Hello barnyard freaks

Sorry for the absence in posts, but i do hope you’ve been keeping up with your regular diet of gardening/permaculture/sustainable living blogs! Milkwood have just put up a great couple of posts, about compost and glossy magazines, and about hydrology and carbon farming, which is fascinating. Nobody, from the Weedy Connections database pointed me in the direction of his blog, which is a great collection of writings on a variety of subjects - on foraging, and art and permaculture. These writings really help me to think about my environment in different ways, since alot of my thoughts about the landscape, about farming, about cultivation, about the soil and so on are nascent and unformed.

These are my faves of the day.

Sometimes on the farm special things happen. A couple of days ago I had a visit from my dearest friend Kathy Malera-Bandjalan, who works in Indigenous Health, on a publicaiton called the Aboriginal and Islander Health Worker Journal. She’s a Bandjalang woman, from around Casino, she has land out that way, and I always feel a sense of privilege that she feels comfortable enough in this country, here, Dorroughby way, to visit and stay when she has to come up here for business from her other home in Sydney. This last week she bought some family with her, her cousins Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter and her Aunty Elaine and Uncle Stan. Archie and Ruby stayed with us, as they were doing a charity gig in Lismore for dialysis machines for the community. They are so beautifully gentle, softly spoken and thoughtful, and very connected to country. We were lucky enough to have Ruby and Archie singing and playing for us on the verandah. Ruby sang her new "woman song" while Archie accompanied her with voice and then there was a great song Archie sang about "mission ration blues". Song is their life.

They helped me to see the land again, cos sometimes you get kind of blind to the beauty you live in when you are task oriented, which is really in my character. I forget to stop and look and be filled with the grace that is my life. That was a beautiful morning.

Maybe is a worry of a cow… She seems to have hurt her leg, or her foot, so that she can barely put any weight on it, as if it’s inflamed somewhere inside, like a tendon or something. I have no arnica, and it’s difficult to know what to do about it. I hope it mends itself of its own accord. We’ve just gotten back into some kind of routine with her, milking for ourselves and also letting her babies nurse from her and it’s been kind of working smoothly. Another vet’s visit is just not going to happen right now…

Lastly, here are some other small farm blessings that came with the spring!

Baby muscovy ducks

These are our newest additions. Their dad Xavier (made famous in the earlier "faux hawk" photo) is Deb’s duck. Deb is our phantom farmgrrl latterly of the UK - but always in our days and thoughts. Xavier’s a violet drake, which accounts for the wild coloring. They are flourescent yellow with these dark black/violet markings. Muscovys are a kind of anomoly in the duck world, not considered to be a "true duck". They have the red fleshy "carnicules" on their faces and don’t really have a voice at all, just a hissy whisper…

a handful of babies 

These are pics of one of our chicks which I promised ages ago. They’re hardly chicks now, they didn’t stay in the cute and fluffy phase for very long.

not my best side, mum…

That’s all for today. I’ll be going off to the big smoke to do some non-farm activities for about a week, I’ll see you all when I get back.

Vxx 

…to say that i’m sick with nervousness, excitement and anticipation…

watching the election ballot count is giving me adrenal burnout…

oh… my… god…

this could actually happen - even without my vote (long story…)

oh for a change. it’s been 11 long years.

All i can say right now is GO MAXINE!

V + C xx

EDIT - FUCK! it’s actually happening… goodbye Johnny - the only thing sweeter than seeing the coverage (Johnny all ghostlike in the background, Maxine all big and bold and high res in the foreground!) would be to see the televised moment of Johnny conceding defeat…

 ps: post about a lovely morning coming when I’m not dribbling with excitement…

Well, after my first spring planting disaster, things seem to be moving along nicely, with only a few losses to, i suspect, heidi, our muscovy duck who spent a leisurely afternoon in the garden snacking on tender juvenile lettuce, tatsoi, some baby chinese cabbages and parsley.

After the initial barrage of spring storms, we’ve had the kind of sun that goes on forever, muggy, burns your nostrils when you breathe. There’s always a frisson of electricity in the air, but the storms don’t come. In this climate after such incredible rains, Wild Nature is rampant. The grass (except in my problem paddock, where I need to slash the weeds) is psychedelic and tall, with farmer’s friend waving in the air, parsley, coriander and dill bolting and seeding and making new homes for themselves everywhere - in the paths, along the garden edgings, my garden beds sprouting things I didn’t plant (and I’m ok with that, really… ).

We have our watering system, which needs some low tech mechanical invention (probably from Sarah!) in order to make the task less arduous (though I’m with you, Ali - lovin’ that farm-muscle… so satisfying to have a strong functional body that’s all farm-grown!) . The outdoor bath for humans is plumbed to the duck run, and to their bath, which they *love*, especially when we pull the plug and the water pours into their bath. They all run over and preen and flap and chatter under the fall of water. They spend alot of time in the bath so it’s pretty mucky by the time we get to it with our buckets and hand cart the lovely mucky liquid gold to the garden beds and to any ailing plants. If I manage to grow and produce anything this season it’s all thanks to duckwater, I feel!

 Duckwatering is the last task of the evening before the light gives way to night, after we’ve fed Maybe and the calves, fed Mamma and the chicks, George the patriarch and other unnamed of his flock. After we’ve fed the Top chooks and the ducks, including the aloof Xavier and Heidi, who are miffed that they have to live in with the Buff Orpingtons while Bonny the muscovy is sitting on eggs (little fluffy yellow muscovys soon!). I like the repetition of duckwatering. Filling the buckets, walking to the garden beds, watering the plants, doing my routine of checking growth and predator activity as I go, then back for more buckets.

 The continuous supply of duck water necessitates outdoor bathing, because without our bathwater, the ducks have no bathwater and subsequently no nutrient rich liquid to feed the plants. Outdoor bathing is not such a hardship I have to say! In a deep enamel tub set on an old cement block, twined all around with jasmine and set in the kitchen garden area, with an outlook of green and it’s a joy, in the morning or at night under the stars. Under a light fall of rain it’s still quite lovely.

The other outdoor bathing option is the banana grove shower, which runs off into the surounding plants, and is like showering in bits of rainbow if you get the light just right.

So I digress… I was going to post some progress pics of my gardens and the plants which will be food. While everything seems to be growing nicely, I still feel there needs to be a more dense planting. I love the intermingling of companionship in densely planted beds. While waiting at the hospital today for the whole of my life (why can’t humans go to the vet? Vets are so much nicer… and they pet you… i wouldn’t even mind sleeping in one of those cages…) I read many gardening magazines and was envious, inspired and felt somewhat inadequate as at the outrageously healthy looking vegie gardens, so beautiful, so ordered, so happily living together. I commit to spending the next wee while filling in all spare patches with all manner of plants… there is so much vertical and horizontal space that can be greened and I feel the excessive luxury of space and the knowledge that I could be so much more productive, especially when I see what people do in milk cartons and cinder blocks and other scavenged and makeshift beauties of gardens in small urban spaces…

Anyway, here are a few garden pics of things that are coming along, coming along… quality is crap, only have phone camera at the moment…

Xavier the muscovy duck in maybe’s drinking water - check the faux hawk 

cinnamon gingers in the foreground, lemon tree, more gingers and the bath set amongst it all… 

the corn is growing beautifully - pollination may be haphazard, but i’m optimistic…
There’s celery and onions seeding in the background, some tomatos and beets, the beets grow BIG round these parts…satisfying to grow…

rainbow chard making greens for salad, just a baby, but alive! 

The house is sleeping, breathing, the rats are out (i find them somehow comforting, their company is so lively!), little jimmy jack is snoring and there are frog noises clicking away in the dark - just letting me know they’re still alive, for which i am grateful.

Goodnight, farmfriends and freaks. Keep reading. Check in and watch my corn grow! (my, how could you resist an invitation like that?)

critter love Vxx 

on sunday night i noticed that Jimmy’s face was swollen on the left side. earlier that afternoon i had removed a long piece of sharp grass that had embedded itself in her nose. i thought that the swelling would have to do with that even though it was more around her cheek rather that on her nose. i looked online and there were some other people who had experienced swelling on the side of the face which was due to a bee sting or an ant bite. but then after looking at it and feeling it i realised that it was rock hard not soft like you would imagine swelling would be. it doesnt hurt to touch and nothing has changed in her. i mean she is still eating, has huge amounts of energy etc. but this morning when i woke up it had gotten bigger again. i took her straight to the vet.

we had no money.

so we took her in for an examination and she eventually had to be left for day surgery to remove what ended up being a fox tail grass seed.

we told them we had no money.

…and fuck it, they said it was ok….!!! can you believe it?

i love country vets.

we already owe them hundreds of dollars after the maybe fiasco and they still smiled and said everything was ok. they make me want to cry!!

so anyway when we went to pick poor little Jimmy up they had also given her her vaccinations. she looks worse for wear to say the least but they really took care of her.

thank you country vets. although thank you doesnt quite seem enough.

charlene 

So I’ve been thinking alot about weeds and biodiversity, among other things. If you’ve been reading my posts you will have gathered that I’m a weeding fiend, if only because it satisfies my obsessive drive and the repetitive nature of it is calming and clears my head. It’s like domestic tasks, which I also find soothing. I can’t work if my desk is untidy, for example. Through ordering my environment I also clear space in my mind. OK, I’m a tad pathological, but so are you, yes?

ANYWAY, enough about me, back to weeds…

I’ve been reading "Back From The Brink" by Peter Andrews. The book looks at (European) farming methods that have been used in Australia since settlement in the context of the Australian landscape, and the damage in terms of erosion, salination, water (creek/river/wetland/floodplain) systems that has been visited upon this environment as a result.

The Milkwood crew wrote a great review of this book here

Early on in the book he talks alot about pasture and biodiversity, about what makes poor pasture and what makes a healthy pasture. This is relevant to my experience here on the farm, since we have livestock and having healthy pasture, and enough of it is always on my mind.

I look out at the front paddock and bemoan the thistles waving like tall aliens amongst the grass. I pull fireweed as I wander from the front to the back paddock. Rip out piles upon piles of farmer’s friend and try to yank out other unidentified weeds that clearly have taproots all the way to the centre of the earth.

In my veggie gardens I clear the soil completely before deep digging, adding cowshit and other composted materials. All weeds *must* be eradicated! (I must emphasise here that I use no method other than hand pulling, no homemade weedkillers or commercial weedkillers, and I either leave them on the ground or compost them)

However, after reading this book (I’m not finished yet, but it has galvanised some of my thoughts about biodiversity), and having other input from permies like Sido and reading the thoughts of other people on permaculture forums etc., I am having a weedy change of heart.

One of the stories Peter tells is about visiting a horse stud in England and after a tour of the land, over tea, remarking to the farmer about how weed free his pastures were. He was nonplussed when the farmer seemed to take offense. After a bit of research, he had a penny dropping moment.  And it was about biodiversity. Apparently in this farmer’s approach, a weed free pasture is considered to be a pasture in decline. Biodiversity (and yes, we are talking weeds) is the key to healthy pastures and healthy soil. Apparently a healthy pasture might contain up to 80 different weed species, and any less than 40 is considered to indicate a pasture in decline. After a second visit to the stud, he realised that the pasture was indeed full of a diversity of plants, but the farmer just slashed and mulched the weeds, left them on the ground to enrich the soil.

There’s an idea, and this is something i touched on in an earlier post, something that Sido said, about how specific weeds might indicate a deficiency in the soil in the area where they grow. The weeds with long tap roots mine for certain chemicals, bringing them up the the topsoil and into their leaves. Slashing them and leaving them on the ground return the chemical to the soil for use by other plants, enriching the soil and restoring the balance. Making a compost tea out of the weeds can achieve the same ends. I guess the same principle applies to the "pepper" made of weed seeds and sprinked on the earth where the weeds grow. The pepper is made from ashing the seeds. Ideas ideas.

Apparently there is a pattern of weed growth where the weeds grow until they reach a critical mass, return the nutrients to the earth that are needed, and then the soild is ready for pasture again. And so it goes.

I just read on a forum 2 ideas paraphrased by gardeners/philosophers, and seem to be in keeping with these ideas… Steiner (father of biodynamics( says that the ‘weeds’ are colonisers and are there to start putting back the basic missing nutrients, so making a stew of the weeds and applying it to the area will fix the nutrient deficiency and hence get rid of the ‘weeds’. Fukuoka (Author of the "One Straw Revolution" Fukuoka practices a system of farming he refers to as "natural farming.") says he doesn’t garden without weeds.

Apart from the nutrient aspect, of course there’s the benefits of companion planting, providing shade and protection to other plants, assisting pollination, attracting bees, good bugs, bad b ug predators, providing diversity in a garden.

SO looking at my vegie gardens, I’m part way there. I thnk it’s ok to pull grass. I don’t mono-plant and I always chuck the seeds of a bug mix around the garden (which essentially means I’m planting weeds, right?!). I have as many different plants and vegies as I can in a patch, with herbs and always onions and tomatos, hoping that they’re companionable (I’m learning about things which like different types of soils, so this will become refined over time…)

The pastures confound me a little. I’m unsure which weeds are actually noxious and need to be destroyed utterly (or is this idea completely spurious?) I’m unsure if there’s a time in growth cycle which is optimum for slashing. Is it ok to leave weeds which have gone to seed on the ground? Is it ok to pull weeds, roots and all? What the hell are those huge weeds along the fenceline with green parachutes attached to them full of seeds? Is it OK to hate thistles? These and many more questions are left unanswered as I move on into the day.

 One more thought… soil is sand, clay and plant matter. The fertile part is plant matter Weeds are plants. Weeds can make soil. Weeds can make soil better.

 And just to complete today’s thesis, here’s a photo of our lovely lovely compost. All made from leaves, food scraps, paper and grass clippings. Oh, and cowshit… *my favorite* Who’d have thought?

 Vxx

Yesterday Sido and I got an early start back out in the garden bed we have been working on. In the "creepers and climbers" bed… We scavenged all the bamboo we could find from old trelisses that had fallen into disrepair or were no longer in use after last season and reworked these bits and pieces into 2 nice trellises, one for climbing beans and one for cucumbers. For the beans we used simple uprights and one cross beam and a couple of triangluated pieces, then strung it across with string up the height of the trellis for climbing.

sido with the bean trellis 

For the cucumbers we built an angled trellis so the cucumber vines can climb up the trellis (again, strung across with string) and the fruit can hang down on the other side of the trellis. We made it so that it was 2 sided, the vines can grow up both sides of the trellis, hang down in between.

sido and i with the bean trellis 

I’m chuffed with these structures, and the bed is really starting to take shape, with asian greens, lettuces, zuchinnis, cucumbers, climbing beans, onions, strawberries, tomatoes…

cucumber trellis in the foreground, beans in the background, tomatos in the middle 

beans in the foreground, cucumbers in the background 

After we finished the trellises we moved down to the pigpen and fenced the top half in order to protect the space, so we can cultivate it. It is a pumpkin/tomato jungle at the moment, and I shall plant some watermelons today. There’s a tamarillo tree in there which is struggling, so it might get a go ahead with less animal activity around it. I’ll also plant the bananas and maybe another berry tree in there.

I should be posting these journal entries and pics on myfolia.com, a kind of myspace for plants! I’ve joined, as has my friend and mutual online gardening fan glittertrash (this is her myfolia link. See the sidebar for her personal blog), but I’m yet to post decent content. Too busy with the backyard blog! Anyway myfolia.com looks fabulous. It’s in beta mode at the moment, so lots of people testing it out. An incredible user-driven resource.

this garden bed is planted with corn, spinach, water chestnuts, beets, rhubarb, some herbs, tomatoes, onions, celery (for seed), and some good bug mix! more planting to be done here… 

I love farm technology. For fencing we use these great little ratchet gadgets which tighten the top wire of the fence in order to then tie off the chicken wire to it. I’ll post a pic..

We then drove Sido home to the Permaforest Trust, out by the Border Ranges in Barker’s Vale. Lovely lovely land, but unfortunately we didn’t get a chance in the bucketing rain to see much of the gardens, just a glimpse of the kitchen gardens, looking very bountiful, very ordered, very lovely with some raised beds, some squash (?) in a tent to prevent cross pollination with the pumpkins (I think I got that right) and a visit to the wee spot (a bucket full of wee… mmm…)! They collect their wee and watered down, use it as a highly nitrogenous compost tea on their fruit trees. I was very keen to see their banana circles and their kitchen gardens. We’ll have to make another visit soon.We came away with warm dandelion coffee and chocolate and carrot cake in our bellies.

As I write this the sun has just come out, for the first time in way over a week. It has been somewhat madness-inducing, the endlessness of the rain, but I shall never speak ill of the rain, for as soon as the sun comes out it feels like it might never rain again! Anyway, I shall do some more planting this afternoon, while the ground is wet and the sun coaxes new life out of the sodden earth.

Loving you. Muddygrrl x 

It’s so lovely to have visitors. We both have friends and family who live far away (happily, some closeby as well) and it’s no small thing for them to make the journey here. It’s a gorgeous place, very beautiful, a kind of paradise, especially for inner urban dwellers. The farmhouse has been lovingly fitted out without taking away any rustic charm and historic ambience. Michael, my good friend who owns this place has put great effort into the design and infrastructure, and the establishment of the gardens and the renovation of dilapidated outbuildings etc. So it’s a lovely holiday for those who visit.

Everyone who has made the effort to come and stay has been so engaged with our projects, and we really appreciate their interest and eagerness to get their hands dirty. We’d be happy for them to sit on the verandah, snoozing in the hammock, or doing the tourist drives to the local villages or going for coffee to bangalow or whatever, but instead they coose to grab a mattock and decimate thistles and other such hot and thirsty work.

I really wanted to thank our lovely friends for their efforts, and hopefully put pics of their pet projects up!

Sarah was official photographer of everything we did while she was here! The lovely banner pic and many more are her work. She also taught Charlene to play guitar and built a pyramid hay feeder for the cows so they wouldn’t foul their hay and so it wouldn’t get trampled and blown away. We’re off to buy some lucerne and so next time it’s in use (read: when the sun finally comes out!) I’ll take a pic and insert!

Matt the aspiring tree farmer hardly sat down. Despite the fact that his wardrobe was decidedly metrosexual, he was up and at em with the mattock, waging a personal war against the weeds. He also built us the Chook Hotel for Mamma Chook and her 4 babies. Their accommodations were inadequate, space wise, and not snake proof (we’ve had alot of snakes), so using discarded corrugated Matt built a moveable run for them, with their smaller house inside (they like the safety of the smaller space at night, so they can snuggle under mamma’s wings). Covered half with shade cloth and half chicken wire it was a larger and safer space for them to learn how to be chooks! This has been decommissioned since we’ve let the chickens out into the regular run. Mamma is still a bit crazy (a broody chook can have the devil in her, I tell you!), but the little chickens are exploring the world at large. There have been some requests for pictures, so I shall endeavour to insert chicken and chook hotel pics here. 

My Dad was a powerhouse, and all I can say is that he’s crazy and generous and despite my best efforts, I could never keep up with him. He did the bulk of the garden bed preparation and also did a good stint on the fireweed. He’s my ultimate working buddy. Never flags.

Sido was a joy to have on the farm. Generous with her knowledge and her energy, she really helped me to sort out the gardens, as is evidenced in the last few posts. 

Greggie is one of a favorite people. He comes equipped with all the recipes in the world, scissors to transform the rattiest farmgrrl into a stylee queen who turns heads in downtown Dunoon, and never lets you into the kitchen. Heaven!

Kathy, Julie, Darcy, we love having your presence around the farm. It’s lovely to be able to offer friends and family a retreat where they can recoup flagging energies. We look forward to more of our distant friends and family coming to visit.

Watch this space for pics of pet projects

xx 

This is what outside has looked like for what seems like forever:

Rain, rain, bloody rain. lovely rain, frustrating rain, unseasonal rain, rain, such a gift, wet inside and out rain, wishing for just a moment of sunshine rain, rain that makes weed removal so easy, rain that makes the grass grow visibly, rain that makes mowing impossible and pastures a lush feast for livestock, rain that dampens my spirits, rain that feeds my seedlings, blessing and curse rain, rain that i love but i’ve kind of had enough of… i NEED some sunshine nutrition!

Anyway, rather than stay inside and become damp and mouldy I chose to garden with my friend Sido who is visiting from the Permaforest Trust for the weekend. It’s cool to have a gardening buddy, someone as crazy as me, who will garden in the pouring rain, get covered in mud from head to toe and keep at it until the job’s done or you get exposure, whichever comes first!

It’s also cool to have someone give me great gardening and permaculture tips, and to chat about farming ideas, about living on/with the land… She’s been with the permaforest trust (check out our side links) for some years now so knows lots about garden design, composting, planting, seed saving, organics and all things of the earth. This is good. I take in what I can, I watch, and I weed…

Today she helped me tackle the garden bed which has been most troublesome for me, in terms of a strategy for planting it out. I concentrated on edging, creating a *closed system* which basically meant I was able to indulge my obsessive need to weed, and rip out grass runners that have crept into the planting area, making incursions underground… The obsessive drive is an advantage in gardening I find, in this case, the edging maintains the integrity of the garden, and I’m a fiend for integrity!

We weeded ourselves silly, getting out couch for the burn pile, and chucking the rest on a big compost pile. Sido told me about how in the biodynamic system there is an idea that specific weeds growing in particular areas might signal a deficiency in the soil, so for example, thistles "mine" silica. They have deep tap roots which draw silica into the plant and as they decay, they leave the silica in the topsoil for other plants to feed off. If you make a compost tea from these weeds, and pour it on the affected area, it might discourage that weed from growing, and it will also put lots of silica back into the soil, and bring a balance back into the soil. She also told me about using a "pepper" made from ashed farmer’s friend’s seeds to sprinkle on affected areas as a deterrent… This may be a long term project.

We also saved some seeds from onions, cabbage and broccoli, rationalised the tomatoes (no garden needs *that* many tomatoes), fixed up a nice pyramid trallis for the tomatoes we left behind, looked at the space to decide upon where to place trellises for cucumber and beans.

There is much more to plant. Today we tackled just half a garden bed, the one I have thought of as the creepers and climbers bed. The other half of this bed is nasturtiums, grass, wild herbs, weeds with a largeish round patch in the middle prepared for planting for us by our trusty chooks in the Dome. Hmmmm… where to put the Dome chooks and their home now that their work here is done?

So there is some pen and paper type planning to do. Since the pigs have gone, there is a need to make that space viable again. Half of the old pig pen is pumpkin vines and tomatoes. There is a tamarillo tree in there and we need to replant some banana suckers and nurture them to replace the ones the pigs, depite our best efforts to protect them, destroyed. Sido suggested watermelons would go well there also. So we will fence this off in order to protect it from wandering calves, chooks, ducks etc… and try to reclaim it as a space for either gardens or animal housing (geese?).

The bottom half of the old pig pen, most recently inhabited by them and therefore very bare, I have no ideas for right now. Perhaps I’ll have more of a clue tomorrow. Any suggestions welcome, especially from anyone reading this who *knows* the space (yes, you know who you are…)

I’m wet, muddy, tired, but pleased. Pretty keen to get back out there. It’s a treat to spend time in the garden, significant time that is productive at the end of the day…

Dinner time. Later, farmyardblogfans! Vx

“You can fix all the world’s problems, in a garden. You can solve them all in a garden. You can solve all your pollution problems, and all your supply line needs in a garden. And most people today actually don’t know that, and that makes most people very insecure.” Geoff Lawton

I think the beauty of this quote is the idea of the garden as a world. Or of the world as a garden. In the permaculture system there is a harmony, a diversity, an interdependence. There is the necessity for problem solving that relies on lateral thinking and the interweaving of form and function. Everyone and everything is a giving, everything is part of a feedback loop. The feeling is a flowing, circuitous feeling.

Sometimes we spend alot of time just sitting in front of screens, and this is a kind of energy vortex for me. I can end up feeling very disconnected, very dissociated, sluggish and un motivated. It’s kind of a necessity because there’s admin, and there’s the business of working out where the next bag of feed is coming from and there’s the guests who make bookings and require customer service, and there’s the bucket tasks (the enterprise that *is* bucket, which is an evolving thing…), and the fact that the only way I really know how to make money is through multimedia production and related activities, so the screen is a kind of necessity.

 Today was one of those days. I had promised myself a gardening day, try to finish some of the replanting and make good use of some of the ENORMOUS amounts of cowshit that Maybe produces. It was not to be, so by the end of the day, I was feeling kind of woo woo, out there, space case, just somewhat not of this world…

By the time animal feeding had finished it was well after half 6, and the sun was sinking, moving towards twilight. I grabbed my seedlings and headed to the garden beds, Jimmy Jack, my gardening assistant in tow, biting at my gloves, the dirt, the seedlings, and conveniently digging holes to drop delicate baby plants into. If there’s one thing that will settle my spacey head (I’m very Vata for those of you who know what I’m talking about… it can blow out…) it’s dirt. Under my nails, fingers deep in the red composted earth, I can begin to feel a sense of calm, a sense of reconnection. I can begin to know who I am in the world. Earthing, grounding, whatever you call it, it defuses the electricity that humms like a high song in my ears and head…

So I often think of that quote.

The other thing which I find quite relaxing (and Charlene speaks about this pleasure too) is "herding" or walking with the cows, from one place to another. In an earlier post I spoke about sensory fields and points of balance with regard to human/cattle interactions, and how subtle those communcunications can be. We have our special stick, which is just right and very long. We never use it to hit or spank her with. If anything we touch her with it lightly, kind of stroking, on her flank or her stomach.

Mostly we use it to kind of "feel" the edges of her sensory zones, her personal space, and guide her subtly, moving the stick in the air around the edges of these zones. It’s a quiet time, walking Maybe back to her night time paddock, just walking with her, in her rhythm, not speaking. Just wandering, cow-style, across the pasture towards home.

Vx 

So, finally I get my hands in the dirt. Life has been all about the animals of late, and gardening became a non functioning part of the system, which has been niggling at me for weeks. If I am unable to sustain us in some small way through the kitchen gardens this season I will be most upset.

The first round of spring planting was lost to neglect, weeds, endless rain and Heavy Weather and… ducks…

Problem.

The ducks are excellent foragers, and so very good for eating slugs and nuisance insects, and they seem to do minimal damage to plants once they have reached a certain level of maturity. They really love some greens, like comfrey and parsley (luckily we grow enough parsley to season the meals of a small nation) and tatsoi and lettuce. They also *love* seedlings.

I have replanted a couple of the kitchen beds with corn, spinach, chard, herbs, rhubarb, beets, zuchinnis, cucumbers, climbing beans, and there are strawberries and tomatos and onions already happening…

I had to prepare the beds all over again, and I’m buggered if I’ll let the same thing happen again.

So I’ve been visioning protective enclosures. Netting draped over polythene piping that is placed in arches at intervals along the garden bed. Alot of work, but effective as all hell I guess. Not doable in the short term.

Perhaps in the short term a simple star picket and netting enclosure… I’ve kept the ducks locked up for some days now because I’m afraid of the destruction they will visit upon my delicate babies. But I hate to do that to them. They need to be free… So whatever needs to happen needs to happen quickly.

The rabbit population here is explosive. They live in huge family groups under the barn, and I’m sure there is no enclosure that will keep them out, but I can live with that if I know I’ve made the best line of defense I can.

As for the slugs, I’m such a fan of baked crushed eggshells mixed with ash and sprinkled around the perimeter of plants as my best slug repellant. Works a treat. Those beer traps never worked for me, or the upside down oranges… They hate to slither their soft bodies over those sharp eggshells…

I have another half bed, a large full bed and a small perimeter bed still to plant out, so will try to raise some of my more exotic heritage and "saved" seeds in the shade house and see what comes of it all.

 I shall post photos of produce and thriving beds once I feel more secure about the future!

Please send expert garden tips and, like, garden reiki and stuff my way. I need all the help I can get!

Much love, brown thumb xx