Half Moon Farm

04/09/2026

A happy little slice of marley russell in the wild on Roma St, just outside the parklands.

04/09/2026

The good gear and the best people at Riser, Toowong. Belvedere Farm FABIO Kylie Russell marley russell L ☆

31/08/2026

29/08/2026

Still fruitin’.

29/08/2026

In 28 years of gardening in Toowoomba and Hampton I have never been able to grow capsicum plants and ripen their fruit outside in winter. Not a chance. This year’s winter hasn’t been exceptionally warm, just very consistently average (or a bit above) with, significantly, only half a dozen patchy frosts. The plants didn’t even get nipped. Maybe next winter I’ll cover them and attempt to grow some fruit with an attitude resembling resigned intention. Winter is warming dammit, but hey, no fruit fly to ruin the fruit so why not try to make the most of it while still laying blame squarely at the feet of the lying fossil fuel industry.

24/08/2026

One of the perks of doing a nature writing PhD is that you get to read - no surprises here - nature writing! I’ve only listened to Underland as an audiobook (while building my writing shed, incidentally) so I’m keen to get stuck into the physical book and annotate it to bits.

17/08/2026

An administrative tip for aspiring freelance writers: assuming you go on to have an extensive career, DO NOT enter a creative disillusionment phase during which you throw out most of your archive of published works, numbering roughly 750, without FIRST documenting each and every article. After all, you may choose to do a PhD someday, in which case evidence of a claimed publishing record may be helpful when applying for stuff like scholarships. Aaarghhh!!!!

06/08/2026

The garden is telling me that spring is here, which means that sadly, for a chionophile (cold lover) like me, winter was a total fizzer. It started all drizzly and warm, like March with a fever, and frost arrived two months later than typical. Cold front driven westerly winds and their associated rain bands have been scarcer than a brain at a One Nation rally. We had 7mm for July, way below average. Our coldest day all season was about 14 degrees. I’m not going to claim this is the “new normal” because that’s not how climate change works, but it’s irrefutable that outlier years have become more common and with genuine action on climate being too slow and too late, I’m reminded that active hope means building resilience and solidarity. I’ve done a lot of work on the space between my ears in the last decade, trying to improve my perception and understanding of how the earth actually works, not how I was told it works. As that flash-in-the pan 90’s band En Vogue once said “free your mind and the rest will follow”.

01/08/2026

Elon reckons we’re entering an age of abundance thanks to AI. Yeah, whatever. Anyone who has ever grown a healthy fruit tree knows that abundance has always been available and without any digital input beyond the grower’s hand. This is a roundabout way of saying that we still have HEAPS of fruit available so call past and grab a few avos or a dozen, whatever you need. They’re in peak condition, full of flavour and healthy fat. The latter is essential for brain function. Maybe the Elon-o-tron needs the input of some Half Moon Farm avocados?

30/04/2026

Never before have we been able to grow capsicums this late in autumn. Usually by the end of April the weather has cooled enough to slow the plants to a crawl and the foliage is riddled with cercospora disease. Not this year. The times are a changin.