…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 

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