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Fernglade Farm – Early Spring (September) 2012 Update (Australia)

Writing the series about Food Forests has made me aware of how much interest there is in them and how they can vary from region to region, but it also highlighted to me just how difficult it may be for people to actually visit a food forest.

However, thanks to the wonders of the internet and YouTube, people have the opportunity to take a virtual tour of a food forest and see how it progresses over time without leaving their chair!

To this end, I’ll post semi regular updates with video here. The updates will be warts and all, meaning that I’ll discuss the things that are working as well as those that aren’t. It should be an interesting journey and I welcome dialogue, constructive questions and observations about the developing food forest and other activities here.

As a bit of background about the farm: It is located in the cool temperate mountainous region of South Eastern Australia at an altitude of about 700m above sea level. There are over 300 fruit trees within the two food forests. There are also 14 raised garden beds, plus berry beds and herb beds. Apart from the local wildlife which is an integral part of the food forest, I have a dozen chickens which provide eggs and fertiliser.

The fruit trees are split into two food forests which have different shading from the surrounding forest and the land aspect to the sun. This is because the growing seasons here can vary from quite wet to quite dry and you never really know in advance what the growing season will bring. Chaos seems to be the norm and I’ve seen snow, drought, floods and even a tornado. It is a challenging environment!

I hope that you enjoy the series.

4 Comments

  1. “It is located in the cool temperate mountainous region of South Eastern Australia at an altitude of about 700m above sea level.”

  2. Hi Brendan,

    No. Although the north of Tasmania is a beautiful place. The farm is up in the Macedon Ranges in Central Victoria. The climate here is very similar to many parts of Tasmania and the mountain range even has Tasmanian mountain peppers (very hot!) as well as being the most westerly location on the mainland for: mountain ash, alpine ash and snow gums. Hope you enjoyed the post.

    Chris

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