We are currently at Speargrass Farm, an off-grid sustainable farm 200km south of Darwin. Luke & Laura have a 6 acre property in the bush that they have spent the past 12 years converting into a living testament of natural living. I was very inspired by some of the reading material in the Speargrass library and am going to work on scenario Project Do Nothing over the coming weeks. Natural Living, Natural Farming, Natural Diet, Natural School……... The farm is isolated but there is a constant flow of visitors and the 3 children, Ginger, Wren, Chilli have an abundance of animals to keep them company; 45 goats, 50 chickens and ducks and an assortment of pet animals including Barney, the bull; Bethany the kangaroo; Jump & Dusty, the dogs, the guinea pigs, the tree frogs etc… Our own children absolutely adore it here and don't want to leave. The girls are “unschooled”. Learning is led by whatever interests them and from what I can see, is a huge success. They teach themselves and the parents are there to provide guidance. They are well-spoken, sociable and knowledgeable on an amazingly wide array of topics. Before we decided to take this year off, I spent quite a bit of time researching Homeschooling techniques. Basically, there are 2 main methods; on one spectrum, we have the Free-schoolers who adopt a democratic system and let the children decide what they learn, and on the other spectrum, we have Distance Education. There were outstanding results from Free-schoolers and I was tempted to give it a go, but being risk averse, we went with Distance Education and signed up the children with SIDE (School of Isolated Distance Education) and CNED. To be honest, Distance Learning is difficult and we are struggling with it. Benoit is considering several new career options : Bread-maker, Poultry Farmer, Goat Farmer, Bee-Carer, Hunter / butcher The Family Ariston went away and we played farmers for a couple of days…. Benoit is very attached to the goats now!
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Birdwood Downs Station (BDS) is owned by a group of philanthropic Americans and is run as a not-for-profit social enterprise. The history of the place is quite interesting. Birdwood is the grass that was used to regenerate the soil and turn useless bushland into pasture for cattle. At its peak, the pastures were able to support 250 cows and a business producing hay and seeds for export. The government then sold the company 2,500 hectares of land on which the station is situated for a small price. This has inspired us to work on Project Scenario B (Details below for reference) and Benoit is already doing research on grants and subsidies available in Europe for land regeneration. BDS is run in the form of a quasi-community. Workers are not paid but receive food, lodging and a share of returns from projects they launch. Business includes cattle rearing, horse breeding, horsemanship training, tourist accommodation and last season, when they had a volunteer chef, they ran a restaurant and also sold fruits & vegetables. Volunteers stay in huts and take communal meals in the homestead. Hans, the manager, was a Dutch Management Consultant who came to BDS 8 years ago, volunteered and loved the place so much, he never left. He is now director of the company and is looking at building a house on the station. We had wonderful discussions on ideology, philosophy and our various wacky projects. Currently, there is a need for the station to have an additional member to help run the tourist operations and manage the vegetable gardens. The kids want us to have horses at our new place. Apparently, a horse can produce 22kg of poo a day. Can you imagine how much compost we can make with that! Well, we would probably have to produce 22kg of grass to feed it, so maybe it isn't such a good idea... Some Observations & lessons learnt from BDS
Mark Nelson, the wastewater gardener, is one of the founding members of BDS. Black & grey water from the homestead is filtered through gravel then goes directly into a garden. (We had planned to do a simplified version by running the grey water from our washing machine at our house in Oceanic Drive into a gravel pit in the front gardens.) He was also 1 of 8 scientists who lived in a sealed, closed-loop Biosphere dome for 2 years. Project Scenario B (Peri-urban Farm)
Identify a need for redevelopment & regeneration of land in the vicinity of a large city (eg : abandoned industrial zones) and obtain subsidies / grants to start up a project consisting of
Our Needs : To create something that contributes socially (regenerating the environment / rehabilitating people in need / supporting healthy food production / small business creation / providing community space) Local Government Needs:
Market Needs :
Meimei is not afraid of horses, but is still terrified of dogs! We started our first WWOOFing (Willing Workers On Organic Farm) project 1 week ago at Birdwood Downs Station. It is pretty hard work, waking up at 5.45am, working from 6.30am-12.30pm, then having to school the kids. We are doing Pasture Management in the paddocks (aka weeding ) cleaning and building maintenance. Fellow Wwoofer, Kevin, is an Agronome (specialist in plant genetics I think) and we are hoping to get to work with him in the nursery and gardens in the coming days. Stephan is now quite the specialist in planting Boabs, irrigation and looking after the chooks. The great thing about being here is sleeping in a real hut, in a real bed and cooking in a real kitchen. I think I needed a break from the camper trailer!
We are in our third week at Embalgun and are still in awe of this beautiful paradise. We have worked out a little routine that seems to work well. The greatest challenge is finding “Alone time”. It is intense having the kids 24/7 and we have the local kids who often join us for school, play and meals so I now know what it would be like to have 15 kids!! It is a little overwhelming and tiring so we called time-out today and I had my first child-free rest day.
Stephan's classroomBenoit is searching for a new career ...
In the spirit of the trip, we have done a little analysis on whether it would be possible for us to live in a community such as this somewhere. (The work is documented below for reference.) There are many reasons why it won’t be possible, and going through the process has helped us understand better the things we want and don’t want. Project Scenario A
Long-Term engagement within an indigenous community – Invest & create a financially viable & sustainable tourism site in exchange for a long-term sub-lease of a piece of land which can be our home (with access to the sea and fresh water bore on the land). Our Needs : To create something for our future that can also help others : working with children & young adults; living a simpler & more authentic life with space to grow our own food, build our own home, educate our children and give them a healthy & meaningful environment to grow-up. Local community Needs:
Market Needs (Tourists) : To have an authentic experience in a peaceful remote environment with access to good food, simple but aesthetically pleasing and comfortable facilities. Project Objective : To provide know-how to support a local community that wants to kick-start a commercially viable activity by creating a site that welcomes mid-long term visitors in search of a genuine experience.
Stakeholders
Threats + reasons why it will not work
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March 2017
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