Melliodora and the Permie Love Shack

Kim and I have recently visited Mick (our former farm employee) in Hepburn, Victoria. Mick is an amazing young bloke who came to work for us to find out more about free range pig farming and regenerative agriculture. He's a passionate environmentalist and was ready to go vegetarian due to his concerns about farming and it's damage to the environment. Coming to us, he learnt that there are people that farm in a way that can save us from environmental disaster and help to mitigate the damage from climate change. He left us to further his education and went on to learn about permaculture, before starting a journey travelling around Australia on a push bike learning about permaculture. After living and working within his values - his journey also included learning about yoga - he is now a yoga teacher and a permaculture teacher. The journey so far has taken him to Melliodora in Hepburn.

Melliodora is the property designed and built by David Holmgren and his partner Sue. You can read more about them here.  David is also the co-originator of Permaculture (along with Bill Mollison). Melliodora is 2 and 1/4 acres of food. Mostly fruit and vegetables but there are goats for milk and cheese and chickens for eggs and occasionally meat. It has been one of my goals to visit there and had always hoped that we'd be able to got to a PDC or even just a farm tour. So when Mick started working there, we that that it might be a good opportunity to visit, especially as we were in Canberra and only a days drive away.

We arrived at our airbnb in Daylsford just on dusk. It had rained all the way from Canberra and as we were unpacking the car it actually started snowing. I really wish I'd taken more photos!

Our airbnb hosts were Meg and Patrick from Artist as Family. The Permie Love Shack that we stayed in was very quaint, although lacking a kitchen was a little disappointing (as you know, we like to prepare our own food when travelling). This tiny house was positioned in the middle of their incredible permaculture garden. It does have a composting toilet so may not suit every traveller. I learnt a little about composting human manure here and while at Melliodora too. Once again, my photo taking let me down!

Human mane is a valuable resource, which would have been utilised in the past, but is not considered highly today. It makes sense that our poo would be the perfect fertiliser for our food. It's such a wasted resource to just flush a rich potential fertiliser down the toilet and either into a septic tank or a sewage system - either way, there is no benefit gained.

Human mare can be safely used as fertiliser once it has been through a long compost process. It should then only be used on tree crops and not vegetable crops.

The toilets we used a both the Permie Love Shack and Melliodora did not smell at all. I remember when I was a kid we had thunder boxes (as we called them) but I don't recall dad turning that poo into compost. What a waste! I wonder what he did do with it? I'll have to ask him....

This is a squat toilet and the side where the board is, is the one in current use. The other side covered with newspaper is the full side that will sit there until it's composted or until the current side is full and it will need to go somewhere else to compost. This was a Melliodora, the Love Shack had a much more civilised looking toilet system! They had one for pee only, a sit down one, which was a bucket  half filled with sawdust to prevent smell and the other was a squat style toilet with a bigger reservoir, which you threw some sawdust after depositing your poo.

We went for a walk around the gardens at Melliodora - everything looked so healthy and there was just so much food in a small area.

We walked down the creek where the 3 goats spend their days undertaking blackberry control and doing a great job. Walking further, Mick showed us where hill and creek and been mined for gold many years ago. 

Kim and Mick walking to see an old mine shaft.

This "track" was created to run water on the level of the hill to assist with the sluicing of the gold.

Fires went through here early this year and it was an incredible effort made by Mick and David to save Melliodora!

I would love to have a cellar!