Sandbox
New wood storage usable[edit] |
| Posted by Nad on 10 January 2017 at 15:16 |
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This post has the following tags: Our fifth year on the land
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A few weeks ago our firewood storage collapsed and we decided to design and build something more permanent. A few days ago, it was complete enough that we could dismantle the collapsed one and move all the wood into the new one.
It's not complete yet though, I'm going to put vertical supports on the front as well so the wood can be piled up higher, and also put shelves over so that a second pile can be made above the existing ones while still allowing for good air flow. |
Feliz anniversário Beth![edit] |
| Posted by Nad on 29 December 2016 at 13:05 |
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This post has the following tags: Our forth year on the land
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| Ontem foi aniversário da Beth! Nós tivemos um dia simples sem viajar para qualquer lugar, foi perfeito :-)
Beth cozinhou um bolo com coco, chocolate e framboesa em cima.
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The Araucária tree[edit] |
| Posted by Nad on 27 December 2016 at 15:56 |
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This post has the following tags: Our forth year on the land
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| Um documentário lindo sobre o árvore Araucária.
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Raspberries for christmas[edit] |
| Posted by Nad on 24 December 2016 at 13:02 |
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This post has the following tags: Our forth year on the land
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We're really pleased that we took the time to save a couple of the raspberries from the ant attacks because they've been amazingly productive. It turned out the cotton wool wasn't very effective (and neither was tin foil which was another method we'd been told stopped them), but the PVC pipes reduced the majority of them, and putting habanero sauce at the top of the pipes when they get particularly crazy works very well. In the last week or so these two plants have been giving us a whole punnet of raspberries every day!
We've found that putting a mixture of yeast and sugar in the path of the ants seems to work very well too, they take some of it back to the nest and the yeast bacteria competes with the fungus that they use all the leaves to produce for food. They have no way to get rid of the bacteria once it starts to grow and have no choice but to close down the whole nest and start another one somewhere else. One big nest about a cubic metre in size has recently been abandoned, but it's important to keep putting the mixture around otherwise the new nest will go through a very productive phase as it grows in size. It's not a very harmonious solution, but until we figure out a better way it's going to have to do. We've been told that they only go crazy and completely destroy plants like this when there's something out of balance in the environment, so maybe as we make the land more fertile and productive it will help fix the balance and we can co-exist with the ants in harmony - but for now the yeast-nuke stays. |
Leelee getting a bit too friendly[edit] |
| Posted by Nad on 5 December 2016 at 19:27 |
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This post has the following tags: Our forth year on the land
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| The other day I was in the hammock eating a hamburger when I noticed some movement on the ground under me. It was Leelee eating the bits of bread that were falling on the ground. This all seemed ok, but then he suddenly jumped up onto the hammock and tried to eat my leg!!! I managed to move the side of the hammock so he fell off onto the ground - he wasn't behaving aggressively, it was more like he just didn't understand which things could be considered as food and which couldn't. Today he's visiting again and hanging around on the door mat - here he is trying to get inside through the mosquito net :-/
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