JubJub Homestead

The next small project on the list was the worm bin, or "worm castle" as I have now decided to call it. Worms are extremely efficient at converting food waste into a nutrient rich, plant available soil medium. This worm poo, commonly referred to as worm castings or black gold is literally worth its weight in gold. To buy good quality castings, you're going to pay a lot for it. You don't get rich writing cheques so I decided to build my own worm castle so I can have an endless supply of castings for my garden. The first step was to source an old bathtub. Thankfully, the previous owners had a horse in the paddock and left the tub they were using as a water trough. It's cast iron and weighs a tonne. I hooked a rope through the pug hole and tied it to the tow bar of the ute, then dragged it a good 100 meters through the paddock. Just as I pulled up beside the backyard, the rope snapped, so i re-tied it and hooked it around me like a horse pulling a plough. I ...

Quite a few years ago when I was first learning about homesteading, I watched a film called "Back To Eden". It's about this bloke who uses wood chips to cover his orchard. The wood chips eventually break down leaving a beautiful black soil, full of nutrients, that facilitates excellent plant growth. This "Back To Eden" gardening method is essentially mimicking what happens in a forest. Branches and leaves fall to the ground, eventually break down and turn into soil. This mimicking of the forest is an excellent way to bring poor soil up to scratch in a relatively short time period (12-24 months). It is a fairly common practice within permaculture design as well. We had about 12 trees/shrubs in the front yard that served no purpose other than to threaten our house foundation with expanding roots and provide a small amount of privacy from the road. They had to go. Rather than chop them up and use them for firewood which was my first inkling, I decided...

The missus and I have recently moved to Tasmania and purchased a lifestyle block of 5 acres with a nice 4 bedroom brick house on it. We paid $365,000 for the place. It still blows my mind that we got it so cheap. We're in a little town called Lachlan (pronounced lak-len, not lock-lan how it should be) which is about 7 minutes drive out of New Norfolk in the Derwent Valley of Tassie. It's about 25 to 30 minutes from the outskirts of Hobart from our place (depending on the traffic, as Tasmanian's are notoriously slow drivers). We moved out here for many reasons, so i'll list a few of the main one's: *Climate: We both like the cold and hate the humidity. It still gets hot here, but its dry heat, and rarely over 35 degrees C. *Housing: $365k for a 4br brick home on 5 acres of fully fenced pasture with a dam, a bore and only 30 minutes from a capital city, 45 minutes from an airport. Show me where you can get better value for money than that. *...