Introducing Mairead An!

Here is our wee girl! So happy to have her here with us, she was born beautifully in the water April 30 after a very short, sharp labour! Ro has been wonderful with her, tries to feed her his brocolli and informs me she needs milk when she pokes out her tongue. We are happily tucked up in the yurt as the weather turns autumn and frost sparkles on our roof in the morning sun...

A wee turtle cave

The other morning Cam found a wee baby turtle tumbled into the grease-trap pit (part of the greywater reed bed system, more on that anon), and duly plopped it in the dam.




Then a few days later our Canadian woofers found another one, also in the pit!



That afternoon we spotted some pieces of soft shell in a tiny cave broken open in the wall of the trench to the grease-pit, the pieces of about six or so eggs and in one the dried fragile leather of a small turtle’s shell, a little one who didn't make it to the water.



(P.S. Still getting my head around new Mac - no idea why this photo is coming in sideways?! If you would all obligingly turn your heads onto your left shoulders you will see the soft bits of shell in the foreground!)

Settled, truly in yurtish, nomad style

Hello everyone!!! Apologies for the long radio silence, we've been madly on the road and the internet hasn't been handy, but - finally, and in what style! - we are settled again and able to roam here once more (albeit for the next little while on a friend's computer up the driveway a little way)....We have come to Mulloon Creek Natural Farm; a couple of Saturdays ago we unpacked a yurt from a box and built it, et voila! Stunning views, a dam out the window to jump in on hot days, a cow to share the milking of, and a huge farm out the door for Cam to run around doing keyline design and holistic management and natural sequence farming, etc etc! One of the etc's being to teach permaculture and all of the above through the Mulloon Institute, which aims to go beyond teaching and sharing about sustainability practices (from an urban to broadacre scale) towards regeneration and restoration of damaged landscapes. Woohoo!

Meanwhile I shall be growing our new baby along with all the fruit, vegies, berries, nuts, herbs and spices that could be needed by the eight families who live on site; the farm is several thousand hectares straddling the Dividing Range and produces free-range organic and biodynamic pastured eggs and beef. All in all, I feel like I'm in Heaven! I promise to be back soon with some photos...

Spring fertility

Sneezing, itching, eyes streaming – wandering the garden like a small walking storm system, watering hankies, thinking how marvellous it is my body can intercept and register so well all this fertility of the plants!

Spring is sprung!

Here's Ro and Cam preparing the terrace beds ready for their spring planting. Many little seedlings are sprouting in trays in the greenhouse, corn and tomatoes and capsicums and pumpkins, cucumbers and many other delicious things....

Ro aerating the soil with the very fine Gundaroo tiller:

Putting straw out over the slashed green manure crop (oats and broad beans) to keep the carbon in the soil:




Ready to go!

Herb harvest

Cam and Yarrow collecting calendula flowers to dry for tea.

Spawning frogs

One of our lovely students has given us some eggs from her established pond to hatch frogs into ours. I've slopped them in among the water plants and fingers crossed they make it through to frog-hood!

Go well, wee froglets!

Yarrow puts foot in mouth

Fox-proof fencing to keep chickens safe

Cam did a design at the start of the year for a couple in Eltham who are mad-keen bottlers and preservers, whenever they go on trips they scour all the little local op shops for forgotten boxes of Fowler's preserving jars...

They wanted a large orchard plum-full of all sorts of delicious fruit, as well as vegies and chickens and drought-proofing for the whole place, fire-proofing etc. Ro and I came along for the day as Cam took his students from the permaculture diploma course at Eltham College to do some prac about fencing and irrigation at the property.


Here's Cam laying out a "skirt" of chicken wire at the bottom of the fence, which will be buried, so foxes can't dig under the fence into the orchard, where the chooks will be roaming and feasting on fallen fruit and insects, and dropping poo as fertiliser:



The top of the fence is angled out, and deliberately loose, so foxes can't climb over it:

The skirt being buried:

The students tacking the fence to the poles (orchard swales in background):

Meanwhile, Yarrow just adjusting the mirror and getting ready to drive us home at the end of the day:

Tree lingering

Out walking with Ro and we came across this tree, for all the world like it had its bark knickers caught in its bottom! 

But stunningly beautiful, even as it made me smile.

Ro's first birthday

It was Ro's first birthday just a little bit ago, and I was on midwifery placement caring for women in labour, thinking, "This time last year I was in Samoa doing this..."

Wow.

...woke up just before dawn in the glowing white box of our mozzie net in the moonlight, full moon out the window, with the first pains just starting quietly, and our little man was born in our bedroom with two local midwives, five incredible hours later.   

And now that small, naked and slippery little fella, so freshly new -  but surely somehow always here too! - is one! And I've been a Mum, and Cam a Dad, four seasons. 

Wow. 

Walkabout at the coast

Mum came down to help us out while I'm on a midwifery placement at hospital. We went down south for a wander in the rainforest and played on a play-ship, washed up on the beach...

Harvesting winter spuds

Our neighbour above us on our hill here, who has been gardening his patch for 20 years and every inch is growing an edible something, told us we can grow potatoes right through winter. So we have, and here are Cam and Ro harvesting one patch (we still have several more around the garden to go).

The joy of rich old books

I was thrilled when Cam found 'Dinotopia' by James Gurney the other day at a secondhand bookshop. 

I used to love his beautiful paintings of a magical island, surrounded by treacherous reefs, where dolphins guided shipwrecked humans to the shore... And there, in desert and mountain top, swamp and forest, in a city carved out of rock in the middle of a huge crashing waterfall, dinosaurs and humans lived in harmony together, sharing the wisdom of the old, old reptiles with the skills of the humans and creating together a vibrant and joyful life. 

I think it is my idea of perfect community - creativity, sharing, purpose, colour, spice and FUN! (Minus the dinosaurs, nowadays, alas!)

Going, going, gone

Swallowed by vegetable jungle, a small boy...