hey guys my name is Jordan from happen
films and today we'll be checking out
purple pear a biodynamic and
permaculture farm run by Kate beverage
and Mark Brown
we've always been passionate about food
particularly feeding children the
growing food which is has been my
passion married with Kate's passion of
educating children and and we just had
to feed kids really good food so that
they can develop to be good humans
I started in organic growing you know
putting poison on your food just made no
sense and it developed from there
through permaculture and ultimately to
bio dynamics this is a mandala Market
Garden we have six circular annual beds
this Center bed is planted out
particularly for beneficials so what we
do here is we provide the habitat for
things that are going to be of benefit
to us in controlling pests we have a
pond in the middle and the little birds
like to come and get a drink and whilst
they're here they'll grab a few bugs the
bromeliads are a fabulous breeding
ground for little green frogs and the
spots around the outside are a great
place for lizards to Sun themselves so
lizards in particular the little lizards
eat a lot of snails eggs and so the
snails don't actually get to become
snails they be they become lizard food
it just made complete sense to me to be
working with nature and not against it
because well basically I'm fairly lazy
and why would you make it hard for
yourself
we have habitats over there for the Blue
Tongue lizard as well and he'll eat the
snails if they do make it through to
adulthood he'll make short work of them
so the beds on the outside for where we
grow our our annuals and if I take you
over next door we'll be able to have a
really good look at how the system works
the progression for growing our annuals
here's a chicken tractor the dome is
made with electrical conduit and the
chickens inside are what cultivate and
prepare our beds for us so if you have a
look at the garden bed next door you
will see the mass of weeds and old food
plants that the chickens will devour
instead of devouring food that we truck
in we grow the food for them here and
they just love weeds
in two weeks they will turn that into
something like this bed here where after
the application of some mulch the
chickens have fertilized the ground
destroyed all of the bugs and pests that
are in their cultivated narrated the
soil and they've spread the mulch out
over the area just absolutely
beautifully so all we need to do is to
come along and move the mulch aside put
a handful of compost in the area put a
seedling in the compost and put the
mulch back around the outside if you
look at this newly planted bed and then
progress around to the bed we planted
four weeks ago six weeks ago eight weeks
ago you can see how the seedlings
progress and the the chickens after
they've finished on that bed we'll go
around the back mandala in a
figure-eight pattern and we just waltz
around after them planting the food and
then harvesting it when it's ready to be
harvested people have a choice and I
think they should continue to have a
choice but isn't it just a wonderful
thing to talk to the person that's
growing the food we are no longer
certified organic because our customers
certify our food they can come onto the
farm anytime they like they and they say
that you know they confirm that what
we're doing is what I sometimes call
more ganic it's way more than organic
because we're not only fulfilling the
needs for organic certification but
we're growing food from an ethic
perspective so we we grow with the with
the organic ethic and with the practices
and principles the fertilizer we use is
compost and our compost is made in these
areas here we make the compost in a day
and we leave it for four for three
months before we use it so there's no
turning once again very lazy system but
the the biodynamic preparations are
added to this compost too
to give it the added vitality that we
need to grow fabulous food plans for six
months it's a compost heap and for
another six months we will plant things
like leeks in the bed you know people
are looking for a simpler way to live
so making sourdough bread and cheese and
yogurt and and preserving I think people
have had enough of of a system that
doesn't regard them as anything but
fodder to the Machine beautiful food
nourishing food and tasty food those
things when added to the permaculture
practices in the organic growing just
allow for a great food system that cares
for not only the people eating the food
but also the land that the food is grown