No time for being passive.

 To enjoy the essence of a farm you can't be passive. You have to reach out and embrace it. It   demands engagement. 
                 (Newell, 2000, p. 149).


I love this quote from Patrice Newell's book "The Olive Grove" which charts her journey from city journalist to olive and biodynamic farmer. In these three short sentences she has captured something of the heart of what moving to the farm has meant for me. In writing about this concept of the farm demanding engagement, she writes of friends from the city who want to visit as they see the romantic vision of farm life, of leisurely days looking at views, drinking tea and reading. But farm life is not like that. The day we were moving the hay, I joked with Rohan about this very idea, saying 'Where's my relaxing lifestyle, drinking wine among the olive groves hey? This isn't the romantic, lazy version of pastoral life I had in my head - this is hard work!' There is no idly standing by on the farm, as Newell writes, you have to 'embrace' it, to launch into the mess of it all and begin to learn the quirks and foibles of the land on which you stand. Farm life demands that I get outside and begin to explore the boundaries of this new world. Our new nightly routine after dinner has been to drag on our boots, grab the dog and go for a walk around the boundaries of the two olive groves and the brew paddock. We stop, looking at the growth between trees and the way the land is beginning to respond to our touch. We stare at the sky and watch the way colours mute and inch across clouds, making predictions on the following day's weather. We snap crisp pieces of hay between our fingers, talking of our plans for paddocks and buildings. We clamber over the wire fence in the orchard, rolling the leaves of the apricot, peach, cherry and apple trees between our fingers, trying to diagnose what the spots mean, what kind of nutrients the soil might need to bring them back to their full fruited glory. We squeeze the figs on our way past back to the house, watching as they begin to hang lower and deciding when they will be ready for eating, ripe for picking and perfect for jamming.

Here I know so little. As always, when I don't know something, I turn to books and search for things to read. I've scrawled through websites, skimming information and trying to glean the most urgent parts of what I need to know. Frantic with the fear of spontaneous combustion, the night before moving the hay, I lay in bed, illuminated by the glow of my iPhone, looking at diagrams of the best way to stack hay. I've clicked buy and deliver for books on growing olives and fruit trees recommended by someone on Twitter. And I've been reading Newell's book. I dish it out to myself, page by page, like a treat at the end of a long day. Between her pages, I find myself  reading of things  that I'd previously seen or heard but which lay long forgotten. I read lines to Rohan, exclaiming, 'Listen to this! I love this!'. She reminds me of the significance and mythology around the olive tree:

The Egyptians revered the olive. Hercules' staff became an olive tree. The first Olympic torch was a burning olive branch, and the first Olympians wore wreaths of olive leaves. The Bible's two testaments talk of olives a hundred and forty times, with the white dove bringing an olive branch to Noah's Ark, signalling that the Great Flood was, at last, in retreat. There's the story of Christ at the  Mount of Olives and the tradition that he died on a cross of olive wood. Has any other fruit been burdened with as much legend and responsibility?  (p. 158).

I read this and I look out the dining room window at the leaves of the olives swaying in the breeze and I'm so glad that we came here.

Yesterday I met Leonie for lunch to discuss a professional development session. She handed me another book to signal life on the farm, and there was a serendipity with my previous post.

The PWMU cookbook, what Leonie claims is the staple of country kitchens. Scrawled inside the card are the page references for her favourite recipes, sweet treats I've eaten over the years of working with her. I like the tips and hints for country living, the fact that there is a recipe for my own homemade cough medicine - I can whip up my own elixir with the notes between these pages! As someone I went to school with commented on my Facebook page, 'It's like you've stepped back in time to a bygone era'. In some ways it seems like this, part of it I see as an ironic joke, smiling at the notion that I may need to create my own cough medicine when there is a chemist only 8 k away in town.
Yet, it is all touchingly simple and quiet, it is a different kind of life we are beginning here. Here there is no time to be passive.