365 days of farm life

This week a letter arrived from our accountancy firm congratulating us on it being one year since settlement of the farm.

A year.
365 days of farm life.

Surely that's worth taking a pause and reflecting on, I figured to myself. I couldn't do it any sooner than now as yesterday I fell in a heap and could barely drag myself out of bed to get a cup of tea. The last couple of months have been busier than usual as Rohan tries to recover from a back injury and I tried to do some of his chores as well as my own. Thankfully he looks like he might be turning the corner and he can now stand up for longer than 5 minutes, walking is still a challenge, but the standing is a big leap forward. So I think my mini break in bed yesterday was the culmination of a crazy November/December, but after a day of sleeping and tending to a sore head, I'm up and at it this morning, ready to face the sunshine and the chores once more.

But Friday night Rohan and I sat together on the back verandah, overlooking our kitchen garden, gazing out to the olives and the mountain beyond that and pondered on what it was we had achieved this year. As I nursed a Belgian cherry beer, Rohan laughed as he remembered the look of horror on my face on that Friday night a year ago when we got the keys to the farm and let ourselves in. 'Your face said, This is even worse than I thought it was,' he pealed with laughter, 'and you were right, it was!' We remembered the yellow walls and beige skirting boards, the back verandah that was all enclosed and a home for redbacks (I do like the fact that autocorrect changed this to rednecks and I had to change it back), the grass that towered taller than me in between the rows of olives, the overgrown, diseased orchard and the back paddock that was overrun with gorse.

Now, we sit in open space that looks out to the mountain, inside the house is all white walls that project light patterns as the day turns to dusk, the grass between the olives is like a park, the orchard is green and lush (although I'm still fighting various diseases and pests in there), the redbacks have lost the war of who owns the verandah, the bees are in their hives and the back paddock is gorse free (for the moment, with a battle plan for how to keep it that way).

We're taming our cows and sheep with buckets of molasses and oats, and they now come running to us when they see us instead of hurtling away in the other direction. In the yard, the plunge pool is taking shape with a coat of sealer going on yesterday and today looking perfect for painting it adriatic blue before filling it with water. On hot days you'll find us there cooling off and gazing at a sky of endless blue.

Every day we've learnt more about the land we live on, the community we live in and about ourselves. Recently, someone said to me 'You were the last person I pictured doing this', and I just smiled -  a self-satisfied smile that belongs to someone who is perfectly at home with life here on the farm. Tonight we head to our local community Christmas party and, unlike last year when we walked into the hall and all eyes turned to us wondering who the hell we were, this year we will walk in knowing our neighbours and the people from this small, quirky community.

New year's eve will be one year since our first night sleeping at the farm and so we'll toast with champagne to the year that's been and to the one that is to follow. There have been some tough times in 2014, for both of us, and as we all know, the news feed this year has been fairly horrific. In all of these times, the farm has been our escape from the world and it has also been a place for family and friends. We've loved having people from here and overseas visit, stay, help out and share in the fabric of our lives.
Thanks to each and everyone of you who have stitched a square of our farm journey. A special thanks to those who have contributed their (wo)man power to the farm cause.

As I wrote in November last year, we decided to call the property Innisfree after the William Butler Yeats poem 'Lake Isle of Innisfree', and it became increasingly pertinent. There is indeed peace here and midnight is all a glimmer.
Long may it continue so.


I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
                     - W.B. Yeats

Feeding plants and tending trees

Today I headed out in the orchard in between bouts of rain and inspected my trees. The cherry trees are in full bloom, their leaves lush and green, while tiny, hard, green cherries grown on long spindly stalks. Meanwhile tiny buds are emerging on the peach tree, small apricots are forming and the apple buds are starting to pop out as well. All of which has made me like a nervous parent, pacing between the trees, looking for signs of stress and disease. Last year the trees were yearning for more water and had been neglected for a while. Some showed signs of disease last year but we had focused this year on trying to get them as healthy as possible so that they could fight against disease.

As I wandered in the orchard though, I saw some worrying signs. A gummy residue on the branches of the apricot, a couple of worrying holes in the cherry leaves, some curl on the leaves of the peach. All signs of bugs and disease. Inside to my bible of organic fruit growing and I read furiously to try and work out what I can do to tend for my trees.

The apricots appear to have gummosis and this will be the result of us pruning them too late. It turns out we should have pruned them in summer after their fruiting season as trees pruned later in winter will be more susceptible to gummosis. Our apricot trees may not give us much of a harvest either as the fruit flowers form on second year or older fruit. So our theory of going hard with pruning with the apricots has been an ill-advised adventure! Ah well, it’s all part of the learning journey. I may not do as much pruning this summer after fruiting (if we have any) and I’ll know to treat the pruning cuts with a biodynamic tree paste which can be made with our cow manure (among other things).

One of the peach trees, meanwhile, looks like it is suffering from leaf curl. It’s a fairly young, spindly looking tree, which is probably why it’s been susceptible to leaf curl as my bible tells me that the key to organic control with peaches is overall tree health. That means that our original plan of getting the trees strong and healthy with food and water was a good one!  Seems like a compost tea might be useful for this particular peach to try and get it through the harsh summer season. 

While the cherry trees look lush and healthy at the moment I am paranoid about them redeveloping cherry slug which had decimated the leaves of the trees last year when we arrived. One of the trees looked like it had a few leaves with holes and so I’m on the lookout for the tiny black slugs. I’d tried to prevent them occurring this year by treating the base of the trees with ash from the wood fire as this makes it more difficult for the slugs to emerge in spring (they burrow down into the earth below the tree over winter). I’d then read that it’s also a good idea to spread newspaper and mulch around the base of the trees in early spring to stop the cherry slugs emerging, and while this has been on my to do list for the last couple of weeks I hadn’t been able to get to this. So, seeing some holes has only fueled my paranoia and so I think I’ll take some action to ensure that slugs don’t eat all my cherries. According to the organic bible the key to this is molasses spray, a spray made, not surprisingly with molasses, water and liquid soap. You spray this on the leaves and apparently, so say my bible, the caterpillars prefer to starve than eat leaves sprayed with this. More cherries for me then.

I’ve had this book for a while (and if you’re interested, it’s Organic Fruit Growing by Annette McFarlene) but it hasn’t been until now that I’ve actually had the space in my head to think about what I need to do and how I should go about doing it.  Here I read that our lovely olive trees will also resent a hard pruning and if pruned too fiercely will refuse to deliver us fruit for a couple of years.

Our figs on the other hand require hard pruning (phew! We did something right!) as fruit will grow on the younger branches. They should be pruned by at least half every year to ensure good fruit growth and as we’ve suspected, require adequate water in the growing period to ensure that the fruit is plump and juicy.

Rohan’s decided that we need a big whiteboard for the shed so that we can record all the pruning dates and tips so that we have a running jobs list for tending the trees throughout the year. It’s a great plan as it means that we can also record the bugs/ disease we treat and how we treat them.

So, after a lazy day today, tomorrow is back to full farm duties for me. The usual mowing and then I’ll get some fertilizer onto some of the plants, rip out some broccoli that has gone to seed, make up some molasses spray and get out there and tend my trees. Life on the farm – it’s a constant learning and I love it!

This time last year...

So it turns out that this time last year we had just put the offer in on the farm, and to our surprise it was accepted. 'And so began two months of hell', Rohan commented, and sure the legal negotiations in buying this place almost made me lose the will to live, but sitting out the back as Rohan bbq's dinner and the birds flitter through the trees, the legal wrangling is a distant memory. They say time flies when you're having fun, and so it is, as I can't believe that it's a year since we decided to throw caution to the wind and buy. Looking about the farm now it seems so different than when we first looked through it. With the boxed in back verandah, carport and shedding gone, everything is so much lighter and open. The trees in the orchard are lush with foliage, the compost and water we've been feeding them soaked up by the roots. Our garden veggie boxes are blooming and every night I pick fresh lettuce and radishes for our salad. 

This week though I've been thinking, not of the past, but of the future. Rohan's herniated two discs in his back, an injury that has left him barely able to stand and walk at times. With the number one farm hand out of action, I've had to take over all the upkeep on the farm, and that's got me to thinking - if it turned out that I had to take over number one farm hand job from now on would I be able to? 

I'd read an article in the age that morning where a well known comedian celebrated the fact that as an older woman (although I'm not convinced she's 40 yet, but she was badging herself as older), she no longer worries about her body. This week I've been worrying about mine, not if it's skinny or fat, but if I've got the muscles I need to hoist a sheep over my shoulder (sure it's not highly likely that I'm going to need to do that any time soon but one never knows). I'm pocket sized in height and I'm really not sporting the kind of muscles Linda Hamilton was rocking in Terminator. 

So this weekend as spring continued to make everything bloom and grow, I was determined that I was going to be able to do all the weekend farm jobs solo, just to prove to myself that I could. And I did. I moved some fence panels, I did my usual 4 hours on the mower getting the grove into its park like condition, I spent another 3.5 hours slashing the grass and edges with the line trimmer, I dug a hole to plant a Logan berry, I moved the worm farm and did some other stuff. Sure, most of what I did this weekend was like your average back yard garden work but on steroids, but it was good to kick start me into my summer farm fit mode. We'd been talking about how winter on the farm lulls you and your body into a relaxed ease, with the rain and days of grey cloud there is little growth and the ongoing maintenance of the property drops away somewhat. Muscles slacken and you spend more time inside in front of the fire. With the advent of warmer weather and the springing to life of everything, the farm demands new attention and your body has to respond. Arm and back muscles ache at the end of the day as the muscles that were slacken begin to work again. It's a great feeling, and I'm confident that soon I'll be out in the paddock hoisting sheep just for the hell of it. 

And who would have imagined I'd be saying that this time last year?

Grouping our history together.

After a couple of days in Melbourne for work I headed home so that I could attend the local community history group with Rohan and Dave on Wednesday night. We’d  received a handwritten flyer in our mailbox telling us about the group and this was followed up by a phone from one of our neighbours. With my interest in local history, there was no way I was missing this meeting!  As we drove to the hall, I muttered 'shit. I don't have a plate'. Surely in the style of all country events, we (ie. women) will be meant to take a plate for supper. Looks like I'll be taking an inadvertent stand against country gender roles tonight. So without a plate I walk in with only my work business cards to offer. They seem excited about those though, with someone exclaiming 'oh you're an expert' when they see I'm a dr. This is the grand misconception. Really, the more 'educated' I become the more I realise that the knowledge I have would fill about one grain of sand in the universe of all that is known and unknown. Still my lack of a plate doesn't seem too obvious as there is food galore on the table, although who knows? Maybe they’re talking about me and my lack of a plate in hushed tones somewhere.

There's something about the laconic Australian humour that I love. I think it's the self-deprecating (not to be confused with self-defecating) element, the willingness to take the mickey out of yourself, and then of others. At its extreme it can be misogynistic, jingoistic, homophobic and racist, but in a kinder, gentler form it enables the breaking down of barriers rather than the creation of them. It's this kind of humour that is on display when the group is talking about its catering adventures to raise money. This is no taco truck parked on the streets of Fitzroy we're talking about here, but a country style BBQ. You might think they'd grab snags anywhere for catering but they buy them at a local butcher whose meat is so well regarded it would make a latte sipping, beard wearing inner city hipster weep with delight upon hearing of the meat’s provenance. If the history group's catering was in Melbourne they'd have the butchers name scrawled on a chalkboard, people would be sitting eating on artfully arranged milk crates, hay bales or pallets and drinking milk 'fresh from the source' out of repurposed jam jars. Damn you Melbourne, you superficial hipster minx.

The group talks about the places they have already gone to seek funding and wanting to contribute I volunteer to make contact with another organisation when they ask for someone to do it. If this is my community I may as well throw myself right in. People talk of moving into country towns as a long period of always being the newcomer. While we might be regarded as the newcomers, our willingness to turn up to the history night means that we feel welcomed and drawn into the community. People seem thrilled when we say how much we are loving life on the farm, and our neighbours offer tips and helpful advice. Perhaps our willingness to admit that we know nothing also helps! As we went around talking to people I was reminded of the way history flows into the present in the way people talk about the local area. No-one lives in a specific house or road number, they live on the ‘old …..(insert family name from generations ago) farm’ or like us, they live ‘down the lane’. There is a shared past among people where they can make these connections and they know which farm this is in reference too and which lane it is. 

The meeting is a rambly, ramshackle affair, interspersed with laughter and finished with cups of tea and Rohan and Dave munching on the treats from the table. There are times it reminds me of the little community meetings in the Vicar of Dibley and in each of the people there I’m sure there lies a novel! It seems everyone round here lives to a ripe old age, with some having parents who are still alive at the age of 102! It must be all this fresh air and clean water. I bet they’ve never eaten kale and don’t follow the paleo diet either. Take that hipsters. (Look I’m really not anti-hipster, I’ve just got a bee in my bonnet about it having had coffee in Melbourne while sitting on a pile of phone books in a place that looked like it was straight out of a Portlandia skit). The next night we get a phone call to let us know that one of the first funding applications has come through – the avenue of honour is going to be well underway with that cash!

So now, having made some connections we are beginning to feel like we have a place in which we will be drawn into the web of country life. You know what? It’s a lovely feeling – like coming home.

Putting one foot in front of the other.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks here on the farm with Rohan on holidays and the advent of spring. It seems like we’re always busy though, and I do sometimes wonder how we will continue to keep on top of all the work that needs to be done. In the meantime, it’s one foot in front of the other and keep ticking things off the to-do list.

One of the items on the to-do list has been there since we moved in and is: Find the Septic. We made an attempt when we first arrived but with no luck and then a couple of weeks ago a letter from our local Shire arrived to say that they were conducting septic audits and trying to update their records as so many people move into properties and, not surprisingly, want to know where their septic is. We too had done this and been given a handdrawn map. Clutching it like an ancient treasure map we began to dig, leaving little holes across a patch of green grass, until….. at last we struck concrete! Our poo treasure was uncovered as we peeled back the earth to find the inspection plate lid of our septic. I can’t tell you how excited this made me and as I type this I wonder who the hell I am and what has happened with the real Sharon? If this is how my friend Leah feels about septics, no wonder she loves her job as an enviornmental health officer! So far the septic has been working perfectly and I figure all those little bugs have reached a happy, optimum state as they munch through our waste matter, but  when I didn’t know where the septic was I was having trainspotting  like nightmares of sewage going everywhere.

Having started with some digging we continued as we tackled the roots of the prickly pear row. It had been there for quite some time and while we’d flirted with the notion of making prickly pear wine, neither of us really got further than me buying the wine yeast and putting it in the fridge. The actual business of wearing sturdy gloves to harvest the prickly pear just seemed too much to fit in and so we’d left the fruit to the currawongs who seemed happy to pick at them. While I’d been in Daylesford eating at my favourite restaurant Mercato, Rohan had decided it was time for the prickly pear to go and had chopped off most of the leaves and large parts of the stem, throwing them in one of our pits of despair. I grabbed the mattock (is it meant to feel that heavy when you first pick it up?) and began working on trying to dig out the roots. I felt like I was in some sort of prison chain gang as I began picking my way through the earth. Sweat was rolling off me, and my arms and legs shook as I swung the mattock back and forth through the air. Rohan had put on some chain gang music in the studio to keep us company as we dug. By the time we came to the last, original root, I was spent. I could have thrown myself on the prickly pear leaves in the pit and considered it a comfy bed. Rohan, however, was not going to admit defeat and was determined to rid the earth of all remnants of prickly pear. He swung and dug until the last root finally gave way and then he rolled it into the pit, it’s final resting place. I’m sure the previous Italian owners probably offered up a groan somwehere as their prickly pear patch came to an end. We meanwhile, fell into the spa. I’d been suspicious of the spa when we first came to the farm, but after days like this, I was quick to realise what a joy the spa can be for aching muscles! Now the challenge will be to stop the prickly pear from growing back and bringing that patch of soil back to being part of our vegie strip. In the meantime the view from the studio to the olives is much better without cactus and netting.

Next on the list was our solar hot water something we’d been wanting to get installed since we moved in and discovered that the previous electric hot water system was chewing through power. Last week the guys turned up and installed the new tank and solar system and we now have the lowest electricity usage we’ve had since we moved in.

The next step was to get some bigger water tanks installed rather than rely primarily on our bore. As we all know tea tastes better when made with rainwater! Rohan got 13 tonnes of rock dust delivered from the quarry down the road and began his next lot of chain gang work by shovelling it behind the sheds to make the tank pads. Getting the dust from the quarry was something we hadn’t known we could do until our neighbour let us know. He also told us that the previous owner had decided to spend a significant amount of money getting a second bore rather than tanks as he considered tanks ugly. I can’t quite get my head around this given the fact that he obscured the beautiful view of the mountain by closing in the back verandah. I guess beauty really is in the eye of the beholder…

In preparation for the water tanks we needed to ensure that we had over 5 metres clearance from all the pine trees so the truck can get in, and that meant  it was time to do some more serious pruning. It smelt like Christmas out there with pieces of pine tree coming down, needles and cones smattering the ground. Rohan spent yesterday chopping the bigger branches into logs that can dry out in the wood shed and will make perfect kindling for the winter to come. With yesterday’s 25 degree weather it felt odd to be thinking about winter, but the dried out cones and wood will be invaluable when winter returns. Smaller bits of prunings went through the mulcher, along with some more olive prunings and we still have the bigger pile of prunings in front of the hay shed to mulch as well. We weren’t sure what was under there, but when Rohan investigated it’s mostly orchard prunings that can easily be mulched. I know lots of people around us are burning off branches that they have cut down, but there’s a good feeling about mulching  the prunings and returning them to the soil. It’s a nice cycle and reminds me to think about what we use, what we waste and what we throw away without a second thought.

Meanwhile we can continue to hatch plans for what we will do next. Rohan’s taken down one of the fences blocking off the orchard and plans to build a wider fence that runs down past the sheds and will give Indy more space to run outside. We still need to finish patching up the pizza oven shed and then we are going to move our ancient hills hoist and pave the area outside between the pizza oven shed and the house. We can picture a table and chairs out there, the door open, pizzas cooking and friends and family feasting. The trout need to be moved from the original tank into a new trout pool that will back onto the orchard and where the aquaponics tanks will sit. That means we can also pump some water onto orchard to give the trees and hopefully get some fabulous fruit. Once the fish are moved we can then begin work on turning the old square concrete tank into my ‘plunge pool’. The plan is for a wooden decking up the side of the shed leading to the tank, some steps, some tiling, a filter and come hot weather we can plunge into the pool and float away while looking at the view of Mt. Bunninyong. There’s a lot to do before my pool, so I figure it might not be this summer that I’m plunging!

Still, this is part of the beauty of living here, the ability to dream of what you would like and to begin working towards making it happen. It’s not about wrestling the land into shape, but of seeing what will work with the land and the existing infrastructure. The longer I live here the more I become aware of what we can grow and of what we can recycle and reuse. When we first moved here I wrote of wanting to give it a year to live through all the cycles and it’s nice being here in spring when everything is ‘springing’ into life. Sure I have a permanent job on the mower and the grass seems to grow as quickly as I mow it, but seeing the trees in the orchard full of blossom and the vegetable seedlings all getting fuller and taller is beautiful to behold. On beautiful spring days the dryness of summer and the crisp cold of winter seem like a lifetime away. Each day brings a new dream for what we could do and we pull on our farm gear, take a step and move towards making it happen.

Inking our stories

In the paddock my foot kicks over a horseshoe rusted brown with age. It lies on the top of the soil, the wind having blasted the surface layer away exposing its rusted fragility. I pick it up and ponder about the horse. I put it back, leaving it there to rust some more.

Friday I went to a workshop hosted by Public Records Victoria and held in the Trench Room at the Town Hall. I love ascending that staircase to the Trench Room, the ornate carvings, the ceiling roses, the walls painted in Heritage colours. The Mysteries of Dr. Blake is filmed in this building and in watching it I am able to return to times past, which is also the purpose of my visit here today. The workshop is called ‘Getting around the block: property and land research’, and on first glance it might seem a topic that doesn’t inspire fascination, but as the morning unfolds it opens up a treasure trove of quirks and intricacies from our local history. I’ve come with a dual purpose: one- to see if I can find some keys to unlocking more about our property’s history; and two- to see what ideas I can take away for my teaching, or even research.

I’m instantly hooked when they begin talking about how the sources we will explore today will give us an ability to build a better picture of the past, and therefore, of the present. I love this notion of continuity and change, of looking at tangible artifacts and seeing what we can glean from those about the less tangible aspects of our heritage. I’m the youngest person in the room by years and I wonder if this is because it’s a Friday morning and I have the ability to integrate this into my work day, or if it is because it is only when people are older that they have the time, space and perhaps even, inclination, to pause and wonder how things came to be as they are.

I’m soaking up resources I haven’t used before – Niven’s directory of Ballarat, the Sands & McDougall street directories, the list of Parish maps, the links to wills and probates, to rate notices, to township plans. As we learn how to dig through the archives holding over 170 years of Victorian history stored in Ballarat and Melbourne, I’m becoming seduced by the notion of leaping off the edge of the present and into the past. I wonder why I never took my history studies further than my undergraduate degree – this idea of sleuthing through carefully inked records is wholly romantic. Perhaps in real life it’s less romantic, more a series of hits, misses and dead ends that can lead to disenchantment. Here in this room though, I see how each archive reveals a new piece and each piece contributes to the making of the whole. I often talk about my love for Tasmania as being comprised of the fact that when I’m there I can feel history breaking through into the present and in this workshop I’m reminded of how Ballarat can be the same. Perhaps looking into history is like looking at those 3D image puzzles, once you stare long enough and find the picture, it is impossible to ‘unsee it’ – every time you look at the puzzle, the picture emerges almost unbidden. Perhaps history is the same, once you alert yourself to the horses that rattled down the road, the women who ran private hospitals and pubs, the men who left their daughters hotels and a ‘set of bees and honey’ so that they could live ‘independently of any man’, once you find and listen to their stories, you cannot walk down the streets of your town without seeing history flashing through the fabric of the present.

I depart the workshop, a set of keys in hand and I come home ready to use them to unlock the past and continue the journey. We are all each of us already and always in the process of making history, of inking our own story into the fabric of existence.