Winter Orchards

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Adelaide Hills and the Big Wet

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trees that fell like dominoes More trees down this morning which means 5 separate events have brought trees down from our neighbour’s scrub onto our chestnut orchard. The trees fell like dominos down the hill mostly roots and all falling on other trees creating a cascade of stringy barks piling on top of each other, spilling out and coming to rest into our orchard and some as far as the valley raspberries. more trees to clean up The weather has certainly been challenging with unusually strong winds and rain. This has come after 10 years of below average rainfall which saw our valley and springs dry up earlier this year for the first time in our 33 years here. Our Spring in March this year It was just mud In the last 48hours we have had another 39mm of rain and it’s still falling. This year’s rain fall figures Jan 73mm Feb 32mm March 57mm April 21mm May 190mm June: 228mm July:276mm August:121mm Sept:337mm . So far in October 181.5 mm in 18 days. While ou...
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Willow House

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Weaving a Magic Place Some 20 years ago w e were given a gift of some osier basket willows from Annemarie & Graham from the Food Forest in Gawler. They figured they would grow better in our wet area. .We planted the m as a copse down at the bottom of the valley adjoining our newly planted forest. Over the years the c o pse was used for bask ets, poles & trellis. In August 2002 sc ulptor Evette Sunset began to weave a living house. A circle was picked out within the existing osier willow copse. Each tree was thinned down to the best large structural branches for t he r oof & wall frame work .Smaller bra nches up to 1 mitre long were cross-woven to fill in the ceiling & wal ls. The woven willow house took about 12 days to make – with two people w orking together most of the time. Each winter it is pruned and prunings used for various projects. The house is a dwelling & visiting place for many creatures. It breathes with the sun, wind & rain. A circle of light ...
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Raised Beds

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