Things have returned to some semblance of normalcy here on the farm. Farmgrrl - partner in all things green has returned from the snowy UK with renewed vigour and love for all creatures big and small, which is great since we currently have animals of all sizes in the menagerie.

All growing madly. The pastures are dangerous, one needs a compass to navigate. The zucchinis, as Ali the urban gardening glitter faerie mentioned, simply exploded with hugeness. Cucumbers have been pickled and salad’ed and tied up in lovely bondaged installation works and are currently kitchen decor before they find new homes in jars or stomachs or in the house of my sister. Tomatoes are being lovely, providing a bounty of round and pleated varieties daily. Greens are offering leaves for lunch. My corn patch produced! yes! However, the formula seems to be 1 for me, 2 for the rats. The rats are growing, there’s no doubt, judging by the size of the hole eaten in the door as they tried to gain entry one night. perhaps they are too fat to fit through the easy access holes in the floor now? Neha, our visiting international, made a lovely corn chowder the other night with the harvest. We have a great variety which has pink silk. Sweet pink ponytails hanging amongst the green… There is more to harvest, but almost time now to turn the corn stalks into mulch and begin the next planting…

kernels intact

part of the harvest 

I almost forgot the pumpkins… yes, masses of them, butternuts and jap… I’m searching for the watermelons in the pumpkin jungle… they’re in there somewhere!

lovely pumpkins 

Charlene was talking about the calves this afternoon, Frenchie (our Charolais) and Little Grrl (Jersey), who are just beautiful, beautiful… They are looking incredible. For once there’s enough, an overabundance of pasture for them to graze, and they eat all day and all night and it’s like the magic pasture… it never seems to disappear… Hinimoa is loking incredible also… We really need Tippi to come home to assist with the grazing. I’m loathe to slash such lushness… the weeds are growng in equal proportion to the pasture, but as previous posts attest, me and weeds have a nascent relationship and i’m entirely unsure how to treat them in this case…

Anyway, weeds aside, Charlene and I were talking about how lovely it is to be able to hand rear animals, how perfect they are, perfect creatures, and how their natures are shaped by their contact with humans, and if they must be farmed, then this is the only way we could imagine doing it.

We talked about our favorite breed of cows and i think decided that we loved the Belted Galloway the best, and would have a paddock full of Santa Gertrudis, Charolais, Angus with a Friesian X Jersey on the side if we had a place of our own. Still, I’m thinking always and alot about all aspects of farmng and how to farm hard hoofed animals witout damaging theenvironment. I know little about this.

We have also poultry at all stages of growth, from tiny fluffy chickens to teenage chickens and ols lady hens who are probably into their last lay. Our baby muscovy ducks grow at an incredible rate, and have adult feathers now, all sheeny greeny black and kind of dark violet. The ducks all have a large fenced run now down by the orchard, which is perfect. They still have enough room to freerange but not where the chooks and goat and cows eat and drink. Ducks love to foul the water, every available puddle or pond… so that there is no clean drinking water left for the chooks and other animals. They are water fiends! So this solution is perfect… all animals are happy…

lunch 

‘Night, lovelies… see you shortly with something wild… Vxx

So I’ve been drowning, here, for weeks. Everything has become fungal. There are mushrooms growing on all surfaces, clusters of miniature hats bursting out of stumps, light harvesting fungi that glow in the dark, an extraordinary fleshy blood red rectangular fungus, meaty stinky fungi, varieties of brown and black and white mushrooms, a phallic fungus with a bright yellow tip that burst out of what seemed to be an eyeball, blue stemmed mushrooms that grow on cow manure and bring joy to faeries. All possible shapes sizes colors textures of mushrooms have exploded into the world during the rain to end all rains. The sun has been missing in action until today, and I shall post some pictures of actual sunlight so i can look at them tomorrow if the sun disappears again.

Blue skies this afternoon

Every morning for weeks on end I have woken to a downpour. The grass is knee high and blindingly green. The hills for as far as the eye can see look like an emerald carpet all lush and springy. We haven’t enough cows to keep it down, since Tippi ran away to join the herd next door. That’s a short story I shall flesh out in a moment.

gingers and cannas off the side verandah 

It was the season of ritual festivities that stole me away from the Backyard. I shall give a sketchy overview of the happenings during the summer of sog, which i shared with extended family members and people i had never met but turned out to be most excellent individuals, and intrepid campers all…

sunshine shadows and tongues

Lismore and surrounds is a popular destination for inner urban folk making the annual pilgrimage north looking for an experience of Difference, a change from Wednesday night at the Sly, an alternative to the slick Sydney parties and flesh parades, a chance to slough off the inner urban skin and breathe a little easier, to perhaps find joy peeking it’s cap out of the tall grasses, to jump into a fresh waterhole and dry off naked on a rock in the middle of nowhere. Then there’s Tropical Fruits, the regional queer party of the year, this year held in a bog (formerly the Lismore Showgrounds) and latterly completely underwater as the floodwaters rose to claim parts of Lismore… partygoers attended in fabulous costumes and gumboots.

geometry in sunshine 

I invited those making the annual pilgrimage to pitch a tent here at Matiatia, and thus Camp Camp came into being. The rain began last year, days before the travellers embarked upon the road trip, and seems to have stopped this afternoon. Guests arrived and left in the pouring rain, and all stayed longer than anticipated, which was a great thing. Intrepid campers all, they didn’t whimper at the door as the rain lashed the farm for weeks, but each bedtime took torch in hand, and, with mud sucking at their shoes, sloshed off to their tents and slept the sleep of the righteous, sometimes with small drips splashing on their faces in the night.

While some level of cabin fever was experienced by all, in the main the rain provided an opportunity for engaging in all manner of damp activites. Swimming in the local waterhole in the middle of the flood was exhilarating, naked animal feeding with gumboots was hilarious and necessary (changes of clothes and use of the dryer numerous times a day was otherwise unavoidable), gardening in the perpetual deluge was handled enthusiastically by our very own urban gardening glitter faerie (who did a sterling job of Camp Camp updates, complete with great photos of activities and wildlife…) ably assisted by Sarah, who was the engineer of the hay feeder pyramid earlier in the year, brave campers assisted me with the removal of rotting and flooded pet bedding which had begun to ferment in a warm gaseous choking ammonia haze, there was hot apron action with baking by all using the season’s overabundance of zucchinis which eventually exploded in their patch in the excessive wetness, cucumbers were pickled and juiced and sliced and diced for all manner of consumables and all done with muddy chic, style and flair and dressups and morning yoga and evening cocktails and naked dancing in the rain…

So much more happened, recreational activites which are beyond the scope of this blog to record, but all were faithfully documented by the skilled in house photographers, and blogged in other locations. We have thousands of images captured during the flood of 07/08. For pictures of the flood itself, check out the next post.

There were a couple of losses to the rain. Three of the clutch of 7 baby chicks that hatched unexpectedly beneath a bush drowned in small puddles and rivers inside the chook run, since mamma was opposed to keeping them dry in any kind of structure we created for her…

One other animal death occurred which I will record at a later date, which I feel very sad about.

There was a hopefully temporary loss also, as Tippi, daughter of the dexter cow Hinimoa escaped by means fair or foul, we cannot say. She has joined the herd belonging to the farmer next door, and despite repeated attempts to call her home, and luring her with buckets and hay, she simply takes our offerings, shakes her horns at us and heads off to join her newly acquired family. We have lost her to the herd. She may well have been on heat, jumped a compromised fence and with all this rain, it’s been hard to track her down, but the herd comes to visit down by our fenceline in the afternoons, and despite her being so close to home, she is so far away from us. Hinimoa has been pining i think, and often calls Tippi from the fenceline in the afternoons. A visit to the farmer is in order, I guess… though I’d like to think that Tippi would just come home to us…

All in all I think the Camp Camp experience was something magical and hopefully something exraordinary for those who stayed and stayed and went away and came back and went away back to their Sydney lives promising to come back again. A window opening, to show a different view.

I’ll be back soon, with regular backyard reports…

In the meantime, here are pictures of actual sunshine…

 the orange tree

zhane and tashi 

farmboy zhane 

jimmyjack (she was in the sunshine, so makes it into this set of pics)

much love, farmgrrl V  xx