities when choosing land (other than location and price) were:

• Vacant land (no house).  We have lived in poorly designed homes before and renovated dealing with other peoples poor workmanship and are not wanting to be trying to undo other peoples mistakes. Plus we are planning on this being our home for an extended period of time of 20+ years so we want to make it suit us from the start.

• Fertile land that is not is need of significant remediation.

• Flat or gently sloping land that would not require significant earth works.

• To be able to provide as much food for ourselves as possible straight from the farm.

• Limit the amount of inputs to the farm and garden.

• Land able to support an orchard, house yard, large veggie garden and a variety of livestock including a house cow, beef cow, chickens, pigs with the option to try rabbits, ducks and goats.  (Note that I did not say lamb, this is because my parents currently run a small flock of sheep and a few beef cattle and we will trade them pork for lamb)

• Generally weed free land with no pine trees (pine trees are often used for wind breaks in New Zealand but they have a significant impact on the soil and even if you remove them you have to actively manage the soil back to good health.

• How many other properties did we share boundaries with and how would this impact on us wanting to farm organically.  We have only 2 as we have a road that goes down our western boundary and around the corner across our southern boundary.

When we were back in New Zealand last year we started planning out where our house and out buildings would be positioned.  In some ways it was a bit of a challenge.  Often you have trees and other landscape features to work around but our land is pretty much flat and completely treeless so we really could have put the house anywhere.  Our main considerations were the aspect, council requirements for the distance from our neighbors home and the distance from the power supply at our boundary.

Hubby and Dad taking some measurements off the tree planting fence

Thankfully because of the New Zealand climate and soil type in the area we were looking the land has a greater carrying capacity compared to Australia.  This means that your land can support more livestock.  On our 3.5 acres here in Australia the land could support a small orchard, house yard, veggie garden, a dozen chickens and 3/4 of a beef cow.  I say 1/2 a cow because we had to buy in supplementary feed and this is something we want to limit in New Zealand.  Our 5.5 acres in NZ should be able to support all the animals that hope to have.

We could easily site our home exactly due north but that will leave us with a view of the road, the power lines that run down the street and the corner of our property with our farm gate.  This will also leave us slightly more exposed to wind.  Instead we (think at this stage) will be aligning the house to our side boundary which will mean we rotate the house by approximately 20 degrees to the east.  This will mean the outlook from the house will be better with too much of a sacrifice of light.

When deciding where to place our house and out buildings one of the things we considered was the potential activities of our neighbors to our north.  

They are a couple a little older than us with 2 young children and theirs is a block of land about the same size as ours and again it is flat and treeless. They only built their house the year after we purchased our land so they are very much in the development stage too.  So far they have built a home and out buildings and planted an orchard.  They are currently using a shade cloth like material all around their orchard and they have told us they will be planting shelterbelts down the track.

As there is the chance that they could decide to plant a line of trees along their southern and our northern boundary we decided to set our house back far enough that any trees they might plant would not be shading out our front yard.  Instead we will have a paddock between our house yard and our boundary.  Of course there is always the chance they will never plant there but once we build our house there is no moving it so why take the risk.

Below is a diagram of the north west corner of our land showing where we are looking to site our home and shed in relation to our boundaries and each other.  The house shape and size is based on our first set of basic plans and is to scale/ in proportion to the shed and marked distances.  There have been a number of changes to the house since then but the location and size of the shed is set and the shed is now in place and complete but more about that in my next post.

Planning Our New Zealand Property - The Journey So Far Part 1

It has been nearly 3 years since we purchased our New Zealand property and started planning our move back there.  We always knew it would be a few years until we actually moved but it was a year longer than we had thought due to me getting pregnant.

The land is 5.5 acres in size on the western side of the north island with average winter temperatures with a low of 5 to a high of 13 degrees Celsius and summer averages from a low of 13 to a high of 25 degrees Celsius.  I have been there when the summer days have been closer to 30 degrees and winter days where there has been frost on the ground but generally the weather would be best described as temperate.  The area averages around 800 mm of rainfall per year which falls fairly consistently over the year with even the summer months receiving on average 45 mm in the month.  This means that there is pretty consistent weather year round farming and growing crops.

Our land is pretty flat sloping from north to south with just one area that dips down towards the neighbours dam and while it is hard to tell in the photo below there are small dips in the land that mean while we do not need to cut and fill areas to build on we may need fill to level building sites.

Looking North to South down the length of our land just after purchasing.

Looking West to East across our land just after purchasing.
You can see the top of the dirt pile we inherited at the front of the photo.

In the past the land has been used for growing crops, mainly maize I believe, and it was re-grassed a few years before we purchased it.  Because we did not know many details about it's use and we had plans for the property to be able to produce much of our food, we obtained a full soil analysis.

At the time the property was in what I would consider average condition by New Zealand standards with: 

PH - 5.8

Organic Matter - 3.3%

Calcium, Magnesium and Potassium at just below minimum target levels and all the other trace minerals will range from below to above average. 

Once we are living there we will be taking steps to improve things with re-mineralisation with the the addition of calcium and magnesium (which will unlock other minerals in the soil) and pasture management to improve the organic matter content.  We will also do another soil test once we have dealt with the calcium and magnesium so see where things are really at.

Looks really healthy but is actually pretty average.

The first principle of permaculture is Observe and Interact and although we are not living nearby where we can watch our land through the seasons there are other things we can do.  
For instance we have visited twice a year in different seasons for the past few years and we have seen the land after lots of rain as well as a period without.  
We have looked at the plants that grow among the grass and while we have lots of plantain and clover and a few different types of grass we also have lots of buttercup which indicates that the soil is compacted and prone to water logging.  
We can also look at what is happening on neighboring properties and along roadside verges.  So when we see trees bent into curves by the wind and established homes with deep shelter belts around them that tells us quite a lot about the wind conditions we can expect.
Our land is quite exposed the area is flat, we do not have any trees at all and we are not really that far from the coast so one of the first priorities was to establish a wind break on our western boundary. We wanted this to be a permanent planting so we decided to also fence the area off.  This left only one issue, the big pile of dirt right in the path of the new fence.  So I set to digging a trench right through which I did over a couple of days.  I had thought it would just be dirt but it was full of stones so I decided that in the future I would be enlisting the help of some machinery to more the rest of the pile.

Cut right through for the new fence

My Dad mowed the area we wanted to plant out, a 4 metre wide strip the length of the boundary (198 metres)

Fence post were laid out then rammed in using a borrowed post rammer.

Meanwhile Mum started the planting.  As this had been planned in advance Mum had been potting up self seeded natives from her garden for a number of months. We have continued to buy Mum potting mix and source extra pots for her pus pot up more plants when ever we are in the county and slowly but surely the planting out continued.

When ever we were back we cleared the grass from around the establishing trees.

Every time we visited we planted out more of the plants Mum had grown on for us and now we have completed the planting (with only dead ones to be replaced for now) and on one visit we had the big pile of dirt removed that I had to dig through to get the fence going.

Ongoing planting

Putting the end panel of the fence back up after the dirt pile was removed

Mums self seeded natives now form the entire planting other than about a dozen plants we specifically purchased for the entire 198 metre boundary.  Over all we have planted more than 500 plants including a few that had to be replaced due to rabbit or hare damage, being accidentally cut by the whipper snipper or just dying off.  We count ourselves very lucky as all we have paid for are a dozen plants and some potting mix for Mum to use.  If we had had to pay for all the plants that have gone in the ground it would have cost us a small fortune.  

Needless to say we will continue to pot up seedlings from Mums and anyone else's gardens into the future as we will need thousands more trees to create suffiecient windbreaks on our property.

On our most recent trip we decided to do some planting out outside our actual boundary fence on the south west corner of our property.  This is to strengthen the wind break on our most exposed corner and also to create additional shelter for the plants in our windbreak that were the last to get planted in the hope that they will establish more quickly with the extra protection.

After clearing the long grass we planted out a whole lot of giant New Zealand Flax (also from Mum and Dads where they grow it around their veggie patch for wind protection) which grows over 2 metres tall and about a metre wide,  Being such a thick dense plant that grows quickly it was ideal for our needs.

The flax all planted out down the side an around the corner.  It has been cut off to form
small fan shapes to allow it to establish.

All planted out and the earliest plants are now well established

With the western boundary windbreak finished other than the odd plant replacement we will not do any other planting without being in New Zealand permanently and doing a lot more planning as future windbreaks will be planted out in relation to buildings and run across the property in an east west direction.

I will post tomorrow about where things are at with buildings as we have made progress over the last 8 months in this area of planning too.

From The Web This Week

Things are getting busy round here so to ease into the week here are some interesting things I came across in the past week.

Check out these clever little foxes growing a garden

Some great uses for mint

I use lots of epsom salt but I have did not know about some of these uses

Some great hand made projects

I really like these tips from Morag Gamble a local permaculture teacher for staying calm when things get busy

I am looking forward to trying this recipe for calendula salve when we get to NZ, I have used calendula salve in the past and found it to be good for everything

Permaculture Workshop

I little while ago I signed up to follow a couple of the local (to where we will be living in New Zealand) permaculture groups on facebook.  I discovered that while were going to be in NZ there was a whole weekend of events happening, most free of charge or by donation.
We were a bit short on time so could not attend more than 1 event so we chose to attend a discussion about wind and water.

The discussion was held at a private property and the gateway that greeted us was quite magical.

Our host had only owned the property for a few years and it used to be a horse property so had compacted soils, a sand arena, no food production or wind protection.  He demonstrated how the water flowed across the property and how the property had been poorly designed as all the buildings created dams and blocked the flow of water.  Plus they were made of metal so the end result would be rusting.  Something we will have to be much more aware of when we plan our property.

There were about 30 people at this one talk and there were 2 other talks happening at other locations around the city.  It was great to see a diverse range of people attending.

They have planted over 50 fruit and nut trees so far and are using ally-cropping where you fence off your wind break and use chickens or ducks below food and shelter plants.

The property we visited had a section of very steep pasture and our host discussed how he was using Poplar poles to stabilise the hillside.  This is a very common form of tree planting for stabilisation in New Zealand as the hill sides are prone to slips.  They are basically giant cuttings that grow into trees and they only cost about $3 each So they are an affordable option for farmers needing to stabilise large sections of their property

Once the tree cutting has been planted they get surrounded with a plastic tree guard to stop the stock rubbing against them.

You can see the top of a slip in the photo

It was a very interesting day and we met some great people.  There was a seed swap later that day but we had other plans and since we are not living there yet there was not much point.
It seems like the permaculture group that hosted all the activities over the weekend do this a few times a year so that is something to look forward to doing once we are living there.

Hare you attended any interesting gatherings lately?

Feeding A Cow On The Cheap

Back at the start of July our cow "Freezer 2" was supposed to have been killed and be in the freezer but this did not happen.
We had planned to have her in the freezer before we ran out of feed which we knew was inevitable due to the lack of rain.  We also knew that because of the severe drought affecting much of Queensland buying feed would be very expensive (between $16 and $22 per week).  At that sort of cost it basically ruins any saving we might have made from raising our own meat.

So for the past 6 weeks we have been cutting grass from the roadside to feed to our cow.  We feed her 2 wheel barrows of grass a day and she has not lost any weight/muscle mass by the looks of things.

Setting off to cut grass

Hubby does the whipper snipping and I do the rake up

We cut a few days of grass at a time and store it in the neighbours open ended shed.  We have finished the grass on the roadside nearby and are now going around our neighbours shed.

Freezer 2 comes running when she sees the wheel barrow

The grass is not great but she picks through it and eats most of it.  You can see in the photo below that she is not at all interested in what is outside that gate when there is a pile of grass to eat.

We have a row of trees in our front paddock where she is at the moment and for a while now I have been picking up all the fallen branches and piling them around the base of each tree.  To this I add dried cow pats and now that we have been cutting this grass for Freezer 2, we are also adding any leftover grass she does not eat.  I am building a sort of Hugelkultur which is something often used in permaculture to build soil and it helps to deter the cows from wearing down the soil around the base of the trees and stops them rubbing on the trunks.  Cutting all this grass made me realise that if you are creative there are sources of free organic matter all around us we just need to go out and find them.

We now have a new butcher who is happy to kill our cow in September so we only need to keep feeding Freezer 2 for a few more weeks.
Thankfully we have just had some good rain (34 mm) and the weather is warming up so we should even get a bit of growth to help things along but I think we will still be cutting grass until she is in the freezer and that possibly means trekking 500 metres up the road and back with the wheel barrow a few times, but free is free right.

What frugal methods have you used to feed your animals?

Crystal Waters Permaculture Community

At the beginning of the year Hubby an I were able to visit Crystal Waters, a Permaculture Community in the Sunshine Coast hinterland and about 35 minutes from where we live.  I have been learning a lot about permaculture and how we can apply the principles in our life.

We had organised to take a tour of the community with the lovely Robin Clayfield.  Robin has a vast amount of experience in the world of permaculture  and has lived at Crystal Waters for many years.

At the start of our tour Robin showed us plans and photos of what the property looked like before the village  was built.  She showed us how the plans has drawn on permaculture to design the layout and features including where dams and roads would be built.

Robin took us to look at some of the home within the community and showed us different ways that permaculture had been used to design the homes.
The weather was roasting and at that stage we had not had rain for months so we toured from shady spot to shady spot.

One of the homes we saw had been built with a grass roof (above photo).  I wondered how the owners were able to collect rain water but then Robin pointed out the stone edging (below photo).

Robin and Hubby

We looked at how some residents had built food forests around their homes, others had used fruit trees in their landscaping instead of ornamentals.

We talked about the shared spaces and small businesses that had been trialled and/or established in the community   It was a fascinating tour and Robin was an excellent tour guide.

There was a lot of information to take in and it has given us a lot to talk about since.  We are in the process of trying to learn as much as we can before we move to NZ so that when we are planning our property design we end up with things in the best place.

We are not moving for a year or so which is good because I think we still have a lot to learn.