Eight Acres Natural Living

04/04/2026

✌️BE PREPARED✌️
At times like this I feel both prepared and unprepared.
I've spent the last 15 years learning how to grow food. I've set up veggie gardens, a food forest, chooks, cattle, beehives, using permaculture design to think about how we can sustain our requirements for food, energy and community, right here amongst the gum trees.
And while we do grow a lot of food, I'm also very concious of how much we still rely on external resources. We buy grain to feed the chickens, hay to feed the cattle, we don't (yet) have an electric car or battery system. We do have a tractor and lots of equipment (chainsaws to cut firewood, firefighting pumps etc) that runs on fossil fuel. We live 50km out of town, and if we don't have fuel, our only option is push bikes.
Knowing that, despite ending we've done, we are still very exposed to this fuel crisis is frustrating, but also a good reason to reflect and review our priorities. We knew that relying on fossil fuel was a risk, but we thought we had more time to gradually replace our gear (we like to use things until they're with out, we have a 15+ year old ride on mower 🤣).
So the past few weekends we've made an effort to w**d the food forest (and found a bounty of sweet potato and limes!), prep the garden for winter, bought more chooks and researched electric vehicles.
How are you feeling? What do you wish you'd know or done earlier to prepare?

14/03/2026

🌱 SEEDS AND PERMACULTURE 🌱
Most veggies will produce seeds if you leave them long enough. It's worth learning how to collect and save seeds to reduce your costs (instead of buying seedlings) and increase self-sufficiency.
In permaculture we are trying to work with nature to reduce our effort, so my favourite way of saving seeds is just to let them fall in the soil and sprout up at the the right time. For insurance purposes, I'll also save some of the seeds to plant just in case nothing comes up naturally. But there is usually so much seed, I'll also give some away. Local seed swaps are a great way to develop varieties that do well in your local area.
These are some Purple King bean seeds I've saved and some carrots that have sprouted from seed heads that I left in the garden beds.
Do you save seeds? Which ones are easy?
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09/03/2026

🌧RAIN🌧
It's been a few weeks since we had any rain, and we'dhad some really hot days in February, so it was nice to get over 200mm over the last 24 hours! Our dams are full, our creeks are running and there are puddles everywhere. The rain stopped by 5pm, so we were able to go for a walk and check it out.
Roads in our area are closed due to flooding, but I expect most will drain overnight. It's times like these that I feel secure with our full freezers, pantry and garden. We can manage here for several weeks without going into town.
How much rain did you get?

07/03/2026

🌧 GARDEN RESET 🌧
Significant rainfall forecast for Sunday was motivation for me to clean up the summer garden and reset for Autumn and Winter. In true permaculture fashion, I just had to pull out the old silverbeet, and replant the self-seeded silverbeet in its place. I also found self-seeded carrots and lettuce, and spread some beetroot seeds from some beets I left to seed as well.
I was able to clean up 3 raised beds, leaving the choko / tromboncino jungle for later. The chickens were happy to help with everything I pulled out. I also found some shallots ready to harvest, and planted pea, radishes, lettuce, parsley and coriander seeds. I'll get seedlings later if these don't come up.
I was happy to find lots of worms, I think we've finally got the soil mix and moisture just right (helped with irrigation set up, so I can leave the bore water running for longer than I'm willing to manually water).
I hope you're having a productive weekend and staying dry. How's your veggie garden?

21/02/2026

💚 FINALLY FEIJOAS! 💚
We started our food forest in 2019 and the harvest some years has been better than others. I was really excited to finally have feijoas on the tree a couple of years ago, but the fruit flies got to them first (as well as the plums, pears and mandarins 😭).
The fruit flies are difficult to control because they don't eat the fruit or leaves, they just lay eggs in the fruit, which hatch into larvae that digest the fruit before its ripe. They don't ingest anything, so you can't use any pesticides, organic or otherwise. You need to be organised with traps and lures.
I was too late this year, and the destroyed the plums again, but I did wrap some feijoa branches in mesh bags (and the manderins), so I've just been able to harvest a few that were in the bags. They are a bit small, but better than nothing.
As a Kiwi, one of the things I miss is feijoas, so this is huge! 💚 this year we also picked two trays of mangoes and we have 5 bunches on bananas on the trees. Also lots of yellow passionfruit.
Next year I'm going to try harder with the fruit fly control as well as using more bags.
Do you like feijoas? What are you harvesting at the moment?

06/01/2026

🌳HAPPY NEW YEAR 2026🌳
We marked the new year with a visit to Bunya Mountains National Park. Nature bathing in the rainforest to reset and refresh. We are so lucky to live just 40 minutes from this beautiful national park and important meeting place for first nations people. It's always 10degC cooler up there too, with some lovely walks and places to eat (and buy our honey 🍯).
I don't feel ready to have plans for the whole year, I'm taking it one season at a time. Right now it's all about the summer harvest and trying to keep fruit flies out of the mandarins. What about you? What did 2026 hold?

26/12/2025

SUNSET was magical yesterday ✨️

23/12/2025

🪴HOUSE PLANTS🪴
I have to say, I'm pretty happy with these plants on the verandah, and the dogs don't mind them either.

17/12/2025

Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to live here amongst the gum trees....

14/12/2025

FINALLY... something other than yellow zucchinis 🤣 purple king beans and cucumbers👌

08/12/2025

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1BpQZpiLxE/

10/11/2024

Land regeneration using donkeys and cattle 👌

Chris Henggeler is the only grazier in Australia using feral donkeys to regenerate his remote property. Now he's on the wrong side of the law.