One more notch

I’m not sure I want the magpies to win. No, I’m not talking about Saturday’s AFL Grand Final but rather the battle of the birds that is going on outside. Swallows have moved in recently and have become a cute addition to our avian wildlife, arcing fast and low over the veggie patch and up under the eaves of the Dairy. For some reason the magpies aren’t so keen on them being here and this morning there was an all out birdie brawl with a pair of magpies chasing about four swallows across the paddock, intent on causing them harm, diving and swooping, getting close before the smaller more manoeuvrable birds would sharply turn, evading a snapping beak.

My days are being gobbled up by the time-hungry orchard, the site now looking like a forest felled by a bomb blast with poles lying every which way on the ground. I spent over ten hours the other day exhausting myself felling trees and dragging logs out from the back of the block with our snarling little tractor, sitting astride it as it strained like a bulldog on a leash. We now have over two dozen poles ready to go, which all need to be treated first then stood up and braced before Tuesday when our friend Mountain Ryan is coming over to help stand up the four big, six metre centre poles. It’s funny that we’re doing so much work in preparation for our garden club next Saturday. The idea is our friends come around and help us knock off a big project but we almost need a garden club to help prepare for garden club. At least when it is done we will have clicked up one more notch in the ratchet, one more project will be behind us, our future proofing will be that one little bit more advanced.

We had a blackout last night, coincidently the same day Emma has started reading Choosing Eden, a book about a middle-aged couple that moved to Bellingen from Sydney and started future proofing in response to their fears about peak oil. After a day thinking again about how we would live without cheap oil it was suddenly brought into reality when the lights didn’t work, we couldn’t watch our River Cottage DVD, and we couldn’t even have a warm shower as the gas hot water system has an electric starter. In the spirit of local production I cooked a green curry with asparagus, broccoli and kaffir lime leaves from our garden, snow peas from Sue’s garden and local Kindee beef. Then we went to bed.


I hope the Freo Dockers can win a premiership before peak oil hits hard. Perhaps they have started stockpiling aviation fuel to keep their premiership window open.

“I’m grateful that I goed for a sleepover.”
(Confused? Look)