Author Archives: sophie

PETA’s shock and awe anti-wool campaign is offensive to the public and farmers

by . Posted on
13 May

The latest PETA campaign featuring a fake freshly shorn sheep covered in blood is wrong. And that’s coming from a former vegan.

 

I was a vegan for more than 20 years. I used to think that all human interference with animal life was cruel and contrary to our purpose here on earth. I was convinced I was right about that and my dietary choices demonstrated my higher spiritual evolution. Much of this time I battled with drug, alcohol and nicotine addictions and anorexia and then bulimia, so it wasn’t that my body was a temple, but that every thing on God’s earth deserved the right to live in peace.

My dietary choices were a pain in the proverbial for my family, friends, and stressed waitresses in restaurants in the days before you could chop and change everything on the menu to suit your selfish needs. I didn’t subscribe to any group or read any literature and this was long before Google or information on tap. I made up my own mind based on my beliefs.

And then a naturopath told me my body was starving and I had to eat eggs or sardines. Well there was no way I could eat little fish in cans so I bought chooks, loved them and was grateful for their gorgeous golden eggs every day. A few years later I bought my riverside paradise, met a man (who I converted to vegan), settled down, got married, had a baby. And I wondered, will I know if he needs meat, and if he does, will I cook it for him? I wrestled with that a lot. And then one day, like a bolt from the blue, I looked at my toddler and knew he needed meat. So my journey to source ethically raised and grown meat began. In the end I realised we would have to do it ourselves.
Australian musician Jona Weinhofen in PETA’s controversial anti-wool campaign.

Australian musician Jona Weinhofen in PETA's controversial anti-wool campaign. Photo: PETA

Australian musician Jona Weinhofen in PETA’s controversial anti-wool campaign. Photo: PETA

Australian musician Jona Weinhofen in PETA’s controversial anti-wool campaign. Photo: PETA

Nature is cruel. I have rescued and wept over sheep ripped apart by wild dogs. Chooks taken by foxes and wild boars. Ducks stolen by wild dogs, and hunted by sea eagles. Chicks swallowed whole by pythons. Cattle, alpaca, sheep and piglets felled by paralysis ticks. Alpaca attacked by wild dogs, birth deformities and so on.
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And yes, some farming practices are cruel – ripping calves straight off their mothers to assuage our endless hunger for dairy products. We have rescued many male “bobby” calves to save them being shot but they often just lie down and die. No will to live. They want their mothers and who can blame them?

None of us are perfect. And there are certainly farming methods that can be improved. But ultimately we, as consumers, can demand that change by choosing sustainable produced fruit, vegetables and meat with a transparent supply chain from paddock to plate. Or not. We can continue to expect the duopoly to make ethical choices us for us, believe the sales hype on the packaging, or we can connect with farmers and make sure that what they say is true.

The latest PETA campaign with Aussie born and raised musician Jona Weinhofen carrying a fake freshly shorn sheep covered in blood is offensive to the public and farmers alike. More shock and awe from the vociferous vegans with farmers left reeling in their tracks.

Sheep need to be shorn every year just like we need our hair cut. Without shearing sheep can die of heat, and would struggle to carry the weight of an unshorn fleece. Shearing is essential regardless of whether the wool is used for insulation, carpets, woollen clothes etc. In fact most Aussie wool goes to the UK where everyday people wear wool everyday.

Australians don’t wear wool, they wear mass produced cotton and synthetics from China. It’s all very convenient to express shock at the poor sheep, but not to question the terrifying pollution in China (think of the birds), the chemical run-off into rivers and streams from bleaching, dyeing processes and so on (think of the fish, the frogs, the water birds, the eels, turtles etc). The chemicals needed to turn petrochemicals into clothes, let alone the pesticides used in the growing of cotton. Give me a nice woollen jumper any day!

Australia grew on the sheep’s back and now we scorn those animals and the shearers who were our lifeblood. Yes, there are some pricks in the industry. Show me an industry that doesn’t have a few cruel, heartless people.

Sometimes sheep do get a few nicks while shearing. So do some men while shaving their faces. It’s nothing to bleat over. And certainly not the bloodbath PETA would have us believe.

If PETA and the rabid vegans of the world want to change the eating and wearing habits of the masses they need to stick to the truth, examine their own hypocrisies, and have an open and honest debate and discussion about animal welfare and where food comes from.

They need to acknowledge there is no perfect way to be human on this planet without harming animals. Everything we eat, everything we buy, everything we use has involved some process which harms the environment and therefore harms animals – all the chemicals and plastics and dioxins and pesticides and fossil fuels that are used every day in order to give us the plastic packaging, smartphones, computers, synthetic fleece and plastic shoes mass produced in sweatshops by small children.

Vegans profess kindness to animals, but my God they can be cruel to their fellow humans if they don’t agree with their lifestyle choices. Humans are animals too!

And there is a conscious way to eat meat, which I have reluctantly realised is good for the human body. I’m older now, hopefully wiser, and more aware and honest about what my body needs to be healthy – that includes some meat. We can all eat meat more consciously – buy direct from the farmer, share a beast with friends – fill the freezer and then eat sparingly and with due reverence for the life that has been given. Wear wool with pride and joy – not only is it better for our bodies to wear natural fibres that can breathe easily, but the planet can breathe better without all those chemical concoctions used for man made fibre.

For the record, bees are happy to have honey harvested when the hives are overflowing. We always leave plenty for them to survive and thrive. Nothing could be more natural than wearing and weaving wool, hemp and flax, eating eggs and honey to supplement the fruit and veg we grow, and occasionally killing a beast and feasting, storing all the rest in the freezer. One steer will feed our family beef for two years. This is how humans have always eaten – with respect and love for nature, with honour for all life, with gratitude for nature’s abundance, using the whole beast, skin and all for leather.

I used to be a vegan. But I’m all right now.

 

The food journey begins . . .

by . Posted on
01 Apr

So when the little one’s soul was screaming for meat, I had to go shopping. And discovered that buying good quality, organic, free range meat is not possible in either of the Duopoly’s chains. Strike One!

Then I hunted out butchers. In the UK these are normally jovial chaps with a real passion for quality meat and making sausages etc. They are artisans, artists of meat. But in Oz I found they were often rude and told outright lies in order to get me to buy their products. Strike Two!

Finally I found a butcher with integrity, who laughed when I told him it was the first time in a butcher’s shop for over 20 years and that I was a vegetarian. The expressions on my face must have been priceless at times as I looked at his wares and listened to his spiel. It was great to find good organic free range chicken, albeit very yellow and skinny so corn fed and maybe marathon runners?

And sourcing goat from him was wonderful. The energy of goat is very clean and pure, nurturing and rich. I never had a problem working with it in the kitchen while other meats made me gag. And goat stew in Autumn and winter is just so wonderful, rich, flavoursome and full of goodness.

It was hard at first, to handle and cook dead animals. But most Mothers will do anything for their children, and despite my ingrained belief at the time that I was a bad Mother, my willingness to forsake all my beliefs for my son speaks to the contrary!

And the more my son ate, as he transitioned from milk and purees, the more interested and involved I became in food – where it came from, what was in it, who grew it and with what energy, intention and chemicals involved.

We ate better as a result. Our diets became more varied, diverse and rich. I learned to bake (and let me tell you I was the worst – I have burned more cakes than you have ever eaten!) and good food became a passion. I always say our children come to heal us and Ben healed my food issues and opened me up to just how nurturing and delightful food can be.

I sourced the best, in bulk – stocked up the pantry and freezers with home cooked and home grown produce with all the goodness intact. As friends and woofers came to stay they praised my food and started dialogues and journeys of consciousness around food that sparked the idea of sharing good food on a wider basis . . . one day . . .

Buying a Farm . . . The ultimate Tree Change . . .

by . Posted on
25 Mar

When I was in the process of buying the farm in 2007 it was with no other thought than to have room to breathe, to run, to ride our horses, to watch and wonder at the star and sky scapes.

‘You do know the river floods?’ was the first question old George asked me when we spoke to him about doing some tractor work and cleaning up almost a decade of neglect. ‘Of course,’ I retorted, thinking ‘does he think I’m an idiot . . .?’

Little did I guess that my plan to be alone and write was to be swiftly shattered – by love. The best laid plans and all that . . .

Ged came to assess the solar and something happened to our souls. Destiny struck and our lives were inextricably intertwined.

How little we knew . . . about the rapidly rising floodwaters that could cut us off for ten days; about the tractor hours needed to slash all the weeds; about the animals we would love and lose; about the wild dogs howling from the hilltops and hounding our beloved sheep and ducks.

About the beautiful boy who was soon to bless our lives and how that would change everything . . .

I had been a vegan for over 20 years. I soon had Ged eating that way too and he lost a heap of weight and was healthier as a result. We set up a wonderful veggie garden and as far as possible ate home grown. I wondered whether I would know or be able to acknowledge if my son was a carnivore. Would I raise him as a vegetarian or would I listen to his soul needs?

One day I was in the kitchen and he was sitting in his baby chair eating and I knew, with a sudden bolt of consciousness, that he was a carnivore to his bones. That meant we had to either buy or grow meat. And a whole different journey began . . .

Those little bodies – so precious, so pure. Most parents want to protect that purity, to feed and nurture their children with the most wholesome, natural food they can get. We were no different. We just had a bit more room . . .

Vale Ping, beautiful friend

by . Posted on
21 Feb

Soon after we got here, almost 8 years ago, we got our first ducks.  Just some little ducklings from the rural store.  Of course we knew nothing about ducks and some of them drowned in the washing up bowl of water we had given them to swim in.  Two survived.  They were Muscovies and as they grew with their red beaks and crowns we decided we wanted prettier ducks so we went online and bought Peking ducklings.  Little bundles of yellow which Phoenix happily herded around the yard in awe and wonder.

One was called Ping after the little yellow duck on the Yangtze River in the story of the same name that I loved and treasured as a child.  Ping & Pong were the favourites of 6. They grew into gorgeous glowing white bundles of feather with glossy golden beaks.  Waddling from the house paddock to the river where they bathed, primped and preened before gliding over the river below us.  They huddled down at night in front of the tie rail and it was from there over a serious of nights that 4 were taken by a wild dog creeping right into the house paddock night after night.  Such brazen thievery deserved the death penalty which Ged duly delivered when he was home.  We do not tolerate predators who treat us and our animals as an all you can eat buffet.

And then there were two.  Ping and Pong remained.  We were given an Indian Runner x Peking and the girls had a boyfriend.  A happy trio.  Always a joy to see on land or water and very noisy at feeding time when they waddled to the feed shed and demanded to be fed.  Not long after Brave (Ged’s horse) came to live with us we found Ping in a terrible state with a broken leg and broken wing.  We can only conjecture what happened but my feeling is that Brave, young, cheeky and a bit wild and excitable probably kicked her.

Sometimes we have to make cost-efficiency calls about sick animals.  We were unlikely to take Ping to the vet.  So we amputated half the wing (secateurs) and splinted the leg with paddle pop (lolly) sticks.  We dosed her up with antibiotics (wing was infected) and Flower Remedies and Homeopathics, our go to staples for physical, psychological and all other ailments.  We kept her on the verandah for about 10 days, every morning expecting her to have died overnight, every night exhorting her to live.

It was a miracle that she recovered.  But she did.  And she has lived a lovely happy life.  Only stressed by the visitations of the sea eagles which have shown me what duck diving really is!  But she has slowed down a lot over the last year.  Presumably with arthritis in that broken leg which never set completely straight having broken right above the knee joint.  Ged and I have watched her and known that at some time we were going to have to do the right thing by her and end her life.  But who wants to end the life of such a true and trusted friend who has delighted us so much over so many years?  Not I.  Not Ged.

But that decision has thankfully been taken from us.  She is gone.  Ben woke us up yelling at us one morning ‘the sea eagle, the sea eagle’.  And since then we have not seen Ping.  Ben has said he saw the sea eagle low and carrying something white.  Whether that is true or not we will never know.  But we know that Ping is gone.  Vale, friend, thank you for all the joy you gave us.  I hope the end was quick.  We will never forget you, always remember you with great love.

 

We’re not in Kansas any more, Toto . . .

by . Posted on
06 Jan

We went to Ged’s parents for Christmas Day.  I wanted to leave at tea time but Ged was revelling in the bosom of his blood family and we we ended up staying after supper.  There were storms brewing all day but only a smattering of rain in Beechwood.  It was hot and humid.  The lunch was lovely and we were all relaxed and chatty.

It rained on the way home and the dirt roads were damp, but when we got further down Tilbaroo we realised from the muddy puddles on the road and the depth of scrubby creek that there had been a significant rain event.  We drove through the river and up the bank towards the house.  The trampoline was bent in half and down near the river’s edge.  Its green and black spring cover was draped over the swings by the flying fox.  I opened the gate & the ground was spongy.  I realised that half of one of the crepe myrtles was felled in front of Ben’s cubby.  As I closed the gate I looked down the river flat and realised that the new timber caravan we have made as wwoof accommodation was no longer up on blocks.  I walked down there in my strappy sandals and long summer dress.  It had moved over 15 feet.  What the hell had happened here?

Ged got Ben into bed and back to sleep (he had woken up when he heard us exclaiming about his trampoline) and then we headed off to check on everything.  ‘We’d better take the chainsaw’ I told Ged.  ‘Let’s just see what’s what’ he replied.  We took hay down to the stallion, Sandy.  The alpacas were completely freaked out and watching something warily.  We couldn’t see anything.  Sandy was drenched and lame on one hind.

Then we started over the hill to the other side of the farm.  We didn’t get far before realising the road was impassable.  I reversed down and turned around and we went back for the chainsaw.  And then we spent two hours, in the dark and drizzle, cutting up and humping not one, but 5 trees progressively blocking our path.  Just by the car headlights.  Finally we got through at about 10.30pm and made it through the tree debris and mud to the other side.  Every track was littered with branches and the short track to the Point Paddock was completely blocked with a big tree.  More reversing.  Then we got to the bees.

Or what was left of them.  Or what we could see of them.  We had to come back and put on our bee suits before going back to even begin to sort them out.  It was an unbelievable mess.  Massive, healthy trees ripped apart and dumped on top of the bees.  Hives smashed, bees everywhere, branches on top of hives and branches blocking bee entries.  They were stressed.  I spoke gently to them as I moved branches ‘it’s all right, darlings, we’re trying to help . . . ‘  I really didn’t want to get stung.

We cleared around the hives that were still standing and worked our way over to the main mess.  A huge tree had fallen on three hives.  They were smashed to pieces.  Bees were swarming.  Ged said we had to come home and knock together the few new boxes he had (unpainted) and try and rescue the bottom boards and lids from the smashed hives to see if he could rescue the hives.  It was just devastating.  Brand new hives, newly painted, newly populated with nuts, and all going so well.  It was so bizarre. Big, healthy trees wrenched off at half mast.

We were covered in bees and trying to brush them gently away before getting in the car.  I got a few stings through my jeans and then a big one in my hand when I took my gloves off in the car.  We stopped the car a few times on the way home to shed more bees and kept picking them off the dash and mirror and putting them out of the windows.  I got a bit neurotic and stripped off my bee suit, convinced there was one in there. Having been stung on the crown of my head two days before, I didn’t want another!  They really hurt!

We came home and I cleaned the house while Ged banged in the shed.  He went backwards and forwards many times that night trying to save all he could of our precious bees and hives.  I cleaned and cooked until 3 and then had a bath and went to bed to read.  I was wired, I needed to chill out.  He came in, showered and crashed after 4.  So much for our nice relaxing Christmas night watching Downton . . .

I woke up at 6 and Ben was up soon after.  He and I had a quiet breakfast together and let Ged sleep.  And then we had to get started.  We had guests coming to The Tree House so I got on with the cleaning, while Ged rang his parents to tell of the devastation and his Dad offered to come and help.  In the daylight it was worse.  We could see the full scale of the devastation.  Huge beautiful trees uprooted or twisted off at half mast.  Healthy trees.  Strong trees.  Limbs wrenched from trunks.  Smashed branches everywhere.  Every track, every paddock, littered with debris.  We’d just been admiring how good it all looked before Christmas . . . pride before a fall and all that . . .

The cleanup will take a year.  On the bright side, Ged reckons we will get some good fence posts out of the fallen trees.  Team McCarthy came for a full morning or chainsawing and helping with all the mess.  We are so grateful for that.  We got the major farm roads cleared.  Still plenty to do.  In the daylight all agreed that we had been hit by a ‘twister’ or tornado.  Every other farm fine.  As I said to Ged, now I know what ‘An Act of God’ is . . .

As always we have plenty to do without cleaning up after Mother Nature’s wilful, savage, act of destructive fury.  I wish she’d had her temper tantrum somewhere else.  Oh well, we weren’t here to see it and Phoenix didn’t run away and the rest is all just time and money . . .

It just goes to show that we can’t leave the farm even for a day . . . and there’s no such thing as a day off for a farmer . . .

When fear is a missing friend . . .

by . Posted on
27 Dec

Ged left the farm at about 3pm to meet Ben on 10th December and I for Ben’s final preschool presentation.  All was well.  Phoenix had been in the office with him and following him around all day – situation absolutely normal.  After the event, we went into town for supper and then I stayed to do the shopping.  Ben and Ged were home by about 7 – no Phee.  So after getting Ben to sleep Ged went out calling and searching, but didn’t tell me he was gone.  I didn’t get home til 9, exhausted, and was then told that Phoenix wasn’t home.  I was pretty hysterical.  Didn’t sleep a wink.  Terrified that I was never going to see his sweet face, brown eyes and waggling tail again.  He’s getting old, my friend.  All of a sudden.  Lame and slower.  Time has suddenly stolen his essential puppy-ness.

They say that about spaniels.  They say that they are eternally young until just before the end.  I don’t want to lose Phoenix.  I don’t want him to ever leave me.  Especially not so soon after Baby – I can’t bear the thought of another two years of grief.  I have been worrying about him going and realising that our time together is limited.  But not so soon, please.

At first light we were up and searching.  Nothing.  We hit the phones and rang all the neighbours.  When he was much younger he would occasionally go walkabout – but not for more than 5 years.  I went driving – it was a foul day, chucking it down.  I saw George and told him and he gave me phone numbers of other occasional neighbours to call. Eventually we all had to get on with our day.  I had to clean The Tree House for the visitors arriving later.  Ged took Ben to preschool & went off to work.  Phoenix didn’t have a collar or a tag on.  His collar had just broken & a new one on the shopping list.

I was scrubbing & polishing when Ged rang and said that our lovely neighbour Pat had just rung him to say Phee had been spotted – over 5 klms away and heading for the highway.  I got in the car and drove through the river and cross country over her land.  She met me at the house gate and told me that the fencers had come in and seen him on Wallis Road, heading out to the highway – looking exhausted, apparently.  A big storm was hot on my heels and Phee hates thunder and lightning now he is old.  Apparently all dogs do.

So I drove as if the hounds of hell themselves were yapping at my tailgate.  Trying to get to him before the storm made visibility impossible.  Thunder was rumbling and booming.  Lightning streaking the sky. My poor boy was out there somewhere, terrified.  Pat said that her neighbour, Barb, had heard a dog barking outside her house all night – it must have been Phee.  She had rung Pat to ask if it was one of hers.  If only we had rung her the night before.

Oh well . . . hindsight is a wonderful thing.  And wouldn’t find my friend.  I drove all the way out to the highway.  There was a tree down across the road – I just drove over it such was my haste to find him before he got run over on the busy Oxley Highway.  He wasn’t there.

I turned round and retraced my route.  Stopping at the few isolated farms to ask if they had seen a small black spaniel with a white front.  No sign.  I drove slowly on the return trip, scanning the surrounding countryside.  The rain was lashing the windscreen.  I met the fencers as they drove back home ‘any sign?’ I asked them.  ‘Nothing’ they said.  They had chopped up and moved the fallen tree.  I was despairing.  And then there he was on the road in front of me.  Wild eyed, soaked, bedraggled.  Thank God.

I grabbed the rug from out of the boot and wrapped him up in it, sitting him on the passenger seat and hugging him over and over again.  He was wet to the bone, violently shivering, and he barely recognised me, such was his terror.  My poor, beautiful boy.

We got back to Pat’s and told her the glad tidings.  And then I took him home before yet another storm hit.  Dosed him up with Emergency Essence and Arnica for his poor tired muscles and bones.  He must have run over 20 kilometres.  But why?

When he was safely home and in recovery there was the time and space to ask that question.  Ged spoke to Pat and asked whether there had been a big storm after he left that day.  Sure enough, she said there had been.  He must have been scared and just started running.  Why he ran that way and not home we will never know.  He must have become disoriented and just kept running.  Maybe he thought Barb’s house was our house and that’s why he barked all night.  Why didn’t he stop at Pat’s house?  She would have recognised him . . .

What a wake up call.  That every moment is precious with my dearest friend.  That we can’t take our time together for granted.  That one day, inevitably, everyone we love has to leave us.  That I have to make time, carve time, to spend just being with the ones I love.  There’s no point taking them for granted and then mourning them when they are gone.  Take the time to love them when they are here on planet earth.  Take time to PLAY, to connect, to have fun, to stop treating them all like annoyances.  So what if Phee traipses mud all over the floor – he’s here with his loving energy, his unconditional love for me whatever I do or say.  The last words I spoke to him before he ran away the following day were to yell at him for making a mess.  That’ll learn me – or will it?

 

Life Lesson

by . Posted on
08 Nov

It’s been almost two years since my beloved horse, Baby, was released from her pain by Ged and his gun.  Almost two years of grieving.  Brought to my knees by the physical pain of loss, feeling like my heart has been torn in two, flung to the ground by tsunamis of tears and aching, shaking misery at never touching or holding or seeing her again.

I have knelt on my yoga mat with her halter clutched to my chest and wept oceans of tears for my friend, my mother, my comforter, my saviour, my rock.  She was all those things to me.  Just to walk alongside her with her lead rope in my hand, chatting or silent, brought me incalculable happiness.  I didn’t spend enough time with her.  I didn’t make time to spend with her.  I was too busy with renovating the house, falling in love, all the work involved in getting married on the farm, improving the farm, looking after all the other animals, having a baby, being tied to the house and Ben . . .

Poor Baby didn’t get a look in.  And yet when I did make time to take her swimming or stand in the river and wash her down, or give her a bath with shampoo and conditioner, I was filled with a simple happiness and joy.  Feelings that were so rare in all my post natal and menopausal depression.  Why didn’t I realise that I could create feelings of peace, contentment and light-heartedness simply by being with her, feeling her immense solidity and roundedness.  She was an anchor for me for 12 years, tethering me to the planet when my depression and despair urged me to leave it.

Whenever I drove or walked past her I would whistle and she would lift her head and whiffle at me.  So much said in that sound.  ‘Hi. I miss you.  I love you.  I see you.’ So much connection in that simple exchange of love.  Yet she wasn’t a great cuddler.  Normally walked away from me and was hard to catch.  Loved to turn her ass on me and have her put scratched while she swayed against my hands and body, loving the satisfaction of a human scratching post.  She would never let me kiss her soft sweet muzzle.  I would kiss her eyelids and stand forehead to forehead with her.  And I loved to fondle her hairy tipped ears.  I knew every inch of her so well, I can still visualise her beautiful hooves, knees, legs (she had great legs!) soft, warm, rounded coat and body.  The strands of silver in her mane at the wither, the thick tangles in her tail to be combed out with patience and great love.  The wild little plaits in her mane that she and nature created that I would tease out, loving standing with her – another opportunity to just BE with her, forgetting all the ‘to do’ lists for once.

I have been a slave to those lists for so long.  As if achievement brings happiness, when all it does is bring the next ‘to do’ closer.  I haven’t stopped to smell the roses or take time to rest or play for years.  Those are things she has taught me in her passing.  I guess she had to leave to teach me that.  Now I take time for Second Chance who really is Baby come back to me.  She loves to stand and smooch with me and loves me to kiss her muzzle and stand nose to nose, breath to breath, just being, breathing, communing.  As with Baby we stand third eye to third eye, sharing spiritual space.  Chancy lets me drip tears and snot on her as I still weep for Baby and in gratitude that she came back to me in this new form.  This new bay with her pretty, dainty, feet and floating movement.

I have learned so much from Baby and her passing and I have changed.  I have slowed down, become much less impatient, more willing to stop and spend time, more understanding that the lists are endless and always will be and we can only do one thing at a time, and do it well.  And that taking time to play and be with the ones we love is not wasted time, but the most precious time of all.  That is not DOING but BEING that we will be remembered for.

Yes, I want to make my mark on the world, but I have realised that if I can love and be loved, if I can shape and grow a healthy, happy, engaged and engaging child with a conscience.  If I can act with integrity, follow my heart and dreams as well as crossing things off the list, I will be happier and mentally healthier, as well as improving the lives around me.  In fact, by slowing down, breathing and be more present, I and everyone around me are happier.

I am so much happier recently.  I have never known such peace, happiness and contentment.  I have rediscovered music, singing and dancing. I have had time to be outside engaging in hard physical labour and am loving the peace of mind and stillness that brings.  I am more relaxed, less tense, and more aware of what makes me tense and beginning to love myself enough to avoid those things and situations (self sabotage is still pretty strong in me though!).  I am growing older and growing up.

And as I pondered my new-found happiness the other day as I talked to Baby, sitting on the beautiful cedar block Ged carved to mark her resting place, I realised that maybe the ultimate gift she gave me was in her passing.

She gave me the gift of grief.  An opportunity to clear out a lifetime’s pain and sorrow by howling out my pain and heartbreak.  Grief brings all loss to the surface.  It allows us the opportunity to spring clean our damaged souls.  All the heartache and heartbreak I have sobbed for has cleaned me out, cleared out the backlog, detritus and junk creating that eternal melancholy in my mind.  Now I can be happy.

The ultimate gift, the ultimate sacrifice, by she who knew me better than anyone, who came to save and ground me, without whom I never would have found this farm and land which soothes and heals me as well as provides the home I have looked for all my life.  She, who I have known in so many lifetimes, left me in order to heal me.  Thank you, Baby, I will never forget you, will always miss you and will always be grateful for the many and myriad lessons you have taught me – both in life and in death.

The Magic & Beauty of the Australian Bush

by . Posted on
04 Oct

Ged always says I drive around with my eyes closed!  I say that of him too.  It does seem that we all have selective vision as we traverse through our lives.  I have been in love with the Australian Bush Flower Essences as healing remedies for years – magic in a bottle that have helped me let go of my past and move through my rage and grief to become happier, calmer, wiser.

Last year at this time when I was walking in Kendall State Forest, still sobbing about the loss of my beautiful Baby, there were thousands of delicate purple flowers scattered through the bush.  Purple was baby’s colour.  Everything she owned was purple – her head collar, leg bandages etc.  So these flimsy flowers on their strong green stalks seemed like messages from her from beyond the grave and I sobbed all the harder.

Still crying one year on.  Not so much, not every day, but still sometimes at a loss to deal with the loss.  And suddenly there were those flowers again.  I stopped and looked closely at them and all the other delicate tiny flowers blooming in the bush.  Each so small and perfect.  Tea tree with their five round white petals, like perfect rounded stars which remind me of the wonder and attention to detail after 10 days vipassana meditation in the Blue Mountains.  Little purple orchids on tiny climbing vines.  The golden yellow of gorse which I thought was a uniquely English bush.  The delicate tendrils of Eucalypt flowers with their wonderful sweet smell and caressing quality.  I made a collection and once more stooped to examine that papery purple flower.  Like a lightbulb in my head I realised that it was Bush Iris.  Familiar name, but what is it for?   I picked one and stroked my face with it as I grieved for Baby and realised that death is an intrinsic part of life.  In winter all is dead and dormant.  The land sleeps, the life forces stilled, nothing grows or flowers.  Yet in the spring time all is new and fresh and vibrant.  Singing and springing of resurgence and new life.  All is reborn.  So too is Baby as my beautiful Second Chance.  Nothing really dies. All is recycled, all is reborn.

I got back to the car and opened up the computer to check on the ausflowers website what the healing properties of Bush Iris are.  ‘The realisation that death is just a state of transition.  Opening of the root chakra and trust centres.’  All the things I have been meditating on recently and realising I needed to shift.  Funny that.

And then after taking the poor ailing child to the doctor who confirmed an ear infection and prescribed antibiotics, I spotted thousands of gorgeous flannel flowers on the sandy side of the road and stopped to harvest them in the hope of replanting them where I can see and adore their velvety smiles.  They bring me great joy and awaken the childish innocence I lost so long ago.

Suddenly my eyes and heart are open to the bush flowers all around me.  I can make my own!  Instead of being dependent on others for my healing I can seek to communicate and commune with nature on my own terms, make my own remedies, allow them to speak to and heal my heart and soul.

I have been an apprentice for too long.  It is time to become the master of my own healing and soul journey.  To step up to my magnificence and soul path.  To own myself.  To embrace myself.  To be myself in all my glory.

Another Rite of Passage

by . Posted on
13 Sep

My parents have sold their house and moved out.  Not the home we all lived in as children – there were far too many of those.  As army brats we moved around a lot.  My parents bought, renovated and sold some stunning homes but we were only in them for a few years, and of course we had our fair share of army ‘quarters’ or basic brick boxes.  And then we had two long term homes.  Shore House where we spent our pre teen and teenage years, in beautiful Bosham.  This was the last house we all lived in as a family before maturity (or lack of it!) scattered us to the four winds, careers, countries and relationships.

18 years ago my parents bought Home Farm House.  I wasn’t there for the purchase or the move – but that’s pretty normal!  Many’s the time we’ve come home for school holidays, half term or an exeat weekend to a new home!  I well remember taking two school friends to Five Trees and spending much of the weekend throwing buckets of hot soapy water on a floor and chipping the plaster off to reveal the 16th Century flagstones beneath.

When I went to Boarding School for the first time the beautiful Hill House, where we were all so happy, was packed up and sold.  I lost my leased horse, paddock, room to roam on Frensham Common where I learned to ride and ice skate.  I lost my freedom, my childhood, my home in one fell swoop.

It was a few years before my parents bought Five Trees and I had some sense of belonging to a place again.  There were only 9 months or so of exeat weekends at my cousins’ house but it was long enough for me to feel like a displaced person and for that to last lifelong.

It would be twenty years before I owned my childhood longed for horse.  And 30 before I finally had the land and freedom I had craved ever since that early loss.  But even with my own home and farm, animals and horses, losing the parental home has me feeling bereft.

In everyone’s lives there are essential rites of passage – adolescence, deaths, marriage, births, menopause, the sale of the family home, parental deaths.  As my parents let go of that beautiful house, pack up their belongings, disseminate their possessions to charity shops and newly rented accommodation while they try and find their perfect new home, we are all feeling the momentousness of the move.

Home Farm House was a home – it was a lovely warm, welcoming house, with beautiful garden and outlook – the product my parents’ hard work.  I have wept for its loss while hoping it brings great joy and happiness to its new owners.  I was devastated not to be able to get back to the UK for a last hurrah with the whole family in situ together for the final time.

But now that the boxes are packed and everything my parents own is gone and I can see from afar that it is just a house.  It is all that they have and all that they are that make it a home.  A home embodies the energy of the people who inhabit it – it exhibits their souls.  So though my parents have critical eyes and voice their judgements freely, from the love in their home, the sheen on the warm mahogany tables, gleaming floors and welcoming kitchen heart of the home, they demonstrate their warm and loving hearts beneath the masks they have adopted and worn so well.

Those hearts and collection of furniture, paintings and household items go with them.  We will always have a home away from home wherever they are, as long as they live.

Those feelings of devastating loss are just a practice run for when they die.  It is impossible to imagine the hole they will leave in our lives.  Not to have them on the planet anymore – knowing us, loving us, judging us, correcting us, critiquing us, sending us parcels, treating us and our children to new clothes, trips, toys etc.

As much as a home is place of safety and rest for the heart, it is the hearts of the inhabitants that makes a house a home.

Bodies and burning

by . Posted on
Mythri
05 Sep

Our lovely neighbour, Pat, rang a few weeks ago to say that there was a dead Jersey cow in the river by the electric fence which attempts to keep her cows on her property and ours here.

Of course I had to go and see which one of my beautiful girls had left us.  It was our lovely Heidi, Mother to the gorgeous Patch.  She must have slipped down the steep bank (what was she doing there?) and broken her back or neck and drowned in only 8 inches of water.

I didn’t really cry.  Do we become immured to death eventually, seeing as much as we do?  Or is it that once the spark of life – the soul, spirit, call it what you will – has left the body, that person, animal, being that we knew and loved is gone.  All that is left is the flesh.  Flesh and skin we have loved, for sure, but without the animus or force of life, it is just a body to be dealt with.

Ged pulled her out of the river with the tractor and a chain and then pushed her into a big old pile of logs several owners before us left behind.  She forced us to light it up and feed it day after day, creating a beautiful clearing next to the bees, opening up the landscape near the spring fed dam.  I asked Ged to remove her horns for future biodynamic preparations, and they’re sitting on a tin roof over the calf shed, hollowing out.

On my walks on the other side of the farm I had a few whiffs of something dead as I turned down the track for home, but hadn’t thought to investigate.  Then Ged asked ‘have you seen Bonnie?’  I hadn’t and went looking.  I found her lying so peacefully with legs straight out under a giant tallowwood tree.  As beautiful in death as in life despite the maggots in her eye sockets.  Golden all over and with creamy hair like eyeliner round her beautiful brown eyes.  She was gone.  Another Jersey cow that we had bought and bottle fed and loved and nurtured.  Another body to be moved and burnt.

Ged pushed her into another old pile but with the fire bans everywhere we didn’t dare light it up.  I forgot to ask about the horns and he didn’t think to get them.

Two cows gone out of our small herd – that is a huge loss.  But more than that, these girls were our friends.  We knew them so well, loved them so deeply and now they are gone from us for ever more.  Poof!  Snuffed out, gone in an instant, with no chance for goodbyes.  Life is so fragile, nature so cruel sometimes.  We have no idea what happened to Bonny.  We will never know.

And then there was Gypsy, who I had renamed Mythri (Friend & Comforter) when Ged brought her onto the farm 6 years ago.  She was a huge (17hh) grey thoroughbred mare who he found starving in the last big drought on a friend of his father’s farm and rescued.  She was a wild child.  Terrifying.  She double barrelled the side of the red Pajero when it was still my road car and Ben was just a tiny baby.  She scared my two horses witless when she first arrived and they swam the river to get away and finally went missing and ‘bush’ for days.  She was a two faced bitch.  When she finally calmed down and I wasn’t so scared of her, she would be that friend and comforter to me when I was upset, but meanwhile she was vicious in thought and word and deed to my horses.  We had to keep them apart for years.  Two on 200 acres, and two on the other 200!

But eventually, on some very bad advice from a so called animal communicator, we put them together.  She killed Baby.  She was so foul to her and Baby couldn’t bear her life with Mythri in it so she got cancer and died. She couldn’t help it.  She was lovely in her heart but she had been so damaged in her early life and she was so jealous and bitter and she couldn’t bear that I loved Baby so much.  Baby had everything she ever dreamed of and she thought by getting her out of the way, she could have me and my love.  But it didn’t work like that.

She was a bully and the herd dynamic was so different whenever she was in it.  She and Brave would swim the river and end up on the Pitt Street Farmer’s place every time they were together on ‘the other side’.  And she had cancer.  First just protruding growths all around her anus and vulva and then a lump that got ever bigger on her throat gland.  It was all through her.  Lump after lump appeared.  The writing was on the wall.  But she looked so well.  Ged wanted to shoot her a year ago but I kept saying ‘she looks great, she’s fine, she’s happy, she’s well’.

But last week after the hoof trimmer had been I let her out with all the horses on the other side, and sure enough, within a day she had led Brave on a merry expedition to the mad, bad neighbour’s place.

We retrieved Brave easily but Mythri resisted all attempts at capture.  Ged went out alone on Sunday morning and caught her.  He said that when she did a poo she groaned with pain.  It was time to do the dastardly deed.  When he came home it was done and he was devastated.  He shot her in the same pile where Bonny was.  In the drizzle and dark that night we did our best to pile up a good pyre around her big grey body and get a fire going.

It has been my job this week to feed that fire which was neither big nor hot enough to get rid of such a big body.  I have seen sights this week that firemen, police officers and paramedics have all seen many times before.  Charred flesh.  That sweet sickly smell.  Bones in the ashes.

I have done my best by her, talking to her all the time, sending her spirit to the light, sorrowing over her body, together with my beautiful Bonny girl.

It has been horrible.  But somehow we just deal with death and the gritty reality of disposing of bodies.  Can’t let grief get in the way.  And what I have learned this week is that once the soul is gone, and just the body remains, it is just flesh and organs and bones.  And the spirit who inhabited it, looking on from the starry realms, would rather that it was made use of rather than just disposed of.  That the body had purpose in some way rather than being left in the ground to rot or using up valuable finite resources to be burnt in a building that will always have connotations of the holocaust for me.

At least Bonny, Heidi and Mythri forced us to get rid of other people’s old rubbish piles and clean up our land.  But still the waste of a life is harrowing.  Every death is a body blow and heart felt.  How and where and why doesn’t matter when faced with the soul-less body to deal with.  Just as many of we humans would rather our flesh and blood were used for the greater good when we are gone