Happy New Year, Just purchased 50 acres

Hi everybody,
We have purchased a big (for us townies) piece of beautiful Northland countryside with our extended family and are looking forward to the adventures ahead!

If anyone else is in Whangarei and keen on selling or swapping animals/eggs, we have
brown shavers and leg horns, will be acquiring 9 cows

We are looking at getting some apple yard ducks to help keep the orchard pest free, does anyone know where to get some?

Happy new year from Jess, Russ and the animals at Sunshine Farm

Wow, and welcome! I guess we will be seeing a lot of you on here then!! How is your 50 acres set up? Is the orchard fenced off and can the ducks be contained? My experience with ducks was that they breed like crazy and the wild mallards soon interbreed with them. Their eggs are very good but eventually they seem to lay them all in one go! If they are left to roam, they will visit your backdoor and leave some unpleasant liquidy stuff that rivals pig poo for stinkability!!
Good luck and keep us in the loop as things progress....

Thanks Tony!
There's a about 1/4acre fenced off that we intend to turn into the orchard, it currently has a few poplars and a few chooks in it. Our chooks also get out and occasionally leave us gifts at the door, so good reminder! Ducks are messy, aren't they?

There are 15 paddocks altogether, the majority of which will have my dad's drystock on and we will take on the orchard/food forest project as well as care for the poultry.

Excited to share more and ask more as we go.

Jess

A quick view from one of the steeper paddocks, we're pretty stoked to be starting farm life in Maungatapere!

That's a nice view. Lots of Maungatapere has lovely red volcanic soil, so a great place to grow stuff if you have the rich red soil. I've hunted all through that country which had trimmed barberry hedges and stone walls. Some good memories of those times and I'm sure you will make some good memories too.

G'day Jess & Russ,

SNAP - we're in the same boat - Maungatapere, 3.3ha, extended family, moving in just after Waitangi weekend. Lots to learn as coming from town and finally getting out into the country. Plans for food forests, integrated animal systems, resilience, soil building etc. Been practicing and teaching permaculture for a wee while now, and amped about applying it at the larger than 1/4 acre scale.

Hope to meet you up there some time.

Cheers

Ron

Awesome Ron!
We would be keen to have you and the family round, we're upscaling heaps which is a bit scary/thrilling after having about 500m in town! We've been avidly watching Geoff Lawton for a while now and love the idea of a food forest and soil building, so it would be cool to share ideas and possibly some working bees on eachother's places in the future

Goodluck with the move on Waitangi weekend!

Thanks Stikkibeek! It'll definitely be interesting to plant in volcanic soil after always working with clay, hoping for some nice surprises. Thanks for commenting!

Thanks, we really look forward to meeting you sometime soon. Having just joined LSB, my account needs to "mature" for a couple of days and then I'll private message you. Feels so nice to already be growing into my new community before even moving in

Hi, looks like my reply vanished...or I just dreamed I replied....anything is possible these days.

Anyway, welcome to everyone, I'm about 30 minutes north of Whangarei, which is a great little town.

We haven't had an LSB get-together for while, let's see how the next few weeks go - if things look good we can meet up

Cheers
Kate

That would be lovely Kate! Are you around Helena bay? We would love to catch up