Progress Report #2: the grounds

We realised that the external environment needed a bit of a makeover while the house is being finished, as you can see from the height of the grass in this photograph. We have the lovely Parramatta Grass (Sporobolos Africanus) running rampant on the property which can grow to 2m in height and is classed as a noxious weed. We also have African Feather Grass, Fountain Grass, Lantana and Camphor Laurels which are also noxious weeds... fortunately we don't have to napalm the block in order to eradicate them but we do have to take measures to control them, of which more later!






















The easiest way to reduce the height of the vegetation is to use a slasher, which is a horizontal plate fixed behind or under a tractor or ride-on mower. The vehicle drags the plate, which has blades or sometimes chains attached, over the land, flattening whatever is in the way. It's a very effective method of "mowing" a large area. We hope to buy our own tractor in the not-too-distant future, which will pay for itself in a relatively short period of time given that it currently costs us in excess of $900 a time to slash our lower slopes because of the gradient and the gullies.









These panoramas, up and down the slopes after slashing, give you an idea of the shape of the land in front of the house. On the bottom panorama you can see the slope that will form our main garden: we plan to cut broad terraces into it, enabling us to have flat expanses of planting and grass and a path down to the lower part of our land.





















The slashing was done a couple of weeks ago when there were a few days of dry weather, and it allowed us to walk over our block and assess it in relation to the house and studio buildings. We have walked over it before, but without the buildings it was hard to make decisions about our longer-term plans. Now we know where we want to put the tropical fruit orchard, the raised vegetable beds and the chicken coop, where the fence line will be (separating the cows from the garden!), where we'd like to put a pavilion structure eventually, and how to manage that big front slope.

















Part of the fun on our block is that we have two gullies running either side of the house and down through the paddock. Until now we've had very little idea of what to 'do' with them, but slashing allowed us to take a good look and make some plans. Managing water is a key issue on the property, not because of extended drought (we are SO lucky here compared with much of Australia!) but because of the damage large quantities of water can do if left unchecked. We have a sort-of dam at the bottom of the paddock which we will line and it will fill (and not seep away, as it does now) but we realised we could dam up one of the gullies and create a container for water nearer the house and near where we hope to put the vegetable garden.





















This is a picture of the earthworks taken from the bottom of the driveway. It doesn't really do justice to Paul the digger driver's skill in manoeuvring a big machine up and down the slopes! He was amazing, using the digger's 'shovel arm' to support the machine as he carefully moved into different positions so that he could excavate while separating out top soil, sub-soil (i.e. solid red clay) and scraping off the vegetation. He's been able to clear a large amount of lantana, big grasses and tobacco bush from the gully and will apparently be coming out to do some more when the weather allows him to do so.
















You can't really see how steep it is above and below the new dam wall in this picture, but this is a part of the gully that simply wasn't accessible before the digger dug!





















For a change of scenery Paul also dug behind the studio to create a 'bench' or channel in the hillside above the studio to move water safely down one side. We get so much rain here: we filled a 34,000 litre water tank in a single evening of not-particularly-heavy rain recently. On occasions when we really get rain, when it's like standing under a continuously pouring bucket of water, huge amounts of it move down the hillsides locally and managing where it goes is of real concern to us so that our buildings aren't at risk. While Paul was digging here, over a couple of days, the rain started again and we were slightly worried that he might end up on our roof!
















What is this, I hear you say? Well it's the inside of our sewage system of course! The contractor had to come in and 'seed' the system with nematode worms to digest our waste, but this could only happen after we'd 'fed' the system for a few weeks, which we have done... I was slightly concerned about what we'd see when the tank was opened up but I'm pleased to report that there was nothing exciting to see and nothing nasty to smell!