Get on board

I’m still on a high from choir on Monday night, loving the song we sang together, each of us singing such simple parts yet when combined making such complex, layered beauty. It reminded me of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, about how he believed that the best chance of achieving personal freedom is by surrendering individual rights for the collective common good. The paradoxical concept of less is more. A similar idea applies to how we raise Noah, teaching him painful lessons like not always getting what he wants, having to share, to be polite and considerate – curtailing his natural instinct and immediate advantage in exchange for getting along, fitting in, being liked. Making his life easier. The challenge for Em and me is to feel confident about which freedoms need curtailing, but in many ways it is easy – we just repeat the lessons we learnt from our parents. Like cultural memes they wouldn’t have lasted so long unless they were important and ultimately effective.


Em introduced me to Stir-up Sunday the other day, the day when Christmas puddings are traditionally made. She’s put the date in the calendar, 20th November this year, and she’s planning to get on board and make hers too. As 21st century atheists we don’t have many traditions in our life and we’d like to have more – opportunities to get together with friends and family, share a meal or do something together, create positive memories and reinforce our sense of belonging. Thinking these thoughts we decided to have a bonfire tonight to celebrate the end of winter and the start of spring. With one eye on creating family traditions we borrowed the idea of burning something that symbolises something you’d like to leave behind. So the morning of the first day of spring on our little farm was spent collecting wood and piling it high for our bonfire.


When we came to set it alight after dinner it had been raining and the dark hills would suddenly be backlit by lightning, while distant rumbles of thunder were upstaged by the old, mouldy bamboo poles on the pile which heated up and exploded like gunshots echoing up the valley. Em and I tossed our objects on the fire and welcomed the coming of spring.


“I’m grateful that we made the bonfire and had a nice day.”
(Confused? Look)

Lush Life

Days get swallowed up in the never ending procession of things to do. The new chooks (Tiplet, Lauren and Claire) enjoyed their new pen, from both inside and out. After having to go and catch them twice I worked out they were climbing up the stays for the fence posts so I spent some time blocking their escape using old oven racks we had in the shack.


It was a warm day today. Lovely and warm. It felt like the first day of spring, too impatient to wait the last week, vigorously shaking off winter early, ready to go. The new chooks had no shade, spending the hottest part of the day in their night house so I went and cut up the old tank on the hill behind Sue and Rob’s to use as a shelter in the pen. Everything feels like it’s just starting to grow, just starting to explode into lush life.

We planted the potatoes in the afternoon. The soil has been top dressed with compost and cow poo in the last week and is moist and rich. We dug deep trenches and covered them in a few inches of soil, then horse poo, a little lime and then mulched with old straw in case we get any more frosts and also to keep the soil open and the worms happy. Finally we put a little blood and bone on the straw so it doesn’t draw the nitrogen it needs to break down from the soil. I’m hoping that by the time the potatoes have poked through and need covering again the whole lot will have broken down into yummy goodness.


Late in the afternoon I turned in the green manures in the Root Crop bed and the Good Companions bed. The Good Companions include things like sweetcorn and cucurbits – pumpkins, zucchinis and cucumbers. We won’t add anything more to the Root Crop bed to stop the carrots from forking, but the Good Companions will get both compost and manure, fed heavily, then covered and left to break down for a while before they are planted. There is a lot to do. Emma reminded me that it’s important to enjoy the journey and it is good advice.

We have bats in the walls out the back. Well, in the doors. We kept the old cow doors when doing up the Dairy but only as a façade, boarding up behind them and nailing them shut. Last night Em and I saw little microbats swooping out of the cracks at dusk, emerging from the tiny void in the back. Tonight I shone my torch in and could see tiny little toes and wing hooks in the gap in the top.


“I’m grateful that we seen the bat and there was bats in the wall.”
(Confused? Look)