So my computer died, which is something of a disaster, since it is my other window to the world, a way to make money when times are hard, and, ok, my primary addiction! I’ve always been blase about backing up my data, and now i’m paying the price… seems to be a hard disk fatality, as there was a lot of whining and grinding going on in the final throes as I was frantically trying to back up my shit (unsuccessful - death occurred mid-backup). I have some vague hope that I can still access the storage but it may require some extremely nerdly action on my part to make this happen, and it’s a long shot. I of course do not have the boot disks for my system and tracking them down is proving difficult. Cross your fingers on my behalf for bit torrent…

Anyway, I’m posting today courtesy of my nephew Darcy, who loaned me his old G3 (even smaller and older than mine!) in the interim… (interim to what, I ask myself?)

So, after my last post , with all my whining about needing dairymaking equipment, and posting on every possible public forum and inapporpriate social network my veiled pleas for gifts of churns and scotch hands, I had some luck and sweetness come my way.

One kind person who I exchanged farmtalk with online just once offered me her butter pats, a small churn and a stack of Good Earth magazines, if she could find them, since she doesn’t use them anymore. In the meantime, I received a mysterious package from a sweet farmboy in Broken Hill, and there, wrapped in gold paper and all tied up in string, were 2 butter pats - my scotch hands! I have posted pictures of me using them, though without the skill of my mother. I guess I’ll get used to the process… The churn is still out there somewhere, I am just waiting on it to arrive from wherever it is languishing. Ebay is useless for this stuff. People buy them as collectables, which pushes the price up to ridiculous heights. I just wanna make butter…

my scotch hands

butter pre-washing and squeezing. the buttermilk has separated from the butter fat

scotch hands in use!
 
Anyway, having said that, it’s all rather moot really for the next couple of months, since we’ve had to dry Rosie off. She’s in calf, and is due on the 10th June. Cows come to the end of their lactation a couple of months before calving, then all their energies go into growing the calf for the last couple of months. After calving the udder swells to enormous proportions. For the first couple of days we will not milk her, just leave her calf to feed off her, because she will be producing colostrum, which is special milk essential to the calf’s development. After a few days we will milk her out every day, and it will be a huge task, given the amount of milk she’ll be producing.

Anyway, we are now bemoaning the lack of raw milk in our daily diets, and cannot bring ourselves to buy any dairy produce from the supermarket. The processing of raw milk into the milk that appears in the supermarkets creates a product which is little more than white water, or worse. Raw milk is a whole food with good bacterias and yes, sometimes bad bacteria, but whole, not stripped of goodness and then pumped full of additives. Authorities believe that raw milk bacteria are harmful to human health. This is more likely to be the case if the milk comes from cows which have no access to sunlight, fresh pastures and cannot roam and graze freely.

There is alot of legislation around the production and distribution of milk. It is illegal to sell or buy raw cow’s milk anywhere in Australia except for use in pet food or cosmetics. The only way you can legally consume raw cow’s milk is to own a cow. There’s this action people are taking in order to take advantage of that legislation. Called cow share or herd share, it involves a number of people buying a share in a cow, or a herd, or a dairy, and therefore, each part owner is allowed to consume the raw milk. I’ve been trying to find out if there are any such projects up and running in this area. It seems there was some movement around a Herd Share in Byron in about 2005 but I’m not sure what’s happened with that. Current legislation is trying to stop farmers drinking milk from their own cows. Raw goat’s milk is available in some states.

There are some great sites talking about the raw milk movement. Just google raw milk movement and you’ll see how huge the movement is. Basically the raw milk movement is antithetical to the notion of factory farming and corporate consumerism. As Joanne Hay, Editor of Nourished Magazine says in this article, "Probably the most important benefit of raw milk is it’s incompatibility with corporate culture. You simply can not control large milk supplies without pasteurisation." This article from The Age gives a good overview of the current legislation and highlights some of the issues around the production and consumption of raw milk. realmilk.com is a great American site for global resources for the raw milk movement, with links to articles from all over the world and even has a listing of raw milk suppliers here in Australia. realmilk.com.au is an Australian lobby group working towards changing legislation around production and distribution of raw milk. In terms of supply that is legal, in a grey-area kind of way, we have 2 dairies in Australia who produce raw milk products for cosmetic use. Cleopatra and Aphrodite produce raw milk and cream and are probably responsible for bringing the raw milk movement into sharp focus here in Australia. Their agents and suppliers are cautioned to warm shoppers not to drink the milk. If there is any hint that the milk is sold for human consumption the producers will be fined $44,000. As Sally Jones from Aphrodite Dairy says "Where has freedom of choice gone? We have the choice to buy raw meat from the butcher shop and have the choice to cook it or eat it raw, we have the choice of eating raw fish in our sushi rolls… we can even legally buy cigarettes, branded ‘smoking kills’ -It doesn’t make sense?… people don’t have the choice to consume raw milk!"

So I guess we’ll be bathing in it instead of drinking it for the next couple of months, courtesy of Cleopatra’s… I’d love to hear about any herd share projects that are happening in the region, and would love to find a local supplier of raw milk - for cosmetic use only, naturally…

Creamily yours

Vx 

So we’ve been googling all things dairy today, particularly following developments in the raw milk movement and legislation around the distribution and consumption of milk.

I’m going to write a post about it shortly, but in the meantime, I’m on the hunt for things like cream separators and butter churns. They’re hard to come by, and I’m looking for small scale domestic items, probably antique (scotch hands and the like), not big scale industrial machinery. Anyway, on Ebay I found a couple of churns that I’d LOVE to own…

This one… 

and

This one… 

feeling generous? got a bit of spare change? my self sufficiency fund, and hence your contribution to the raw milk movement would be most appreciative…

cheeky i know, but i’m desperate…

I put a bid on an antique pair of scotch hands (see previous post for pic). There’s only 1 other person bidding, no doubt some crazy feral raw milk fanatic who’s been searching for scotch hands to no avail as i have. i may have a battle on my hands…

more later

xxV 

…or have been, incessantly…

[aside and preamble - there is alot of dairy talk in this here post, so vegans and those of a lactose-intolerant persuasion might wish to skip those bits. I’ve been thinking how much happier i am to ingest a raw, unpasteurised wholefood than to drink soy or rice milks. The extraction and processing of these products creates a food which is not natural or whole. anyway, just a thought, which is not relevant for those who are ethical vegans or those who have a system which can’t digest milk…]

…today, happily, we see some sun, and maybe some tomatos will ripen and our perpetually soggy little calf will dry out a bit and her rain scalded little hoofs and legs will regrow the fur they’ve lost and i will get some vitamin D and my disposition will change from glowering to glowing and the chooks will lay and the worms that usually live outside under the soil but have made the big trek indoors in their hundreds will go back to their earthly home and so on.

I feel somewhat guilty bagging out the rain, since i know come too many sunny days in a row and i will be worrying about when the next rains will come… but ordinary day to day tasks become very difficult when the sog reaches a certain level and the water table is no longer below the surface of the earth…

So, be that as it may, rains and so on, things carry on and there are goings on to report, and some pics to illustrate said goings on.

We have a new housecow, and her name is Rosie. She is a beautiful jersey, about 6 years old, and she’s pregnant with her 4th calf. She comes to us via the generosity of Brian, Charlene’s boss. He’s a cool guy. Brian’s wife is named Rosie, and we could think of no better name for this much loved newest addition to our small herd.

rosie

Rosie has a very very placid disposition and from day one let us squat down at very close quarters around her back legs while we did things to her udder… It feels slightly precarious to be in such close proximity to a potentially swift kick with a hind hoof. I’ve seen the damage that can cause and a hoof in the face would not be pretty… but she’s a darling and honestly I really feel perfectly safe around her.  She’s due to be dried off in about 3 weeks before the birth (she’s due 15th July)and towards the end of her lactation her milk will become very creamy (and it is!).

pretty face

We are currently milking anywhere between 4 - 6 litres from her in the mornings. We have alot of milk product in the fridge!

 
the first milking - about 6 litres…

our fridge… full of milk and cream…

cream begins at the arrow…

separating the cream from the milk

Dried off heifers who are in the last trimester of their pregnancy are called "springers", and take a different diet to help build up their strength for the birth and for suckling their newborns, which takes alot out of the cow. After the birth Rosie will produce up to 15 - 20 litres of milk. Her newborn calf will drink about a litre and a half. Hopefully our little Luka will drink from her as well (we are currently feeding her Rosie’s milk via bottle or bucket). That will leave us a good 12 or so litres to strip out of her by hand! That is muscle building work! Brian suggested we take up squeezing stress balls to strengthen our hands for the ordeal…

With so much milk product I’ve been looking into making other dairy foods - butter, yoghurt, cheese…  I have no equipment to speak of, so I’m doing alot by hand and in a fairly ad hoc way, but the butter seemed to work just fine, we’ve had it spread on our toast and it doesn’t have a strong or sweet taste, but it’s soooooooooo good… i just have to experiment a bit more…

our butter

To make the butter I used about 500ml of cream (you can use as much as you have or want) and this made about 100 grams of butter.  

I used a bowl and a hand whisk (wooden utensils soaked in water are preferable, cos the butter won’t stick to them), but you can use a blender or food processor.

Whip the cream in the bowl until it passes through the whipped cream stage and then quite suddenly you will hear a sloshing in the bowl as the butter and buttermilk separate. Drain off the buttermilk into a jug (use it for drinking or baking).

The next stage is called "washing" the butter and is the process by which all the buttermilk is expressed from the butter. Marja Fitzgerald says that she washes the butter only once, and that by leaving some buttermilk in the butter the butter will stay sweet for about 5 days and then develop a "cultured flavour". I washed the butter many times, using a wooden spoon to pat and squeeze the butter until the water runs clear (my mum used to use "scotch hands" for this process). Then I drained off the last of the water and continued to pat and squeeze intil no more buttermilk came out. It comes out through the buttter in small beads and runs off. It takes some time, and i was pretty thorough, but i’m sure there was a little buttermilk left.

Further advice indicates that it is probably best not to use fresh cream (milked that day) for butter making. Best to use cream that is about 5 days ol. The taste will be sweeter, not so tasleless. If you use cream that has been naturally soured at room temperature just slightly, then you will have a culktured butter. 

Today I am going to experiment with yoghurt. It seems like a complex process with incubators and double boilers and so on, but i am taking Marja’s advice and keeping it simple. I’ll put a spoonful of storebought, unflavoured yoghurt (jalna) in a jar and pour just milked (and therefore very warm) milk into the jar. I’ll place it somewhere reasonably warm, wrapped in a wooly jumper and leave it for 24 hours, see what happens! I think Marja was probably living in the kind of farmhouse where there was an aga or other wood burning stove going all the time (as it was during my childhood), making the kitchen a very warm place. I have a fucking awesomely fantastic Ilve stove, but when it’s not on it’s just stone cold, and doesn’t do anything to keep the kitchen warm. Perhaps when the weather turns more wintry and we are having fires at night i can place the jars around the fire to do their thing. Anyway, I’ll let you know how it goes…

Enough with the dairy!

(phew! as i write this I feel the list of tasks that cover the concept "self sufficency" stretch out before me in a neverending scroll towards the vanishing point of the horizon… the produce to be dealt with by baking, preserving or eating before it is spoiled - limes by the score, bananas by the many hands, milk milk milk; the lawns to be mowed before the water table turns everything to sog again; the vegies to be tended and garden beds to be mulched, the animals to be cared for, and that’s just today… )

So Tashi has a new house. Goats do not like the rain. The only place Tashi had to go to be out of the rain was the verandah, and i’m all about keeping animal housing and human housing quite seperate… the old pighouse would have been ideal, but the other thing about tashi is her deep need to be near humans. she likes to be able to see us, be near us, and the pig house was too far away, she just would not stay. Even tethering her was useless. she just got herself into a terrible mess trying to get closer to us. So a house for Tashi was in order. Tashi has a good sprinkling of mountain in her, likes to climb, be at the highest point, so we decided on an A frame up off the ground that she could climb up to, be safe from the weather and be near us. Our man in Dunoon, John, made the house for us. Here it is. We need to spruce it up a bit, probably with a sign and some carnival lights, but she seems to like it…

tashi’s new house 

peeking out…

My dairygrrl is going well out at the farm. Apparently she’s onto the "second stage of learning", which is all about the cows and calves. Brian has been reading this blog, and laughed when I said they milked 400 cows a day. Actually the herd is 400 strong but of that 400 there are always cows who are not being milked because they are in the process of drying off and so on prior to calving. So often these mornings Charlene spends mornings wandering in the paddocks searching for the calves that have been born overnight. They are very small and hide in the grass, and play dead when you pick them up. She identifies them and then records every little detail about them before rosie comes to take them to their new home. In the calf pens they get warm milk delivered straight from their mums morning and night. They are kept in the pen to keep them warm, dry and safe from harm. This way they can be monitored for disease and given extra attention if they are struggling. She still comes home smiling every night, with that special aroma of cow in her clothes and hair.

One of our loved family members has hit the road, and we are sad to see her go. Our much loved farmboy Zhane has turned swaggie boy and is movin’ … Big adventures await her but she knows she always has a home here. I’ll miss her quiet presence in the garden, or feeding the animals, or smokin’ on the balcony while looking out towards the horizon. She’s been such a fantastic help on this sustainability journey we’re on, and we hope she comes back full of the world, full of the roads she’s travelled, full of color and joy.

Zhane … thinking of nuffin …

Zboy

So we have a new tenant, whose name is Bec. She’s a massage therapist, a naturopath and all things good, and we’re looking forward to the new energy she will bring to the farm.

I’ve been told I should wrap this up, it’s getting way out of hand, so wrap I will.

It’s been too long between visits, so I’l endeavout to wander out into the backyard a little more frequently.

Much love to farmfans everywhere.

 Vxx

Introducing the newest member of our farm family. Her name is Luka and she is a Murray Grey x Galloway. She is about 2 months old and is absolutely beautiful. She only arrived this afternoon after a harrowing ride in the car between Virginia’s legs. She had her ear pierced with her identification tag just moments before she left, so she keeps shaking her head. Anyway, everyone say ‘Hello’ and hopefully you will all get to meet her soon.

Charlene x

Once again, it’s been sometime since i have wandered out into mybigbackyard and taken stock of where we’re at, how the creatures big and small, four footed and two legged, beaked and billed, are faring.

I spoke of changes at Matiatia last time I wrote and it seems we are in a constant state of flux here, with some happenings causing sadness (see previous post) and others bringing joy and levity.

The family is settling into some sembelance of stability, with Zhane well ensconced now in the cottage, carnival lights and all, and Jax moving into the bails today. Deb arrives back from the UK in just a few days and Neha has returned to Oakland, on a mission to be back on the farm by June or July at the latest. We miss her, and look forward to her return.

We are enjoying living here as a home and family, now spread over the various dwellings on the property, without the place being part home, part business. It feels freer, knowing we can wander at will, play music loud if we want to, farm naked (if we want to), without frightening or disturbing guests. And we do all of that and more! There has been much productive activity, with me and my farmboy Zhane embarking upon lists of to do’s every day. Zhane is remarkable in her stamina for taking my mania for listmaking and tasking in her stride and remaining quite unflustered by it all…

Big news is Charlene’s new job! She’s working on a dairy! Rises at 4.45am for her first shift, comes home by half 9, and is off again for her second shift at around 3pm, home by 7. She’s usually quite aromatic and shit splattered by the time she arrives home but glowing and energised after milking 400 cows and so on… the farm she is working on is very lovely, green as green, on the banks of the richmond river, dewy in the early morning sunlight… the cows are pretty and docile, contented cows, not sad cows. Brian her boss is an excellent person. He works with a mixture of farming principles, including biodynamic principles, using chook manure instead of chemical fertilisers, feeding his cows lots of minerals, apple cider vinegar, epsom salts and so on. He knows every single cow and doesn’t treat his cows like milking machines, pushing the grains in order to get more milk gain from them. This can ultimately lead to "sad cow syndrome", where the cow’s system is very acid, and they become depressed and walk with dropped heads. He works alongside his dairy hands, talking 20 to the dozen about everything in the world and thinks charlene is the bee’s knees. All this is good. I went out wth her yesterday and took hundreds of photos of the dairy and the cows. Some lovely lovely pictures… i’ll post a couple here. It’s a great place to take photos, all that symmetry. Rows of legs, rows of shiny machines… Chatted to Brian her boss about minerals and weeds and honey locust trees which he has growing along the creek bank and about green mulch which he’s looking to turn to if his chicken manure supply runs out, which he predicts will happen because the price of chemical fertilisers have become so expensive that traditional farmers are looking for alternatives. He’s a 4th generation dairy farmer who has come from traditional farming roots and through his own learnings has moved towards using sustainable farming principles, so he’s interesting to speak to about things lke the soil and pasture improvement and animal rearing.

On the home front Zhane and I have been extremely busy in the gardens (in between rainfall) trying to get the grasses down to a manageable level. We’ve also been doing major gardening around the bails and caravan, in the secret garden, down around nick’s grave, around the clothesline and so on, all places we need to wander regularly. I’m hanging out to turn over the garden beds for the autumn planting… though we are still getting mountains of cucumbers, lots and lots of beans and the tomatoes and the greens never stop really. Pumpkins are so abundant that it’s a case again of two for the rats one for us… We’re thinking of making a sweet pumpkin pie (gluten free) with chocolate ganache lining the case… mmmmmmmm… And limes, my god limes to burn (but we’re squeezing them and freezing the juice for the lean times…).  We will probably preserve a whole lot, and then also make some baked goods and lime curd to sell. Lemons haven’t been ripening really due to lack of sun. It’s been a helluva season, no sun to speak of, so alot of the produce never really made it…

Our best task so far has been plumbing the drain for the outdoor bath in the bails. Michael already had it in place, so much of the hard work had already been done, but leveling it was a bitch, then digging out for the drain. We pruned many of the gingers and oter plants, weeded out tobacco plant and farmer’s friend, and it looks fantastic, and Jax is pleased to be able to use the bath, which has been a job going begging for such a long time… it really looks great…

the outdoor bathroom at the bails 

the plumbed drain 

no cheating, finding true level… 

level! 

We bought some new plants yesterday at the Lismore Carboot Market, which I love to go to, has everything from old playboy magazines to geese and ducks to vegetables and antiques and cool boots. We bought a crazy looking succulent that Zhane has put outside her new home, and a lemon myrtle tree and a native frangipani which is less perfect that the common frangipani. I’m keen on getting hold of some more native fruit bearing trees like finger limes…

I’ll be back again soon with more news. Perhaps about the acquisition of new animals… Stay tuned, farmyard friends…

xxV 

One of our dogs, well, a family member really, who we loved dearly, is no longer with us.

Nick (aka Nicholas Joseph Judy, Noodle Boy, Handsome Dan), 7 years old and so pretty, died a week ago and is buried here on the farm, in the orchard. We planted frangipani at his head and thyme at his feet.

Nick was beloved especially by Charlene, his Mum, and by Deb, his Mummatwo and is missed by Bucky, his big brother. Charlene and Deb picked up Nick when he was a pup, and he’s lived and travelled with them from city home to city home, from city to coast, and to his final home, here at Matiatia

He came into my life when he was 4, and I loved Nick too. He lived with me at the beach during his sea change phase, and loved to swim, thinking he could mix it with the dolphins way out in the river. He came running with me most mornings when I was living in the city down at Blackwattle Park, and more often than not ended up soaked after a flying leap from the esplanade into the water…

For Charlene, Nick was so important to her because she’s had some pretty rough times in her life. During the hardest times, when she had nothing at all, no money, food or electricity, she had Nick, and for a long time it was just her and Nick, and they shared what little she had.

Nick was a beautiful dog, handsome and energetic, strong and athletic, sweet natured and fiercely loyal. We loved him with all our hearts, and we will stay in our hearts forever.

mmmmmm.. milk 

part seal, part dog :: Ballina home away from home with Ammamamma and Uncle Dreggie

inner urban nick at the punks picnic, sydney park - photo by debra anthonisz

We love you Nicholas. Charlene, Deb and Virginia

written by V. Charlene will contribute nick stories when she feels able xx

In my previous post I mentioned that there were some changes happening at Matiatia, so I’ll try to bring you up to speed…

For those who came late in the day to this blog, brief backgrounder. Matiatia (formerly Mateatea) is this here farm where we live and do farm things and blog. Matiatia is a small holding 5 acre permaculture farm and guest facility owned by my friend Michael. I live here currently with my grrl Charlene.We have been living here for about 1 year, and I have been managing the guest facility during that time. For the full story see here.

We have a fairly fluid family/community life going on here, with lots of people coming and going. We like it like this. Our friend Neha is here from San Francisco at the moment. She will stay for a month. You can check her out at Ekphrastic Feminarca.

So… 

Recently, Michael and I decided to call it a day with the business. It’s no money maker and it’s wierd to have people who aren’t friends or family in your space all the time. It’s a psychic drain., on a permanent basis. They’re always lovely people, really interesting, aren’t your usual Byron tourist fodder, have eco interests often and so on. Still, I feel constrained by their presence.

So on February 11th, in just a few days, the business will close. The last guests are currently in the cottage and the last turnaround has been done. Then it will be just family at Matiatia and that is how it should be.

We (the farm family) will rent out the whole property, including the cottage (formerly guest house) and the bails, which is a renovated space which was formerly the original dairy. It’s a great space, self contained with the outdoor bathroom, but very, um… rustic living. It is a great space. I love the bails.

And so we are expanding, our small family, the core of which has been Charlene and I, this small family in which dogs outnumber humans, will be expanding our number to 5 and occasionally 6.

Deb, frequent commenter on the backyard, our other limb, and founder of the Bring Tippi Home Front will be coming back from the UK at the end of February and taking up residence in her old room, reuniting with her dog Bucky and resuming house duties .

 
Deb (left) and Charlene (right) photo by tom anthonisz

In the cottage our Zhane,special friend, farmboy and tree changer from the Big Smoke (that’s Sydney…) will be living. She will come to Matiatia to be herself and paint and stretch her wings (which are usually hidden beneath her clothes).

Zhane outside the toilets of the Lismore Showgrounds looking cruisy

In the bails will be Jax, a local writer who will write!

Neha will make regular visits in preparation (we hope) for eventually moving out here permanently.

neha on the verandah

In other exciting news, I am about to become farm housewife to a dairy farmer! Yes, Charlene just scored herself a job on a local BIODYNAMIC (!) dairy farm. This couldn’t be more perfect for her. She loves cows, and they are a sustainable, organic, eco friendly, animal friendly ethical family business. They loved Charlene and are prepared to fully train her based on her passion for the job. This is great news for a family that has been living a subsitence level existence for quite a while now.

I broke the mower, perhaps not unfixably but i have to say that mower was everything to me. That mower was my life and today I felt that I could mow forever. I do feel remarkably tired at this juncture, however, and, while I am sure there was more to say, many more important tidbits of information to pass on, I am simply too tired.  

Some words and some pictures should suffice for the day.

Love country style Vxx 

We’ve been having a helluva a time with our internet services lately… hence offline-ness… the reasons why require a bit of backgrounding regarding changes here at Matiatia, which I will save for another post but for now suffice to say no interruption of services is a lie… and I now know about telstra processes 75, 77, 90 and the holy grail, 95…

On with the show…

Over the last couple of days and nights we’ve had sky phenomena which has been quite glorious. A couple of nights ago we had a phenomenal sunset, which transfixed everyone we spoke to the next day. Out of nowhere, out of this uniformly grey sky, as sky that went on for days and weeks and months, exploded, at the crepuscular hour, a golden light so fierce that it hurt… it lit up the hills all around in a fire of psychedelic green gold yellow. We all ran around trying to capture it with various cameras, but it was too ephemeral, too much for any lens we had…

nothing could capture the colors but you can see the double rainbow on the hills 

Then appeared the beginning of a rainbow, quite fluorescent, just the beginning, creeping across the sky until a full rainbow spanned the horizon, with another faint arc beginning to appear just above it. This beautiful double rainbow remained until dark. It felt like a promise of all the skies to come, lit as it was by an unclouded sun.

Yesterday there was another rainbow, and actual sun for most of the day. It was hot. I felt alive. I ran, and mowed. I weeded the vegie patch to reveal long lost spinach and tomato plants. I sweated. I began the task of wrestling the gardens back from the thigh high grasses. We saw 2 snakes today, always a sign of hot dry weather. And a good reason to get onto the mowing. With so many vulnerable animals and humans, and a good number of brown snakes, it’s wise to be able to see what’s in the grass…

A couple of days ago Charlene commented that one of the baby chicks was missing. I thought perhaps another victim of the rains, but really they’re babies no more, gangly teens really, and puddles of water shouldn’t be deathtraps.

Today I found the baby chick, in a most unfortunate circumstance. As I was mowing, a most tedious process using a push mower in thigh high grasses, the mower stalled, as it had been doing occasionally on the thick growth. In front of the mower was the baby chick – in the belly of a carpet snake! Which I must have walked over a couple of times in previous rounds of the lawn. Unfortunately this time I had inflicted grievous bodily harm upon the snake, a most beautiful carpet snake, huge and fat, which had been sleepily digesting the chick in the long grasses until fatally woken by the mower. I felt awful. The snake had to be swiftly killed as it was injured so terribly. I had seen this snake a couple of months ago around the pond, where I guess it was eating small frogs and rats, and I was very pleased to have a carpet snake living on the property, since rats outnumber people here by about 10 to 1… If I had had the opportunity I would have relocated the snake to inside the house, inside the walls or the ceiling to deal with the rat population, but unfortunately snake as gone back to the earth and will eat chicks, rats and other small rodents no longer. Not an auspicious event…

the snake’s stomach, with baby chicken inside 

An update on Tippi, since I know erstwhile farmgrrl 3, Deb, has started the Bring Tippi Home campaign… So, after our unsuccessful visit to the farmer who owns the herd Tippi is running with, and no word from him at all, I finally tracked down phone numbers for him and, feeling not so confident, since I have heard stuff about said farmer, rang and spoke to him. One needs to be bolshy in these kinds of exchanges so I was just as hardcore matey farmer as I could be, with the outcome that he will help us to get her back on Monday. His property had been sold, all cows dehorned, ready for market I guess, so lucky we got him when we did. I’ll report back on Monday as to the outcome. I’ll be happy to have Tippi home, and so will Hinimoa.

Laters, websters Vxx

Mamma chook died this morning, at about 3am.

Mamma was a lovely black and white bantam, a stalwart broody who hatched just about every chook on this farm. After her last brood was hatched she was quite frail. I takes alot out of a hen to sit for so long with such fierce dedication. They are very very protective of the clutch of eggs and the chickens once they are hatched. Mamma looked wild and was quite the devil during the period of sitting and once the little brood was hatched she never really assimmilated back into the flock. She was bottom chook, so had to fight for every scrap of food and was jumped on by George (macho patriarch of the flock) every five minutes with lots of pecking out of feathers and mating carry on to boost George’s frail ego. Mamma submitted but became very frightened. So we moved her out to another pen where she lived with the ducks for a while, but never really fully recovered. I think this constant rain finally did her in. She was skin and bone poor love. We had her in our room in a warm box for the last couple of days, but she died this mornng. She will fertilise the corn patch and provide food for us in the cycle of life that is the farm.
 
Mamma, we miss your little bantam ways and your fierce mothering love.

xxV 

The lack of backyard chronicles of late in no way reflects a lack of action, lovely chaos, yet more explosive growth and motion that is happening in the real world… this real world of the big backyard and the bigger backyard beyond this here farm… I was clearly premature in announcing a settling down of energy and a return to the routine activites of farmlife post Camp Camp in my last update.

Since then there have been yet more visitors (the lovely Neha from San Francisco is having a surreal rural life experience with is for a month), a trip to the Big Smoke (wild country grrls go nuts in the Big City), road trips with crazy storms dogging our every move… camping in the rain, eschewing camping in the hail for the questionable relative comfort of a cabin in a dodgy caravan park, swims in hot mineral baths and driving driving driving. Kate, our lovely farm caretaker, caretook dogs, poultry, goats and cows in the unceasing rain that is our lives. It is something of a big deal to be able to get away from the farm to consume Other Culture, the other one that we came here from…

The going away from it and going back as a visitor to it makes the experience of the inner urban environment new and fresh in it own grimy kind of way. Meeting new people who are doing the city in a Different way is refreshing. We stayed at a large sharehouse that spawns great community activities like bike clubs and community cafes and queer events like queeruption and makes spaces in the city for hanging out and doing *stuff* and the urban gardening glitter faerie will be making her home and garden there… she’s talking about making a herb spiral in the central part of the yard, which is currently inhabited by many many bikes in various states of dis/repair, a trampoline, some overlooked plants, a large table we found on the footpath in glebe, many couches, compost in the shade, some wormfarms that need an overhaul and other odds and ends, leftovers of projects past and ongoing. The trampoline is the hub of all social and solitary activity. I want one on the farm. Charlene is brave and wild and jumps very high and does all configurations of gyrations on it…

So I feel after the heady heights of trampoline fun in the city like i’ve crash landed back into Life.  

Right now the grass is thigh high and there’s a kind of grotesque and abject fecundity everywhere, worms crawling around inside, the really blood red ones. Whole cities of termites building inside a cupboard full of sheets, where there was not a one just a week ago. Mold growing on surfaces that I never imagined could support mold growth. everything from outside wants in. Rats, flies, crawlies and creepies, frogs and beetles, cockroaches in their millions… and the usual quota of fucking huge spiders…

Everyone is talking about it. The weather. Small talk has become big talk. Predictions of the Big Flood to come, bigger than ‘54. Due February 12th apparently. The Bureau predicts rain for the forseeable future. I am going crazy.The animals are bedraggled. Their bedding is an abomination and i can’t do anything about it til the rain stops, or relaxes, please! Tashi is standing on top of her copper mountain in the rain. Tippi (Dexter cow, Hinimoa’s daughter) has run away and won’t come home. The farmer next door cut her horns off. I think he plans to sell her. We went to see him to try and get his help to retrieve her but i think he was hiding inside his house when we called by refusing to come out. I believe he was in there. We left a note asking for his help but so far we’ve heard nothing from him. We nearly had her home this afternoon but she’s got the spooks and tosses her head and runs off if we try to force her to go anywhere. It’s this inch by inch process of luring her with lucerne closer and closer to the bottom gate, which we can hopefully shut behind her… Hinimoa is a bit beside herself and lonely and calls Tippi from the fenceline… Mamma chook was nearly killed today. She’s living in our bedroom in a cardboard box with food and water and towels for warmth and lots of quiet. She won’t uncurl her feet to stand properly and is doing a little bit of falling over on her side, which is disturbing. I hope it’s all just shock and that tomorrow morning we’ll find her being normally chook-like and she can live out her days scratching in the dirt and having dustbaths (tho *dust* does seem like a far fetched concept in this endless wetness that is the world… ) I could not allow an ignominious end to such a stalwart broody… The calves, Little Grrl and Frenchie, are just beautiful. There is more grass than they could ever dream of eating and they are fat and happy, growing into the most beautiful creatures, and so lovely, living just close by us all the time, nudging us with their noses, gentle big doglike things… They have not a care, and the rain does not bother them one bit.

My gardens are inpenetrable. The cucumbers have exploded. The corn is done. The tomatoes are rotting on the vines. There are greens, but they need sun. The beans are vicious, tendrils reaching out to grab you as you walk by. I can’t find the spinach in the projectile lateral explosion of nasturtium growth, so recently well decimated by the Dome chooks…

I realise this is a chaotic post, but i guess life feels a bit like that sometimes, and that isn’t all bad. Despite fences and neat cornrows and delineations between animal and human, between wild nature and a kind of civilised world (I have a farmhouse and i live behind its doors. Nature is beyond the doors), sometimes this all just defies containment. At the moment these fickle physical delineations are all a little blurry (we are all of the earth anyway), as the rain falls inside the house, as wood cracks and swells and doors rot away, and nature moves inside and we move a little bit outside.

I’ll leave my wild ramblings there for tonight. Sense may return at a later date, but hopefully not.

See you in the backyard again soon.

Love feral farmgrrl V xx

EDIT:

I almost forgot… there will be some changes at the farm. Beginning on February 11th Matiatia will no longer be running a guest facility. (I think i spoke about that aspect of the farm in the very first post…) So there will be new farm family moving into the previously guest-inhabited cottage and the into the bails, which is the renovated old dairy. This will make a considerable difference to our lives, we think. It’s odd having guests in your home all the time, ones that aren’t friends or family… Zhane, who is previously pictured in the unusually sunny backyard, will be living in the cottage, and a writer called Jax will move into the bails. Their lives will become part of the backyard, and they may pop up from time to time. Our old housemate Deb, who’s been in the UK since the backyard has been up and running, will be back home by the end of February, and our raggle taggle farm family will be complete…

FROM THE BUREAU OF METEOROLOGY (The BOM’s distinctions between rain, chance showers and rain periods are lost on me, since it NEVER FUCKING STOPS!):

NORTHERN RIVERS

Warning summary at 0948 hours :
Flood warning for the Richmond/Wilsons River.

Lismore:      Rain.

Lismore:       Rain periods, chance thunderstorm.

Lismore:       Rain periods, chance thunderstorm.

Lismore:       A few showers.