Darren suggested I include a couple of images of an olive grove that he designed for our farm. This provides a good example of the principles of keyline design. Pictured below is Darren’s original layout for the olive grove. In designing this grove, he performed a half meter contour survey represented by the solid black lines in the photo below.

As you can see in this example of keyline design, the tree lines don’t follow the contour lines precisely. Instead they cross the contour lines which reflects the principle of allowing water to fall from the gullies to the ridges.

The olives has thus been able to establish themselves without irrigation, even during several years of extreme drought.

The trees have also demonstrated even and consistent growth which reinforces the benefits of keyine design.

Pictured here is a satellite photograph of the grove following ground preparation and below the olives as they appear today.

Meet Ivy, our young maiden house cow. As Ivy is equally inexperienced in providing milk for our family, we’re certain that this experience is going to be both challenging and rewarding. We purchased Ivy as a 12-14 month old heifer last September, and she was joined with our gentle angus bull Zeus in February. She has now grown considerably, and while she hasn’t had as much contact with us for the last 6 months, she hasn’t lost any of her curiosity and affectionate nature (at least that’s what I call it).

Here, she is pictured as a young heifer, and below a couple of weeks ago.

Nina and I are dedicated to achieving our personal self-sufficiency, and an important part of this is the milking of our jersey cow.

Ivy is now pregnant to our angus bull Zeus, and in the interim, we’re preparing ourselves for the adventure of producing our own milk products (milk, cream, butter, cheese, yogurt) by obtaining some essential pieces of equipment. Pictured here, are the latest additions to our kit. In the foreground, our hand operated cream separator, behind this a 5 litre milk billy (for storing the daily milk), and then our stainless steel milking bucket.

We’re very excited that Ivy’s calf will be born around November, and we can’t wait for the milk! Currently, we’re rolling our own oats and we’re looking forward to have real unhomogenised, unpasteurised milk with them. Not to mention the plethora of additional uses cows milk can be put to.

I made a little more progress today on our house orchard. This project has taken a back seat while the dam upgrade has been going on, so I was keen to make a little more progress today. I’ve got roughly 35 fruit trees and 50 tagasaste on order waiting for me to collect. Though I can’t just roll up and collect the bare rooted trees without having first prepared the ground for planting. Ideally, I would have done this last spring but with so many projects on the go, that was impossible.

Today, I was able to remove 95% of my pegging and take this orchard layout from the academic stage of keyline design to the soil bed preparation. In the photo below, you can see the lines I’ve power harrowed which will be the tree lines. Having put them in, I’ll somewhat concerned about the tight spacing (6×6), but you can always move trees later if management becomes an issue.

I’ve managed to mark and sow oats on 4 rows today, with another 2 rows in the main orchard, and another 3 smaller rows on a smaller orchard further down the hill. Though I haven’t decided yet, I’ll probably interplant the fruit trees with tagasaste in an alternating manner.

It’s now the end of the week, so I’ll have to pick up this project next week - though given this hectic week, I must admit a couple of days off are more than welcome!

Day 4 has come to its conclusion today, and with astonishing changes. The most noteworthly is certainly the construction of the water drain that will feed our upgraded dam. Special thanks to the earth moving guys for an excellent job, I’m very pleased with the outcome.

Below is Darren Doherty’s strip forest design followed by photos of the development.

Below the work of the road grader can be appreciated. Prior to the grader’s work, this was just grassed pasture. Now it’s a combination water drain / access road sculpted in the landscape. This will dramatically increase the water catchment of our dam and forms an integral part of the integrated farm design.

In the photo below, you can identify the tree lines that will form a strip forest on the lower side of the road/drain. This is a five tree system of mixed forestry. These lines can be seen just behind the grader.

The more-or-less finished dam. The top soil as now been returned to the parameter of the dam in this photo. A beautiful shape, it resembles an enormous clay bowl, ready to be fired.

Our farm ‘get-around’ is pictured here. Absent a muffler, this jeep certainly barks a lot louder than it bites and it’s mighty temping to play a little rally car driving along the new road.

In this photo, only the top soil has been removed for the drain construction. This is a beautiful representation of the prepared strip forest lines. Daz is visible in this photo, just left of the drain on the horizon.

Here are a few photos from our dam upgrade from day 2. These guys mean business. It’s quite amazing how much dirt and clay they can move in a short space of time. I consider this an excellent use of fossil fuels.