Animals and Permaculture
Excursion to ECOSS and PEACE farms excursion
On 18 October, students from the Permaculture elective went to ECOSS and PEACE farms .
🌿At ECOSS, which is a community organisation and farm, we were given a tour of the farm and we saw a bike repair shop, a food forest, art studios for rent and so much more 🚲🌳.
🌱After a tour of the farm and morning tea we split into two groups and did some gardening. My group planted trees , while the other group removed potatoes from a crop of garlic 🥔🧄, then we swapped. We learnt about how a community farm operates and we learnt about their strategy for growing great crops 🌾
We then hopped back on the bus 🚌 and drove two minutes to PEACE farm. PEACE Farm is a small co-op focusing on heirloom produce run by a few families and volunteers 🍅. First, they gave a talk about their mission and gave us a tour of the farm. They explained how they keep their living sustainable, by using solar energy to electrify fences ☀️, planting trees to protect their crops, and planting crops in a cycle to ensure they always have food to sell and eat. They also had a section in their garden full of art and flowers 🎨🌼, and we sat down and learnt about the importance of taking time to reflect, and to celebrate, instead of working constantly.
I really enjoyed this excursion, and I'm looking forward to (hopefully) going on another one soon! 😊
Theo
Permaculture student
Caldermead Farm excursion
🚜 On 28 October a group of Feather and Fur students went on an excursion to Caldermead Farm to learn more about how farmers take care of their livestock. I had worked on this for my Passion Project with my teacher, Meg, and I was excited to be finally going 😄.
🐄 The first part of the day was a tour of the farm on a tractor trailer. We looked at how all the cows and calves are taken care of and went out into a paddock to see the cows up close. After that, we had time to eat at the café and had a break to look at the other animals like ducks, deer, baby goats and chickens 🐓🦆🦌🐐. This was followed by an information session with the managing director of the farm and we listened to an interesting presentation about how they run their farm and business. We learnt about possible diseases and ways they are transmitted as well as how the farm came about 📚.
🥛 After that we went to look at the milking of the cows and we thought it was all really smart how it worked to encourage the cows to walk in and out. For example, they got to eat while they were milked and if they didn't step out at the end they got a small spray of water in the face 💦. Most of them had learnt to step out before the water got them!
🌾 Many people said it would be a good idea to take the FAF classes to farms like this more often each year. All over we had a great time 😊.
Emma M
FLE1
Zoo Camp - Halls Gap Zoo & Grampians
🌄 In Week 7 of this term, two amazing teachers, Duncan and Rebecca made the crazy decision to take 20 Animals students to Halls Gap for a week: Zoo Camp. The best part of the year; it was a grueling week filled with laughs and sighs, fun and pain, friendships and arguments 😊.
🚌 The week started with the long two- and half-hour drive to the small town of Beaufort for lunch. We were set free with hungry stomachs to be filled. We all scattered around, peeking into the op shop, getting ourselves some pies and coffees for lunch, and getting to look around the town. Once we finished up in the town, we prepared ourselves and hopped back on the bus for the last hour and a half of the drive. After a long day, we made it to Halls Gap. In the drizzle we set up our camp for the next week 🌧️. At about 4pm, we all got ourselves ready and started on our first hike of the camp, Venus Baths. It was a leisurely walk, passing some very beautiful rock formations and getting a wonderful view of the Grampians National Park in all its glory. Our walk took us to the beautiful Venus Baths, a freshwater stream with rocks to climb on and beautiful mountains around it. We spent about an hour hopping over rocks and dipping our toes into water. It was such a great way to start the camp 🌿.
⏰ Tuesday was a 7am start, which for most of us is very early, and very cold (about 8° in Halls Gap and even colder overnight). By 8.30, we were all on the bus driving to Halls Gap Zoo, our workplace for the week. We got to see behind the scenes, staff prepping the animal feeds and getting ready for the zoo to open to the public 🐾.
🧤 We got our tools and headed off to the brush-tailed wallabies enclosure to spend the day weeding stinging nettles, raking and throwing away branches. Even in the 15° weather we get hot weeding, dragging and loading bags of nettle, branches and leaves onto trucks. By the end of the day we were pooped, but we hopped onto the bus and headed back to camp, and by 3.45pm we had already gone into town and gotten ice-cream... only for them to be promptly swooped and stolen by rosellas!! 🍦🦜 Tuesday's hike was Chatauqua Peak; a bit more intense and longer than the previous hike, it was hard on our feet after the already long day. We made it to the peak, with one full rotation of 100 bottles of milk on the wall. From the peak, we got some amazing views, photos and even a rainbow 🌈. Once we were done gawking at the view, we started the slow descent, with many a round of Eye Spy.
🐾 Wednesday marked the middle of the trip, and we all felt as if the time had just sped by, but also like we had been there forever. By 9am we were back finishing the brush tails wallabies enclosure, and by 9.30 we were done. Just to move promptly to the next enclosure, which was the red-necked wallabies. When we needed breaks we did have a great opportunity of being right next to the rhinos and going to see them was a nice refresher. By lunch, we had finished this new enclosure, and were split into 2 groups. One with the lemurs and the other with the red pandas. The red pandas group spent an hour weeding their entire enclosure and hauling bags of mulch over the fence for their ground cover.
🦏 It was a race, but we managed to do it in time, and as a reward, we were given an encounter with the rhinos. We were taken over to the white rhino enclosure, and we got to feed and pet him. People always ask how they feel and I would say tough and leathery, and dirty! We got to chat with his keeper as well and learnt all about their habitats and how they are kept. Unfortunately they are going extinct, but it is programs like at the Halls Gap Zoo that keep the species surviving. The other group finished up in the lemurs enclosure, and we were back to camp, off to the ice creamery and up to the start of the Mackenzie's Falls hike. Now unlike the rest of our walks, Mackenzie Falls was at the bottom of a ravine, so the first half of the hike is downhill. The walk itself gets pretty steep pretty fast - but going downhill was easy. At the bottom, we were met by a beautiful waterfall, and just a little downstream was a part you could stick your toes in. This water was freezing ❄️, but some of us brave enough to put our feet in, and if you were Jacob, Sophie, Dom, Will and Aishlin, you might have gone too far! They were freezing!
🌤️ Thursday was bittersweet, with us feeling sad as it was our last full day at camp, and our last one at the zoo. We all got up at our usual time, and got to the zoo by 8.30. By now, we were familiarized with the behind the scenes and our work load. We grabbed our tools and started out the day in the aviaries, mulching and cleaning. After we left the squawking birds, we moved onto yet another wallabies enclosure, the yellow-footed wallabies. Doing, you guessed it, weeding nettles and removing sticks.
🛠️ We got ourselves into a great rhythm of weeding, mulch bag filling and delivery, and finished up all the work by 12pm. The keepers, who had spent the day running around trying to find us new jobs, because we finished so fast, rewarded our hard work with free time to look around and actually go see all of the animals 🐾.
🦒 By about 2.30pm, our feet were shot and we were tired beyond belief, and the other group had their encounter with the giraffe, we bid adieu to the zoo keepers (who thanked us for our assistance), took our time buying out the zoo shop and hopping on the bus for our last ice-cream, and for our hike of the day, the iconic Pinnacle.
🐾 We took the walk slowly, seeing animals like skinks and echidnas along the way. We walked through bush, stone faces and waterfalls to get to the lion-king-esk Pride Rock, and proudly take our photos 📸.
🍲 We got back to camp and had our last dinner, the best one of the whole trip: tomato and bean soup! Sounds underwhelming, but it was the best dinner of them all. This afternoon made me feel like we were a big family the most, all joking around and all sitting together eating and mucking around and wanting more bread for the soup so using our precious bread butts. It was an amazing time, and we wrapped up the night with a Jalapeños juice drinking competition, s’mores and our talent show ⭐. Then, for those who were brave enough, we packed down our tents and slept outside under the freezing stars on a tarp so our tents were dry when we put them away. This was a bad decision ❄️.
🌅 The next morning, all those sleeping outside woke up cold and early, I personally woke up at 5am, and ran to the kitchen to heat up my heat pack. It was so cold that when I went into the fridge to get my milk for my cereal, it was warmer inside the 2° fridge than it was outside. Slowly we all woke up, got ourselves breakfast and crowded around the sink, filled with hot water, anything to warm us up.
🏕️ We managed to pack up a camp for 20 students and on the bus by 8am (a pretty amazing feat!), driving to our final walk, Hollow Mountain. The first 20 minutes of the hike was relatively flat, but about 500m in, the walk went vertical, requiring us to climb rocks to get to the summit.
🧗♂️ In small groups, Duncan took us through the hollow mountain cave. We first had to shimmy ourselves on our stomachs through a crevasse, then climb up the inside of the cave. The roof was a yellowy stone, with indents making it look like the set of an alien movie. We climbed down from the ledge and to the iconic hollow, a beautiful view over the green hills and the end of the Grampians 🌄.
🚌 By 11am, we were all back at the bus, and in one piece. We gave ourselves one last stretch then said goodbye to the Grampians and drove to Beaufort. We stopped there for lunch, and some mugs for Duncan and Bec for their present. We all made it back and made the last 3 hours of the drive, screaming “Queen” and “Teenage Dirtbag”, and made it back to a sunny 29° TC by 5pm ☀️.
⭐ This camp was the best camp I have ever been to and I would recommend it to everyone.