Tag Archives: Sustainability

Fan Interviews & Art, Hobby Farming

Permaculture: Using Goats to clear Blackberry Patches

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On our farm here in NSW, like many other farms in the region, we have a problem with Blackberry Bushes.

For anyone from the city who isn’t acquainted with them, Blackberry Bushes aren’t cute little shrubs that give you some delightful fruit.  No, they are a noxious weed that grows out of control.  There is virtually no limit to the size they grow, and they are covered in thorns ready to ensnare human and animal alike with even the slightest contact.

And that is just ONE patch!

We’ve got some whoppers of Blackberry Bushes on our land, some almost bigger than our house!  They have been very hard to get rid of for two reasons:

A: We don’t like to use poisons on our property

B: Even if we did use poisons, most of the bushes are located in the middle of our shallow creek, meaning that any use of herbicides could result in them entering the water, causing major damage to other plants and the ecosystem in general.

So what were we to do?

Well, we kinda lucked out.  Mick, who I buy nearly all my second-hand pots from in order to propagate plants for our Organic Plants & Produce business, runs a family business of his own.  He and his wife Billie run Dry Creek Farm, and they specialize in bringing out herds of goats in order to decimate Blackberry Patches, leaving nothing but stems and fertilizer in their wake.  After being impressed with the job they did on our farm, I couldn’t help but ask them for an interview and they kindly obliged:

Sustainable – and cute!

What first gave you the idea to use goats to clear huge blackberry patches?

Huge Blackberry patches on our own place and a strong desire not to spray. We have done a permaculture course and heard of people using goats for weed control. We were getting a fair bit of pressure from the weed inspectors to do something about our Blackberry so we decided we’d have to give it a go. 

What made you decide that using goats to clear blackberry was a viable business?

Mostly the fact that it worked so well on our place. We knew other people were also looking to an alternative to spraying. Also, we had the goats and were running out of feed for them! 

How much blackberry can a mob of your goats clear in a day?

We usually say a single car garage per day but we’ve recently experimented with using larger mobs and knocking them over a bit faster. We have found that it depends on the goats and what they’re used to eating, we’ve recently bought some goats and found they weren’t as keen on blackberry as our initial mob. Nothing a bit of competition and on the job training won’t fix. (after the goats moved from your place to join with the others they have started churning through the patches like there’s no tomorrow)

How is using goats to clear blackberry more sustainable and ecologically friendly than using traditional methods?

Spraying is very detrimental in the long run, it kills soil life and does not allow the weed to add fertility to the soil. The production and transportation of agricultural chemicals is a huge contributer to greenhouse gases and creates a cycle of chemical dependence on farms. Goats help to increase fertility by turning weeds into manure which makes it easier to break down. Treating weeds in this way also allows the plant to continue filling it’s niche in the ecosystem. For example, blackberry helps prevent erosion and having the goats treat a patch still leaves the canes and the roots to fulfill this function. 

I understand something rather odd (and amusing) happened when your goats were at our place.  Can you describe what happened?

We’ve well and truly learnt that not everything goes to plan when working with animals. We decided to swing via your place for an unscheduled check on the goats because we happened to be in the area. Lucky we did. When we arrived we noticed there were nine feral and stinky billygoats showing an interest in our girls. One was in the paddock with our goats and another had his horns completely tangled in the mobile fencing and was being humped from behind by another of the billies! It was not his lucky day. Mike had to get amongst it and wrestle him free of the fence then we had to draft them out of the paddock and chase them away to discourage them returning. It was all a bit dramatic but didn’t cause too much drama in the end and gives us something to have a laugh about. We were quite surprised as we had the goats working on our place for twelve months with feral goats always around and we have also done other jobs and seen billies about but never had this situation! 

 

I’d like to thank both Michael and Billie for both their time doing this interview and the wonderful job their goats did getting rid of our blackberries.  You can find the website for Dry Creek Farm HERE.

Before
After

Got any questions for Mick and Billie?  Pop it in the comments section below and I’m sure they will be happy to answer it.

 

Related Articles:

*Capturing Wild Animals: Feral Goats

*Interview: Greens Member – Natalie Abboud

*Raising Goats as Pets

*Permaculture: Building a No-Dig Garden

 

 

 

Hobby Farming

Sustainability Tip – Don’t let your green waste go to waste!

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Some Councils are looking at introducing green bins for their residents.  These bins will serve the purpose the same way your current recycle ones do – separating items that can be reused in some fashion rather than it going into the landfill.  In this case, green waste.

That might be fine and dandy if you live in an inner suburb in a major metropolis.  If you live in a house that has a big garden or like me, you have a hobby farm – then why pay to have this valuable stuff to be taken away?  You can use it all yourself – and I do mean all!

 

On my farm I get five main kinds of green waste:

  • Kitchen scraps: Fruit peels, old bread, vegetables my children once again refused to eat at dinner.
  • Garden waste: Plant and bush pruning’s, mowed grass clippings.
  • Wood waste: Fallen branches, tree pruning’s.
  • Weeds: Milk thistle etc from garden beds, bindi-eye and so forth on bare ground.
  • Animal Waste: Not their actual waste, more used straw from bedding.

 

Well all of this can be reused and put to use on your property, so much so that it will can reduce your costs in other areas such as buying compost or animal feed.  Here are the various ways I use all of the above in a Permaculture fashion.

 

Use 1: Compost

mmmm…. composty goodness!

Every good gardener should have some compost heaps.  I will be doing an in-depth look at composting on my blog soon but until then here is a rough guide to what you can and can’t put of your green waste in there.

Yes to:

  • Fruit peelings
  • Vegetable peelings
  • Grass clippings
  • Egg shells
  • Small twigs
  • Soiled straw animal bedding (including all poop, feathers and hair)

No to:

  • Citric fruit (oranges, lemons etc – put them at the base of your trees)
  • Weeds
  • Grass with root systems

 

Use 2: Animal tucker

We don’t need lucerne today – we be fed already!

Different animals will like different foods and what you can reuse depends on the animals you have.  If you own omnivores like pigs you can give them most anything.  Sadly I don’t but here are the animals I do have and what green waste I give them

  • Chickens: My chickens will happily gnaw down on kitchen waste that hasn’t fully been used up. This means things like corn cobs with some kernals still on them, watermelon rinds with some fruit left, half eaten stone fruit and any and all bread scraps.
  • Ducks: My ducks love leafy food so wilted spinach leaves, old silverbeet plants, browning lettuce and so on go to them to fill their tums.
  • Goats: Goats aren’t omnivores but when it comes to plants they are close. To my goats go things like grass (not mowed, it can knot in their stomachs), leafy tree branch pruning’s, most weeds (prickly is fine – ones with actual prickles such as bindi eye and three-corner jacks no) and clippings from bushes such as roses.

 

Use 3: Firewood

I got wood

Those big trees you cut down?  Chop’em up!  Those big branches you cut down?  Strip the smaller stuff off them and cut into the sizes you need.  Come next winter you wont by buying a single bag of kindling because you will have all you need!  Of course, if you own a woodchipper (which sadly I don’t) you can always turn your wood into mulch.

 

Step 4: Bonfire

Great for both your garden and to drink beer around

All other green waste that you can’t use in the previous three ways put on your bonfire pit.  Whats that you say?  Burning them is bad?!  It releases smoke into the atmosphere?  Well it’s a trade off.  Yes you are releasing a bit of smoke but its smoke from plants, not harsh chemical smoke.  And instead of all that otherwise unusable green waste going into landfill you are burning it off and getting something great in return – ash!  Ash is awesome stuff! All compost heaps love a bit of ash!  You can brush ash onto your plants to get rid of small bugs and onto your chooks to get rid of mites.  And all that leftover ash can go around the bases of your trees – they will love you for it!

 

So don’t let your green waste go to waste.  It’s just too useful in too many ways.  Do yourself and the environment a favor. It’s truly a case of – if done correctly – everyone wins!

Hobby Farming

Sustainability Tip: Get your mulch for free – from the tip!

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Mulch – wonderful stuff!  Serves three main purposes around your garden:

  • It keeps the moisture in the ground by preventing direct sunlight hitting the soil
  • It helps to prevent weeds growing by covering bare earth
  • It beautifies an area by putting down a layer of woodchips rather than looking at either the ground or weed matting

And of course you can pick mulch up most anywhere.  If you have a tiny garden, then maybe it’s economically feasible to just grab a bag or two at Bunnings or your local garden center.  But what if you have a big garden, or even like me a hobby farm?  Suddenly a few bucks a bag doesn’t seem so cheap when you would need about 50 of them!

Well, good news!  There is a place you can go where you can not only get as much mulch as you want for free, but you will be helping the environment by doing so.  That place is your local tip.

The majority of tips practice recycling in a big way.  Our local one has bays where you can drop of cardboard for free, aluminum and glass for free and has some absolutely huge bays for green waste which can be dropped off for a relatively modest fee.

What happens to all that green waste?  Well all the wood and huge tree branches get taken out, put through giant chippers and become great big hills.  And in order to keep those hills from becoming mountains, the majority of tips will let you come and take as much as you like for nothing!

 

So here are some tips for using the… er…. tip.

You will need:

  • A ute or trailer
  • A pitchfork
  • A tarp and rope

When you go there the staff will direct you where to go.  When you reach the mulch hills you need to look for the freshest looking piles.   Because some of these piles sit there for so long in the elements, they might seem fine on top but dig underneath even a few inches and what you will find what was once mulch has turned to compost.  Usually this will be a black or dark grey colour and will smell pretty pungent.  You do not want this stuff.  It’s useless as mulch, lacks the nutrients of regular compost and all it will achieve in your garden is to make it ugly and smelly.  So look for the freshest heaps.  Even these heaps will probably have been poured upon older heaps so as soon as you get deep enough that you hit the grey and smelly stuff, move to the next area.

Magnificent Mulch!

After you have loaded up your ute or trailer with mulch using your pitchfork (shovels are useless for mulch) make sure you tie a tarp over the top.  Most councils will fine you if you have stuff flying out the back and it will defeat the purpose of getting it for free if you subsequently get pulled up by a copper and get handed a massive fine.

Once you get it home, how you use it is up to you.  To stop weeds you usually want your mulch to be at least an inch or two thick on the ground.  Make sure when placing it around plants you leave a bit of space around the base of each plant or the trunk of each tree.  It allows the soil at the base of the plant to breathe and otherwise when your mulch eventually does rot it will be rotting against your plant.  This could cause damage to your plants or even kill them.  But used properly, mulch can turn an area of your garden from this:

 

Ew!

To this!

Ah!

So take the tip and get your mulch from the tip.  You are helping the environment from doing so by using mulch that would otherwise rot and eventually go in to the landfill and more importantly you will be getting as much mulch as you want, for free!

 

Got any other mulching tips?  Would love to read them in the comments section below!