Bee Forage Calendar

Today three of my fellow interns (Ashley, Jurgen, and Olive) quickly cranked out a bee forage calendar that was so awesome it cried out for a digital version. Species have been selected for cold temperate Australia (this is definitely not the subtropics!). We’re all beginners when it comes to bees, and damn close toe beginners when it comes to botany, so please forgive any mistakes and omissions (especially under the “uses” column).

We’ll improve it as time permits, in the mean time I hope it provides a useful starting point for others. If you have any corrections or additions we’d love to hear them!

Please note that the months indicate when the plant will be flowering in the southern hemisphere, where summer is from December to February!

I’ve posted the calendar to my website:

http://adam.shand.net/archives/2011/bee_forage_calendar/

All About The Rain

Yours truly

The last couple of days have been all about rain.  Nick informed us that a big storm was brewing and that we might actually get some serious amount of water falling from the sky.  We kicked into gear doing a quick design for the area around the woolshed (Milkwood’s HQ) so we better control the water and get some plants in before the magical wetting!

A days work later and there were lots of pretty pink triangles dotted about the woolshed, each with a young Acacia, Golden Elm or Kurrajong inside.  We planted along contoured rip lines, but unfortunately we had a bit of an accident with the tractor part way through which meant that we couldn’t complete our plans.

The following morning the normally dry Milkwood landscape was transformed, water was everywhere!  Our baby gabions held up, the rip lines were beautifully soaked and the plants were all looking happily damp.

Adam.

Ripper go boom!

Bridge over lower swale.

Lower creek.

Pretty!

Erosion gully

All in a row

Claire and Nick

Upper swale and Sabina

Discussion

Views from Milkwood

Hello Everybody!

My name is Adam and I’m one of the six who was selected to be a part of Milkwood’s spring internship program. It’s an exciting time for me as my interest in permaculture came about during a period of fairly major change. Professionally my background is a mixture of management, business and hands on geekery in the high tech world. Personally, well until recently … my personal life has largely been my work. About three years ago I had a major wake up call and realised that it was time to make some changes if I wanted to actually live the way I said I did. So I sold everything I owned (well except for my books, art and laptop!), quit my job and bought a one way ticket to Bali with a deliberately vague plan of making my way overland to India. Along the way I ended up attending a PDC course in Thailand and discovered that there was a word for all of the ideas and dreams which had been jangling around in my head, “permaculture”!

So here I am, two weeks into this internship, at the beginning of gaining the skills and experience I’ll need if I decide to develop my own property once I return home to New Zealand. I don’t really know where this ride will take me, but I’m looking forward to finding out. In the mean time I’ll leave you with some pictures from an early morning walkabout Milkwood.