Category Archives: Experiments

Breeding Aviary Project

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Some of our smaller friends
This Project is one of Michael’s passions* and began pre ‘Octoberfest’ 2011 and has been a continuing project since. It will be an on-going project that has and will be created in stages.
Stage one consisted of converting a calf house into the aviary. This consisted of knocking out stalls, putting up wire mesh, creating perspex windows, high step up doorways and sealing up any holes that possible rodents or reptiles could enter by. Putting down a sand floor, heating for the winter months, hanging nesting ‘boxes’ and creating water baths/drinking bowls and feeders.

When This was complete some feathered friends moved in. At present there are Star Finches, a Blue Faced Parrot (who will be getting a mate in the next couple of months), Long Tailed Finches, Masked Finches and Zebra Finches. There are expected new arrivals in the coming months.

Inside of calf house during conversion to aviary.
Almost complete inside view.
Outside view holding up window that will lead to first flight zone.
Inside view – nesting bundles, food and water dishes,
heater and sand floor
A wee nest

Stage two consisted of the ‘first flight zone’. The ‘first flight zone’ has had tin dug into trenches to prevent anything from digging under it, and is fitted out with wire mesh to make an enclosure. This eventually will lead out to a greater or free flight zone with the wire mesh cut so the birds can come and go into a greater flight zone and then into the bush land beyond where they can ‘learn’ survival skills from the native non captive finch populations that inhabit the area. At present there is a small family of Red Brow Finches that come and go from bush land behind the flight zones.

first flight zone under construction
Earthworks for the ‘first flight zone’ under construction.
Digging the tin into trenches
Adding wire mesh to ‘first flight zone’ and beginnings of planting out
beginnings of planting out and construction of wire mesh zone.
The plants taking to their new environment and the beginnings of small
bird food abundance.
Same as above, different angle.

The intention is to eventually have a release programme for native and endangered finches (and small birds in particular) that educates the birds to care for themselves in the ‘wild’. We are in the process of planting a lot of spiky, dense native flora to create nesting and habitat for small birds.

We would also like to design and implement in future portable aviaries that can be taken to regeneration sites near food and water, with birds in them where they can create nests and ‘living’ quarters and be safe from predators while they get established. Once ‘educated’ by ‘wild’ finches (- to avoid attack and not be totally dependant and domesticated) the flocks established and flourishing we will remove the portable aviary and begin the process again.
In the mean time we are planting out seeding grasses that small bird and finches like and that attract insects, shrubs, bushes, trees for nesting and food near to permanent water sources to create habitat and as ideal conditions as possible to encourage breeding and support large populations of bird life.
For more information or details feel free to contact us.

* Though we all gain much joy and excitement from it.
Some of the small birds that are in the Breeding Aviary at this time

Preparations Day One & Two

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The last couple of days have begun and been busy organising things for ‘Summerfest’. We are grateful to all who have volunteered time and resources over the last while and especially the last couple of days organising, sourcing, gathering, delivering… Thank you so much to our neighbours for giving us their wood piles to put in the systems and to everyone who has contributed newspaper, cardboard, wooden pallets, cardboard bales, time etc.
Chopping Cardboard for ‘Worm food slurry’:
making a cardboard roll
feeding it in
shredded
worm food

Neighbour’s forest and wood piles. Gathering, chopping, transporting wood. New discoveries and wonders:

tall trees
termite mound
dead matter pile
loading
loaded

Discoveries:

ants
ant highway and animal
trail
shaped wood
somethings home
gaul wasp nodes

Standbye Paddock Preparation:

new contour
pond beginning to fill from a beautiful downpour of
rain. We suggest you bring your gumboots!
Things just want to grow!! Growth on the contours beginning
already
fertility system/living system hole partially full of water

Another load of wood from the neighbours – thank you!!

We kept imagining this being planted out and created into
a beautiful forest again! It has so much potential.
load on the move
investigating all sorts of new things.
what is happening around some of the woodpiles at the
neighbours. They are naturally creating living
systems. It was really exciting to see what is happening.
There were some different soil creatures,
beetles, ants, insects etc beginning. Not much else, but there is life.
I feel there was much that I ‘couldn’t’ see also doing lots of work.

millipede
sculptural log stacking
what water does to wood
woodchip
en-route
unloading
new home

Thanks so much for all your help, ‘pre’ preparing! We are grateful for your desire, help and growing friendships!

after some rain
v

Living Systems

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Environment day today was about creating: Living Systems. Thank you Jesus for teaching us about love. Thank you to everyone who gave their time today to create a ‘worm hole’ and an experimental ‘worm mound’. We are grateful for your efforts! We are excited!
A worm found already in residence.
They were few and far between
So grateful for the tractor – what a great hole digger!!!
It was a really great day learning about the earth, ourselves and how to create abundance through giving love and supporting the intelligent life systems without expectation* that support us.
I feel that one of the greatest gifts was the fact that if want to take and we want for everything to be given to us from the earth; If we do not desire to give and love the earth, land and all the intelligent life – the fungi, bacteria, microbes, micro-organisms, worms, insects, and all the creating things – then it is really best to not begin in the first place. The whole exercise is an exercise in giving for the pure desire to give to that which creates. To give without gain.
The hole
What I learnt today is that I need to be like a worm hole.
To stop expecting and demanding** from the earth and the land and to trust God’s abundance and her way of creating and see the way she creates and help out the best that I can by providing food, water, shelter to everything that sustains life. To all the insects, fungi, bacteria, microbes, micro-organisms etc these are our friends and our desire to erridicate them reflects how much negative, self serving desire we have and how little we understand about the way that the world operates as God designed it. We create more and more problems that then need fixing. We are exhausting ourselves with meaningless things that could be done so much more easily if we were more humble, more logical and actually understood what God has gifted us in the first place. We humans claim to be intelligent but I am beginning to wonder, smile. What I saw today is that God’s way is best*** and it is beautiful, magical, abundant and can create wonderlands…. We are excited about the experiment and to see ‘who moves in’ and what happens.
Thank you to all ye who volunteered your time!
Thank you Jesus for showing us ‘how’, for
explaining the principles, the logic and love behind the
whole system!
Thank you Lena for your time and expertise
in filming and documenting the entire process.
making clay creations
preparing the hole for minerals
adding minerals to ‘help’ the soil
Our dear friends and leaders in Love and logic – Thank you!!
jostling the bale into place
cardboard packing
the more cardboard the better –  food
more  food
and more food
and more food
and more food
add manure, add worms
cover with mulch to keep moist
what a lovely ‘bug’ palace
cover with woodchips
add some homes for other fauna
taking a wee rest
The beginning of the worm ‘mound’
Bale of hay wedged into a bit of open soil
and separated to create decomposition not composting.
‘Bugs’ don’t like too much heat
the beginnings of worm food slurry/brew
make a worm food slurry/brew water, poo,
decomposed hay, small bits of cardboard
fill the gaps with cardboard and manure
put the slurry/brew under the newspaper in all the
holes and cracks so that there is moisture
thank you for all your efforts!
Put it all together
cover in manure, mulch it with hay, cover with wood chips and
then put fallen branches  (ones that have not been on the
ground long and that have not begun creating habitat.) To
hold the mound in place and create habitat and encourage other
fauna and flora to come and make their homes!
The mound
encouraging what is already there – feeding a white ants nest,
adding cardboard and wood chips to encourage the
life and support it where it is.
pretty exciting
Can’t wait to see what happens!

* Today I learnt how much expectation I have about things giving to me in order for me to get what i want. I learnt how much demand we have and how much pressure we put on the earth rather than giving to the earth abundantly and without expectation to encourage intelligent living flora and fauna to create it’s own living self creating systems. 

** This is an emotional change not just an intellectual exercise that we can think into existance. It takes us emotionally releasing the demands and expectations that we have on things to sustain us. To grow our desire to love, grow our desire to give and our desire to find out about all the intelligent life that God has created and support it purely because we desire to support it and for no other reason. 

*** In my arrogance I am not always humble to this fact and try to force my way, but when it is logically explained I wonder why I thought there was any other but God’s way. Much to learn and how exciting!