Maybe it's the fact that I was struck down with a viral bug and had spent 3 days sleeping that made me overly sentimental. Maybe it's the fact that on this farm, I feel history alive all around me, with each footstep I make in a paddock seeming to reverberate through the ages. Whatever it is, I found myself swirling with thoughts of connecting and stitching the past into the present.
I'd been reading a wonderful book 'Saving St.Brigid's' by Regina Lane in which she charts the fight of a local community group against the might of the Catholic church as they battled to save their local church and community hall. The Lane family lived down the road from where my parents lived at Tower Hill and where all my siblings spent some of their early years. I never lived there but I've got the ghosts of memory imprinted on my brain from their tales, and as I read Regina's book, names, places, incidents seemed like ones I could have been there for. In the book, Regina also finds her connection with her place again, and there are pages of her book that I've dog-eared so breathtakingly beautiful I find the sentiment within them. Lane writes:
Facebook and Skype might have made communication easier, but with the pace of our lives, you don't share these seemingly meaningless, but telling, details. And in the process something is lost. When you live the restless life, moving from one place to another, you learn to detach yourself from these things - from the details of the everyday lives of those you love (p. 155).
And in this paragraph ideas were thudding through my head - a social media junkie from way back, I wondered how I substituted it for the meaningful connections with those around me. Here, at this farm, we have begun stitching more meaningful connections with family and friends as we share in the journey that is our growing to understand more about this land and our life on it.
Knowing the details that matter is important and so this week I sat down, wool and crochet needle in hand and began making a baby blanket for a friend. Her mother made a blanket for her first baby, and with her mother no longer here to craft a blanket for her second baby, I take up the needle. I crochet in rounds, stitching a blanket for her, for the baby to come and for a way to keep her mother's presence alive. It's easy to laugh off knitting and crochet as passe, old-fashioned skills that are out of place in our modern, disposable world. Yet, in these ancient forms, there lies a narrative and a history much bigger than our own.
On Saturday afternoon, I wandered out to the peach tree where branches hung heavy with fruit. A few weeks back the fruit looked like it would be no good, sap pouring out at gaps on the rounded flesh. A friend told me they thought they would still be okay, but I was doubtful. In the last couple of weeks though the peaches have taken off, bigger, rounder, plumper, the sap holes healed and the flesh ripe and juicy, pock-marks the only remnants of what had been before. I couldn't eat them all in one go though and set about searching for a guide on how to preserve them. On the SBS website I came across Matthew Evans and a guide on how to preserve peaches. Jars sterilised, I tenderly placed pieces of flesh in, covered them with water and sugar and set them in a pot to preserve. I sent my mum a photo and she sent me an email saying that I must have my Nan's talents for cooking. In those days the act of preserving would have been commonplace, but now, I become one of many who seek to reclaim some of these connections to the past, to ways of eating, saving and storing the food we grow.
As I write this, I'm sitting here staring out the window, watching the birds. Wattle birds, rosellas and currawongs feed at our makeshift bird feeder. A wattle bird sails towards the one, lonely persimmon on the tree. Watch it wattle bird, you may be cute, but that one persimmon is mine, all mine. Suddenly I'm wrenched out of the past and back to the present :)
Sunday, 6 April 2014
Wednesday, 2 April 2014
Falling for green
In almost the blink of an eyelid green is returning to the farm. After what seemed like almost endless days and nights of hot weather, the last couple of weeks have seen us waking up every day to the mountain shrouded in fog. Dew falls lightly from the branches of the pine trees, sprinkling my shoulders as I duck under them to take Indy out into the paddocks.
And then one Wednesday night, it arrived. Rain. Not just a light shower, but proper, tumbling down rain. Rain that you could hear tapping on the laserlight of the verandah and which pooled in hollows in the driveway. I woke up that Thursday morning and sat at the kitchen table, clutching a mug of steaming tea and gazed out at the endless grey, as the rain continued to fall. I don't think I can recall a time I've felt so happy to see the grey. Normally I complain about it and long for patches of blue sky, but I think there's been too much blue sky this summer and so it was wonderful to see some rain.
Within days, it seemed as if the farm was swooning, head over heels in love with the rain, the dew, the colder nighttime temperatures that allowed droplets of water to rest and soak into the ground. Between the olives where only weeks ago it was dry, cracked and brown; patches of green are emerging. In the orchard, fruit trees that were tired, lifeless and wilting under the heat, begin to come back to life, their leaves swollen and on the citrus trees, tiny buds appear. In these moments I begin to see the rhythm of life on the farm. The Indian summer which has stretched out and dried everything begins to fade away and the land breathes a sigh of relief as moisture starts to creep back in.
We grow accustomed to waking up with the trees and mountain shrouded in fog. Already it doesn't lift until after 10 some mornings and we begin to get a sense of what winter will be like - I'm beginning to think that by the middle of winter I'll be yearning for sun - but not yet. Out in the paddocks after the rain, I use my gumboots to dig under the surface and the ground is morphing, becoming a rich, velvety chocolate rather than a dry, dusty brown.
I begin to dream of woollen blankets, coats, scarves, gloves. On top of the fire in the kitchen lie a pair of fingerless gloves, with interchangeable mitten tops that I bought at a market. I bought them on a day when it was nearly 30, when the idea of wearing mittens seemed laughable. Now, I look at them and know it won't be long till I'll be dragging them on before I head out for my morning walk in the grove.
With the arrival of cooler weather and the return of green, comes a new list of work to be done. The mower which has lay idle since the great mowing incident (hmmm I don't think I ever wrote about that on here did I? I'll get to it one day), will need to be dragged out again and once again my weekends will consist of the meditative pleasure of mowing up and down the rows in the grove, backwards, forwards, backwards, forwards. As the trees spring back into life I need to give them some care and attention and to the side of the house a whole mini vineyard has emerged - tiny grape plants pop up out of the soil in neat, symmetrical rows suggesting that at some point they were organised, and tended to with love and care. We begin planning for their growth, the emergence of another secret from Innisfree, and a new lot of learning to be done.
In the meantime, we like the farm, are falling in love with this new season that is upon us. I stare out the windows watching the parakeets and rosellas picking at seed on the makeshift bird feeder and smile as I look beyond them to the rows of green.
And then one Wednesday night, it arrived. Rain. Not just a light shower, but proper, tumbling down rain. Rain that you could hear tapping on the laserlight of the verandah and which pooled in hollows in the driveway. I woke up that Thursday morning and sat at the kitchen table, clutching a mug of steaming tea and gazed out at the endless grey, as the rain continued to fall. I don't think I can recall a time I've felt so happy to see the grey. Normally I complain about it and long for patches of blue sky, but I think there's been too much blue sky this summer and so it was wonderful to see some rain.
Within days, it seemed as if the farm was swooning, head over heels in love with the rain, the dew, the colder nighttime temperatures that allowed droplets of water to rest and soak into the ground. Between the olives where only weeks ago it was dry, cracked and brown; patches of green are emerging. In the orchard, fruit trees that were tired, lifeless and wilting under the heat, begin to come back to life, their leaves swollen and on the citrus trees, tiny buds appear. In these moments I begin to see the rhythm of life on the farm. The Indian summer which has stretched out and dried everything begins to fade away and the land breathes a sigh of relief as moisture starts to creep back in.
We grow accustomed to waking up with the trees and mountain shrouded in fog. Already it doesn't lift until after 10 some mornings and we begin to get a sense of what winter will be like - I'm beginning to think that by the middle of winter I'll be yearning for sun - but not yet. Out in the paddocks after the rain, I use my gumboots to dig under the surface and the ground is morphing, becoming a rich, velvety chocolate rather than a dry, dusty brown.
I begin to dream of woollen blankets, coats, scarves, gloves. On top of the fire in the kitchen lie a pair of fingerless gloves, with interchangeable mitten tops that I bought at a market. I bought them on a day when it was nearly 30, when the idea of wearing mittens seemed laughable. Now, I look at them and know it won't be long till I'll be dragging them on before I head out for my morning walk in the grove.
With the arrival of cooler weather and the return of green, comes a new list of work to be done. The mower which has lay idle since the great mowing incident (hmmm I don't think I ever wrote about that on here did I? I'll get to it one day), will need to be dragged out again and once again my weekends will consist of the meditative pleasure of mowing up and down the rows in the grove, backwards, forwards, backwards, forwards. As the trees spring back into life I need to give them some care and attention and to the side of the house a whole mini vineyard has emerged - tiny grape plants pop up out of the soil in neat, symmetrical rows suggesting that at some point they were organised, and tended to with love and care. We begin planning for their growth, the emergence of another secret from Innisfree, and a new lot of learning to be done.
In the meantime, we like the farm, are falling in love with this new season that is upon us. I stare out the windows watching the parakeets and rosellas picking at seed on the makeshift bird feeder and smile as I look beyond them to the rows of green.
Tuesday, 11 March 2014
Maiden Voyages
The long weekend glimmered like a beacon of hope after a busy but good first week of semester. I'd come home each day buzzing with enthusiasm about my uni teaching and the feedback I'd collected from students suggested they were enjoying the first week as much as me. Each night I came home exhausted and wondering when I would find time to sit down and do some of the writing my research and job demands. I'd even missed my regular Tuesday morning virtual 'shut up and write' session. Surely this week it will be easier to get some work related writing done? Here's hoping or it could be a lean year for research publications!
After the promise of rain all week, some finally fell on Friday evening. Clouds drifted across the landscape until the house was shrouded and rain floated through the air in soft sheets. It was far from a downpour, more a light splattering of drops, but it was enough to give me hope that rain will come again. After letting the rain tap my skin outside, Rohan and I sat down to watch some House of Cards as it is our new addiction. Halfway through an episode and the power went out. We padded around the house in the dark, and with the moon hiding behind the clouds, there was no light to penetrate the inky, black darkness. Each time the power goes off I'm suddenly reminded of all the reasons why we need a back up power source and our new water tanks. With the power out we only have the water in our pipes if the bore isn't pumping and at the front of the property our electronic gate stays firmly shut. So it was an early night, but not quite an old fashioned one as we both lay in bed, the room illuminated by the glow of our iPads.
Saturday morning and Rohan was up early to go hunting rabbits with Nam (and I've got a vision of a Disney cartoon in my head now). I, however, had woken with one of those headaches that makes you feel like your brain is sloshing against your skull each time you move your head. Standing up was like running a marathon, and Rohan, the saviour that he is fed me toast, tea and painkillers in bed before he headed outside. A few more hours of drug induced sleep and I was up, slowly inching around the paddocks trying to get fresh air to cure me. David, Jane, Lisa and Neale were coming up for the weekend and I was desperate to get my brain in working order before they arrived. All the things on my Saturday to-do list lay untouched, and I was even more grateful to house guests who arrived with lunch, wine, herbal tea and good spirits. I felt like a terrible host though, drifting off in conversation, pressing my fingers into the point at the back of my neck where I could feel some relief and wandering around the house in a zombie like state.
With my brain not working and a frantic week before I hadn't organised anywhere for dinner and so we headed to our new local a couple of k's up the road, the Shamrock, which had only opened the weekend before after a long period of renovations. I'd read some of the history of the pub and of the town it's located in, Dunnstown, which was named after James Dunn, a man who grew barley and made whiskey at a distillery located there in the 1850s. A once thriving town, it was populated by the Irish who fled the potato famine, and was popular given its location to the Ballarat goldfields. The distillery closed down and the Irish turned back to potato growing.
At home that afternoon I'd tried to get my head together by reading the Britt family history book that Jane had lent us. Reading it I realised her family history is intimately woven into the landscape all around us, with the pub down the road part of her extended family's stories. Looking at the map of the area with the names of the families that owned parcels of land, I saw Irish name after Irish name. Some of them are names that are familiar to me, names that belong to Irish families who also lived in the south-west where I grew up. As we drive towards the pub I wondered what place it will play in our new lives?
Inside it was busy and stories began to seep out of every brick. I recognised faces from the Christmas party at the community centre and while only a week old I had a sense that the pub would become a hub for the local community. The footy tipping chart hung on the wall, a few names (including Paddy O- can you get more Irish than that?) already pencilled in. At the bar we chatted with Shane, the publican and realised that even here we needed a booking for dinner! We ordered, thinking we'd eat at the bar, but got a table when Lisa did some hunting and some reorganisation. Towards the end of the meal, Shane got up and in ways reminiscent of a 21st thanked us all for being there, encouraged us to join the footy tipping and introduced the first of their sat night bands. I did some people watching, creating stories and lives for the people in the pub. 'There's a book in that pub', I said to Rohan Sunday morning as we lay in bed, 'I'll have to go back each week for research'. I'd sent Kat from work who has bought her parents house nearby an email telling her we'd taken our maiden voyage to the pub and she replied saying that her dad knows our property and knows about a whole range of the previous owners. He's keen to meet up at the pub to share a beer and some stories so I definitely have to go back now!
Sunday meant coffee, wandering around the Mill markets for bargains and then we took a trip up to the top of Mt. Warrenheip and peered out through the trees to find our farm in the distance, our rows of olives looking neat and symmetrical from far away.
Once our guests headed home, we decided to take our first off farm trip and headed to Warrnambool where we were picking up a load of kindling for our wood fire in the form of fence posts from where my folks had their fence replaced. Much as I love the olive groves and paddocks, I had been feeling a bit landlocked and was itching to hear the sound of the sea rolling in the distance through my bedroom window.
In Warrnambool it was like an Indian summer was underway, at the beach a surf lifesaving competition was on, fishermen filled the bay and people lazed around tables at Lake Pertobe. For a moment, I could just imagine it was the start of summer and that holidays stretched out before me. On Monday morning I headed into Kermonds for a burger, where tired Port Fairy Festival goers lingered outside taking pictures of themselves outside the shop.
If you're not from Warrnambool, you probably don't understand what the big deal is, but all I can say is if you're ever in the south-west then you have to do yourself a favour and try a burger (with double sauce to pretend you're a local). With my fix of the seaside it was time to head home and there the olives were waiting.
Tonight the rain has arrived, I sat at the kitchen table with Maryann who dropped in on her way home from work and we sniffed the air - that gorgeous smell of rain on hot, parched land. Indy and I wandered around the grove, rain falling while the sheep huddled under the trees. There, in the paddock, with rain falling on my bare arms, I was happy. A perfect farm moment captured in memory.
After the promise of rain all week, some finally fell on Friday evening. Clouds drifted across the landscape until the house was shrouded and rain floated through the air in soft sheets. It was far from a downpour, more a light splattering of drops, but it was enough to give me hope that rain will come again. After letting the rain tap my skin outside, Rohan and I sat down to watch some House of Cards as it is our new addiction. Halfway through an episode and the power went out. We padded around the house in the dark, and with the moon hiding behind the clouds, there was no light to penetrate the inky, black darkness. Each time the power goes off I'm suddenly reminded of all the reasons why we need a back up power source and our new water tanks. With the power out we only have the water in our pipes if the bore isn't pumping and at the front of the property our electronic gate stays firmly shut. So it was an early night, but not quite an old fashioned one as we both lay in bed, the room illuminated by the glow of our iPads.
Saturday morning and Rohan was up early to go hunting rabbits with Nam (and I've got a vision of a Disney cartoon in my head now). I, however, had woken with one of those headaches that makes you feel like your brain is sloshing against your skull each time you move your head. Standing up was like running a marathon, and Rohan, the saviour that he is fed me toast, tea and painkillers in bed before he headed outside. A few more hours of drug induced sleep and I was up, slowly inching around the paddocks trying to get fresh air to cure me. David, Jane, Lisa and Neale were coming up for the weekend and I was desperate to get my brain in working order before they arrived. All the things on my Saturday to-do list lay untouched, and I was even more grateful to house guests who arrived with lunch, wine, herbal tea and good spirits. I felt like a terrible host though, drifting off in conversation, pressing my fingers into the point at the back of my neck where I could feel some relief and wandering around the house in a zombie like state.
With my brain not working and a frantic week before I hadn't organised anywhere for dinner and so we headed to our new local a couple of k's up the road, the Shamrock, which had only opened the weekend before after a long period of renovations. I'd read some of the history of the pub and of the town it's located in, Dunnstown, which was named after James Dunn, a man who grew barley and made whiskey at a distillery located there in the 1850s. A once thriving town, it was populated by the Irish who fled the potato famine, and was popular given its location to the Ballarat goldfields. The distillery closed down and the Irish turned back to potato growing.
At home that afternoon I'd tried to get my head together by reading the Britt family history book that Jane had lent us. Reading it I realised her family history is intimately woven into the landscape all around us, with the pub down the road part of her extended family's stories. Looking at the map of the area with the names of the families that owned parcels of land, I saw Irish name after Irish name. Some of them are names that are familiar to me, names that belong to Irish families who also lived in the south-west where I grew up. As we drive towards the pub I wondered what place it will play in our new lives?
Inside it was busy and stories began to seep out of every brick. I recognised faces from the Christmas party at the community centre and while only a week old I had a sense that the pub would become a hub for the local community. The footy tipping chart hung on the wall, a few names (including Paddy O- can you get more Irish than that?) already pencilled in. At the bar we chatted with Shane, the publican and realised that even here we needed a booking for dinner! We ordered, thinking we'd eat at the bar, but got a table when Lisa did some hunting and some reorganisation. Towards the end of the meal, Shane got up and in ways reminiscent of a 21st thanked us all for being there, encouraged us to join the footy tipping and introduced the first of their sat night bands. I did some people watching, creating stories and lives for the people in the pub. 'There's a book in that pub', I said to Rohan Sunday morning as we lay in bed, 'I'll have to go back each week for research'. I'd sent Kat from work who has bought her parents house nearby an email telling her we'd taken our maiden voyage to the pub and she replied saying that her dad knows our property and knows about a whole range of the previous owners. He's keen to meet up at the pub to share a beer and some stories so I definitely have to go back now!
Sunday meant coffee, wandering around the Mill markets for bargains and then we took a trip up to the top of Mt. Warrenheip and peered out through the trees to find our farm in the distance, our rows of olives looking neat and symmetrical from far away.
Once our guests headed home, we decided to take our first off farm trip and headed to Warrnambool where we were picking up a load of kindling for our wood fire in the form of fence posts from where my folks had their fence replaced. Much as I love the olive groves and paddocks, I had been feeling a bit landlocked and was itching to hear the sound of the sea rolling in the distance through my bedroom window.
If you're not from Warrnambool, you probably don't understand what the big deal is, but all I can say is if you're ever in the south-west then you have to do yourself a favour and try a burger (with double sauce to pretend you're a local). With my fix of the seaside it was time to head home and there the olives were waiting.
Tonight the rain has arrived, I sat at the kitchen table with Maryann who dropped in on her way home from work and we sniffed the air - that gorgeous smell of rain on hot, parched land. Indy and I wandered around the grove, rain falling while the sheep huddled under the trees. There, in the paddock, with rain falling on my bare arms, I was happy. A perfect farm moment captured in memory.
Saturday, 1 March 2014
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.
- Mark Twain
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.
Saturday, 22 February 2014
Farm days
It's been a couple of weeks between posts and so I thought it was time for some farm life updates. Despite promises in the forecast of rain last week, we only had one day where there was proper rain, rain that tumbled down, turning the mountain a sea of mist and drenching us when we went outside in it. It didn't last long though and after a couple of downpours, it disappeared again. The forecast kept promising showers, but they didn't come, and instead, the clouds cleared and patches of blue sky took over as the sun streamed down. I'm sure that come winter, I'll be complaining about the cold and the rain, but I wouldn't have minded a bit more of it this week.
We've had more visitors at the farm which has been great. And I've been settling into farm life, by turning the farm into the site of my very own academic writing retreat - which you can read about at my worky blog here:DIY writing retreat
Leah came up a couple of weeks ago and we spent a lovely day feasting and catching up, while David and Rohan worked at the old house, plastering and painting in preparation for selling. It's amazing how the old house is starting to take shape under the coats of white paint and I wonder why we didn't finish the plastering and painting when we were there! (Well I know it was the houseful of furniture preventing us!).
David came back again this week to put in another day of painting while Rohan and I were at work. He's a painting, sanding and plastering machine and we can't even begin to thank him! Proof of his generous nature was when I dropped in to the house in Melbourne a couple of weeks ago as I left my car there and walked to a meeting nearby. I came back and he'd washed my filthy car to the point where I thought I was breaking into someone else's car as I put my key in the lock! That wins major votes in the father-in-law of the year competition!
My Mum and Dad arrived on Thursday morning for their regular swap meet adventure. They weren't sure how far out of town the new place was or if they would find it, but they're loving it now and spent a lot of time soaking up the sun through the kitchen windows, reading or watching the birds in the yard outside.
We've had more visitors at the farm which has been great. And I've been settling into farm life, by turning the farm into the site of my very own academic writing retreat - which you can read about at my worky blog here:DIY writing retreat
Leah came up a couple of weeks ago and we spent a lovely day feasting and catching up, while David and Rohan worked at the old house, plastering and painting in preparation for selling. It's amazing how the old house is starting to take shape under the coats of white paint and I wonder why we didn't finish the plastering and painting when we were there! (Well I know it was the houseful of furniture preventing us!).
David came back again this week to put in another day of painting while Rohan and I were at work. He's a painting, sanding and plastering machine and we can't even begin to thank him! Proof of his generous nature was when I dropped in to the house in Melbourne a couple of weeks ago as I left my car there and walked to a meeting nearby. I came back and he'd washed my filthy car to the point where I thought I was breaking into someone else's car as I put my key in the lock! That wins major votes in the father-in-law of the year competition!
My Mum and Dad arrived on Thursday morning for their regular swap meet adventure. They weren't sure how far out of town the new place was or if they would find it, but they're loving it now and spent a lot of time soaking up the sun through the kitchen windows, reading or watching the birds in the yard outside.
Our hope was that the new place would be filled with visitors, with talking, with laughter and with food and it has been this way so far. It's great being able to walk in the paddocks with family, to sit around the table sharing a meal with them, or to see Rohan and his Dad heading off into the back paddocks together in search of rabbits.
We've installed a makeshift bird feeding station in the yard - but so far they seem less interested in their bird seed and more interested in our fruit!
My evolution to country/ farm life person continues as I decided that what I really needed was to teach myself to quilt. HUH? I'm blaming country life magazine, the weekly times and removal from constant stimulus of shops for this. I've always liked sewing but with no space to spread out projects, I'd kind of abandoned it. But I woke up with an idea for quilt throws in two colour schemes. Fabric purchased and a quilt cutter at the ready, and I'm going all how to make an australian quilt - truth be told I loved 'How to make an American quilt' in both book and movie form - the combination of quilting, academic writing, and Winona Ryder in the film version - you can't go past it. So we'll see how I go, I'm not convinced I have the time to do this as I'm not sure I can fit everything I need to do in, let alone everything I want to do, but hey, having ambition and a plan is always good right?
Tonight's farm life adventure will be to cook Spaghetti Squash. I've never cooked them before but have been looking at recipes for them, tossed with garlic, herbs and parmesan cheese and I reckon it could be worth trying as a Sunday night farm recipe. Let's see how it goes :)
Sunday, 9 February 2014
The winds of Innisfree
It's been a quiet weekend here at the farm and I'm pretty happy about that, given that when I look at the CFA app Victoria seems to be a sea of triangles as fires burn out of control across the state.
Yesterday was another Saturday with a forecast in the high 30s heading towards 40. I'm getting a bit tired of summer now, every time I look at the forecast map and it shows a string of days over 30, I feel a little bit like weeping. Our paddocks have turned yellow and crispy and the longer summer stretches without rain, the more the ground hardens and dries beneath my feet. It's easy to be slightly deluded as to the extent of the summer heat when you look out at the evergreen olives and see them sparkling silvery, grey green in the light. Stray deeper into the paddocks or in between the rows and the grass cracks brown beneath your feet. Each morning I get up and run Indy for laps between the grove, our little 3k circuit wears the dog out and is enough for my arthritic knees to handle, by the time I return to the house they swell slightly and creak as I walk up the stairs at work. I conveniently ignore the surgeon's advice not to run, chowing down on fish oil and hoping that it may help the bone on bone smashing of my knees. Running here though is a delight, the parakeets swoop in between the olive trees as I run, the sheep gaze at me inquisitively from the other side of the fence and despite the fact I'm running laps I never bore of the landscape around me.
Rohan was out fixing a couple of solar panels to the array early Saturday morning so that we could actually generate some power- we were a couple of panels short of actually kicking over the system. Two more panels installed and we were cranking out 9 kilowatt hours (or killer wasp hours) a day and we were feeding back into the grid. Throughout the week I'd enjoyed watching the parakeets flit around the back garden (or what currently passes for garden) but they were beginning to colonise the nashi tree and eye off the fruit. I knew it was a battle when Rohan walked near the tree and a sea of green and red feathers came barrelling through the sky ready to swoop him as he went near 'their' fruit. Sorry birdies - much as I like you, those fruit are going to be mine! A quick trip to Bunnings to grab some bird netting for the nashi and for the grape vines which are beginning to be a favourite of the magpies.
Saturday night and the news bulletins were all about the extreme fire danger that Sunday would bring. I woke early to the sound of the wind whipping through the olive trees. It was hot, gusty and I began to worry about what the day would bring. Fire authorities were saying it was the worst day since Black Saturday and I was remembering flying back from Sydney to a state charred and hung with black cloud. My constant companion for the day was the CFA app and one of the first fires was one around the corner from our old house in town. By mid morning the change had arrived and the wind had swung around from the North to the South. The sky was clouded with dust, whipped up by the wind, but luckily we remained untouched by fires in our region. Others were no so lucky and I got messages from friends who had left home as townships and fields close to their homes began to burn. More than ever this summer I've had to think about what it would mean to pack up and leave a home, knowing that you might never see it again, and I've rationalised in my brain what I would take and cram in the car and what I'm happy to leave behind.
Sunday continued with a visit from Maryann and Chris, with Maryann bringing lime and poppy seed cake she got at an open garden not far from our place. After afternoon tea and a stroll around the paddocks I insisted she take it home (or I may have eaten the entire thing tonight in front of the tv). Chris got me thinking about cows, goats, sheep. More precisely he got me thinking about what is going to be best on our back paddocks and what is going to work best with the seasons and the quirks of the land we're living on. The deliberations will continue for another day as we try and learn the habits of our land.
I turned my thoughts to farm life food and baking. A social media campaign 'SPC Sunday' was in full flight, encouraging people to take photos of the SPC food products they were buying and eating. I'd seen a recipe for apple cake in the Weekly Times and was wanting to give it a whirl as Rohan is a sucker for any kind of cake business with apple involved. With no fresh apple, but an entire slab of SPC pie apple, it was time for baking.
Today's farm life food also involved making fresh pesto with basil from the window sill and parsley from the organic farm, and then my favourite lazy Sunday night meal of spicy ground beef pizza topped with yoghurt and coriander.
Now we've been in the paddocks carting water to the sheep and Rohan has taken over the kitchen as he begins to brew up a lightly hoppy ale.He's using wheat malt, dry light malt, dextrose and 50 grams of Galaxy hops.
The smell of malt and hops swirls up from the mixing pot, and this will be ready in time for Woody's 21st in March.
The winds of Innisfree have died down and so I end Sunday with the sweet smell of malt.
Yesterday was another Saturday with a forecast in the high 30s heading towards 40. I'm getting a bit tired of summer now, every time I look at the forecast map and it shows a string of days over 30, I feel a little bit like weeping. Our paddocks have turned yellow and crispy and the longer summer stretches without rain, the more the ground hardens and dries beneath my feet. It's easy to be slightly deluded as to the extent of the summer heat when you look out at the evergreen olives and see them sparkling silvery, grey green in the light. Stray deeper into the paddocks or in between the rows and the grass cracks brown beneath your feet. Each morning I get up and run Indy for laps between the grove, our little 3k circuit wears the dog out and is enough for my arthritic knees to handle, by the time I return to the house they swell slightly and creak as I walk up the stairs at work. I conveniently ignore the surgeon's advice not to run, chowing down on fish oil and hoping that it may help the bone on bone smashing of my knees. Running here though is a delight, the parakeets swoop in between the olive trees as I run, the sheep gaze at me inquisitively from the other side of the fence and despite the fact I'm running laps I never bore of the landscape around me.
Rohan was out fixing a couple of solar panels to the array early Saturday morning so that we could actually generate some power- we were a couple of panels short of actually kicking over the system. Two more panels installed and we were cranking out 9 kilowatt hours (or killer wasp hours) a day and we were feeding back into the grid. Throughout the week I'd enjoyed watching the parakeets flit around the back garden (or what currently passes for garden) but they were beginning to colonise the nashi tree and eye off the fruit. I knew it was a battle when Rohan walked near the tree and a sea of green and red feathers came barrelling through the sky ready to swoop him as he went near 'their' fruit. Sorry birdies - much as I like you, those fruit are going to be mine! A quick trip to Bunnings to grab some bird netting for the nashi and for the grape vines which are beginning to be a favourite of the magpies.
Saturday night and the news bulletins were all about the extreme fire danger that Sunday would bring. I woke early to the sound of the wind whipping through the olive trees. It was hot, gusty and I began to worry about what the day would bring. Fire authorities were saying it was the worst day since Black Saturday and I was remembering flying back from Sydney to a state charred and hung with black cloud. My constant companion for the day was the CFA app and one of the first fires was one around the corner from our old house in town. By mid morning the change had arrived and the wind had swung around from the North to the South. The sky was clouded with dust, whipped up by the wind, but luckily we remained untouched by fires in our region. Others were no so lucky and I got messages from friends who had left home as townships and fields close to their homes began to burn. More than ever this summer I've had to think about what it would mean to pack up and leave a home, knowing that you might never see it again, and I've rationalised in my brain what I would take and cram in the car and what I'm happy to leave behind.
Sunday continued with a visit from Maryann and Chris, with Maryann bringing lime and poppy seed cake she got at an open garden not far from our place. After afternoon tea and a stroll around the paddocks I insisted she take it home (or I may have eaten the entire thing tonight in front of the tv). Chris got me thinking about cows, goats, sheep. More precisely he got me thinking about what is going to be best on our back paddocks and what is going to work best with the seasons and the quirks of the land we're living on. The deliberations will continue for another day as we try and learn the habits of our land.
I turned my thoughts to farm life food and baking. A social media campaign 'SPC Sunday' was in full flight, encouraging people to take photos of the SPC food products they were buying and eating. I'd seen a recipe for apple cake in the Weekly Times and was wanting to give it a whirl as Rohan is a sucker for any kind of cake business with apple involved. With no fresh apple, but an entire slab of SPC pie apple, it was time for baking.
Today's farm life food also involved making fresh pesto with basil from the window sill and parsley from the organic farm, and then my favourite lazy Sunday night meal of spicy ground beef pizza topped with yoghurt and coriander.
Now we've been in the paddocks carting water to the sheep and Rohan has taken over the kitchen as he begins to brew up a lightly hoppy ale.He's using wheat malt, dry light malt, dextrose and 50 grams of Galaxy hops.
The smell of malt and hops swirls up from the mixing pot, and this will be ready in time for Woody's 21st in March.
The winds of Innisfree have died down and so I end Sunday with the sweet smell of malt.
Saturday, 1 February 2014
Eau de farmer
It's 10.45 on a Sunday morning, just nudging 36 degrees and I'm bathed in sweat. I smell like eau de farmer, a mixture of salt, earth and grass clippings. I'm thinking you could market it as 'Earthy', in a bottle the shape of a blade of grass and an ad campaign filled with endless sky and hay bales. Clearly I've been out in the sun too long this morning already. Sensible people would have been inside reading the Sunday papers and drinking a cup of tea before it gets too hot to contemplate tea drinking, but I was up early filling up on vegan chia pancakes and running Indy around laps of the grove before the heat really struck.
Then it was into the orchard where I wanted to do a quick spot of pruning before it got too hot. Tan came over yesterday to check out the new place and to have a look at our fruit trees. She pronounced them as being in pretty good shape given that they've been unloved for a while and is confident that they'll spring back into life with some care and attention. First task on the list was to get the secateurs Nam gave me for christmas and trim off the bits of branch that the sheep had broken off in their bipedal pruning work. Their edges weren't neat and tidy and Tan informed me that this is where disease can start in trees. Task two was to snip off bits that were crossing over and rubbing against each other as well, as this can also cause disease. Task three was to get rid of the green shoots that were springing up around the base of the trees as these suckers take valuable moisture away from the main tree. There were heaps of these and so this morning I was out, snipping them off, trying to ensure that the main tree won't have its water supply stolen by springy, stringy little interlopers. Some of the trees (mainly the cherry and pear trees not surprisingly) are suffering from a case of cherry and pear slug, so we'll have to get onto that, but Tan said chickens will help with that, which may explain why there was a door from the chicken coop into the orchard where I presume the chickens used to free range, pecking around the base of the trees. Some of the others have leaf shot, so we'll have to look into some remedies for that too. Our citrus need a good dose of epsom salts as the leaves are turning yellow and beginning to drop, and they are also hungry for a feed so we'll give them some food when the temperature drops a bit and some good watering to keep them happy over the next couple of hot days.
So I think pruning 101 went okay and I'm looking forward to sitting down in the heat of today reading this book which Tan gave us as a farm warming present:
Then it was into the orchard where I wanted to do a quick spot of pruning before it got too hot. Tan came over yesterday to check out the new place and to have a look at our fruit trees. She pronounced them as being in pretty good shape given that they've been unloved for a while and is confident that they'll spring back into life with some care and attention. First task on the list was to get the secateurs Nam gave me for christmas and trim off the bits of branch that the sheep had broken off in their bipedal pruning work. Their edges weren't neat and tidy and Tan informed me that this is where disease can start in trees. Task two was to snip off bits that were crossing over and rubbing against each other as well, as this can also cause disease. Task three was to get rid of the green shoots that were springing up around the base of the trees as these suckers take valuable moisture away from the main tree. There were heaps of these and so this morning I was out, snipping them off, trying to ensure that the main tree won't have its water supply stolen by springy, stringy little interlopers. Some of the trees (mainly the cherry and pear trees not surprisingly) are suffering from a case of cherry and pear slug, so we'll have to get onto that, but Tan said chickens will help with that, which may explain why there was a door from the chicken coop into the orchard where I presume the chickens used to free range, pecking around the base of the trees. Some of the others have leaf shot, so we'll have to look into some remedies for that too. Our citrus need a good dose of epsom salts as the leaves are turning yellow and beginning to drop, and they are also hungry for a feed so we'll give them some food when the temperature drops a bit and some good watering to keep them happy over the next couple of hot days.
So I think pruning 101 went okay and I'm looking forward to sitting down in the heat of today reading this book which Tan gave us as a farm warming present:
Meanwhile we continue to experiment with farm life food. I used Kale from the organic farm across the road to make our first batch of Kale chips, rolled in olive oil, smoky paprika and sea salt and then baked in the oven. Last night we made our first chia seed puddings with almond milk and cinnamon and topped with blueberries. My favourite dessert was to be had on our nightly stroll around the paddocks. The heat of the day had disappeared and the patches of pink were crawling across the sky. We paused at the mulberry tree and picked them, until the ripest ones were gone.
Close to 9pm we were still out there strolling with the dog and I was struck once again about how fortunate we are to be able to live this life. There's something about living here that causes me to stop and just appreciate what I have. I joke that the farm is making me overly sentimental, but maybe it's just reminding me that there are so many good, simple moments we can enjoy and it's much nicer to revel in them than to dwell in the frustrations, annoyances and negativities of life. Some people seem to like it when there's drama and negativity, they thrive on it and seek it out.
Here at Innisfree, we're choosing to dwell with the good.
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