Guard Llama

Sue reckons the difference between a bad haircut and a good one is about two weeks. She told us this while Noah was perched on a stool after dinner last night, sitting still as she wielded comb and scissors, snipping away. I’m not quite sure why she brought it up.


Em and I dropped him off at preschool today and continued on to a Farming Workshop at Chris and Ann Eggert’s dairy farm in Wauchope. We’ve gone to a few of these workshops now and they’re generally excellent with lots of good information, tips and other small farmers to talk to. The first talk was on Livestock Selling and Marketing, given by a local TAFE teacher. It was one of those talks where a door is opened into a world that you only ever viewed from afar. Aimed primarily at the strategic selling of beef cattle it was a little outside of our sphere of interest but it was thought provoking nonetheless. I haven’t really thought of raising beef cattle but from what he was saying one of our best options would be to raise weaners, born in early spring and then sold around Christmas, leaving the mothers to put some fat on over summer to get through the winter when pasture growth is slow and feed is scarce. The weaners are mainly sold to farmers looking to build up their herds out west of the ranges where they fatten up quickly on the good quality feed and fetch a good price. I have a problem however with treating animals as pure economic units so I’m not sure I could do it. In the chase for maximum profits, or even any profit, production is streamlined, fast weight gain is desirable, cows and calves are separated, translocated, inoculated, drenched – the list goes on. What seems to drop off the list are things like animal welfare and happiness, organic principles and respect for the environment. Given the choice I have I’m not sure I want to be part of such a system, although Em knows people down near Canberra who have a biodynamic beef farm. It would be interesting to talk to them and maybe go and see their farm sometime.


The other part of the workshop was taken up by Chris Eggert speaking passionately about biological farming – soil chemistry, grazing management, weed management, compost – lots of good stuff. Em and I always take a lot away when we hear Chris speak and we get very excited, impatient to get our farm set up and producing more. I think if we’re going to go to the trouble of improving our pasture for our two dairy cows we might as well get some beef cows as well and utilise them as a powerful tool on the farm for weed management, nutrient recycling and another food source. No ending up in feedlots for our cows. Our neighbour is looking to get rid of a couple of cows which he says we can have so it may happen sooner than I think.


We ended the day with a paddock walk, checking out his amazingly lush and diverse pasture. He has gone into partnership with some friends and now has 1700 chickens laying organic eggs in mobile sheds in his cow pasture. The chooks break up the cowpats, eating fly larvae and adding more fertilizer to the soil through their droppings. He even has a guard llama in with the chooks, having got rid of the Maremma dogs he had which turned out to be more trouble than they were worth. There’s so much to do and it’s all so exciting.



“I’m grateful that I got to meet Steven today.”
(Confused? Look)

Manuring and Mulching

I’ve heard that a gentleman is someone who can play the bagpipes and doesn’t. I have recently taken on a job making a window for someone in the valley and my thoughts were wandering along similar lines today when I finally decided to pull the pin and not do it. Little things were going wrong and the quality wasn’t going to be as good as I would like. For similar money they could get a joiner to do a better job and with far less stress for me. I noticed a few years ago that I don’t deal particularly well with stress. I can do it for a while, conjuring up illusions of competence and coping, but before long I’m twitching in the corner in need of a cup of tea and some Tim Tam therapy.


So I went home and walked around the horse paddock scooping up horse poo with Em and Noah. Shit shovelling I can do. We got so much done in the late afternoon sun, manuring and mulching the garden. I borrowed a book from Rob on composting and it’s the best book I’ve read all day. In it Tim Marshall talks of how to make leaf mould, the phosphorous content of bracken, the nitrogen content of different animal manures, the alkalinity of wood ash – my kind of book.


“I’m grateful that I holded those mushrooms that were in the straw.”
(Confused? Look)

Implements of Destruction

Hooray! PLAGGA day today, so we took shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed on toward Jim and Kelly’s. Well, maybe not shovels and rakes, but definitely implements of destruction. For the uninitiated PLAGGA stands for Pappinbarra Ladies And Gentlemen’s Gardening Auxiliary, the garden club we share with our friends, taking turns once a month to visit each other’s farms, hitting those big projects with lots of bodies and enthusiasm. There are lots of kids, good food and cold beer at the end of the day.

Today’s project was removing woody weeds from the edges of their creek, hence the implements of destruction – chainsaws, loppers, hand saws and herbicide. I have never been a big fan of herbicide but our group has a high proportion of people who work in weed control and bush regeneration, people who are passionate about both the bush and living sustainably – people I trust, and they see it as an essential tool in their work. I don’t like it but I can live with it in order to be effective in the face of the mammoth task of controlling weeds in our beautiful country.


Today we were removing Wild Tobacco, a member of the Solanaceae family like tomatoes and potatoes, up to five metres tall and with a leaf that looks a bit like the leaf on an eggplant. Each cut stump got a little dribble of herbicide on the cambium layer and then the plants were stacked into big piles for burning once they have dried out. We got a huge amount done but we didn’t manage to clear it all. Then there’s the lantana, the privet, the blackberry.

It’s so easy to get caught in the mundane and the slog of life so PLAGGA is important for our souls. We laugh. We eat together. We help each other grow our dreams. My favourite part of the day was driving back from the creek with a trailer full of kids and adults, everyone hanging on as we bumped across the paddock, another beautiful day in the valley, heading up for some lunch.


One sad thing that happened today was my camera broke. It is just a little, simple Canon Ixus point-and-shoot – not great quality but it fits in my pocket, always at hand for capturing little scenes for posting later. I think it’s been sat on, perhaps it was me.

“I’m grateful that we went to PLAGGA and I held those two chooks at once.”
(Confused? Look)

Slightly burnt

My dad was a bit of a pyromaniac. Perhaps not in the true meaning of the word, but he wouldn’t need much of an excuse to set something on fire. His idea of tending the fairway he was responsible for at the golf course was to set it alight and then spend days raking honky nuts up into little volcanoes. I have inherited the pyromania gene, and although there has been some dilution I still love a cheery fire. He knew it too. When he had his flower farm he would stack the dead bushes up into a big heap and wait until I came to visit before setting it alight so we could share it together. I was thinking about how much he would have enjoyed this fire as I raked the coals over this morning, separating the coals from the ash and piling them high in the middle so they would keep burning throughout the day. Noah loved the fire last night too – good memories for kids. He has a special bonfire whacking stick that he uses to… well, whack bonfires with, sending sparks up into the air. We had jaffles for breakfast, baked beans and cheese – hot, stringy and slightly burnt.


I’m getting the straight razor that Em bought me professionally honed by a guy in Sydney. He takes extreme close-up photos of the blade and sends them to me, explaining the work that needs to be done. At one stage he wrote describing how it is one of the few vintage razors he’s cleaned up that didn’t chip, finishing with “Judging by the steel's behaviour I'm expecting quite a shaver to result.” Mmmmm. It’s on its way now.


To maintain the razor's edge I’m getting a strop made by a guy in Queensland. He was recommended by the guy doing the honing, and I’ve been really enjoying the exchange of emails between us determining price, materials, time. I’m getting a basic strop made from roo hide which is apparently more delicate than cow hide giving a finer, smoother edge but also easier to damage. I’m really happy that I’m getting something made especially for me using local materials, by a craftsman who knows what he’s doing.


Tonight being the first Friday of the month we went to Happy Hour at the local hall. Noah disappeared into the night, absorbed into the large tribe of kids running around, reappearing later with a glow stick, disappearing again. Our valley is getting bigger, and more engaging. We stay late talking and drinking, having fun until Noah appears again and begs us to go home, the last kid left standing and ready for bed.

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)

Rampant and Alive

Today is the last day of winter. A time supposedly devoid of hope, like in Narnia where it is always winter and never Christmas. Not for me though – we’ve only been here for 18 months and I suspect that winter is the front-runner for my favourite time of the year. Nonetheless it’s very exciting to be on the verge of spring, everything ready to burst forth with life. Rampant and alive, starting anew again, a chance to be reborn.


I spent the day warmed by the sun chipping at bricks down at the tip, cleaning them up for re-use in my friend’s path, the next stretch of paving now in progress. The work was repetitive, physical and perhaps a little boring but I don’t mind days like that from time to time. A big wedgetail eagle circled high above the tip and reminded me of Tim Low’s book The New Nature, where he talks about the inextricable relationship between wildlife and urban spaces.


Noah’s friend has an amazing collection of costumes, mostly made by his very talented mother, feeding and encouraging his obsession with dinosaurs and other more contemporary wildlife. Noah often gets to borrow one or two when he goes to visit but we seem to have accumulated a few, and his favourite thing at the moment is to wear them all at once – wings, shell, comb, and about three different tails.


At home Em kept Noah entertained and treated the horses for ticks, unfortunately a bit overdue. We’ve been umming and ahhing for a week or two about how bad it is, then we bought some sulphur blocks to help boost their natural resistance, but the final straw came the other day when I went over to feed them some apples. The poor loves had bites all over them, big swollen ticks under their manes and Nugget’s muzzle had dozens of bush ticks crawling on it. Sue and Rob talked to the vet and got something we can spray on them, which Em and Sue did today while Noah took some photos. It is another reminder to us how vigilant we need to be in our stewardship of the animals in our care.

Tonight Em and I watched some of the River Cottage series with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. It is so good to feed our vision of the farm we want to create, the life we want to live. There were bits on beekeeping, butchering your own animals, brewing your own beer, keeping pigs, spring gardening and eating feral pest species. Yay. Em is always thinking of design and decor and it has started to spread to me, so much so that we have to pause the video and admire window seats, rock walls and kitchens big enough to hang a butchered lamb in - excited by what's in front of us.


“I’m grateful that I licked the bowl and I taked photos of the horses.”
(Confused? Look)

One below

We think our duck, the widow Marmalade, has been taken by a fox. She didn’t come back on Sunday evening when I put the chooks away at night and it’s been two days now. The poor love, we miss her and feel bad.


Last night we partied like forty year olds – a few beers, some guitar, a couch, a cup of tea, just a little nap… all over by about 11pm. Dave has a beautiful, amazing voice and when he plays and sings I just put down my guitar and listen. I would probably pay to hear him sing a shopping list. This morning we went for a walk to the waterfall at Wilson River, discovering that there is two waterfalls and we’d been going to the small one all this time. Getting to the big one involves scrambling up rocks to a path that wends its way above the smaller one, well worth the effort. The falls are about three times larger than the one below and breathtaking.


And finally our Confluence Point trip has been uploaded to the website.

“I’m grateful that I went to preschool and had a nice day, and I’ve got the same shirt as a kid in preschool.”
(Confused? Look)