Norfolk Road Adventures

We had a lovely field trip yesterday to Norfolk Road.  Our first stop was Emilie's farm. She has a large olive grove, chickens, a food forest in progress like our one at SES, raised vegetable beds and cows. The tree fort in the food forest was something the Earth School team loved :)

She showed us her permaculture plantings and the beautiful fruit tree guilds she has planted around her fruit trees that work together as a whole system.

A fruit tree guild has a fruit tree at the centre and then several types of beneficial plants and bushes underneath within the drip line of the adult tree.

We will be doing some more work on guilds and companion planting next term...

We saw her solar panels and electric car, the kids thought it was cool that the energy to charge the car comes from the sun!   We then wandered down to see her small herd of organic highland cows and calfs.

We then hopped back on the bus and went to the Watermill Bakery and Luca's house, as the name suggests the bakery runs on a hydro-electric turbine that generates power from the force of falling water (the drop of water is known as 'head') in a small mountain stream turning a turbine that turns the generator and generates electricity.

Boly showed us the roundwood log building that houses the Watermill bakery and pizza restaurant, and the turbine that powers the flour mill and other dough making equipment and ovens in the bakery, as well as the wood fired oven shown in the photos below.

We then saw the orchard with the biggest most delicious feijoa trees, apples, pears, plums and gigantic raspberry cages...

Climbing up the terraces we found Luca's treehouse and his the off grid house with Solar power, solar hot water and hydro-power from the bakery stream.

We all had an excellent time and thanks to our hosts for opening their properties to Earth School, and thanks to Lucia for the beautiful photos. Lots of amazing ideas for our Earth school plans.