My garden is going well, doing the autumn crank. The weather is beautiful here now cold nights and cool, fresh, clear days with no humidity, perfect gardening weather. I’ve got all my winter crops in the ground, Brassicas, peas and broad beans, onions, garlic and leeks, as well as tonnes of flowers (very essential). I made pea tee-pees from some bamboo Chay gave me and have made a little pen for my broad beans, Tino style. My rhubarb is colouring up nicely in the colder weather getting ready for rhubarb and apple crumble. I love autumn.
I sustained my first wallaby damage the other day (carrot tops) so Ryan has obligingly whipped me up a fence with a cute little gate he made from the old dairy door. While he was in his whipping mood he also made some fab compost bins. 3 bays, 1 metre cubed using the old iron from the house roof and old fence posts. He used some wood that was left in the shack to make wood slats for the front. We filled two of the bins with layers of grass clippings, cow poo from the paddocks, chipped up cuttings and fallen leaves from the pecan tree with plenty of water and “my favourite”, blood and bone. So, fingers crossed, in a couple of months I’ll have some beaut compost. Composting is pure alchemy.
After many weeks of our four old chook girls (that we inherited with the property) laying only one thin shelled egg a day between them and then fighting over who was going to eat it, we bopped them all. That left Johnny (Rotten) our Wyandotte rooster that my sister bred all alone in the chook tractor and me on a mission to find anything a little more interesting than Isa Browns. In Perth I could just look in the Quokka and there would be at least 20 people advertising there pretty chickens on any given Thursday, but here no such luck. So I contacted the Wauchope Poultry Society, rung breeders, searched the internet and finally found Jim in Taree (about 1 and half hours to the south) who breeds many things including Wyandottes. We bought four girls and got one free. So now we have four Silver Pencilled and one Buff Wyandotte. The oldest silver is Cantic pronounced Chantic, the Indonesian word for beautiful. The two younger silvers (who are indistinguishable) I’m thinking of calling Gladys and Paige. The buff should probably be Buffy and the youngest, who was free cause she’s a bit funny looking might need a name like Princess Rodricka. Johnny is in love with Cantic because she’s the only one old enough to do, and picks mercilessly on the others, which I find a bit distressing but that’s just chooks and hopefully they will settle down. Johnny be good.
So living in the country is good. I knew it would be. One of the things I love the most is the space. Of course the space for vegies, fruit trees and animals, but also not having to be too precious about everything. In Freo as with most built up areas there were so few wild spaces. Towards the end of our time there, mostly due to the mining boom, all the vacant lots of land, that had been precious little areas of ramble and chaos, were being developed. Out here I feel like we are the vacant lots just hugging the edges of vast areas of wilderness, surrounded and small. It feels ok to go and cut down a few trees or ‘bush poles’ for fence posts. Or to let Noah run around and hit things with sticks (not animals) and throw rocks, swim in the river and be a little boy (if a little wild boy, ‘be still’). And space for the senses, to view the landscape and not be distracted by other people, cars, advertising. It’s good for me, for my soul.
