JubJub Homestead

In The Loop So we've been pretty busy in the 5 weeks we've been here. I started a new job and Shannon has been spending 4 hours a day travelling to work and back. Yet, we've still managed to do quite a bit. The Back To Eden Food Forest is progressing well. Every chance I get, I'm out there spreading mulch with the wheelbarrow. I'm about a third of the way there. I think its about 40 cubic meters of mulch I've moved so far. I don't know how many hundreds of wheelbarrows, or better yet, how many shovel full's of mulch that is, and quite frankly, i don't want to think about it. But, it's getting done, that's the main thing.  You can see the remnants of the french drain trench in the photo below. At the start of March I can place my order for bare root fruit trees. It's going to be a pricy order, but buying in bulk will bring the costs down. I'm going to take a stab and say I'll get around 30-40 trees initially....

You made your bed, now lay in it. So we're fortunate enough to have a fully fenced backyard. However, it is rather boring and empty. I wanted to fill the entire backyard with raised beds, but Shannon wants a nice lawn. After reminding Shannon of her place in the patriarchal dominance hierarchy, I agreed not to build raised beds everywhere, but was allowed to build them along the fence, which I have agreed to do. So the first one I built was at the back of the kitchen window. There were a couple of pesky shrubs there so I dug them up. Then I built a rock wall and layed cardboard over the weeds. Then Shannon and I filled the bed with some sandy soil that was left in a pile beside the house. I then topped it up with compost and put a few bricks in there till I could get hold of some pavers. There is a tap on the wall so I'm going to screw a bracket into the fence near the footpath to hold a garden hose and hook it up to the tap. The final step was c...

Scuse' my French A belated happy new year to you all. Things have been busy both on the homestead and off, hence the lack of posts. Anyway, lets get into it. One of the problems that was identified by the builder when we bought the house was the lack of drainage under it. The water was coming off the hill and seeping under the foundation. Whilst there is no damage, he told us it was a priority to get a french drain installed as it would eventually become a problem if it wasn't rectified. I asked the builder how much it would cost to get someone to do it and he said about $3000. Having no desire to spend the holiday fund on the moving of dirt, I enrolled in Youtube University. So this is the back of the house. To the left, just out of the picture, is the water tank. The water seeps down under the house from this side. I started digging from where I thought it would be the most difficult at the front of the house. Thankfully there was no rock, but the soil was...