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 

just chillin’, farm style, one eye on da chooks 

V + C xx 

Literally! Flowing the *wrong* way out of the drains… oh yes…

So… I’m not sure whether I had already made this clear, but one of the other things that happens here is that we manage a guest bungalow for eco-holidayers, farm stayers, hinterland tourists, visitors to the northern rivers who DON’T want to stay in Byron, people with pets, those seeking an alternative retreat destination that *doesn’t* have a spa and so on!

You can check it out at matiatia.com.au

This week we had some guests visiting, as one does, when one runs such an establishment, with their dog Billy, a border collie, cute dawg. Bad weather for them, I have to say. Good weather for us and ducks… It’s suddenly wintry again and the rain is unstoppable.

Yesterday when I dropped in to chat, as I do, they told me that the kitchen sink was not draining properly, but wasn’t a big deal. Farmgrrl C and I grabbed out trusty tools, thought we’d sort out an S bend or 2, but that didn’t work so I headed for the pantry and grabbed my bicarb and juiced a couple of lemons. C wielded the trusty plunger.

I chucked the bicarb down the sink and poured the lemon juice down after it, and watched the crazy explosion of foam pouring out of the drain with bits of god knows what wrenched out of the S Bend with it. Then Charlene got to work with the plunger and we ended up with a most satisfactory result. No more problems in the kitchen sink.

BUT this morning, more drain drama. The bathroom sink and the toilet were both acting up… the toilet rising dangerously close to the top of the seat before subsiding. We decided to call the plumber and perhaps have another go with the pantry ingredients…

We left with plan in hand, picking up supplies in Lismore then back home. Part way home I get this message from the guests. The toilet has backed up, there’s stuff pouring out of the shower drain, and that stuff isn’t nice stuff, and smells kinda bad… They’ve packed up and are leaving. Nick the plumber says he’ll be there in a flash. I try and placate, let them know it’ll be sorted, but it’s raining and i guess they don’t fel like being shut up inside with their own shit… They’re already on the road home.

 Once we get back home, I go in to check out the damage, doesn’t look too bad until Nick has a go and suddenly there’s a lovely murky water feature flowing out of our shower drain where before there was only gleaming chrome…. eeeeeewwwwwww…

SO Nick does a little sound check on the drains, listens for things that plumbers listen for, wanders around to get a picture of what’s going on, and we head on over to check out the system. If you look back at the map of the farm you’ll notice that we have a reed bed system for filtering the grey and black water from the farmhouse and the cottage. Today I got a closer look at the workings of this system. It’s very cool, and works so well, under most conditions. As Nick said, staring down through the trap into the murky (and stenchy) depths of the settling tank - if you’ve got townies staying, then you’ve gotta watch out - he’s pointing out cotton buds, great WADS of toilet paper (people don’t want to accidentally touch themselves or their excrememnt yanno, so the whole hand wrapping trick is often utilised I guess… uses alot of paper… ), other "sanitary" items…

I asked him if he would mind talking me through the system a bit, so this is how it goes.

All the waste water from the farmhouse and the cottage is routed to a "settling tank". The cottage is quite a long way from this tank, takes about a minute or so for the water to travel along the pipes and reach the tank. The tank has 2 halves, separated in the middle by a baffle. On the inflow side all the heavy waste settles at the bottom heavy metals, earth etc… and the lighter, oilier waste floats on top. It’s an anaerobic treatment which means that it treats the wastewater without the use of air or elemental oxygen. The organic pollutants are converted by anaerobic microorganisms to biogas. It’s pretty steamy in there. The water passes through the baffle, which removes the lighter waste, the heavier waste having already settled in the inflow side of the tank. the outflow side has another filter which catches any smaller foreign matter, like cotton buds!. This water then flows, using gravity (there is nothing mechanical about this system at all) into the reed bed, which in our case is growing taro, arrowroot, gingers, lots of rhizome plants, and some grassy reeds. The reed bed is carefully levelled and full of gravel and plants. There are 2 of them, side by side. The water is then filtered through the gravel and the plants do their bit by getting rid of nitrogen and phosporous in the water and they also respire, I guess, so alot of actual moisture escapes into the atmosphere via the plants. So this water passes through 2 reed beds to the final outflow goes to a chamber located in the orchard. The water I saw flowing into this chamber looked very clear, it was amazing to see the initial inflow and this final outflow. The water from this chamber is then directed to 3 further dumping chambers, and disperses into the ground, nurturing our (very overgrown, but sporting cuuuuute miniature apples) orchard.

So, that was a long post, I apologise, but it was cool to really get down with the shit and see this system in action.

later, dudes 

Vxx 

"…give her a little in her bucket at night so that she will develop a permanent and abiding interest in buckets."

Our gleaming bucket - it has an unearthly glow about it, yes? 

And while I’m being random, thought I’d talk shoes, well, boots actually…

A city grrl who comes to the farmlife probably (if you’re of the bootboy/grrl persuasion that said city grrl is) has stashed away a pair of 16 hole docs,maybe black, steel capped, cherry red or oxblood. Perhaps such a city grrl imagines that she could actually *wear* these sexy laced numbers in the paddock, that the chooks will appreciate the fetish value of these pavement- and perhaps bedroom-worn boots…

Well, the rude shock is (and i can tell you, my oxblood 16 hole steel capped knee highs with screw in soles are gathering dust, waiting for the opportunity to stride… somewhere) that you will be swapping your docs or similar for short brown boots with elasticised sides. Docs just don’t cut it at the saleyards, my friends… really…  You will wear these boots everywhere, except when you swap them for the knee high rubber boot commonly known as the gumboot.

 See below for images of high farm fetish wear:

rubber wear 

the short brown boot 

If I’m not mistaken, Charlene, dedicated bootgrrl and pavement basher, wore her SHORT BROWN BOOTS last time we were in Sydney. Take a clue, grrl. Brown is the new black… (or cherry red, or oxblood..)

xxV 

There’s been no mention of our Maybe for a week or so I guess, probably about the amount of time we’ve been holding our breath wondering of she’ll be ok… I guess we’ve become used to her tenuous grip on wellness, and don’t freak out now if she goes down for a while, even for some hours and can’t seem to rise. She always manages to get up at some point without assistance and always immediately begins to graze like she’s never seen grass before, then gets a bit bossy when we bring out her feed bin, sometimes managing to prise the lid off a chook feed bin and get her nose all covered in grain…

She’s still producing milk, not a huge amount, but enough for her baby Andy to have a 10 minute suckle morning and night. Andy’s learning to suck fast before we call "last drinks buddy!".  

We think we’ll return to a system of letting just one calf run with her in the day, locking her up away from her calf at night, milking her for ourselves in the morning and either giving that milk to her other calf (who’s struggling without Mum’s milk) or keep a little for ourselves…

Anyway, this is more of a recovery than we could have hoped for. Still have no clue what is wrong with her or why she’s like this, but we continue to love her to death and feed her all kinds of bits and pieces we’ve read about. Todays’ meal: chopped up mulberry and comfrey leaves (mulberry for parasites, comfrey for calcium), carrots (parasites and just cos they taste good), dairy meal, mill run, mineral mix, dolomite, sulphur, cod liver oil, molasses, crushed garlic in apple cider vinegar, all mixed together with a jug of warm raspberry leaf tea (for lactating Mums, to stimulate milk production). Yum!

To the naming business. We’ve tried many names out in the field, and momentarily alighted on Lucky, before slipping back into our habitual yelling of "MAYBE! oh I mean, um… whatever your name is… oh fuckit, MAAAAYYYYBBBEEEEE!" So despite it’s uncertain ambience it seems to have stuck… we’re too accustomed to her name… nothing else seems to work.

So Maybe it is… we just have to embrace her Difference I guess… Maybe the uncertain cow…

 More posts to come.

Love to you all, farmvoyeurs. Vxx