The View from Vinegar Hill

UPDATE - at last



It has been a shockingly long time since anything was posted on this site. Large gaps in the story of the process of establishing our "Vinegar Hill Complex" - too many to fill at this time. However, here's a shot of the house, from July/August, but looking more or less as it does now.

We are working on the kitchen benches and cupboards now - more on that later.

There has been progress with the workshop too - slowly getting into better shape for doing serious work - latest addition was this new three-metre work bench. It's currently being used to make up the components of the kitchen benches.

We've spent the weekend putting up a shade house in the vege garden - the first thing that has been added there since the 3000 litre water tank late last year. It's made from the frame of one of those temporary car garages that was given to us.

We are going to try out "wicking garden beds" - where the soil sits in a 100mm pool of water that slowly wicks up into the soil as it dries. This is said to signifiantly reduce evaporation and thus result in far less water use - something that really matters here as we move further into a hot dry summer.

Below are a few shots of the new structure - taken using my mobile phone, so maybe not as sharp as they could be.

The tank on the right is the 3000 L garden water tank (it now has a pressure pump attached to it, so we can use it to water all of the gardens), and on the left is a heap of lucerne straw, waiting to be used as mulch on the garden.

The shade house partly completed - still needs the ends closed in.  At the back is a section of one of our first water tanks - actually it was here when we came and had gone through a bushfire.  We cut it into three sections and used them as surrounds for permaculture beds, to keep the wallabies and possums out. The blue containers are trial wicking pots (still more work to do on them), made from recycled 200 L plastic drums used for shipping food ingredients. The tree on the left is one of our lime trees.