Kyabra Learning Centre, Kentucky, NSW, Australia: 'Octoberfest'

panorama of part of 'Octoberfest' site

'Octoberfest' was a project that Teams from the The God's Way of Love Organisation (now disbanded), gave their time and energy too in order to prepare for and plant 10,000* trees.

We (the Lytton-Hitchins' family) had a grant from the Namoi CMA to create a wildlife corridor.

It was a fun filled week of activities consisting mainly of tree planting, building a breeding aviary*, working with draught horses, mediumship, karaoke, singing, dancing and sing-a-longs.

Our objective was to create a wildlife corridor, linking a highway bushland travelling stock route (TSR) with a timbered ridge line some 3km from the TSR. The nature strip follows along two creek lines which already had ample water and some established trees.

Activities of the week:

Preparing and planting 10,000 trees in total (we planted 5,000 over Octoberfest)
Built swales to improve hydrology (on a large scale with a crawler - already in place)
planted bushes, shrubs and trees for bird habitat, insects, bugs and creatures.
mulched to help feed and retain water for all the new plants
Our intention was to start the rehabilitation process in one planting.
Enjoy each others company and have fun

We wanted to give to the land rather than continue taking from it constantly. So we encouraged anyone planting to plant with love or to not plant at all.

'Octoberfest' was also an experiment about how our soul, Love, emotions, expectations, demands affect the environment around us (in this case plants).

The objective was to give love to the land in areas that it felt 'tired' and had been overly and excessively used for many years.

Looking up to the swale site (Oct 2011)

Walking to 'work' (Oct 2011)

Swales ready for planting (Oct. 2011)

Working on Swale projects (Oct 2011)

Swale Site (Oct 2011)

Pre-made swales ready for planting out (Oct 2011).

Some of the trees to be planted out during the week (Oct 2011).

Another part of the 'Octoberfest' 2011 Project was a very 'tired' paddock that lacks fertility and has been heavily grazed for many years. Hundreds of years ago this paddock was full of huge trees, a stump and some large holes (scars) are all that is left of it now. We swaled and direct seeded the area with wattle seeds (to regenerate the land and soil).

Some amazing things have happened over a year. The land has begun healing itself with a whole variety of different plants (weeds). Fleabone came up rapidly all over the place in abundance, amongst this was also thistle, dandelions and some very delicate flowers and other plants.

Swales just dug

volunteers seeding the area

a year on from a distance you can see the colour of the fleabone
healing the area

fleabone beginning to do it's 'job' a few months after seeding

fleabone at the end of it's cycle

A Year on we have noticed that many trees have died in certain swaled areas. We feel that they received a large amount of emotional projections in the form of expectation and demand upon them during 'Octoberfest' 2011 which caused them to die.

This can be seen clearly from swale to swale in that every plant and tree had the same planting conditions, the same amount of minerals, water, mulch etc, yet some trees have flourished and grown 6ft in a year and others are totally dead. The only difference in the planting on each swale was the people, so by process of elimination we feel that it has something to do with us the people.

We also noticed that the loss rate of trees from 'Octoberfest' was far higher than some of our 'commercial' plantings of the past and we feel that the 'commercial' plantings had much less investment from those that did the planting. Those who do 'commercial' planting are paid and contracted to plant, they don't really mind what happens to the plants after they have done their 'job' of planting the trees.

We found this observation interesting and have been experimenting with it on smaller scales and other projects. An example is Peter's asparagus planting and cucumber experiment.

Swales a year on - grass and 'weed' cover over them now

Swales a six months on

swales a year on in a very dry season

Swaled area a year on - we are beginning to add
dead matter to the swales to create living fertility systems
in the swales themselves. We feel this should have been
done at the time of the project last year.