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!

muscovy babies

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…

muscovy babies

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.

baby chick

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