Unlocking mysteries

'All you need is ignorance and confidence, then success is sure' 
                                                                            - Mark Twain

I was in the studio/ library/ gym room yesterday and I saw the blue of this book out of the corner of my eye, I picked it up and began re-reading the blurb, unable to remember what had attracted me to the book when I'd first bought it - was it just the mention of the sea? As I read on, I decided 'yep, I must re-read this' - the story of two people who bought a banana farm near the sea when they knew nothing at all about farming bananas. Seems we're not the only ones who venture out into new lifestyles without any idea of what we're doing and the Mark Twain quote at the start of the book captures perfectly my feelings about life here on the 'farm' (just don't call it a farm to people who have a real, normal amount of land, as opposed to the dinky 38 acres of our hobby farm).  Blind ignorance and optimism will surely see us succeed? Or those things will see us being too stupid to actually realise when we're failing so it will be okay anyway.

It's been a busy week for me with students in our new Masters of Teaching course starting this week. This is a course that a group of us had planned last year and so to see it finally begin has been fantastic - and I had a couple of days where I came home from work literally buzzing - so excited about the way the year had commenced, having the opportunity to team teach with uni colleagues, to bounce ideas around together with students and to have one of the best professional learning discussions I've had with a colleague after we observed each other's classes. It was a week where I was keenly aware why I work in education - learning is pervasive and the relationships you form with others in education settings are unlike anything else. Last night I saw a tweet from Pope Francis (love a Pontiff that gets onto twitter) that said 'Educating is an act of love; it is like giving life'. The Pontiff is onto something here, this concept that in education we are opening doorways for people, showing them ways of being, thinking, learning and living that perhaps they might not have considered before. So while our Masters of Teaching students started, our first years were getting into the Oweek spirit of things and here we see a whole different learning journey commence- some wandered the halls looking terrified, others looked unsure, others wandered with parents and one decided to leave after a day when the practicalities of bus timetables from another town all seemed too hard and too daunting. It would be easy to scoff at that and think 'what?', but when you're in first year with no family background of going to uni, little finance and you come up against a transport hurdle, it all seems too hard, too scary, too new and so you want to retreat to what it known, comfortable and easy. I'm lucky to work with colleagues who understand that sometimes it's not a lack of aspiration that stops people, but a lack of physical, material and other resources, and they work hard to help young people find their way in a world that is new and overwhelming.

While I pondered the nature of learning and waxed lyrical about how I loved my job (I'm sure that will fluctuate throughout the year), Dave continued to transform our old house. Each time he comes up the walls seem to straighten beneath his touch, the layers of paint brighten what was dull and with Rohan, Woody and Dave working on it yesterday, the trees emerged from the straggle of weeds and the old kitchen benches disappeared. We're doing a few small cosmetic touches by adding a couple of new cabinets, hoping that someone else might wander through, and like Rohan and I did, see their lives as homeowners starting in this small and humble house.

Yesterday I drove home and cattle were crossing the road as they moved from one paddock to the next, boys on quad bikes mustered them and I sat watching the black angus pad across the gravel road, their silky hides shining in the sunshine. They passed by and I kept driving, coming across one neighbour on his tractor, his face breaking into a smile and a hearty wave emerging from the cab when he saw me. Here already, we are part of something bigger than just us, we become part of the history of this place, woven into the landscape.

Friday night, our neighbour David came over, bringing us the card of an olive farmer he met at a farmer's market. This guy presses his own olive oil by hand and David had told him we'd just taken over with no idea of what we were doing or of what we would do with our olives. He's happy to come and see our farm, talk to us about our trees, and is also interested in buying our olives to press them if we do the harvesting. I'm so excited at the thought that someone will walk through the lines of trees with us and be able to tell us more about the trees we have. Rohan and I wandered through the grove last night, turning and twisting leaves and olives that grow bigger by the day. In our hands some olives lay oval shaped, while others are like round, green balls. Different varieties surely, but which ones? Here on a small business card, lays a clue that may unlock the mystery of our trees. While David was here we talked about the land around us, Rohan taking out the Britt family history book that Dave and Jane had lent us and which shows that Jane's relatives live just down the road, running the dairy. David nodded and told us that paddocks on the other side are also owned by the Britt family and that further down the road, the people there are related to the Britt family as well. We see the family history of the land emerge around us, people are cousins, uncles, aunts and Rohan wonders how our patch of land came to be owned by an Italian family when other patches of land were either passed on to family, or sold and then re-bought by people who wanted to keep it in the family. Where did our Italians come from? How did they find themselves here in a land surrounded by the Irish? It's another mystery to unlock as we continue to learn more about the place we've chosen to live.

Last night after Dave and Woody had gone home, we set about moving the sheep into another paddock to graze, moving an old bath for water, carting water in the ute to fill it up and then heading into the paddocks to muster our three girls into the next paddock. No sticks were required for moving the sheep this time and once we opened the gate, all three wandered in like they'd been waiting for us to do it. Once inside we wandered around as well as this was the first time I'd ventured into this smaller paddock and so we headed to the back of it to where the small dam lay dried up and empty. I wonder if we will get rain soon and if the dams will fill? Each week the forecast has promised days of rain, but as the promised days draw closer the forecast changes and the rain inches further and further away on the 7 day forecast and we're yet to get to the promised rain. Today held the promise of early morning showers and yet as I write this the sun is glinting of the silvery leaves of the olives and only small white clouds dot the sky. Rain when it comes will surely turn our soil to a rich chocolatey mess, and I can't wait for it. I can see myself plodding around, my gumboots slick with mud, raincoat on and hair matted with water - or is this just a hopeful fantasy?

So we wait. We wait for rain, we wait for more of the stories of the land to emerge and we learn everyday.