Permaculture Worm Farm Pathway

We have a shadehouse in which I raise a few hundred farm trees every year, plus all the vegetable seedlings we need year round to raise in our food garden.

I used to hand water it, but to save watering time, Graeme has set up a sprinkler system for me. Only trouble is, the system also waters the pathway... what a waste! When you are living off record low rainfall collection, this is unacceptable.

Now, I've also been wanting to raise compost worms in a much bigger way but was worried about the amount of water that would use up. Eventually my old brain worked out an ideal Permaculture solution to both dilemmas: why not use the pathway in the shadehouse to run a worm farm?

This was easily achieved and here's how:

The beds in the shadehouse are confined by large bricks. I simply found some single bed frames on the side of the road and lay them along the recessed pathway. The space created under them by the bricks became our worm farm.

I feed the worm farm every few weeks with free horse manure scabbed from local small farmers, (plus masses of feathers from a big chook kill, litter from raising baby chickens, etc) by just tipping it along the pathway and raking it around until it falls underneath. Formerly this stuff had to go into compost as my worm farm was too small to take it all in.

It's working well and I never have to remember to water my worms! Once it gets cranking I will have heaps of beautiful castings to add to my garden and could also run chickens in there to get a free high protein feed now and then :P

Under ideal conditions earthworms reproduce rapidly. Grown on horse manure, one square meter can yield 1.7 kg of earthworm protein a year, enough to exceed the protein needs of 1 hen.

Easy Ways to Adjust Soil pH

Its very good practice to monitor your soil pH from time to time. And though the rule of thumb "ideal" soil pH is around 6.5, lots of plants have their own preference, some doing better in a slightly more acidic soil, and some thriving only in more alkaline soils.

So what do can you do about it if your soil pH is a little bit "out"? Reader Robert Bradford shared his ingenious approach to this very problem:

My soil was lab tested years ago when I was in master gardener training. It, like all soils around here, tested slightly acid. I topdress with 4" of mostly finished compost every year which nudges the pH closer to 7.0.

If the plant wants a sweeter, more alkaline soil, I topdress with wood ash (5 gal/4X20'bed).

To get a more acidic soil, I simply topdress with coffee grounds at the same rate.

One way to tell if your soil is more than slightly acidic without a lab test is by the appearance of moss - it only grows in acidic soils.

If the plant requires a highly acid or basic soil I double the above dosages. It is not scientific but it works. Our tomatoes and potatoes were the best ever according to those we shared them with. And the onions and garlic were too good to share.

The Great Pumpkin Challenge!

There is no doubt that we live in very interesting times. So far this year we have seen worldwide, multiple occurrences of such previously rare events as mass bird and fish deaths, earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, cyclones and mega snowstorms. The omens are kind of, well, ominous. Change on a planetary scale seems to be happening, and happening fast! So what to do?

For us, the events above have prompted us to make sure we have a lot more fun this year…. Go to more plays, dinners, concerts, parties and talks. The only time we have is the present and the present is still pretty damn good, and not to be wasted!

And the usual advice to safeguard your welfare against any eventuality – be as self sufficient as possible, grow and store food, and strengthen ties with your local community network – is still as relevant as ever.

So what has that got to do with Giant Pumpkins? As it turns out, plenty!

As part of our local community strengthening, we’re helping organize Produce Markets in our area and someone came up with the brilliant idea of running a competition to see who could grow the biggest Giant Atlantic Pumpkin by the time the markets are on, 20 March. So seeds were sold late last spring and the race is on.

Apart from being a wonderful marketing and promotional tool, the Great Pumpkin Challenge as it has become known is turning out to be a fantastic way to encourage people to have a go at growing food. The competition is the motivation, and the experience will hopefully inspire them to do more. It’s win-win as the more people who grow food in your local area, the stronger you all are. Just by following the simple steps on the instruction sheet given out with the seeds, people automatically learn the basic principles that go towards growing great vegetables.

These were, in a nutshell:

• Plant into a mound of well rotted compost – that takes care of the need for good drainage and plenty of organic matter to feed on.
• Water adequately.
• Mulch well to preserve ideal moisture and temperature conditions for soil life.

And there are plenty of categories for the “failures” including best decorated pumpkin and best carved pumpkin…. I’m still hoping ours will top the comp for heaviest pumpkin – grow baby grow!

Codex and the Quackery of Modern Medicine

In this CBS video a farmer on life support almost dies because a team of doctors refused to administer intravenous vitamin C. Resorting to legal action, his family managed to force the hospital to administer 50 grams of intravenous Vitamin C a day. To everyone’s delight the patient showed immediate improvement leading to full recovery.

Despite such results, on December 28, 2010 the US Food and Drug Authority ordered manufacturers to stop making IV Vitamin C, Magnesium and certain B Vitamins by classifying them as “New Drugs”.

Now the nutrients under attack, which form the basis of countless therapies for serious diseases, may be provided ONLY by compounding pharmacies under a specific prescription for a specific patient. This means that the cost of these nutrients will increase sharply.

It also means that the FDA, always hostile to compounding pharmacies and the independent use of nutrients, can pick off individual substances and attack compounding pharmacies at their leisure. This is a result of the power granted FDA in 2007 (section 301(11) of the Kennedy FDA Enabling Act) to ban interstate sale of any “food” ever studied for medical use, even if never so used.

Living Proof: Vitamin C - Miracle Cure? - 60 ..., posted with vodpod

It's Raining Goo! Early Experiments with Chemtrails.

This video gives testimony from POLICE OFFICERS and ordinary citizens about several episodes of gelatinous rain that occurred 15 years ago in Oakville, a small town in Washington state. Analysis of samples of the "rain" supports the notion that the town had been used as testing grounds for the military's use of RAIN as a way to vector viruses for a population.

Just think how many advances they have made with this technology with 15 more years of R & D.

Why the Zeitgeist Movement's Venus Project will not succeed.

Its a terrible sign of our times that things that seem at first glance so sparklingly wonderful and positive, on closer look turn out to be the exact opposite. And simultaneously the genuinely innovative and good suffer smear campaigns and negative propaganda as a matter of course. So how do you know what's real and what to believe any more? The Venus Project is a great example of the former...

The utopian vision of the Venus Project certainly presents a beautiful alternative and sustainable future for humanity. However, there are some very serious problems with the vision. The central control it necessitates is doomed to corruption; history has proven that all power corrupts (and "absolute power corrupts absolutely").

Rather than the "top down" approach expounded in the Zeitgeist movement-supported Venus Project, a safer alternative is the "bottom up", empowering, grassroots practice of Permaculture by ordinary people.

This video argues that the Zeitgeist movement, while claiming to be non-violent and non-coercive, could never become established without becoming a murderous, totalitarian dictatorship.




Others that the Zeitgeist movement is a UN front, and the Venus Project supported as part of its eugenic psuedo-environmentalist agenda.

Here's evidence of that here:



Here Stephan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio gives a critique of the essential flaws of Zeitgeist and the Venus Project:

The Evolution of Revolution

Kelly Bryson, expert on non-violent conflict, describes the evolution of non-violence as a revolutionary force, its success rate and historic examples over the last century.

Keeping the Bastards Honest: Julian Assange on Citizenry's Right to Scrutinize the State

This video is a bite sized montage of the "Wikileaks Free Speech Forum" in Melbourne on the 4th Feb 2011. Here Julian Assange pulls no punches explaining why the citizenry must uphold its right to scrutinize the state. He also directly calls on the Australian PM to do all she can to bring him home, and the Australian public to turn their care and concern into ACTION and insist on his return to Melbourne.

The founders of Wikileaks, as individuals, citizens, mothers and conscious human beings instinctively know (as do many around the globe) that the narrative being played out in relation to Wikileaks and Assange, has ramifications for us all. We must collectively ACT on that knowledge, with the understanding that the attack on Assange is an attack on us all when it comes to freedom of speech, citizenry rights, human rights and the right to know what our elected officials do in our name both here and abroad.

People Power via Non-Violent Action and Peaceful Civil Disobedience

From Jesus to Gandhi, and Martin Luther King and Chavez to the people of Egypt today, nonviolent action campaigns have been a part of political life for millennia, challenging abuses by authorities, spearheading social reforms, demanding an end to colonial rule, or protesting militarism and discrimination.

Famous nonviolent protest leaders such as India’s Mohandas Gandhi and the United States’ Martin Luther King Jr., were committed to nonviolent action as the most effective means of waging their respective struggles. As Gandhi said "I would die for my cause but never will I kill for it".

In recent decades there has been a major upsurge in organized nonviolent insurrections against autocratic governments, many of which have achieved significant political and social reforms and even toppled repressive regimes from power.

Why Nonviolence Works

Nonviolent action can actually be more powerful than violence. A recent academic study of 323 major insurrections revealed that major nonviolent campaigns were successful 53 percent of the time, whereas primarily violent resistance campaigns were successful only 26 percent of the time.

Armed resistance tends to upset undecided elements of the population, who then seek security in the government and also gives the government easy justification for violent suppression. Conversely, force used against unarmed peaceful protesters engenders greater sympathy and may encourage formerly undecided elements of the community to side with the protesters.

Unarmed movements also increase the likelihood of defections and noncooperation by unmotivated police and military personnel.

Tactics of nonviolent campaigns may include strikes, boycotts, mass demonstrations, the popular contestation of public space, refusal to pay taxes, destruction of symbols of government authority (such as official identification cards), refusal to obey official orders (such as curfew restrictions), and the creation of alternative institutions for political legitimacy and social organization.

How to Protest Intelligently: Egyptian Activists' Blueprint

Prior to their planned protests, Egyptian activists circulated a guide "How to Protest Intelligently". Excerpts have been translated into English and published by The Atlantic.

While the plan itself contains specifics about what protesters might do, these excerpts show how one might equip oneself for clashes with riot police.

Amongst the "necessary clothing and accessories" shown I particularly like the rose, there to help make friends with the police and army.

As you'll read, the creators of the pamphlet explicitly asked that the pamphlet not be distributed on Twitter or Facebook, only through email or other contacts because of monitoring of the former avenues by Government agencies.