Posts

I have compiled a list of do’s and dont’s for homemade pineapple beer to help you make a successful first batch. This episode talks about the steps and considerations to make a safe and drinkable pineapple beer. These tips have been compiled by asking a group of homebrewers for their input after successfully brewing their own batches and is intended to give you the knowledge required to get through a brew.

Harvesting rainwater in South Africa on my a 10 000L storage platform using molded tanks, leaf diverter, and a first flush system. If you are interested in setting up your own rainwater harvesting systems at home WATCH this video first! It is possible to design a rainwater harvesting system that can harvest rainwater off of almost any structure at relatively high efficiency. In this video, I have used my 10 000L storage platform to explain the process of understanding, collecting, and using rainwater in my context in South Africa. Jojo and Roto tanks are both made in South Africa and are readily available throughout the country.

Morgan Brand urges young farmers to also understand healthy ecosystems

We Built a wall using New South Africa skills. In this video, I sit down with my mate Rob to chat with him about how he learned the art of building. South Africa is a dynamic place with too many people lost in the dark. Rob and I are in pursuit of learning and we have the drive to self-teach. I recently learned that the term for this is AUTODIDACT.

This week on the farm has been busy on the ground and tough on the mindas we deal with the loss of a friend. The vegetables we planted in August together have been harvested and taken to the venue for all her friends to share. A final gift Lindy shares as we enjoy the bounty of food we planted. This week’s video is a look through time at our little garden project and the start of our renovations project.

Every small farm needs efficient watering systems. In this video, we look at the Drip irrigation system that we are using powered by 0.5 bars of gravity. We set this up with every small farm in mind and specifically chose to use non-compensated gravity emitters as a low-tech solution that could be replicated in rural South Africa. For a long time, we have been irrigating the market garden using two 10L watering cans. This made sense when we were still borderline subsistence but since we have taken on the challenge of scaling our production we realized that time spent watering is otherwise wasted time.

In this week’s episode, we took out half of our onions from last season. We will be replanting this area as soon as we have amended it with our new mix and then we will be plumbing our drip line irrigation into this space for the next round of growing. These onions were grown on raised beds in an educational system. It is not easy trying to teach your teacher how to do things and not all things work out the way they are planned. Getting the planting density up is essential if we want to optimize the small growing area we are using.

I first came across this way of thinking when I found the work of Darren Doherty. He is a world-class designer who has established the Regarians platform where they use a more in-depth understanding of the scale of permanence in setting up a farm. The basic concept is a movement from the most energy required to change to (#1) to less energy (#9). I have used the scale of permanence in setting up our farm as a tool to help inform how specific components may impact the design over time. In this video, I have tried to briefly introduce the Scale of Permanence as a logical way to approach a landscape so that it can be used as a tool to better understand the holistic potential. This way of thinking about a landscape can help guide decisions that need to be made by weighing up its relative permanence in the system and the costs of energy that it would take to alter. It will be a powerful tool in a new farmers' toolkit as it takes time and experience to gain the required abilities to read the landscape efficiently.

In this week’s episode, we took out half of our onions from last season. We will be replanting this area as soon as we have amended it with our new mix and then we will be plumbing our drip line irrigation into this space for the next round of growing. These onions were grown on raised beds in an educational system. It is not easy trying to teach your teacher how to do things and not all things work out the way they are planned. Getting the planting density up is essential if we want to optimize the small growing area we are using.