A milestone!

A special day today - the 100th post to this blog! I've just looked up the statistics and seen that we've also passed another milestone - more than 30,000 hits. Thanks to everyone who reads the blog and sends in comments - it's always good to know that people are finding it useful.

Bruce kindly climbed up on the roof to take this photo of the two mandalas (complete with me gardening in Mandala 2):

Click on photo to enlarge image

The photo shows more clearly than any words how horribly dry everything is - really depressing.

As I mentioned in a previous post, we've now got a dome on each mandala, and in the left-hand corner of the photo you can see we also have a 'nursery pen', currently full of young chicks and their mothers. It's impractical to keep a hen in a dome once it's gone broody, because the other hens continue to get into the nesting box and lay new eggs, so the broody hen ends up sitting on an ever increasing number of eggs. Another problem is that, once the eggs are hatched, little chicks can often find ways to get out of the dome, and then can't get back in again. To solve these problems, Bruce built the nursery pen, which has several places he can shut off, so that a broody hen can sit in peace on a clutch of eggs. He also reinforced the wire round the bottom to keep the little chicks in place.

We've enjoyed chook breeding, but have decided to kill off our roosters and just buy in new hens if we need them. We realised that we were putting in a lot of time, effort and money (in buying grain) to raise chicks that we didn't really need.

Comments

[Carol Stroud]

I found the blog today and am so excited about it. I started my garden in may this year. my purpose is to plant this method in a very underprivilaged community in the innercity of Johannesburg South Africa. I am still busy with the pilot project at home. We have a great number of unemployed, as well as HiV being rampant here. I am tired of watching children go to bed hungry at night and and handing out food enabling a dependance on on the person handing out the food.
It's time to teach people to care for themselves.
How I plan to do this is to get permission to use the vaccant lots in and around the community ( of which there are plenty) seccure them and get going one lot at a time. Here's to nutritious eating and restoring hope. my project is called Roots and friuts, and it is part of a missions organization called Joseph project.

[Aurelius]

Lurker speaking up to say I read from time to time, and I've lifted a few of your ideas for my own backyard. Keep going. You're an inspiration.

[Hugh]

Hey Denise,

Good to read your site, I stumbled across this while looking for info on mandalas in permaculture design. I was wondering if the book you have based your design on offers any explanation of the reasons for using the mandala. Is it for its space effective properties, or the ease of chook rotations, or are there other reasons I'm missing? I am interested and want to know more before I make a decision. Also, what is the total diameter of your mandala?

Thanks!
Hugh

[Denise]

Just found your blog and enjoyed reading about your progress over the years. I've just started living on 4 acres of ex-dairy country in SE Qld and want to implement Linda's mandala vege garden. Wish me luck.