Aerial photos and updates Oct 2019

Posted on by Laurence Manchee

A friend dropped by and took some aerial photos of each area of our farm areas. These are taken at the end of the Summer 2019 when the land is very dry and shows the work we have done on this abandoned land over the past two years.

Food Forests / Restoration Agriculture & Reforestation areas

Food Forests
Olive grove food forest above. perennial vegetables and winter garden food forest below. Greenhouse and shed to the right. This is our winter garden food forest in 2019, full of vegetables, trees and perennial vegetables. Mostly with sunken and wood chip beds, we plan to complete this with two more trees, some extra windbreak, more rows of perennial vegetables and hugaculture beds
Olive Grove food forest
Our Olive grove food forest is the most diverse with many varieties of trees, perennial vegetables, medicinal plants, herbs and berries. this is kept as a diverse planting with not so many of each type that can be used for propagation and an example of what could be done on a smaller space.  You can see the swale on the right and overflow pond, new areas sheet mulched with woodchips for planting in spring in center and brambles cleaned up (again) at back left by the wall to plant soon.
Chicken Food Forest
This is our youngest food forest, under a year old at planting. It is our chicken food food forest. It is full of edible plants, however will less focus on weed suppression and ground covers. this is because chickens (chicken house on the right) will rome around clearing weeds and low hanging fruit. They will be rotated between another food forest and compost generating chicken run
Restoration agriculture for sheep and chickens
Our Restoration agriculture (chicken and sheep food forest). Ditch dug on left to make a stone wall foundation for fence to keep chickens in the compost making chicken run on the left. On the right we have three swales, bottom one with  wind break trees (nurse trees and trees for timber in between), next swale up we have a row of apple trees we grafted here and shrubs in between. Row of olive trees, row of almond trees and a hedge row to be planted for bees. Also some grape vines around and wind break to the right. This has three spaces for ally crops where we are seeding granes to save seeds for chickens. The chickens will rotate between here and the chicken food forest, in future years sheep will also come in here.
Reforestation field
This shows the lake we dug with a low water level as it is end of summer. this field was fence so the sheep cannot enter and many trees have been planted (too small to see in this photo). This winter we are planning another round of trees in this field.
We will be fencing this field off, putting swales in this field and designing and planting based on restoration agriculture principles. Here trees will be circled with individual fences so the sheep can continue to graze here.

Community House

This shows around 1/3 of our farm but this is the space that is mostly used. The rest is mostly grazed by sheep.
Main working areas
this photo has the food forests, restoration agriculture fields, reforestation fields to be done and scrubland to be cleaned up.
This is where guests spend most of their time. The house will chill out areas, stone circle, longdrop vermiculture toilet was all completed at the end of this summer. It also has a BBQ area at the back and views all around.

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