The best gift is your listening, your attentive active listening. Your inquisitive questions, not rushing to interrupt. Your present presence, your engagement and your thoughtful gentle affirmations of what is being shared. The Best Gift - Holly, effervescent and...
My Garden Sanctuary
This article was first published in The Diggers Club Magazine I truly, deeply love my garden. I love it as much as I love people and that’s because gardens are powerful healers and essential to our wellbeing. In their absence urban & rural towns become...
A festival of Flowers
This article was first published in Sanctuary Magazine Issue 67 Words and photography: Mara Ripani There’s nothing lovelier than a bouquet of blooms, except perhaps one picked fresh from your own garden. Expert gardenerMara Ripani sings the praises of good...
The best gift
I met my first best gift in year ten. A girl called Sam. Then along the way I met other gifts, Kulja, Jane, Lise, Amber. All of them great listeners, open, vulnerable, authentic, real, and all of them made me feel needed. Twenty five years later they are still with me...
Sweet and wild: Sumptuous syrups from foraged flora
This was first published in Sanctuary Magazine Issue 64 You are probably familiar with fruit cordials; perhaps you even have a family recipe that comes out in time for summer. But did you know that delicious drinks can be made using wild floral infusions? Mara Ripani...
Braided Rag Rug class with Ilka White
Ilka White came to teach us and brought skills she has honed for over thirty years. Her weaving and braiding skills, her technical and creative skills. All thrown together to create something from nothing, something from very little. Braided Rag Rug made by Ilka White...
How to dry fruit
How to dry fruit Fruit drying is a rewarding way to preserve your summer harvest. Like many preserving techniques it is simple to do (one of the simplest) and the results are extremely satisfying. By the end of the season, your larder shelves will be adorned with...
Herbaceous perennial plants, what are they, how to care for them and their role in organic gardens
One day you may find yourself falling in love with plants and gardens and in the process discovering an entirely new language. Many plant nursery websites have a category called perennials, dedicated to plants that live for more than two years. What you might not...
How to create a living fence
This article first appeared in Sanctuary Magazine, the 55th edition (with a few changes made here for my blog). A big thank you to editor Anna Cumming for commissioning this piece for I really love writing about the things I really love. Living fences: Using plants to...
Book Launch and Fruit Tree Grafting Workshop!
With Author Jade Miles and Graftsman Charlie Showers at ORTO Farm, Blampied. An exciting event with these wonderful humans! From Black Barn Farm in Stanley, Victoria. Charlie and Jade at their Black Barn Farm fruit orchard. Jade’s recently published book “Future...
TOUR: building with straw, establishing a wetland, keeping chickens and making all things
Our wetland in Autumn Every year we host a tour or two, to talk with you about all that we have done, all that we have learned. Our home and farm stay are built from straw. Our land had not a single tree and now it has many. A wetland we made with hundreds of aquatic...
Welcome to ORTO
Our property is becoming a little more abundant each year. With hens and roosters and geese. Our hens have various homes. An enclosed run with deep litter. And various orchards and paddocks where they can roam. And now geese! Proud and confident, they roam in ORTO two...
Beautiful youuu
I host many volunteers on our permaculture property. Mostly in their 20's. This post is dedicated to all young people and all my past, present and future volunteers. Beautiful you. About to turn 20 or 20 something. Just finishing high school, university or a trade....
Spring and fertility
This is artichoke season and asparagus too. Well you know all about it. Like me your year has been challenging and strange. For me it has been quite a change. Normally every weekend we have up to four couples visiting and staying at our farm stay. They punctuate my...
Greenhouse and Propagation
All year round our greenhouse keeps our household protected and in comfort. It serves multiple functions: a place for drying clothes all year round. A pocket of warm air to heat the passive areas of our house such as the lounge room and bathroom. It’s where I...
Why I built a wetland rather than a dam
It never occurred to my partner Ralf and I to build a dam - it was always going to be a wetland. The sale of our home in Melbourne in 2015 afforded us the chance to act on our dream. After purchasing 15 acres in Blampied, Victoria, we set about constructing our very...
Fungi Language
New words have travelled and found me, making their home in my minds nest. Popping out clearly at times and hiding at the very bottom of my nest unretractable and reluctant when I need them most. Words new, such as pileus, lamellae, stipe, mycelia and hyphae. Over the...
Summer
Summer will we ever be able to love you again? Or have you become a time of great loss and fire? To all those affected I am sorry. I am sorry for all of us for the situation we are in is complex enough to be difficult to grasp. I am sorry too because there are many...
Seasonal rhythms
It is spring and Madeline is here from Canada. And working with her is a dream. Her pace is calm and focused. Together we are working through various projects on our 15 acres of volcanic soil. In the morning we visit the hens. We place clean water in their heavy cast...
Permaculture, wetland, straw building
We are offering a tour of our burgeoning permaculture farm followed by afternoon herbal teas and home made treats on Sunday 15th December 2pm -4pm. Please go to our Workshop tab to book a ticket. We are on 15 acres in Blampied between Daylesford and Ballarat. We began...
How to care for chickens & how to choose them
Ancona We have chickens after a four-year break. First, we needed to build our home, the farm stay, the piazza shed. We needed to plant thousands of trees, and grasses, and fruit orchards and berries and chestnuts and oaks, and hazelnuts and our kitchen garden. There...