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?

It seems that Heavy Weather is back with a vengeance… Brisbane has been trashed by freak storms for days on end. We’ve had ceaseless rain for 2 weeks, now punctuated by blazing days with a hint of the storm to come rumbling on the horizon. Yesterday, after a very very hot day, the Dairylad and I sat on the back verandah and watched the clouds build and boil and race across the sky, eventually hitting us with great sound and fury - every kind of lightning, winds,  and bucketing rain. Two little calves sheltered on the verandah, soaked, despite the warm protected home we made for them. The rain was driving in horizontally and overflowing from the gutters, straight on to the little ones. I expect this weather pattern to continue, much as it did at the end of last year, leading up to the floods of new year.

I mentioned calves (do I ever *not* mention calves in this blog?) … Yes, we have calves. You saw Pretty (since that’s what we’ve called her in lieu of a name since she arrived here, it has become her name!) in the last post. She’s still tiny and delicate and sweet natured. She’s been a little sick, but is getting stronger every day. She has a companion now, a little bull calf called Joe. There is a story to Joe. He was rescued during a day of freakish storms…

I answered the phone the other day to one of our very neighbourly neighbours, Heidi. She told me that she had just been visiting some friends down the road, when a farmer called by to say that the mother of one of his calves had died, and he didn’t think he’d be able to rear the calf. Heidi, knowing that we are the local calf nursery, told the farmer that we might be willing to take the calf. I asked how old and what breed and so on, and apparently the bull was only 2 days old, and his mother had died while calving. So I’m guessing this means that he didn’t get the very first all-important drink from his mum. (the colostrum she produces post calving passes on her immunity to the calf, protecting the calf from all sorts of disease. There is a window period of 6 hours when the calf is receptive to this.) Anyway, it turns out the calf is a pure bred and registered Limousin bull (nice beef breed - Sunny’s sire out of Tippi was a Limousin). For us to buy a pure Limousin calf would cost us round $150. Bulls run to the thousands. So our good turn for the farmer was really a great bonus for us. We collected him in treacherous weather… I am sure the calf would have died had he stayed in the rain, and without a mum and no milk… he came home in the car with us, and was bedded down on the verandah with Miss Pretty. He’s a quiet calf, reluctant to drink, and very… slow… he moves very slowly. We’ll be happy the day he does a little high kick and highland fling, in the way that calves do. It’s such an expression of good health and happiness on their part. Not sure why he’s so… lacklustre, but possibly he’s still recovering from a traumatic birth and also, maybe he didn’t get his first drink. Anyway, we are deciding whether we should/could to keep him as our herd bull… He would produce beautiful calves with Frenchy - Charloais/LimousinX, and also with our other cows. Obviously he’s not going to be up to the job for another 2 years, but it’s about building something slowly, this cow business…

Currently we are in the position of having to artificially inseminate our cows, since we don’t have a bull. And milkers need to be impregnated in order to produce milk. As long as they have a calf on them they will continue to produce milk, though I’m no sure how long the cow produces milk for in quantities that are useful after calving. Little Girl is about ready to be impregnated for the first time, and Rosie will probably be ready in a few months also, though we need to stagger the impregnation, since the cows are dried off a few months before calving, so we want to organise it so that we aren’t without milk during that period. Frenchy can be impregnated at any time from now on, really.

So to have our own herd bull would be fantastic. We just have to see how he holds up I guess, and whether our small holding is suitable for keeping a bull. And maybe check on a few things like what size calves he’s likely to produce, and will any of our cows have trouble calving. His mum died because she prolapsed. It’s a bit graphic, but he’s a huge calf, and i’m not surprised his mum’s insides fell out while calving. I don’t want that to happen to any of our cows.

Apart from calves, there are gardens. I’ve had quite a productive time, and have had much welcome assistance from city dwellers coming for a farmstay. Erica and Coonan and Katy spent about a week in total here, and when it wasn’t raining, spent time in the gardens with me, mowing and reorganising the garden beds so that they are more manageable for me, and less available to rabbits. So things are getting crossed off my mammoth list. I’m happiest when writing lists and crossing things off said list.

So now I have one huge garden bed whittled down to a raised bed of reasonable size. The rest of the mammoth garden bed will return from whence it came - to lawn… The raised bed is still a work in progress, but looking good. Around this I will place pots up on decorative stumps and grow herbs and green leafy vegetables in them. Just down the hill a tad from this raised bed is the bed which was the winter bed of onions and leeks, which we have been eating for a long time now. Plenty of leeks still to eat out of that bed! This one I will fence with rabbit wire and star pickets. It will get any the runoff from the raised bed, which will be very beneficial for it. There are 2 more beds. One, neglected for the longest time, I mulched just this morning. It self seeds a variety of greens such as tatsoi, baby spinach, chard, rocket and parsley. Oh and bulbing fennel. I just gave it some love and attention, and I’m sure it will become a productive part of the system again soon! The second bed is full of weeds and seeding parsley. The bed is fully in te shade, since it contains a lime tree, a large rosemary shrub and a huge cycad. Anyway, I’m going to mulch it and see where to go from there. Some herbs seem happy in there, growing in amongst the trees and other plants.

The other thing which is about to happen is that we are installing a "hidden fence", a dog containment area which means that, come Saturday, our chooks and ducks will be free to range again, without fear of massacre. This will make me very happy. The ducks can go home, the chooks can live in a duck free environment and maybe maybe i will even get some geese for the orchard!

Seems that systems are being restored, and if my environment is functional, then perhaps i will be more so!

Now, I have photos, of course! Of Miss Pretty thinking I am her mum, and of a sleeping Joe. Gorgeous.

joe sleeping, which is all he ever seems to do, on the first sunny day after 2 weeks of rain

joe’s eyelashes

miss pretty

i am her mother… !

more gorgeousness

a succesful escape attempt by 2 small dogs… just go out through the glass!

pretty lyra - farmstay dog (belongs to erica, urban escapee and gardening buddy)

my lovely Likely Dairylad and 2 lovable terrors

That’s all for today… I shall post photos of the garden progress next time.

Backyard love,

from your Ms Everything, Vxx 

So the Likely Dairylad and i were moving our little herd this morning over to some new pasture, just taking in the sunshine, ambling along, hanging in the paddock with them, filling their water, scratching under their chins (they love that), when I hear Charlene yell out : babe! Tippi is bagging up!

What? Already? Rosie is not even noticeably bagging up yet…

Well, we knew that Tippi was running with the bull next door (the gnarly Limousin mentioned in the previous post)  and that she was probably pregnant, but she’s been home for some weeks now and we were just waiting it out, not really imagining that we would know anything one way or another for some time yet. Dexters are small cows, with small udders. You usually can’t even *see* their udders, so to see our little heifer bagging up was quite exciting. It means she’s not far off, maybe as close as Rosie. We both felt her udder and yes, it was quite tight and full. She’s been a bit bolshie since she ran away to joing the circus, and isn’t having much to do with humans. She’ll turn around and have a go at you with her non existent horns (maybe she still has phantom horns?) so it was hard to get a look at her vagina, which would be swollen if she’s nearing her cavling date.

So we have one heifer, Tippi (she will remain a heifer until her second calf, at which time she becomes a cow), and one cow, Rosie. Both of these animals are also springers! A springer is a heifer or a cow that is about a month off calving. So we say they are springing as they are preparing to calf.

Tippi had a sister, long gone now, who was from the same bull, called Pania, so we know what Tippi’s little one might look like. Pania (Little Pania of the Rocks no less) was brown, a lovely caramel brown, and the Dexters are black, straight up. Pania now graces the living room floor, so her short dignified life provided food and warmth for the family here before we arrived and still now.

There is alot of excitement about our first farm births, and some trepidation. I’m not so concerned about problems that might arise during calving, since I have seen quite a few calves being born in my time, and especially recently at Charlene’s work, and they just seem to get on with the business. Brian said they have very few problem births, and i don’t think they’ve had one this season. My trepidation is mostly around handling the calf rearing aspect, the milking and then the management of ALL THAT MILK! Cheese time! It will be a bit hectic, and we may need another calf or 2 to feed from the lactating cows, but it’s hard to say how much milk Tippi will produce. She’s a dairy/beef breed, meaning they do well for both, but will not produce anywhere near the amount of milk that Rosie, being a Jersey, will produce.

Naturally there will be a photo essay of the whole process! 

I think an update on little Luka is in order. She’s doing well! The Galloway are a hardy breed, and it seems she has not only pulled through but is making progress in leaps and bounds. We treated her for parasites and she now gobbles down 2 meals a day (with livamol which is a gorgeous mineral supplement, apple cider vinegar and garlic! ) and cries (quietly) for more. she seems to like being out with the big cows, and manages to avoid being stomped on or steamrollered. I hope she develops a loving relationship with one of the other cows, because she is still very much a loner. We have seen her trot, which was an exciting moment and she walks swiftly to her meal bucket but she is yet to present the full calf gambol that seems intrinsic to calf nature.

All is well with the herd!

In previous posts I have mentioned Nourished magazine and Joanne Hay, who is the superhero editor of the magazine, and is involved in all things sustainable and most especially passionate about the raw milk movement and the herd share. We made a lovely connection through this blog, and I hope to write for her magazine in the future. We invited Joanne and family out to the farm for lunch and chat and it was lovely! Joanne and her partner Wes and their 3 glowing children are a delight! Interesting, quirky, energetic, productive, and ever so slightly wild! We ate things we’d grown ourselves, and Joanne bought out an incredible raw cheesecake that I must get the recipe for… They live in a couple of yurts in Byron, managing businesses and family and still have time and energy for the sustainable projects they are involved in. We loved them and everything they do. Check out Joanne’s site Nourished Magazine for edification and enlightenment!

Well, it has been a year of change and inclement weather! All this has left me feeling a bit discombobulated, a wee bit out of sorts and … well … lacklustre. I’m one of those who are seasonally affected, mood-wise, and not enough sunshine is a recipe for a not so shiny me… So much great stuff has happened this year, and most of it chronicled in this blog. I feel quite content with the trajectory this small family seems to be taking, more than happy that my hardworking dairylad has found a passion and a livelihood that engrosses and inspires her, enjoying the small communal living situation we currently have here at Matiatia, especially loving the animals and how that is shaping up. There are also some very very exciting things that might be happening that I can’t talk about here yet which go even further towards making dreams come true. So why a lacklustre me? And what am I planning to do about it? Perhaps others can relate… With the lads out working all day I guess I’m missing company and project partners, farmboys to fix fences with and gardening enthusisats to shovel shit and compost with. I seem to have moved inside (the house, that is…) and have become a bit of a farmhouse wife, with tasks focussed around household management and domestic duty, rather than the getting grubby, hands in the dirt kind of activities which energise nurture, inspire and keep me sane! Lists. I think lists are the answer. And enforced family farm activities in worker’s downtime. If there’s anyone out there who’s up for a bit of farm exposure as an antidote to the urban, let me know, we’ll organise a working bee… Oh yes, and yoga. Of course, always the yoga. I’ve been re-establishing my acquaintance with yoga, and do a good hour and a half practise every day, and sometimes with a buddy and i remember that yoga is the one constant in my life. hari om!

I tend not to personalise this blog, but i think my experience of isolation and lack of motivation, and the perils of identity crisis (i’m just a farmer’s wife!) that we fall into when we are used to more complexity coming from the city is an experience that others who have done the sea/tree change might identify with.

Fundamentally I’m loving the simplicity of this life and the direct connection with the earth, my food, animals that provide and I’m really looking forward to taking on the dairygrrl challenge again (oh yes, still on the hunt for a butter churn and cream separator - old not new), but thought the slight malaise was worth a mention…

So I have more to write, but I shall put it in a separate post, since it’s not at all vegan or vegetarian friendly, and I’d like to flag that here first. Self sufficiency can be gory!

See you shortly 

Vx 

…or have been, incessantly…

[aside and preamble - there is alot of dairy talk in this here post, so vegans and those of a lactose-intolerant persuasion might wish to skip those bits. I’ve been thinking how much happier i am to ingest a raw, unpasteurised wholefood than to drink soy or rice milks. The extraction and processing of these products creates a food which is not natural or whole. anyway, just a thought, which is not relevant for those who are ethical vegans or those who have a system which can’t digest milk…]

…today, happily, we see some sun, and maybe some tomatos will ripen and our perpetually soggy little calf will dry out a bit and her rain scalded little hoofs and legs will regrow the fur they’ve lost and i will get some vitamin D and my disposition will change from glowering to glowing and the chooks will lay and the worms that usually live outside under the soil but have made the big trek indoors in their hundreds will go back to their earthly home and so on.

I feel somewhat guilty bagging out the rain, since i know come too many sunny days in a row and i will be worrying about when the next rains will come… but ordinary day to day tasks become very difficult when the sog reaches a certain level and the water table is no longer below the surface of the earth…

So, be that as it may, rains and so on, things carry on and there are goings on to report, and some pics to illustrate said goings on.

We have a new housecow, and her name is Rosie. She is a beautiful jersey, about 6 years old, and she’s pregnant with her 4th calf. She comes to us via the generosity of Brian, Charlene’s boss. He’s a cool guy. Brian’s wife is named Rosie, and we could think of no better name for this much loved newest addition to our small herd.

rosie

Rosie has a very very placid disposition and from day one let us squat down at very close quarters around her back legs while we did things to her udder… It feels slightly precarious to be in such close proximity to a potentially swift kick with a hind hoof. I’ve seen the damage that can cause and a hoof in the face would not be pretty… but she’s a darling and honestly I really feel perfectly safe around her.  She’s due to be dried off in about 3 weeks before the birth (she’s due 15th July)and towards the end of her lactation her milk will become very creamy (and it is!).

pretty face

We are currently milking anywhere between 4 - 6 litres from her in the mornings. We have alot of milk product in the fridge!

 
the first milking - about 6 litres…

our fridge… full of milk and cream…

cream begins at the arrow…

separating the cream from the milk

Dried off heifers who are in the last trimester of their pregnancy are called "springers", and take a different diet to help build up their strength for the birth and for suckling their newborns, which takes alot out of the cow. After the birth Rosie will produce up to 15 - 20 litres of milk. Her newborn calf will drink about a litre and a half. Hopefully our little Luka will drink from her as well (we are currently feeding her Rosie’s milk via bottle or bucket). That will leave us a good 12 or so litres to strip out of her by hand! That is muscle building work! Brian suggested we take up squeezing stress balls to strengthen our hands for the ordeal…

With so much milk product I’ve been looking into making other dairy foods - butter, yoghurt, cheese…  I have no equipment to speak of, so I’m doing alot by hand and in a fairly ad hoc way, but the butter seemed to work just fine, we’ve had it spread on our toast and it doesn’t have a strong or sweet taste, but it’s soooooooooo good… i just have to experiment a bit more…

our butter

To make the butter I used about 500ml of cream (you can use as much as you have or want) and this made about 100 grams of butter.  

I used a bowl and a hand whisk (wooden utensils soaked in water are preferable, cos the butter won’t stick to them), but you can use a blender or food processor.

Whip the cream in the bowl until it passes through the whipped cream stage and then quite suddenly you will hear a sloshing in the bowl as the butter and buttermilk separate. Drain off the buttermilk into a jug (use it for drinking or baking).

The next stage is called "washing" the butter and is the process by which all the buttermilk is expressed from the butter. Marja Fitzgerald says that she washes the butter only once, and that by leaving some buttermilk in the butter the butter will stay sweet for about 5 days and then develop a "cultured flavour". I washed the butter many times, using a wooden spoon to pat and squeeze the butter until the water runs clear (my mum used to use "scotch hands" for this process). Then I drained off the last of the water and continued to pat and squeeze intil no more buttermilk came out. It comes out through the buttter in small beads and runs off. It takes some time, and i was pretty thorough, but i’m sure there was a little buttermilk left.

Further advice indicates that it is probably best not to use fresh cream (milked that day) for butter making. Best to use cream that is about 5 days ol. The taste will be sweeter, not so tasleless. If you use cream that has been naturally soured at room temperature just slightly, then you will have a culktured butter. 

Today I am going to experiment with yoghurt. It seems like a complex process with incubators and double boilers and so on, but i am taking Marja’s advice and keeping it simple. I’ll put a spoonful of storebought, unflavoured yoghurt (jalna) in a jar and pour just milked (and therefore very warm) milk into the jar. I’ll place it somewhere reasonably warm, wrapped in a wooly jumper and leave it for 24 hours, see what happens! I think Marja was probably living in the kind of farmhouse where there was an aga or other wood burning stove going all the time (as it was during my childhood), making the kitchen a very warm place. I have a fucking awesomely fantastic Ilve stove, but when it’s not on it’s just stone cold, and doesn’t do anything to keep the kitchen warm. Perhaps when the weather turns more wintry and we are having fires at night i can place the jars around the fire to do their thing. Anyway, I’ll let you know how it goes…

Enough with the dairy!

(phew! as i write this I feel the list of tasks that cover the concept "self sufficency" stretch out before me in a neverending scroll towards the vanishing point of the horizon… the produce to be dealt with by baking, preserving or eating before it is spoiled - limes by the score, bananas by the many hands, milk milk milk; the lawns to be mowed before the water table turns everything to sog again; the vegies to be tended and garden beds to be mulched, the animals to be cared for, and that’s just today… )

So Tashi has a new house. Goats do not like the rain. The only place Tashi had to go to be out of the rain was the verandah, and i’m all about keeping animal housing and human housing quite seperate… the old pighouse would have been ideal, but the other thing about tashi is her deep need to be near humans. she likes to be able to see us, be near us, and the pig house was too far away, she just would not stay. Even tethering her was useless. she just got herself into a terrible mess trying to get closer to us. So a house for Tashi was in order. Tashi has a good sprinkling of mountain in her, likes to climb, be at the highest point, so we decided on an A frame up off the ground that she could climb up to, be safe from the weather and be near us. Our man in Dunoon, John, made the house for us. Here it is. We need to spruce it up a bit, probably with a sign and some carnival lights, but she seems to like it…

tashi’s new house 

peeking out…

My dairygrrl is going well out at the farm. Apparently she’s onto the "second stage of learning", which is all about the cows and calves. Brian has been reading this blog, and laughed when I said they milked 400 cows a day. Actually the herd is 400 strong but of that 400 there are always cows who are not being milked because they are in the process of drying off and so on prior to calving. So often these mornings Charlene spends mornings wandering in the paddocks searching for the calves that have been born overnight. They are very small and hide in the grass, and play dead when you pick them up. She identifies them and then records every little detail about them before rosie comes to take them to their new home. In the calf pens they get warm milk delivered straight from their mums morning and night. They are kept in the pen to keep them warm, dry and safe from harm. This way they can be monitored for disease and given extra attention if they are struggling. She still comes home smiling every night, with that special aroma of cow in her clothes and hair.

One of our loved family members has hit the road, and we are sad to see her go. Our much loved farmboy Zhane has turned swaggie boy and is movin’ … Big adventures await her but she knows she always has a home here. I’ll miss her quiet presence in the garden, or feeding the animals, or smokin’ on the balcony while looking out towards the horizon. She’s been such a fantastic help on this sustainability journey we’re on, and we hope she comes back full of the world, full of the roads she’s travelled, full of color and joy.

Zhane … thinking of nuffin …

Zboy

So we have a new tenant, whose name is Bec. She’s a massage therapist, a naturopath and all things good, and we’re looking forward to the new energy she will bring to the farm.

I’ve been told I should wrap this up, it’s getting way out of hand, so wrap I will.

It’s been too long between visits, so I’l endeavout to wander out into the backyard a little more frequently.

Much love to farmfans everywhere.

 Vxx

We’ve been having a helluva a time with our internet services lately… hence offline-ness… the reasons why require a bit of backgrounding regarding changes here at Matiatia, which I will save for another post but for now suffice to say no interruption of services is a lie… and I now know about telstra processes 75, 77, 90 and the holy grail, 95…

On with the show…

Over the last couple of days and nights we’ve had sky phenomena which has been quite glorious. A couple of nights ago we had a phenomenal sunset, which transfixed everyone we spoke to the next day. Out of nowhere, out of this uniformly grey sky, as sky that went on for days and weeks and months, exploded, at the crepuscular hour, a golden light so fierce that it hurt… it lit up the hills all around in a fire of psychedelic green gold yellow. We all ran around trying to capture it with various cameras, but it was too ephemeral, too much for any lens we had…

nothing could capture the colors but you can see the double rainbow on the hills 

Then appeared the beginning of a rainbow, quite fluorescent, just the beginning, creeping across the sky until a full rainbow spanned the horizon, with another faint arc beginning to appear just above it. This beautiful double rainbow remained until dark. It felt like a promise of all the skies to come, lit as it was by an unclouded sun.

Yesterday there was another rainbow, and actual sun for most of the day. It was hot. I felt alive. I ran, and mowed. I weeded the vegie patch to reveal long lost spinach and tomato plants. I sweated. I began the task of wrestling the gardens back from the thigh high grasses. We saw 2 snakes today, always a sign of hot dry weather. And a good reason to get onto the mowing. With so many vulnerable animals and humans, and a good number of brown snakes, it’s wise to be able to see what’s in the grass…

A couple of days ago Charlene commented that one of the baby chicks was missing. I thought perhaps another victim of the rains, but really they’re babies no more, gangly teens really, and puddles of water shouldn’t be deathtraps.

Today I found the baby chick, in a most unfortunate circumstance. As I was mowing, a most tedious process using a push mower in thigh high grasses, the mower stalled, as it had been doing occasionally on the thick growth. In front of the mower was the baby chick – in the belly of a carpet snake! Which I must have walked over a couple of times in previous rounds of the lawn. Unfortunately this time I had inflicted grievous bodily harm upon the snake, a most beautiful carpet snake, huge and fat, which had been sleepily digesting the chick in the long grasses until fatally woken by the mower. I felt awful. The snake had to be swiftly killed as it was injured so terribly. I had seen this snake a couple of months ago around the pond, where I guess it was eating small frogs and rats, and I was very pleased to have a carpet snake living on the property, since rats outnumber people here by about 10 to 1… If I had had the opportunity I would have relocated the snake to inside the house, inside the walls or the ceiling to deal with the rat population, but unfortunately snake as gone back to the earth and will eat chicks, rats and other small rodents no longer. Not an auspicious event…

the snake’s stomach, with baby chicken inside 

An update on Tippi, since I know erstwhile farmgrrl 3, Deb, has started the Bring Tippi Home campaign… So, after our unsuccessful visit to the farmer who owns the herd Tippi is running with, and no word from him at all, I finally tracked down phone numbers for him and, feeling not so confident, since I have heard stuff about said farmer, rang and spoke to him. One needs to be bolshy in these kinds of exchanges so I was just as hardcore matey farmer as I could be, with the outcome that he will help us to get her back on Monday. His property had been sold, all cows dehorned, ready for market I guess, so lucky we got him when we did. I’ll report back on Monday as to the outcome. I’ll be happy to have Tippi home, and so will Hinimoa.

Laters, websters Vxx

I had a trip to Sydney which i enjoyed greatly, catching up with friends and staying with my lovely and generous friend Sarah. All my plans to take inventory or urban gardens and friend’s sustainable inner city solutions and do a special backyard post dedicated to this came to naught, but i had many a fine dandelion latte with friends and went to parties and looked at the cloudy night sky from a trampoline and freaked out in pubs and didn’t like Inland Empire in the middle of the day when i decided to treat myself to a movie… I missed home, but learned to like the city a little more then when i left it…

There’s been quite alot going on since my return, mostly in the garden. matt, who did much of the landscaping for this place, made a too short trip from melbourne to do a summer overhaul of the gardens, which was much needed. I was feeling overwhelmed by the whole Wild Nature thing, and a bit unable to manage it on my own. It needed a huge slash and mulch, and Matt and the boys were fantastic. I can breathe! The taro, arrowroot, helaconia, gingers and so much more were basically slashed and I can feel the life ready to burst forth and bloom fresh and green and in living color… It was great to watch matt work, and to know just how far i can go in terms of slashing back the gardens. matt also built a duck run off the existing duck house where the new baby ducks are living which encloses the orchard. ducks, geese and orchards go well together. They eat bugs, slugs, keep the grass down and leave their shit around the base of the trees. We’ve trialled the run and it seems to work well. We went to buy some geese from the lismore carboot market on sunday but it seems they’ve taken christmas early…. i love geese. I love the sound they make

Speaking of the animals, there have been some changes. We have had to sell some of our herd since we can no longer afford feed for them. It’s been a big learning curve, and has raised alot of questions and clarified some of my thoughts around animal farming, and we have learned alot about rearing cows in a particular way, particularly hand rearing calves, and milking cows. We have learned about how to treat the animals naturally for a variety of ruminant ailments and some things about pasture and rotation and worming. I also have questions now about how to raise hard hoofed animals in a low impact way. We still have frenchy (see earlier posts for pics) and little girl, who we hope eventually to be our house cow. This feels more doable. I don’t feel so stressed. I don’t think it was an experiment that didn’t work, just a learning curve to be applied.

We have also acquired a goat. Tashi is her name and she’s an anglo nubian X. I love goats, and she has a sweet nature. Michael had a goat, May, who died from snakebite or something, and she’s been missed. We had a little hiccup in the acquisition of Tashi. We bought her from a farm out in a beautiful valley past Kyogle from a German family who had many goats, mostly nubian. We wanted a small goat, but their children wanted to keep the small kids as pets, so we were offered 3 year old Tashi, who has had a few kids. She’s very healthy and plump and has an amazing coat. She was scared to be taken from her herd, but we were quiet and gentle with her and fed her and showed her her new home. It was just on dark, Friday night, when we got her home, and i went to get her some feed, leaving her untethered for just a moment. When I came back she was gone into the night. I searched as far as i could in the dark to no avail. In the morning we put flyers in all the mailboxes of the area, knowing they probably wouldn’t look until monday, and we drove and walked for hours looking for her. By this afternoon I was despondent, thinking we’d never see her again. But at about 5 Charlene and I were feeding the other animals and Charlene who has keen eyesight saw *something* off in the distance on the next door neighbour’s farm. I ran down to see, and it was tashi! - shivering, frightened, starting at the sound of every car that drove by… I was very happy to see her. We tethered her near the house, fed her, brushed her and loved her. She’s very sensitive to her environment, notices all smells, sounds, everything.

here is Tashi:

our anglo nubian x goat tashi

So my best christmas present this year would have been…

Milkwood’s most recent workshop, starts TOMORROW! 

8 - 20 December 2007 - Mudgee NSW
Water is the major issue on every Australian farm. Water harvesting and storage earthworks need to be intelligently designed and well implemented. This three day intensive course taught by Geoff Lawton will give you the knowledge to design and construct earthworks that will act as an insurance policy against drought and increase the value of your property.

Failing that (well, having failed to acquire that), I would also like to attend:

Introduction to Permaculture - Sydney - Feb 08

9 - 10 February 2008 - Sydney NSW

Christmas wishlist.

I haven’t said anything about weeds for a while. I had made a post on a permaculture forum some time ago about my nascent weed thoughts, and noone made much comment, but recently a forum member did make a post which was helpful to me in my thoughts about weeds and how to live with them. I’ll post it here…

I was asking about control of weeds, whether things needed to be eradicated etc… 

Instead of slashing/weeding and burning you may try slashing and charing. Make a pile of weeds and ag. waste and partially cover with dirt and burn on a damp day. This makes the fire burn at a low temp, and low oxygen level. As a result, the carbon is sequestered in the material as well as some nutrients. Spread this char over the garden beds. Do a search on this site for "terra preta" or "dark earth" for a more in depth and accurate description. This process creates a great medium which acts more like a sponge, holding moisture longer and locking nutrients in place instead of them eventually being washed out.

This I will try, because i am very interested in carbon farming ideas…

It’s late for farmgrrls and i want to post a couple more pictures before sleep, so I’ll end here. Sorry i was away for so long… More updates soon…

xxV 

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 

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 

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