i seem to have lost track of times and seasons. there was once apparently some order to these things. wet seasons, dry seasons. i recall a year hence we were rained in for months from december through to february at least. heaps of us. going crazy but laughing alot. this year over the period where many many gorgeous queers visited the farm we had such fine beautiful weather, sunny, and the rain came just as it was needed. the storms, when they visited, were spectacular, but it wasn’t like the season of heavy weather a year prior, which was drenching, unstoppable, flooding, cabin-fevered…

however, today and yesterday and for a few days, in an unseasonable turn (or is it? i don’t know anymore…) the heavens have opened and i can barely leave the property as there is a rather large lake in the driveway. i put on my running shoes and jog out of the property, down the potholed asphalt that passes for roads round these parts, running through the overflows from stormwater drains, dodging fallen branches, listening to the rushing floodwaters running off into dams and flooded fields. sweating in the rain. taking off my shirt as i run so i can feel the rain on my skin. inside, in a farmhouse, cabin fevered, in a rural locale named dorroughby, i feel like the world isn’t possible, but running along these back tracks and past farms and wet cows and everything dripping and green, the world seems possible.

it’s raining in the jungle

one soggy chook on the verandah… they hate the rain. the rest came to join her…

exuberant fungal growth

…even milking in the rain feels possible. i milk in a very freestyle way. i just make up a feed for rosie, put it in front of her and milk freestyle, bucket on the grass. i wash her teats first with warm and soapy water and always lubricate her teats with something natural. so she eats and i milk, and if she finishes eating before i finish milking, she wanders off, and i just follow her with the bucket. she usually finds a patch of grass to much on and just stands quietly until i finish. she’s pretty awesome like that. but given that i don’t have shelter milking in the rain is always a challenge. Water drips off her fur and into the bucket. I’m slopping around in the mud and puddles. if she flicks her wet tail whatever she’s carrying around in it might fly into the milk. a muddy hoof in the bucket also makes for a nice milkshake. any one of these things means that the chooks and ducks get the milk, not us… but if the cosmos is aligned correctly and all my wetness avoidance strategies are in place, then i can manage enough for the day. today i managed enough for the day, despite the cosmos feeling very very wrong…

the farm herd is smaller, more compact in keeping with the transitions that have happened here which i have been logging irregularly. my beloved farm family (The Likely Dairy Lad and Farmboy Deb) have departed to follow their personal journeys in the city and the dogs are chasing different rabbits in new parks. they are much missed. there are new farmhousekids (Jarrod and Janet) and new geese (Portis and Lamb). the bovine herd is reduced to 4. this is what I can manage at the moment. Rosie has 2 foster calves. Pretty, who will stay with us and become a housecow like her mum. see many pictures of Miss Pretty in earlier posts. rosie is also fostering Charlie, who came from the dairy. he’s a stocky, bullish bull, already has his horns and is a lovely santa illawarra cross, dark caramel. he will not live with us forever. Little Girl makes 4.

terrible picture of the geese Portis and Lamb. i can’t get close to them yet, they are still pretty wary…

the geese are to keep the orchard free of weeds and keep the grass down. i am in the process of making that more viable. they don’t like long grass (check that growth!) and it can be dangerous for them to feed on long tough grasses. Our mechanised tools of grass maintenance are currently out of order (they get worked hard) so there’s been alot of hand weeding and slashing going on… oh… we do not know if they are a mating pair or not… genderfluid geese… friend mez suggests that a female has an "egg waddle" going on, like a lower belly and a waddle to accommodate, and that she is smaller than the male. i would hazard that lamb, on the right is a goose, and that portis is a gander. really wouldn’t have a clue though. any goose experts out there?

i spoke about artificial insemination in earlier posts in passing, and the time has come to bring it on. so far it’s been rough and ready and entirely unsuccessful. if you have time and powers of observation and the ability to interpret what you are seeing, then you can know when a cow is on heat, and receptive to insemination. this tells you all about it…

"Standing estrus, or "heat," is the most reliable indication that a cow is going to ovulate and release an ovum… Estrous behavior is used to determine when a cow should be inseminated. A brief window of opportunity exists for fertilization of the ovum and pregnancy of the cow to occur… Ovulation usually occurs approximately 28 to 32 hours after the onset of estrus in dairy cows (Trimberger 1948; Walker et al. 1996). After ovulation, there is only a short period when ova can be fertilized (fig. 1). Optimal fertility of ova is projected to be between 6 and 12 hours after ovulation (Brackett et al. 1980)."
from here>http://aces.nmsu.edu/pubs/_b/B-117.html

standing estrus is when the cow stands still when mounted by another cow, rather than moving away. if she stands still, and is observed to do so a number of times, then one can assume she is on heat. easy! easy to misinterpret, hard to calculate.

you can also get these strips, like scratchies, which glow flourescent green when the cow comes on heat. theory being that one cow stands still, another mounts her, rubbing off the silver and revealing the flouro green. rosie’s tail happened to switch away at flies just about where we applied the strip, gradually rubbing away all the silver. useless. one can also needle the cow to bring her onto heat. takes up to 10 days for that to work. the needling and the strip should work together. no such luck. disaster.

then you have Dwight Wyatt, local AI guy. professional imseminator. i have his number, and i plan to use it.

both Rosie and Little Girl are ready to be inseminated, but as there is a dry period when cows are in calf, they will need to be inseminated about 3 months apart, so that we are not left short of milk for any period. this process will take about a year all up i guess. this will be Little Girl’s first calf. i’m a little trepidatious about milking her. she has her horns still and loves to fling her head about. i haven’t dome any kind of proparation with Little Girl around milking. they should have their teats handled early on so they get used the the feeling. she’s just wild. there’ll be no freesyle milking of Little Girl…

it’s 2.36am. i have to sign off. there is rosie to be milked, there are roads to be run, and then a weeding date at 9!

i always promise to be back soon. 

i promise to be back soon.

goodnight, farm freaks. all the love in the world. Ms. V x

Writing this blog has been one of the most pleasurable things I have embarked upon in recent times. This began as a way to chronicle the life and times of… and also as a challenge to myself, usually a writer of obscure poetic melodrama, a challenge to write in a style that was not disclosive, and yet was warm and personal. To tackle a kind of reportage. To write about our day to dayness in an engaging way. To *do* narrative, of a fashion. To let people into our world. To take them on a holiday, maybe. To document learnings, and hopefully make them as fascinating to others as they are to us. To infuse words with a personal politics that reflected the basics of self sufficiency and sustainability. To keep it queer, in a country-assed kind of way! Since the Likely Dairylad writes less and milks more, or something like that, I have come to think of this farmer’s-almanac-of-a-kind as my own, though i probably don’t feed it as often as i should.

There’s always a line to be drawn. There are things I don’t write about here. And yet, boundaries bleed and sometimes what’s happening on the farm is more about the human inhabitants than about the bovines. We have struggles, living as we do, and i made reference to some of those struggles in the last post, and flagged some internal observations and conflicts.

…

short intermission for milking and to re-bury a decomposing duck for the umpteenth time… this time i have built a veritable cairn on top of it, perhaps it will be allowed to decompose with grace now, instead of being unceremoniously dragged around the lawn, eviscerated…

…

So where was i? Ah yes, I thought I would write today about some changes on the farm which I guess are just as much part of our day to dayness as the birth or death of a calf or our dairy adventures or why the hell is the hen’s comb flopping like that or any one of a multitude of happenings that bless or assault us on a daily basis.

The Likely Dairylad, my amazing and enthusiastic partner in this rural adventure, will return to the city in the near - middle distant future. I will remain on the farm, and we will continue to share the lives of our animals and some farm projects. There are things that LD needs to do and experience in the city, including live life fully and alone. Tackle the mundane day to dayness without support. Make new friends, open up the social spectrum somewhat. I’ve done alot of that. LD has not, well, not with her eyes wide open and the fear and excitement of a brand new day in her heart. I’ve no doubt she will miss this life terribly. It’s a living dream, it’s incomparable, it’s beautiful but when you live the dream, rather than dream the dream, it comes complete with the same struggles and sacrifices that urban dwellers face. Rent, taxes, death, politics, injustice and so on.

[edit :: i do feel heartsick over the leaving, however matter of fact I sound]

Things here will change little. I have embarked upon a list of mammoth proportions. I mentioned in the last post that i was feeling somewhat overwhelmed and disillusioned, that there were some systems failing and this was making my experience of living here a bit of a struggle. This feeling has lifted a little, especially since I’ve just been visited by the dream team! Michael, who owns the farm, and Matty, who did alot of the landscaping here. It was lovely to have them visit. Michael now wears a suit every day and lives in inner urban Melbourne, which seems incongruent with the Michael I know, doing hard labor in the garden, creating gorgeous life from the bones of an old dairy farm. So they spent a whirlwind few days here, pruning, replanting, taking care of alot of the stuff I just couldn’t manage to maintain alone. It’s given me a good kick start. We talked alot about how to rethink the systems so they are manageable.

The next project is to rationalise the garden beds, let some of the large vegetable garden area go back to lawn and create a couple of nice raised beds in order to keep rabbits at bay. Much of the work of making the systems functional again really hinges on getting the dog containment area in place, so that the ducks and chooks can free range again.The pastures suffer when this doesn’t happen (the chooks scratch around the cow shit for grain, spreading it widely, breaking it down quickly). The chooks become depressed and squabble in a smal area no matter that they free range in a fantastic run. The depleted duck flock, orpingtons and muscovies are living in with the chooks, since this seems to be the only dog-proof area. They might all be poultry but they shouldn’t live together. Even the different duck breeds don’t get along so well. I really want to put muscovies and geese in the orchard, and the orpingtons by the vege garde in their former home, so i can use their water for the vegetables.

The farm should not be run by the dogs, the dogs should be contained and the animals should be free. Right now, the other animals suffer because the dogs are prey driven. Hopefully it shouldn’t be too long before I can have the hidden fence installed, and the dogs can have a huge area to play in, without causing harm to the other living creatures.

So yes, challenges abound. I will prevail!

On another couple of notes… I think today a new dairy heifer is arriving on the farm, a little girl to grow into another housecow. 3 housecows! Wow… I’ll take a picture and edit it into this post later today. She will be my baby, so naming rights fall to me… ahhhh.. i might be all out…

…and here she is … she’s so dainty, such a long legged high stepper! red and white like her mamma. I can only think of names like daisy and bluebell and buttercup and lovely and beautiful when i look at these sweet things… suggestions welcome!

prettiest little thing - another housecow… looks like we are in cheese!

Camp Camp is happening again this New Year. I’ve put together an info kit, made mailouts, but thought i might link to earlier Camp Camp posts , and another , AND another… AND ANOTHER… and post the info kit for those who are interested. Perhaps I’ll make a dedicated Camp Camp website also…

NOW…how to post a pdf here…

OK, so I’ve made a new website for Camp Camp… pretty generic but has high quality maps and so on, and everything you need to know you will find there…

Camp Camp page

OK… that’s it for now… gotta get on with the day. It’s gorgeous here today, blinding emerald leaves and grass in the spring sunlight.

Love to you, backyarders. Vx 

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 

It’s so lovely to have visitors. We both have friends and family who live far away (happily, some closeby as well) and it’s no small thing for them to make the journey here. It’s a gorgeous place, very beautiful, a kind of paradise, especially for inner urban dwellers. The farmhouse has been lovingly fitted out without taking away any rustic charm and historic ambience. Michael, my good friend who owns this place has put great effort into the design and infrastructure, and the establishment of the gardens and the renovation of dilapidated outbuildings etc. So it’s a lovely holiday for those who visit.

Everyone who has made the effort to come and stay has been so engaged with our projects, and we really appreciate their interest and eagerness to get their hands dirty. We’d be happy for them to sit on the verandah, snoozing in the hammock, or doing the tourist drives to the local villages or going for coffee to bangalow or whatever, but instead they coose to grab a mattock and decimate thistles and other such hot and thirsty work.

I really wanted to thank our lovely friends for their efforts, and hopefully put pics of their pet projects up!

Sarah was official photographer of everything we did while she was here! The lovely banner pic and many more are her work. She also taught Charlene to play guitar and built a pyramid hay feeder for the cows so they wouldn’t foul their hay and so it wouldn’t get trampled and blown away. We’re off to buy some lucerne and so next time it’s in use (read: when the sun finally comes out!) I’ll take a pic and insert!

Matt the aspiring tree farmer hardly sat down. Despite the fact that his wardrobe was decidedly metrosexual, he was up and at em with the mattock, waging a personal war against the weeds. He also built us the Chook Hotel for Mamma Chook and her 4 babies. Their accommodations were inadequate, space wise, and not snake proof (we’ve had alot of snakes), so using discarded corrugated Matt built a moveable run for them, with their smaller house inside (they like the safety of the smaller space at night, so they can snuggle under mamma’s wings). Covered half with shade cloth and half chicken wire it was a larger and safer space for them to learn how to be chooks! This has been decommissioned since we’ve let the chickens out into the regular run. Mamma is still a bit crazy (a broody chook can have the devil in her, I tell you!), but the little chickens are exploring the world at large. There have been some requests for pictures, so I shall endeavour to insert chicken and chook hotel pics here. 

My Dad was a powerhouse, and all I can say is that he’s crazy and generous and despite my best efforts, I could never keep up with him. He did the bulk of the garden bed preparation and also did a good stint on the fireweed. He’s my ultimate working buddy. Never flags.

Sido was a joy to have on the farm. Generous with her knowledge and her energy, she really helped me to sort out the gardens, as is evidenced in the last few posts. 

Greggie is one of a favorite people. He comes equipped with all the recipes in the world, scissors to transform the rattiest farmgrrl into a stylee queen who turns heads in downtown Dunoon, and never lets you into the kitchen. Heaven!

Kathy, Julie, Darcy, we love having your presence around the farm. It’s lovely to be able to offer friends and family a retreat where they can recoup flagging energies. We look forward to more of our distant friends and family coming to visit.

Watch this space for pics of pet projects

xx 

Six months ago my partner and I moved from Glebe, an inner city suburb of Sydney to an established/evolving permaculture farm in Northern NSW. We reside in the C1890’s farmhouse on 5 acres of gardens and pasture land. There are a number of roles we fulfill here. The property, called Mateatea (www.mateatea.com.au) is part of the Byron Hinterland tourist industry, in that it provides accommodation for guests who are interested in holidaying in an environmentally low impact, solar passive design luxury bungalow. We manage this business for the owner, my friend Michael, who has run away to the city for a while to run with the freaks! The other part of our life at Mateatea, and the part which we will attempt to chronicle here - part old school farmer’s almanac, part journal - is our farming life…
 
This blog is to chronicle the learnings and realisations that arise on a daily basis living on a permaculture farm. Written from the perspective of 1 city grrl and 1 latterly-city grrl, lost to her formative rural years. We are discovering how to make things grow, understanding systems of agri/culture, and discovering the very fundamental changes it can make to one’s person. We make lots of mistakes, but we honor the land and try to live by sound sustainable principles. We wake up smiling every day, ready to milk our cow, Maybe…

We are not vegan or vegetarian, so please be warned that there may be posts which disturb or offend.

We do, however, try to approach farming, our version, as a humane and loving way of growing plants and animals in an environment where respect for all living creatures is our number one priority. We try to approach the ideal of having a system where everything has its place and purpose and is a kind of feedback loop. The theory of permaculture is not part of our vocabulary in any formal way, but we read and experiment and take on the tasks of weeding, calf wrangling, castration, milking cows, creating gardens, building animal housing, sometimes killing animals (never gratuitously), rotating pastures, spring planting, cow shit collecting, mulching, duck-watering all with equal enthusiasm.

In the following post we will post a diagram of the farmhouse and its systems (established by Michael) and speak about how we utilise these systems.

Virginia and Charlene