I live here quite simply, communally, in a small kindred network of three dwellings, gardens, with like minded people and a variety of animals. We live with a fairly heightened environmental awareness and share common views. We grow our own food and live as sustainably as we can. I have in front of me a computer. I have lights and a television. I have a car, and I drive almost everywhere. I have hot water powered by the sun on sunny days and on gas when it rains, which is alot. I play music, and i have an iPhone4 plugged into my computer, which is more than I need for communication, but it has such a nice camera on it… I have more than i need…

I spent the day fairly flattened beneath constant rolling incoming intel about the devastating quake, tsunamis, aftershocks, nuclear reactor catastrophes, mixed media reportage about radiation levels, about the threat to human life, about HAARP testing and the effect it’s having on the globe. I’m shocked that we all get in our cars and drive to work and eat and fuck and talk and laugh and act as if anything really has value on a day like today. I’m shocked that we don’t just stop.

So i sit here crying, thinking how ineffectual is crying, thinking … i haven’t done enough, i have more than i need, i haven’t done enough, i have more than i need …

I am complicit, it’s true.

Margaret says it’s good to stop, it’s good to cry-to bear witness, so that we understand, that we really understand that the 2,000 dead people on a beach are not part of a Hollywood construction, even though it’s playing out here on the screen. We won’t walk out into the daylight blinking, blinking, blinking.

And you know, it’s not just on a "day like today". Because every day is a "day like today" The only difference is privilege and power. Some people and places are simply so Othered that coverage by the media is not warranted. Every day, every day there are indefensible causal events happening on the globe. And it’s my fault. All the wars. All the deaths. Apartheid. Genocide. All the hunger. All the environmental degradation. My fault. Theoretically if not actually.

There is no such thing as a "natural disaster" anymore. It’s all causal. We’re desecrating the planet, surely there is no time like the present to acknowledge that? For what? A little extra comfort? A new pair of shoes? More and more cars? Houses by a deceptively blue ocean that is really dead? Fine furniture from logged trees? Capitalist greed is unfathomable.

i want everything to just. stop. stop. I want to make a difference or die trying.

You know the urgency is not in the stopping, it’s in the lying, the desperate urgency to continue grabbing land, or oppressing others, or poisoning someone’s drinking water or creating false supply and demand situations which end in wars for blood and oil - all this for personal and political gain. for power. The stopping is just quiet. it’s just stopping.

Here is a poem by Pablo Neruda. Margaret directed me to it, thankyou. It’s about stopping:

Irati wanti. the poison. leave it.

I’ll begin at the end and work back.

Last night. The absolute demonstration of foster-calf/cow bonding. Being kept awake all night by the calf and cow calling to one another in great distress. I am separating them at night now because Little Girl has begun to allow Cake to suckle on her with no resistance. This is breaking news, folks. Maybe two days ago I discovered this new development when I was bringing Little Girl in for her evening meal, halter tying her so that Cake could get a feed without being horned. Cake was supremely disinterested. Then I noticed her bloated little belly and Little Girl’s udder, which was like a deflated balloon. They had obviously sorted out their differences.

This called for a new strategy. I needed to separate the calf at night, in order to have milk in the morning. So last night I kept Cake by the bails (where she proceeded to wreak havoc in her efforts to escape) and Little Girl in the Big Paddock. By midnight, after suffering through what sounded like the soundtrack of a horror movie (I could imagine Little Girl with slavering jaws and bleeding eyes) as they called out to each other without cessation, I decided that milk in the morning was not worth this chorus of distress, and let Cake out. Earlier in the night she had sauntered into my living space either to find a new route of escape of just to lie on my plush rug…

Cake inside my home!

Ok. rethink. I’ll try something new tonight.

Anyway, back to the beginning…

I felt pretty ragged after Little Girl’s ordeal, emotionally drained and physically exhausted.

So many people helped me through that night and the next day or so. Thanks to Bek, Chuckie, Margaret and Neha. Your assistance and support helped me to make this a success rather than a disaster.

I really felt, through that 24 hours that stretched out into a week, that this work - the work of the farm, this project that i have taken to heart, is the most important and the most difficult life and work i could choose. Not just physically, but emotionally. Responsibility for the lives of animals, treating them humanely, creating systems that work for humans and animals, minimising the impact heavy animals have on the environment, and just being here, present, every day. This last thing is probably the hardest of all.

I learned alot from this traumatic event, about calving. There have been quite a few calves born here over the years, but there’s never been any trouble. Easy births, for cows and heifers alike. Little Girl is certainly old enough to be in calf (going on 3 years now), but i guess is just tiny in the pelvic area. Her calf was not a big calf, which is usually what causes problems. Nick the vet told me that 5 or 6 hours of labor is about the limit, any longer and trauma can result, and did. I’m familiar with what labor looks like in cows, and i guess that Little Girl wasn’t showing what I would normally be looking for, but *something* was certainly going on for some time. She did not seem unduly stressed, but there was a discharge of mucus and blood every now and again. Now I know never to let a situation like that continue. If i *think* a cow is in labor, and it goes on longer than a couple of hours, I know to call the vet.

As I was writing this I thought I’d check out what other people were saying about similar situations. I was also interested in checking out information about meconium, which is the calf’s first bowel movement. I wondered if there might have been meconium in Little Girl’s discharge, which could have been a warning to me. The calf does not usually defecate inside the womb, and if it does it indicates there is some trauma or distress. Anyway, so I was checking this out and came across a post from a person who was pretty much describing a labor situation exactly like Little Girl’s. One of the responses at derkeiler.com suggested that:

"Cows were having calves out in the wilds without human assistance long
before human assistance was discovered. Just give her space. If she is
having trouble she will let you know. But the more you let her see you
around her she will get "worried" and THAT will cause her problems. Let
Mother Nature take her course." 

Which, apart from being frightening advice, I believe, brings me to my next point. Correct me if I’m wrong but dairy cows, in particular, have been selectively super-bred over centuries to be milk producing machines. They pretty much *require* human intervention to survive. I believe there are probably no wild dairy cows in existence. I’m not saying I like this state of affairs, but these domesticated animals which rely on human care exist, and at least I can treat them humanely. Waiting for your cow to "let you know", if you don’t know what you are looking for, is insane. That advice will lead to a dead calf.

So. To illustrate. It is the middle of the night. I have a dead calf at my feet. Little Girl is slashed from there to there, and stitched. She has an udder which is about to burst. There is no calf to suckle this monstrously swollen udder. I feel overwhelmed, and teary, and can’t think what to do next. The vet leaves, and we stand around looking at the dead calf. Margaret and Chuckie kindly offer to bury the calf, which is so small that it doesn’t even nearly fill a feed bag. I can’t do anything until the morning, but I do know that now comes the really difficult job of aftercare, to make sure that she doesn’t fall prey to infection from either mastitis or the savage episiotomy. Sleep seems the best option at this point.

stitches

The first thing I do the next morning is drive to Trevor’s dairy farm ’round the corner to see if i can get a foster calf from him. He gives me a murray grey/illawarra cross heifer for 20 bucks. Cake, she’s called. It’s my birthday. A bull he’d have given me for nothing. That’s another story. Trevor is an … interesting … man and i wasn’t relishing seeing him, but it wasn’t as awkward as I’d expected. The Likely Dairy Lad used to work there (see earlier posts), and there were some issues around animal care that were a bit distressing.

Cake

There were a couple of ways I could have dealt with the problem of Little Girl’s udder. I took the difficult, but ultimately the most rewarding path. That is to foster a calf to her and milk her out every day, maybe twice a day. I would clean her wounds myself with warm salt and tea tree baths, and keep a close eye out for infection. The other alternative was to give her antibiotics and hand milk her for 6 days, since her milk would be unfit for human or animal consumption for that period of time. In addition i’d have to feed the new foster calf with milk replacer, which is never a god start for a calf. The idea of hand milking her seemed impossible at the time given that i had NEVER milked her or even touched her udder, and I had no idea how that was going to pan out. She is feisty, has horns, and isn’t afraid to use them. I was thankful that in a docile moment I had managed to halter her, so that i could use a halter rope and tie her to a post while getting her used to the milking process. This is itself seemed like a major achievement! The final alternative which I did NOT want to do was to dry her off using a product called Dry Cow and feed her full of antibiotics. This would have been a last resort for me. A cow recovers more completely and faster if she is suckling a calf. It is a more natural solution. You can see human intervention at play already here…

Little Girl’s new blue halter

Due to what I previously mentioned about the selective super-breeding of dairy cows, we have a situation where the cows need to be fully stripped every day. They produce far more milk than a little calf can drink, so the rest must be milked out by hand or, if you are in agribusiness, a machine. The little calf will get sick with a very common calf illness called scours if they drink too much milk. It’s like calf diarrhea, and they can die from it due to dehydration. So the calf needs to be monitored while suckling and taken away as soon as it has had .. probably for a new calf 1.5 - 2 litres. Then the rest must be stripped out. If this doesn’t happen, the cow is in danger of getting mastitis, which can compromise the udder in the long term.

It’s always difficult to foster a calf to a cow, especially if she has lost her own calf, and more so if it’s a heifer, who hasn’t had any mothering experience. Little Girl was no exception in this case. HATED cake. Tried to run her through with her horns. Smashed her into the yard railings, kicked her in the head. Hard. Cake, thankfully, is a feisty and resourceful calf, and stuck around, at a safe distance.

It was a tough few days, and the first litre i ever managed to get out of her reluctant teats was the hardest litre i’ve ever milked. i reckon I was milking for at least an hour, perhaps more. She was holding her milk back for her newborn (dead) calf like her life depended upon it, and in addition to that her teats were so huge I couldn’t get my hands around them, and the back ones so swollen that they were like pimples on a huge balloon… I was nearly crying, but i had to get her udder emptied and also get some milk into the calf.

First milking. Little Girl safely in the yards, so she can’t kick me.
My hand can’t fit around the teat, it’s so huge…

Cake’s first drink, Little Girl is halter tied so that the calf can drink without
being horned or kicked. You can see her tail wagging.
Little calves do this when they are happily drinking.

This immediate aftercare and ongoing care is a responsibility that you can’t shirk, ever. There’s no choice, these things like milking her out and getting food to the calf are not negotiable. There’s no sleeping in, no deciding you can’t be bothered or just "letting nature take its course." If ou have a lactating cow, there’s work to be done. Always.

Little Girl is not yet out of the  woods - I wash her down every morning, and while there is definitely some discharge from her wounds, she isn’t red or swollen, and I keep the suture areas clean. I tok out the stitches about 5 days ago, and I’m crossing my fingers for a full recovery really soon. I can’t see *inside* her vagina, where she was cut as well, but she’s bright and feisty and eating well and i’m trying to feed her up, get some weight on her, since she looks a bit skinny after the trauma of the birth. Her pissing functions were compromised after the birth but this seems to have returned to normal, but i’d say there’s been some anal sphincter damage cos she is NOT shitting cleanly, and cows actually are very clean in that respect. Anyway, I’m optimistic, and I’m now at the point where i’m getting around 3.5 litres of milk a day on top of giving Cake a drink. Which feeds the entire farm and beyond. We are back into yoghurt and cheesemaking, which feels great. More foods we produce ourselves.

I still have to tell you about Neha’s visit and Michael’s visit, show you the new gardens and the new ducks. I might leave that for the next instalment, however, since this is already so epic…

I’ll post updates about Little Girl’s progress and Cake’s prettiness, and oh! Rosie is due to calve any moment. Any moment. She’s HUGE!  She already thinks that Cake is her baby, so I’m not sure what will happen when the new calf comes along. So Cake has 2 mummies, which seems appropriate. I know, that was awfully corny.

 
neha and cake. beautiful day.

So I’ll return with more farm tales soon, and new photos of everything in my world.

Thanks for reading, farmfriends!

Much love, Ms V x

So, there is much to be said in the aftermath of the stillbirth but i am exhausted and overwhelmed.

I will write a full post tomorrow when i am not so tired.

To summarise; the mission to secure foster calf from trevor was a success, she is cute and called cake. She is feeding from Little Girl, under controlled circumstances. Little Girl wants to run her through with her horns. I have milked Little Girl a few times now, in the stalls so she can’t kick me. Little Girl has an infection and some other complications from the traumatic birth. More vet tomorrow.

I have photos galore. and I will post them. Tomorrow.

Sleep tight all. I will sleep the sleep of the dead. And see you in the yard tomorrow.

Ms. Vxx

 So this was meant to be a pre-calving post… however i think i’m too late for that. Went to check on Little Girl this morning and she’s looking very ready… restless, udder edema, pushing, mucus strings dripping out of her vag (sorry for the gruesomeness but that’s just the way it is. SO, I’m setting up the yard for her calf and making sure the paddock is safe and ready for her to calve in. it was full of building rubbish. The last thing I want is for her to swallow hardware.

Little Girl

her udder has swelled more… late afternoon and she’s still pushing…

one of her massive teats dripping colostrum

So this is what i wrote last night before things were ever-so-imminent…

If you read my last update then you will know that my cows are in calf! Yes! Rosie and Little Girl are both up the duff… thank you (I think) to the big old limousin bull next door who appears right on time, every time, and has sired a number of calves at Mateatea.

The cows also have a release of a hormone that softens the pelvic ligaments and the tailbone rises up, or the hips open and widen, making the tailbone more prominent. She seems steady on her feet at the moment, but this softening can give the cow an unsteady gait, and when all this happens: the edema of the udder, the softening of the pelvic girdle and the loosening and swelling of the vag; then you can be pretty sure she is close to calving. I think she is close to calving!!! (said in a high anxious voice)…

And why am i so anxious? Well…

Little Girl is a heifer, a female bovine who has never calved before. Little Girl has never been milked before. Little Girl is feisty. And has horns.

OK, so now I am off to bring her over by the Bails where i now live and take some photos and watch and wait. my big list of Things To Do Before Little Girl Calves is now redundant…

Ms V x

7.33pm: so i just went out with my headtorch, it’s just started raining, of course. i really don’t want it to be raining right now… Little Girl is down, can’t seem to get up or is more comfortable lying down. Her udder is swollen to impossible proportions and she’s breathing heavily. Her vag is stretched out and she is pushing every few minutes. God I wish the rain would stop… She is making the strange lowing sound that calving mums make…

In the night

 9.25pm: she’s pushing hard, her vag is really distended. i just spoke to Smith, who has known Little Girl for as long as I have (drove out to get her as a 3 day old calf, bought her home in a feed bag…). I guess pretty much he is waiting to see feet, as am I. As soon as there are feet I’ll feel a little more relaxed. A breach will mean a vet callout, and if it’s a big calf (she’s small), the calf might get stuck. Heath advises the old rope and ute approach, which will not work here… I could put my hand in, feel for feet, or just wait. Everything could be progressing normally, I just don’t know. Her teats are so huge i don’t know if the newborn could get her mouth around one. I might have to milk some colostrum while she’s in labor and put it aside in case i have to try and bottle feed the baby some colostrum. I’m just gonna check on her every hour…

7.41am: OK so I promised an hourly blow by blow but honestly, there’s not much to tell, she’s dilated, distended, pushing and for all the world appears to be perpetually moments away from birthing. But still no feet. *sigh*. I bought her into the yards just off my room but she wasn’t happy in here so i put her out in the paddock again. kept an eye on her until about 3am and then went to sleep… hopefully she will calve today, during the daylight hours… Any developments you will read about here first!

 8.20am: I have uni today, and I’m reluctant to leave under the circumstances… My friend Nancy just said "Oh no! Who will look after her when you are away?", which gave me pause to think, and my response was:

"well people can watch over her, but i guess i’m the only one who can know if it’s time to call the vet, but you know, i should probably just stop worrying. cows have calves all the time. by themselves. with noone watching. but usually, i guess, it’s in generally controlled circumstances, in a dairy, cos there is no such thing as a wild cow (in the main, and especially not a wild dairy cow). they were bred for a purpose, and that purpose means that they require human intervention in order to survive, really. I need to make sure the calf doesn’t drink too much milk, but i need to make sure the calf drinks its first drink of colostrum, cos that’s how it gets its immune system, through the colostrum, from mum’s milk. but then too much and the calf will get sick… sooooo… hmmmm… this is a total hands on house cow, not part of a large regulated herd. it’s a different experience."

8.10pm: vet on his way… seems like a breach? i guess we’ll see soon… i see no feet… only a round thing that looks like a head…

10.25pm: tired, sad. calf died. was dead inside her. Little Girl is ok. I have photos of the beautiful little girl calf, but i must warn you the pictures are, while not gruesome, perhaps distressing. The calf is dead. I am committed to documenting all of this, so don’t scroll any further if you don’t want to see pics of the dead calf. Little Girl was just too small to birth the very small calf… sadly. I should have called the vet much earlier and for that i feel very sorry, regretful. learning. always learning… Nick the vet told me that 5 or 6 hours of labor is the limit, otherwise it is too traumatic for the calf. It was hard for me to determine whether Little Girl was actually in some ind of pre-labor state or in full labor, especially as she didn’t seem to be in any distress. But I definitely had prescient feelings of anxiety… terribly brutal business, pulling a dead calf out of its mum, with a full episiotomy and winches. I’ve said it before. veterinary equipment is brutal, primitive. But Nick is a professional and quietly compassionate vet, while also expecting animal owners to know their animals, take responsibility for their wellbeing and treat them with respect and with the full complement of knowledge available to them. Tomorrow I will go and see Trevor (not a prospect i relish), the dairy farmer round the corner and try to get a foster calf from him and foster her to Little Girl who is at the moment just outside my door, quiet, but sniffing the ground, as if expecting to find something, perhaps not knowing her loss, but feeling that something should be there that isn’t. It will be better for Little Girl to have a foster calf than for me to dry her off. Poor darling. Anyway, there is much more to say, but I am really tired now, and need to go to sleep. so i am going to attach photos. you can’t see how pretty the little calf was from the photos, cos i had a head torch and my camera phone, but nevertheless I want to post these pictures.

 SPOILER: MIGHT BE DISTURBING

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stillborn baby girl

pretty calf feet

 That’s all.

Goodnight. Peace and love. Ms Vx

I decided that I would reactivate this blog and damn the surveillance team *waves gaily across the ether* since this is public domain stuff. it’s just weird to see your words in an unexpected context, you know… so, I logged into the backyard after a long hiatus and found this old post, which i abandoned halfway through, but was a honor roll of thanks to my special friends and i have many many photos to post as well, which i will slowly but surely sort through and contextualize in some kind of unreliable chronology!

so… this bit is in the past…

I’ve had a despondent season or two in the garden, which i have not failed to mention more than once in this here blog. Rabbits are a never ending problem, and the aforementioned rains wreaked havoc on newly planted seeds and seedlings. Fruition has been slow or absent due to lack of sun. It’s disheartening work sometimes, and every now and again managing the gardens alone seems too much and I grow dormant along with the plants. Recently Bek and Jax and I made a plan to create time for community gardening to take the burden of any single one of us, which i am grateful for. In addition I’ve had a never ending stream of visitors, farm stayers and wwoofers all willing to contribute to the productivity and general well being of the farm, and this has resulted in an overhaul of the vegetable beds which mean they are now manageable, viable and are beginning a cycle of newfound productivity, I do believe.

[aside: to the present day I have failed my gardens in this respect, but once we move to the present day, in this narrative, you will see that things are looking up!!!]

The delightful Sarah, a frequent farmstayer and loyal friend, built singlehandedly a raised garden bed, using remnant sleepers from a recycled timber store in Lismore. It is filled now with becoming-soil, made in the soil lasagne method, layers of of cowshit, chook pen bedding, garden prunings, cardboard and paper, grass clippings, vacuum cleaner dust, food scraps and straw. the process of mulching takes some time, but i predict a wildly dynamic bed of nutrition for baby foodstuffs to nestle in when the time comes.

raised bed by sarah, making soil lasagne

[indeed the soil is ahhhh mazing! - the rabbits, however, still exist, and anything nestled in that lovely soil lasted, oh, about … um… overnight *sigh*. again, however, there are changes afoot!]

Then came Jan and Kaja, the Estonians, my blonde wwooffer angels who dug, mulched, rabbit proofed, weeded, planted, cared for animals and loved the farm with all their hearts while i took a break from life and hitchhiked to Alice Springs and back. I have been eating the product of their labors for nights and nights now. fresh broccoli snapped from the stalk and steamed. pepper, perhaps, as an accessory. lemon maybe, or the smallest dob of butter. one doesn’t want to overdress fresh broccoli. I watch anxiously as small heads form on the cauliflowers, all compact and protected in their tight parcel of outer leaves. Green caterpillars want these babies as much as I do, and i hope their snowy growth will outrun the caterpillar hunger.

cauliflower harvest  - there are more!

mulberry season - we harvested buckets of these daily!

bek’s jam!

kaja and me, choosing our plantings

jan in the garden

garden with rabbit proof fence v.1.0. design modifications have been made.
current version of rabbit proof fencing will be seen on this blog soon…

Some photos from my road trip (hitching) to Alice Springs through the middle,
with Pike, my Canadian friend

Ernie’s big rig - i have a fascination for these huge rigs, these rolling signifiers each
with their own very specific and ornate heiroglyphics, truck codification of
identification and hierarchy. i love the punched metal casings that say "Western" or
"Mack" or "Hino"…
but this is probably another blogworth topic "the textuality of bigrigs" or some such!

pike on a hill of tailings, or mullock, at sunrise, with a fence
i became enamored of, for it’s purposelessness, it’s angles, it’s photogenic nature…

erldunda sunrise, on the way to uluru

Urban retreaters see the farm as a green respite from asphalt and concrete, and are always eager to get muddy, filthy and prickly. Do a shitload of work and then eat a hearty eggy breakfast and wash it down with a glass of Rosie milk. Lucky, since milk and eggs are the 2 most consistent things the farm produces. Urban retreaters love to gingerly pat the cows. Esther is a welcome return farmstayer and friend from Melbourne who I am in awe of for her unparalleled skills in city farming, greening inner urban environments, geurilla water harvesting and other such wonderful acts of participation in creating livable and sustainable environments. She’s an amazing cook, and writes a blog dedicated to all things food (i think she’s in my blogroll, and even if she hasn’t made a post for a while, her archives are amazing…)

esther with matilda, the closest thing to a "pet chook" we have…
tho a reluctant model…

esther rolling around in wanton abandon on a bed of prunings
from the reed bed wastewater system … mmmmm … sewage pinup?!

This was the end of my attenuated post… I think the gist of the post was that I really wanted to thank visitors who have contributed in significant ways to making this small system work, and as they reached in, i reached out, and the exchange has been mutual and there have been learnings, and all this ripples out into the world. 

[time passes]

my father died in this pause………………..

So there have been some major changes.

Firstly, I will catalog the animals we now have on the farm:

2 cows, both in calf! and ready to calve i think in about a month! (i am somewhat freaked out by this, for various reasons)
4 geese, beautiful creatures, if a bit noisy and disinclined to stay in the orchard, where they are supposed to be doing good works!
0 ducks! (long story) I should be picking up a trio of khaki campbell’s in about a week. this is exciting!
5 chooks (sadly depleted flock). I am looking forward to replenishing supplies with australorps and barnevelders

I have moved out of the ‘main house’, the farmhouse, where i held court, all queen like, for some years! After the last tenants moved out I lived there by myself for some months, but it’s a big house and i didn’t like living in such a big space all alone and i couldn’t afford the entire rent and it’s difficult to get people to rent just a *room* rather than a whole house… they don’t see the value in that, the lifestyle commitment i guess, that they are entering into…

so i offered the whole farmhouse for rent and moved across to the dwelling jax used to live in, the converted dairy bails, which i really love. it’s a gorgeous space. rustic, open plan, unfinished on the inside, raw wood and cathedral roofline, the ceiling silver with insulation, an old kookaburra stove in the kitchen. all muted greens of old enamel and raw wood and red floors. i like it because it makes me feel like i can keep a handle on the way i function in the world, the space i take up in the world, the very real connection i have with the resources i use and the waste i produce. I have an outdoor shower and bath and a compost toilet. the great outdoors is my pissoir and i also use my piss to water the plants and add nutrients to the compost. my compost toilet is a bucket style, which means i have to get up close and intimate with the shit when i empty the bucket into a composting receptacle. i do not hate this process. it makes all the abject invisible (flushed away) very real.

sunny corner in my new dwelling

early kooka

looking through the arched window out into the cattle yard and run

… so the most fabulous people have moved into the main farmhouse. chuckie and margaret. gorgeous grrls. chuckie is an old friend from the city. they are amazing and wonderful. excited by our project of communal living. it’s lovey to feel a sense of shared purpose and dedication to the ideas of sustainability and self sufficiency. I’m also very happy to be feeling held in the security of what feels like a farm family ethos, where there is a commitment and a dedication to an ongoing project of living and working together. it feels very supported. of course bek, the lovely bek, is still living in the cottage.

bek took this beautiful photo of the flowering cactus in the cottage garden. beautiful, no?

it was margaret’s birthday shortly after they moved into the farmhouse,
and chuckie and margaret created a gorgeous farm lunch table outdoors for the occasion…

margaret, who lives with chuckie (arm visible) in the farmhouse,
at the birthday table under the palms

There are so many stories in between these lines and paragraphs, and it’s hard to fill in the gaps and silences, the quantum leaps from there to here… i think i will need to do some dedicated posts. i need to post about the gardens, about the cows, about the poultry… i think it would be best if you, my farmfans, would let me know what you would like to hear about. rosie stories? produce and baking exploits? projects? water harvesting? building? mini pigs?

I’m very happy to be wandering around taking stock of what’s in mybackyard again. I hope you enjoy the time out too.

much green love, ms. v xxx 

i live on this farm, quietly, peacefully. i love my animals and i am happy and feel blessed to be living amongst family - queer, environmentally conscious, communal, harmonious.

anyone who has been reading this blog for a while will be aware that i do not own this farm, but that i reside here as a tenant, but love it as if it were my own, and care for the earth and the animals with respect and honor.

this farm is at the centre of an outrageous litigation claim, which impacts upon me on a daily basis. greed gone mad.

while i am personally not involved in the case (i am merely collateral damage), the claimant makes my life uncomfortable on many fronts.

this blog (as well as other personal websites and the public domain blogs and information of anyone who has stayed on the farm) is scrutinized and printed out as part of a surveillance campaign that doesn’t stop at the public domain, but involves surveillance of the farm with telephoto lens. i do not know what other surveillance is in place. it is the nature of surveillance to remain invisible.

i am writing this post to let you know that i will not be posting here until the litigation is over.

peace and love

Ms Vxx

It’s really damn hot. For winter, it’s hot. Too hot. Disturbingly hot. This morning I drove past a tabloid sheet that pronounced today the "hottest winter day ever". I felt every degree, arm out the window as i drove. Last time I ventured into the bigbackyard to blog I was in need of gumboots and wet weather gear (or was alternatively unclothed, often a better way to manage the ridiculous downpours). Today, by contrast, I set foot on dry land, gumboot-less and in need of sun protection. Where once there were small lakes and sodden fields the earth is dry, compacted, cracked, shrinking away from fence posts and pipes and from around the stems and roots of plants. I find myself wondering, with an edge of anxiety, when the next shower will come. My sister calls me and says she’s run out of water. I am shocked. She’s had an excess of water for about 2 years. I am suddenly conscious again of the capricious nature of the weather and that drought is only ever a few days away from the last shower. We’ve been living in a wet dream of too much water for so long now that the days of hauling water from the duck’s bath to nourish the plants is a dim memory. From the side door I can see the usually psychedelic greenness of the surrounding hills turning brown before my eyes. Smoke rises like a warning from spot fires along the horizon. Farmers are burning off, anticipating a scorching summer. The smoke creates a quality of light which engenders a sense of unease: yellowish, dense and strained through the threat of fires to come. I plan rescue strategies for the vegetable gardens and carry bucket after bucket of water to the newly planted and embattled palms in the driveway. Looking out into the big paddock, I worry about the lack of pasture for the cows, and the impact of their hooves on the dry earth. Only weeks ago the paddock was carpeted by an impossible lushness of fodder for my small herd. Today I see a carpet of yellow; fireweed; and a forest of those weeds that grow green parachutes full of beautiful but evil diaphanous seed-silk, carried on the hot early summer breezes. I don’t know the name for this weed. I see very little in the way of food for my cows, in particular little to nourish cows in calf. I worry about the cost of feeding the cows through the dry, about hauling bales of lucerne from Casino or Tatham to see them through.

Sage words from local farmers indicate a dry season that may last well into next year, no doubt punctuated by heavy weather phenomena, the kind of weather that rumbles and boils out of a clear blue sky at the end of a scathingly hot day. The kind of weather that splits trees in two and blows apart churches. The kind of weather that turns on you, spitting in fury. No, Dorothy, we are not in Kansas anymore but Heavy Weather is here to stay…

So, having created the weather for this entry, i sit sweating in the double edged loveliness of it, looking into the cavernous gap of time between my last foray into the bigbackyard and this, today’s expedition. Alot has happened.

I did just mention in passing, did i not, without really a pause for breath; "cows in calf"? Yes! I did! While there is no empirical evidence to support my belief, I am quite certain that Little Grrl (now the banner pinup cow for this site!) is in calf. I’m unsure about Rosie, but Little Grrl was looking decidedly rotund this afternoon when I went to feed her and while I have, as I say, no empirical evidence, I witnessed some interesting bullish happenings last time Little Grrl was on heat. Not the least of these things being that Charlie is now a capable bull, and tall enough to mount Little Grrl successfully. Which he was doing repeatedly the last time she was on heat. However, more interestingly, during the same estrus period a bull from the next door property managed to jump all fences and and spend the night with Little Grrl in the house paddock. That bulls can sense the estrus from quite some distance and another property away is quite amazing. They are quite capable of and will jump fences to get to a cow in heat. As i witnessed. I’d say it was a rowdy night, judging by the bellowing, and none of my cows slept much, but the bulls know when to take their leave, and in the morning, not a sign of big bull. This will be Little Grrl’s first calf, which also means that she will be a lactating heifer, and I will have 2 house cows to milk. I feel some trepidation about milking Little Grrl. She has horns and is not afraid to use them. Her udder has never been handled, and while she has been hand raised and is very domesticated, she’s feisty and frisky and will top a puny human every time, regardless of puny human cow-topping strategies… one should always respect a good set of horns. I expect I will have to build her a stanchion for milking purposes, and perhaps restrain her while milking so she doesn’t kick me. All this will be a new experience for me, as I’m so used to milking Rosie freestyle, she being the most accommodating of cows.

My small herd of four became three recently. Regular visitors to the backyard will have seen photos of Miss Pretty, the sweet calf I raised by hand from just days old. She was a rescue calf from Trevor’s Dairy where the Lad used to work. A pure Illawarra dairy calf, sweet natured, very docile and human-friendly. Miss Pretty died recently after swallowing something which caused a blockage in her oesophagus and subsequently created bloat. Bloat is a distressing ailment for an animal. The animal is unable to belch, swallow saliva (cows produce up to an amazing 100 litres of saliva a day) or chew their cud. The gasses in the rumen expand and can’t escape, creating pressure on the lungs and obstructing bloodflow. Death can occur very quickly from suffocation and other complications. In a cow, diagnosis is often difficult and death is often sudden. Decisions need to be made quickly. The veterinary approaches to dealing with such emergencies are primitive and harsh. Thus a knife between the ribs or a metal tube down the oesophagus are part of the arsenal of emergency veterinary treatments. But one does what one can to try and preserve the life of a healthy animal. I desperately wanted to save Miss Pretty. I wanted to watch her calve and milk her. In the end, following 4 very distressing visits from the vet all through the day and night, I chose to euthanize Miss Pretty to end her suffering. The treatments were punishing. I couldn’t watch anymore. Miss Pretty was euthanized and buried down in the old pig pen, near May the goat and Charlie the rescue calf. I wasn’t alone in digging her grave and tossing the red soil on her red red coat. There were 5 of us quietly digging her grave, sweating alot and passing small comments. I am blessed to be living as part of a community that honors the processes of life and death as part of a sustainable system rather than just eating it, vacuum packed, from the supermarket.

Of course where there is death there is also an abundance of life. From where I sit, I can turn my head left and see out the side door down the garden path, towards the vegetable gardens and the hills beyond. The house gardens are still green, and the vegetable beds are full of bolting brassicas, rushing toward seed in the unseasonal heat. I have been eating fresh broccoli for nights and nights now, snapped from the stalk and steamed, with only cracked pepper as an accessory. Perhaps a squeeze of lemon. Maybe the smallest dob of butter. One doesn’t want to overdress fresh broccoli. The chinese cabbages are sprouting unruly heads of yellow flowers, securing their place in next season’s garden. Cauliflowers are nearing their denouement, packed tightly in their parcel of outer leaves, perfectly formed, having outrun the appetites of the green caterpillars. Baby greens are thriving and there is an abundance of last season’s straggler leeks, spring onions, brown onions, kaffir lime leaves, curry leaves, lemongrass, limes, lemons, galangal and mint for the creation of sublime evening meals.

citrus mania - taken by esther, farmfriend and marmalade queen

This abundance is due in large part to the time and energy of my farm family and to the neverending stream of urban retreaters, wwoofers and devoted friends who are so generous with their time and skills. After a despondent season or two, the gardens have now been beautifully overhauled and feel manageable, viable and are beginning a cycle of newfound productivity, I do believe.

Continuing the theme of abundance, I found yesterday a goose egg in the small goose house under the mulberry tree (which, incidentally, is ripening its berries at a rapid rate and subsequently i have stained lips and fingers most of the time…). This egg was the first goose egg i think i have ever seen. The appearance of the egg makes one thing clear: one of the geese is female, and since, apparently, it is rare for geese to lay unfertilised eggs, I would say I have a mating pair! I haven’t yet seen any mating activities between the birds, and believe me i keep a close eye on such things, but goslings would be a fine thing. The egg is sitting in the middle of the kitchen table, while i ponder what to do with it. Apparently if the egg is eaten on the day it is laid it is referred to as a Golden Egg. This is now a second day egg. I haven’t come across any references to second day egg naming. The shell of the egg is very white and somewhat matte and chalky. it sits next to a much smaller duck egg, with it’s waxy, smooth and slightly blueish shell, and a tiny smooth brown shelled chicken’s egg.

eggs: goose, duck, chicken

I think I will have a goosey scramble for dinner. 

Sending you all golden eggs and an abundance of all that is good. Let’s catch up again soon.

Ms V x

Heavy Weather: Taken From the title of a novel by cyberpunk writer Bruce Sterling. The sf thriller is set in a near-future world suffering from "heavy weather" - tornadoes and other phenomena caused by the runaway greenhouse effect. Last year a tornado hit Dunoon. My friend’s response to my frantic texting, knowing my penchant for drama, was "… yes, Dorothy … were’s Toto?". We don’t have tornados in Australia, do we?

i seem to have lost track of times and seasons. there was once apparently some order to these things. wet seasons, dry seasons. i recall a year hence we were rained in for months from december through to february at least. heaps of us. going crazy but laughing alot. this year over the period where many many gorgeous queers visited the farm we had such fine beautiful weather, sunny, and the rain came just as it was needed. the storms, when they visited, were spectacular, but it wasn’t like the season of heavy weather a year prior, which was drenching, unstoppable, flooding, cabin-fevered…

however, today and yesterday and for a few days, in an unseasonable turn (or is it? i don’t know anymore…) the heavens have opened and i can barely leave the property as there is a rather large lake in the driveway. i put on my running shoes and jog out of the property, down the potholed asphalt that passes for roads round these parts, running through the overflows from stormwater drains, dodging fallen branches, listening to the rushing floodwaters running off into dams and flooded fields. sweating in the rain. taking off my shirt as i run so i can feel the rain on my skin. inside, in a farmhouse, cabin fevered, in a rural locale named dorroughby, i feel like the world isn’t possible, but running along these back tracks and past farms and wet cows and everything dripping and green, the world seems possible.

it’s raining in the jungle

one soggy chook on the verandah… they hate the rain. the rest came to join her…

exuberant fungal growth

…even milking in the rain feels possible. i milk in a very freestyle way. i just make up a feed for rosie, put it in front of her and milk freestyle, bucket on the grass. i wash her teats first with warm and soapy water and always lubricate her teats with something natural. so she eats and i milk, and if she finishes eating before i finish milking, she wanders off, and i just follow her with the bucket. she usually finds a patch of grass to much on and just stands quietly until i finish. she’s pretty awesome like that. but given that i don’t have shelter milking in the rain is always a challenge. Water drips off her fur and into the bucket. I’m slopping around in the mud and puddles. if she flicks her wet tail whatever she’s carrying around in it might fly into the milk. a muddy hoof in the bucket also makes for a nice milkshake. any one of these things means that the chooks and ducks get the milk, not us… but if the cosmos is aligned correctly and all my wetness avoidance strategies are in place, then i can manage enough for the day. today i managed enough for the day, despite the cosmos feeling very very wrong…

the farm herd is smaller, more compact in keeping with the transitions that have happened here which i have been logging irregularly. my beloved farm family (The Likely Dairy Lad and Farmboy Deb) have departed to follow their personal journeys in the city and the dogs are chasing different rabbits in new parks. they are much missed. there are new farmhousekids (Jarrod and Janet) and new geese (Portis and Lamb). the bovine herd is reduced to 4. this is what I can manage at the moment. Rosie has 2 foster calves. Pretty, who will stay with us and become a housecow like her mum. see many pictures of Miss Pretty in earlier posts. rosie is also fostering Charlie, who came from the dairy. he’s a stocky, bullish bull, already has his horns and is a lovely santa illawarra cross, dark caramel. he will not live with us forever. Little Girl makes 4.

terrible picture of the geese Portis and Lamb. i can’t get close to them yet, they are still pretty wary…

the geese are to keep the orchard free of weeds and keep the grass down. i am in the process of making that more viable. they don’t like long grass (check that growth!) and it can be dangerous for them to feed on long tough grasses. Our mechanised tools of grass maintenance are currently out of order (they get worked hard) so there’s been alot of hand weeding and slashing going on… oh… we do not know if they are a mating pair or not… genderfluid geese… friend mez suggests that a female has an "egg waddle" going on, like a lower belly and a waddle to accommodate, and that she is smaller than the male. i would hazard that lamb, on the right is a goose, and that portis is a gander. really wouldn’t have a clue though. any goose experts out there?

i spoke about artificial insemination in earlier posts in passing, and the time has come to bring it on. so far it’s been rough and ready and entirely unsuccessful. if you have time and powers of observation and the ability to interpret what you are seeing, then you can know when a cow is on heat, and receptive to insemination. this tells you all about it…

"Standing estrus, or "heat," is the most reliable indication that a cow is going to ovulate and release an ovum… Estrous behavior is used to determine when a cow should be inseminated. A brief window of opportunity exists for fertilization of the ovum and pregnancy of the cow to occur… Ovulation usually occurs approximately 28 to 32 hours after the onset of estrus in dairy cows (Trimberger 1948; Walker et al. 1996). After ovulation, there is only a short period when ova can be fertilized (fig. 1). Optimal fertility of ova is projected to be between 6 and 12 hours after ovulation (Brackett et al. 1980)."
from here>http://aces.nmsu.edu/pubs/_b/B-117.html

standing estrus is when the cow stands still when mounted by another cow, rather than moving away. if she stands still, and is observed to do so a number of times, then one can assume she is on heat. easy! easy to misinterpret, hard to calculate.

you can also get these strips, like scratchies, which glow flourescent green when the cow comes on heat. theory being that one cow stands still, another mounts her, rubbing off the silver and revealing the flouro green. rosie’s tail happened to switch away at flies just about where we applied the strip, gradually rubbing away all the silver. useless. one can also needle the cow to bring her onto heat. takes up to 10 days for that to work. the needling and the strip should work together. no such luck. disaster.

then you have Dwight Wyatt, local AI guy. professional imseminator. i have his number, and i plan to use it.

both Rosie and Little Girl are ready to be inseminated, but as there is a dry period when cows are in calf, they will need to be inseminated about 3 months apart, so that we are not left short of milk for any period. this process will take about a year all up i guess. this will be Little Girl’s first calf. i’m a little trepidatious about milking her. she has her horns still and loves to fling her head about. i haven’t dome any kind of proparation with Little Girl around milking. they should have their teats handled early on so they get used the the feeling. she’s just wild. there’ll be no freesyle milking of Little Girl…

it’s 2.36am. i have to sign off. there is rosie to be milked, there are roads to be run, and then a weeding date at 9!

i always promise to be back soon. 

i promise to be back soon.

goodnight, farm freaks. all the love in the world. Ms. V x

… to take care of before returning to normal programing…

I’m looking for a farmhousemate. I figured this would be as good a place as any to post my needs in that regard…

I’m looking for a farmhousemate

Timeframe: April - earlier timeframe negotiable

NOTE: I AM REALLY HAPPY TO CONSIDER SHORT TERM FARMSTAYS/URBAN RETREATERS/TRAVELERS FOR PERIODS OF ONE MONTH OR MORE, BEGINNING IN APRIL. ALL DETAILS THE SAME WHETHER SHORT TERM OR LONG TERM. CONTACT ME FOR DETAILS…

If you or someone you know is seeking a treechange on a small farm with multiple dwellings, in an eco friendly, sustainable environment with self sufficient leanings who is ok with a non-vego but veg-friendly space and is queer, not a big drinker, drug taker or pothead, let me know or send them my way…

needs to be:
. queer/queer friendly
. familiar with living in a communal way
. not just looking for a roof over a head
. knows the 101 on self sufficiency and sustainability
. good with animals
. cool about a non-veg but veg-friendly environment (also the aspects of non-veg that are part of self sufficiency)
. domestically trained (i cannot abide a messy living space)
. wants to share cooking/eating/cleaning/food shopping
. ok with random people coming and going all the time
. ok with occasional big events happening in the living environment (i.e. camp camp)
. would find gardening, animal care, farm projects a joy to be involved with
. not necessarily drug or alcohol or smoke free but definitely recreational NOT habitual
. reliable

The rent is $150/week ex-bills
utilities include:
gas
electricity
phoneline
broadband
water

Beautiful environment. Tropical gardens, outdoor bathrooms (and an indoor one), chooks, ducks, cows, fresh milk and eggs, vege gardens, nice people (artists, writers, masseur, yogis and so on)

if you contact me i can tell you more

virginia@bucketmedia.net
 

Blogging is a strange art. To publish or not to publish? Who will be reading this and should i care? Who’d have thought that blogging about calves and gardens would create such dilemmas. And yet… here I am… having not blogged in an age, worrying about this and that. I love this form, this opportunity to tell stories, to draw people into my world. i love the respite from the intensity of other forms of writing i indulge in (i use the word "indulge" after some deliberation..). The purity of reportage, the simplicity of just making a chronicle of the days. I know it brings people joy, and is useful. To tell people how to make butter, or to kill a duck, or to make a trellis out of bamboo and string - these are things that people want to know about, and maybe they find answers here, as i do in other people’s blogs, when i google "stiff back legs calf" or some such thing!

But here I am, struggling with, not writer’s block, but with feeling unable to write here about things which are integral to the farm and its wholeness. Much has happened and that happening, and being unable to write about that happening, has created an erasure, a period of non-reportage, a forgotten moment in the backyard.

 Simply put. Calves have come and gone. Milk has been off and on and off. Rosie grieved mournfully over the loss of Rabbit, who we sold. It’s a terrible sound, and tuned into some sad frequency in my own heart and mind and the resonation was often too much, so that we left the house alot to escape her grief. Little Joe, the rescue calf died. We had to take his breath in the end, he was so weak and would not recover. Gardens struggle and chickens hatch. Many people came and went over Christmas and New Year. We had 45 people camping here and there were performances on the back verandah, so much love, and so much fascination.

The Likely Dairylad has gone back to the city. Today I am in the farmhouse alone, and it’s very big and empty and quiet.

i wrote this in the early hours, when i couldn’t sleep in the bigness of the house

oh! the day!

wraiths hang in the sky
like sad rags

the cows are silent, listening

i live on light,
barely snack on sleep

the day wraps around the farmhouse
like a christo

- my island home -

the sea is green
and i cannot walk on water

there is far too much air in here
for me to breathe alone

………………………….

This in an unusual kind of post for this blog. I am just stepping back out into the yard, blinking in the sun and acknowledging change. I will try to fill in the holes as the dust settles. The chronicle of the days will return to normal programming. I have missed the bigbackyard.

Love love and love

Ms. V