experiments – Page 2 – Gallifrey Forest Farm

June 22: wattleseed pancakes

2016/06/22 Danielle 0

Of the many species of wattle native to Australia, several produce seeds which are suitable for use as human food. Edible wattleseed has rich nutty, chocolate and roasted coffee flavours, and is well suited to both sweet and savoury uses. Australian aboriginal peoples ground dried wattle seeds to form a flour, which was then baked into damper (traditional campfire bread). The green seeds of some wattle species were also eaten, cooked and consumed as a green vegetable like peas or fresh beans. Wattle seeds have also been used as food in some areas in West Africa, where the wattle […]

the great livestock debate

2016/05/23 Danielle 0

As may have become clear by now, I adore animals. Fur, feathers, scales – they are all awesome in their own special ways. Even guinea fowl (noisy, dumb as bricks, but pretty and useful and lovely) and rabbits (destructive, tree-ringbarking wild versions are annoyingly hardy, while the tame meat-breed ones die far too easily) are pretty cool. My problem is deciding which animals to keep. I mean, I obviously can’t have them all. That would take more space than we have, and feeding them and taking care of them would take more time and $$$ than we have available. […]

summer holiday tree planting

2016/01/05 Danielle 0

This has been a lovely, idle, summer holiday. To be honest, you could replace ‘idle’ with ‘utterly slack’, and not be far off. I’ve read books, gone to the beach (twice already this year, which is impressive given that it’s an hour’s drive each way), played with my cats, and barely checked my email. It’s been wonderfully relaxing. The regular household chores have continued to be done though – pot plants watered, kitty litter cleaned, the chickens and the guinea fowl fed. The guinea fowl are hardly keets any more at all, they’re almost completely feathered out. We did put […]

Polyembryonic Seeds

2015/12/22 Danielle 0

Plants grow from seeds, but what many people do not know is that not all seeds contain just one plant embryo. Many varieties of mangos, for example, have polyembryonic seeds, as do most citrus. A polyembryonic seed is one which contains multiple embryos. Poly-embryonic seeds produce a number of shoots, one of which originates from fertilisation. The fertilised seedling is often weak and stunted and should be discarded. The other seedlings are clones of the mother tree. Yes, clones – just like a cutting, only from seed. This means that if you grow a polyembryonic mango (such as Kensington Pride […]

Plausible marketing options – initial thoughts

2015/06/30 Danielle 0

I’ve been thinking about agriculture – well, for some time now, actually. Thus the currently-in-progress Masters of Sustainable Agriculture. But I’ve been thinking of it in our specific context for the last few weeks. I would like our farm to be more or less self sufficient. I don’t mean in the homesteading survivalist sense, although producing as much of our own food as we can would be cool and is one of the goals. I mean in the overall part of the local economy sense, that the things we produce can either be sold directly or used by us to […]