Author Archives: sophie

Controlled burns are better than the alternative

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http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4461246.html

Burning off has proven unpopular with land owners fearing legal repercussions and politicians unwilling to make tough decisions, writes Sophie Love. Expect to see more devastating fires as a result.

How many more Australians have to die, how many more homes have to be lost before the Federal Government acts to implement strategies to protect Australians and their properties?

Australia is getting hotter, more populous and disconnected from the realities of life on the land here. Prescribed burning, or burning-off, is a crucial land management tool which stimulates germination and rejuvenates the landscape.

But vast tracts of crown land, as well as small properties abutting native bush, are rarely burnt off. In most states, less than 2 per cent of forested crown lands have prescribed burns.

Where I live, we have had five years of above average rainfall and the load on the ground is phenomenal.

We have to find the balance between generations of Aussie farmers who burn off indiscriminately every year (thus producing more carbon, depleting soil hummus and causing further soil salinity), and the well-meaning so-called tree huggers who think all flora and fauna will die in a burn off. (NB: Some of the finest environmentalists I know are farmers, and I often hug trees!)

Naturally occurring compost from trees and vegetation, which grows vigorously in spring and summer and then dies back and falls to the ground in autumn and winter, is necessary for healthy soil. Well covered soil absorbs and retains water, and dead and hollow trees and limbs provide homes for parrots, possums, and bats. Ground dwellers protect themselves with fallen leaves and tree debris. But a contained burn on a cool winter day can be controlled far more easily than a raging rangeland fire on a 40-plus degree day, fanned by summer southerlies.

A cool or controlled burn is manageable and the wildlife can escape. I’ve seen singed possums scamper ahead and find a fresh tree to climb. A cool burn doesn’t burn high into the foliage of the trees like a summer scorcher. Those are the fires that kill, and which we have to prevent.

But burning off has become such a contentious subject. I know farmers in places like Kangaroo Valley who burned off for generations, but for 10 years or more have been too scared to burn, fearing legal repercussions from neighbouring newbie landholders in case a fire ‘gets away’. Such legal action has been taken in other jurisdictions. But if there was a fire in a bowl like Kangaroo Valley now, how would anyone get away? Who takes the ultimate responsibility for land and bush management in Australia? Who decides what needs to be burnt and when so that we no longer have to witness these horrifying scenes on our televisions?

When a neighbour doesn’t burn on their property, it puts us at risk. On days like today I am scared of what might happen if the current fire just five kilometres from us keeps going. It’s happened before. It’s jumped the river and it’s raged through this valley, and that’s why last winter, when all the forecasters were predicting a hot dry spring, we burnt off.

Some people around here think we are weird because we don’t do it every year. As the current caretakers of this oasis, we prefer to feed the soil by slashing grasses and allowing them to decay and compost.

But we have a four year-old as well as animals that we love, and a 100-year-old timber farm house. We won’t risk it or live in fear or have to spend a day like today fighting for our lives and livelihood. So we burn when it is obvious that that is the smart and safe thing to do. The animals come back, the grasses recover and some seeds, like banksia, need the heat of fire in order to germinate.

So who takes responsibility for burning off the travelling stock reserves, the state forests, the national parks and the council-owned lantana-choked verges? Who gets the power to safeguard Australia from the very real and present threat of fire?

We have had a Royal Commission into the Victorian bushfires of 2009, and yet only four years later we are facing a firewall across the Tasman. When are Australians going to stop being so damned provincial and demand federal legislation with sweeping powers across all states and territories?

Of course, we all face different climates and country, but the very real threat of fire unites us all. It’s no good just recommending how to escape from bush fire and building houses to try to withstand them. We need to prevent them by burning off responsibly, regularly, and safely.

Someone has to protect the landscape, and its inhabitants, both animal and human. We need a federal fire service that actively polices both private and public land and prosecutes those who don’t burn off; charges money to provide a controlled burn off service; and executes cool weather burns in order to keep us all safe. Clearly we can’t rely on state and territory government-controlled fire, parks and wildlife and environment agencies to make these tough, often unpopular, decisions to burn off public spaces.

The Bushfire CRC has started to bring bushfire agencies together to share and learn from research. But it is obviously not enough or we would not have witnessed this week’s devastation. We must fund a federal initiative to actively manage fire risk by reducing flammable load.

Please, let not one more home or life be lost. Let not one more royal commission fail us. We need a bipartisan, practical and grounded future to protect us from fires, and must commit to a program of responsible, strategic, and controlled burns across Australia.

The burn or bury dilemma

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http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=14659

Two days before Christmas I had to make a horrible decision and asked my husband to finally shoot my horse. She had cancer. I would have done anything to keep my friend here with me, and over the past 3 months she has received many a ‘stay of execution’ as I imagined improvements, however slight.

But eventually it was obvious that she was in pain. I couldn’t bear that. Burying a horse is a huge endeavour, requiring a big hole. That means earthmoving equipment which we can’t afford at the moment. And I don’t think I could have borne putting her in the ground and then having the weight of it on top of her. The only other option is burning. I have always been a believer in cremation and so this felt right for me.

The morning after the fateful night, I went to say my goodbyes. She had chosen to lie down at the foot of a lovely rainforest tree which had coated the ground in pink flowers and as she lay during the night, more had fallen on her. She wasn’t there, but that body that I love so much was. I cut off some of her mane and tail for jewellery in remembrance of her and finally drove away and told my husband it was his turn to go and do what he had to do. He felled a long dead tree, split it, and built the most beautiful pyre. Burning a body requires a very hot fire but I was surprised how small it seemed to be. As in life, Baby was beautiful to the bitter end. The fire burned hot, bright and with cascades of shooting golden sparks – like champagne. She was glad to be free.

Over the Christmas week I fed the fire every day, determined that there would be nothing left. I had to rake bones back into the fire and while my heart was breaking it felt good to do something really practical and it was very grounded. After all, we will all die one day.

In my grief and pain, and amidst the practicalities, I mused on which is better – burn or bury?

And I learned things perhaps we don’t need to know. As I strove to burn all the bones I googled cremation process and learned that no cremation is hot enough to destroy all the bones, and that in all commercial cremations something called a crepusculator is used to grind the remains into the fine ash we associate with cremated remains. All death is final, but it seems that cremation is more so. Once they are gone, they’re gone. There can be no imagining of their whole and perfect body which burial allows us. With burial in those airtight boxes we can imagine our beloved sleeping peacefully underground. Still whole. That is very reassuring. Although I have fought the urge in the past to dig up a dog a few days after burial just to hold him once more.

Burial gives us a place to mourn and grieve, a place to speak and imagine we are heard. A place to go to share this enormous burden of grief. I had never understood the roadside grave markers but now I see that the exact spot where someone has died holds enormous significance for us. As if some part of their soul still remains there. I had always thought that burial binds us to the earth as if our souls can’t fly free once entombed. Now I see we are always held here in the hearts and minds of those who have loved us.

It is easier to imagine our loved ones soaring free on the breeze after cremation because they are no more, and have abandoned their earthly body. But maybe in all death, no matter how we dispose of the remains, the journey for those left behind is in coming to terms with the irreversible nature of their loss. Never to touch, never to hold, never to stroke again. My hands almost hurt with the need to touch her.

The glade where she lived out her last months and finally died is where I see her still and where I go to howl out my pain. Grief is so raw, ragged and furious. So primitive. Now I understand Aboriginal and African wailing for the dead. But in pristine, crowded, cemeteries how can modern Australians allow themselves to be prostrate with grief and to rage at the heavens and howl out their pain? Do we allow space and room for grief in modern society? It’s a long process. A lonely journey. In our denial of death and our seeking to reman ‘forever young’ have we forgotten how to honour death and the pain of those left behind. We don’t talk about it, we like to gloss over it, we won’t dwell on it. But surely only in full exploration of our emotions are we able to set both our beloved and ourselves free and to carry on.

Life is for the living but we carry the dead with us in our hearts. As city cemeteries become fuller and land price prime, don’t we need to have a conversation with the living that we love about what will happen when we die? A living will, a prosaic appreciation of the inevitability of our own demise. And to have this discussion in our own homes, weighing up whether our bodies are better burned or buried and where we want our earthly remains to lie.

Grief – the loneliest journey

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01 Feb

During January it seemed that I could conjure Baby instantly in my mind at the end of the day when Ben was finally asleep, the animals fed and some peace and time to grieve. She seemed to be here in spirit, if not in body. My hands ached to stroke and scratch her, to play with her mane and feel the rich satiny thickness of her tail, but at least I could look at her and feel her presence while I howled out my pain.

Now I understand the women’s wailing in ancient cultures (did you know that the wailing woman is a banshee?) at the death of a beloved. The pain in the heart and belly is physical and literally brings me either to my knees or at least doubled over, hands on knees. And why do my teeth hurt? Is that from all the days of ‘biting back the tears’? The grief grimace seems to start at the back of my neck, travel through my teeth and out either in a traditional boo hoo or keening. Covering my mouth is instinctive even though there is no one to see or hear.

I am such a believer in Eileen Caddy’s wisdom ‘the fastest way to freedom is to feel your feelings’ but even I am scared of the intensity of my pain and procrastinating about allowing it to overtake me. If the loss of this great friend and companion of a quarter of my life hurts this much, how will I survive when, inevitably, my parents die?

How do we go on? How do we bear the sense of loss and abandonment? The finality of death? And how do we love again, knowing that loss is inevitable? Is this the human experience? Tinkerbell seems to be equally aged and wearied by our loss. As I said to her the other day, if I am in this much pain, how much more must she be feeling, she who spent every day and night with Baby for 12 years? Grief knows no boundaries, animal or human, it affects us all at some time in our lives.

And yet we don’t talk about death. We don’t seem to allow or acknowledge grief. We seem to expect people to ‘get on with it’ because ‘life goes on’. In that very British tradition of ‘stiff upper lip’. Nobody wants to hear about the pain of grief, and it is so personal that it is hard to describe. But it would be nice to think that others understood that I was in pain. I guess that’s why in the old days people wore mourning clothes or armbands for a set period. So that others understood that they were ‘maddened by grief’. If we are all supposed to just ‘carry on regardless’ aren’t we demeaning ourselves and our experience by not honouring another life ritual, the ritual of mourning?

I don’t normally wear black and if I suddenly started now, to indicate my loss, I would only, finally, be perceived as fashionable! When my lovely farmer neighbour lost her husband at Christmas a couple of years ago, we had many conversations where I empathised with her pain and loss after over 50 years of marriage. She says she still howls in pain. Somehow society expects her to have gotten over it . . . how?

Why aren’t we comfortable talking about our own and other’s emotions? And yet much of society watches TV soaps and drams which revel in human pain and suffering. What, it’s ok to share it on the screen but not in real life? Is that how removed from ourselves we have become?

Grief is a uniquely long and lonely road. No one else can feel our pain. Each of us experiences our loss in our own timeframes and stages. I guess I have been in shock because now I am beginning to realise that I will never see Baby again, never touch her, never stroke her, never put her halter on and walk beside her, never saddle her up and ride her. Never give her a bath or take her down to the river for a swim, never wrap my arms around her neck and feel the strength and love of her. Never untangle her mane or wind her forelock around my finger. Never stroke her long, elegant, nose or feel the velvety softness of her nostrils. Never try and kiss her muzzle and laugh when she wouldn’t let me.

It sounds pretty stupid that aged 47 I didn’t realise that death was final, but maybe that realisation needs to sink in slowly or we couldn’t bear the weight of the grief from the outset. While the intellect can accept the finality of death, the heart takes its time.

Hoofprints on my Heart

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The Most beautiful Girl in the World
02 Jan

Baby had been so peaceful and happy for the few weeks before Christmas – she has been eating – well, like a horse! Loving her lucerne and always so pleased to see me. Ears forward, eyes bright, nodding her head. We have had some truly beautiful moments and I have cried a river of tears at the prospect of a life without her after 12 magical years in which she turned my life, and its direction, on its head. One night, she lay, with her head in my lap, and we talked, I sobbed, she shed tears and we shared our love. One night I sat back to her belly and reminisced and shared our thoughts and feelings. She was, without doubt, the most beautiful girl in the world.

But 10 days ago her Horse Herbalist herbs ran out and she went downhill. She had a Bowen treatment on Thursday with the instruction ‘kill or cure’ (because I could feel the sand of time running rapidly out for us both). And then she really started to be in pain. Instead of looking happy her eyes were stressed and fearful and sending out a silent plea. On Saturday night (22nd) when I fed and washed her down, it was clear that she was in pain and so the decision was made for the following day. Life never proceeds as planned, though.

I took Ged’s swag over there, planning to spend a last night under the stars with her, talking, crying, sharing, reminiscing. But when I got there she was lying down, her breathing was so laboured and she was gritting her teeth and holding her breath at the pain. It was clear that cancer was ravaging her. Only anyone who has ever seen that in another will know what that was like. I texted Ged to bring the gun, please.

He took a while, sorting a sleeping Ben out, and then came. By that time, she was up, and eating. But I think she used food as a distraction from the pain, there was a desperation to her hoovering. I never wanted him to shoot her while she was standing. I didn’t want her to crumple. So he went back to bed and I waited and watched and talked. There were so many things I wanted to tell her, I wanted to talk though my memories of her life. I wanted to thank her for being so amazing. I wanted to beg her forgiveness for the times I had shouted and lashed out, for the times I hadn’t understood her, had forced her or made her frightened. I wanted to say how amazing it was that I had always been able to ride her in just a rope halter, how beautifully she did her Parelli circling and sidestepping, and share with her the memories of how the two of us had learned to do all that at Kangaroo Valley, spending hours and hours together. She had said to me recently that her favourite time in her life was when we were living at Kangaroo Valley. I thought that was because she, like I, loved living next to the Grippers so much. She did, but it was because she got to see me and be with me so much, all the time, we were always in each other’s vision and never far from the other’s thoughts. That was why KV was so amazing. She loved me so much, it took her death for me to realise the enormity and selflessness of her love. Typical of me and my family, I was always focussing on the things that were ‘wrong’ with her and our relationship. I failed to fully realise the depth and breadth and wonder of it. The marvel of a love and friendship, a true partnership, the miracle of a relationship with a horse.

But I couldn’t tell her any of those things, because all I could feel was her pain and I just wanted that to go away. I didn’t want her to hurt, I wanted her to be happy. My dead Grandmother had directed me, during the week, to read once more the book she gave me when I was a small child ‘Ludo and the Star Horse’ and once I read it, I knew I had to let Baby go. Granny Morton died a very slow and painful death in agony and she wanted me to put Baby out of her pain. So once she lay down again, I called Ged, and he came like a shadow in the night. The shadow of death.

I kissed her and walked away. It wasn’t peaceful, she was not peaceful, and I walked to the car and screamed out my pain. I heard the gun cocked and then the shot and my friend, my best friend, my first Baby, was gone. I waited until Ged said I could come, howling like a wild dog, into the blackness. When I went back to her she was at peace. She was so peaceful. And she was gone. She wasn’t in that body that I have loved so much, any more. I stayed for an hour just stroking her, as if trying to imprint her in my hand for ever more. As if I needed to. I told her all the things I wanted to say then, trusting she was there with me in spirit. And I realised, too late, just how much she had loved me. She had loved me enough to mask her pain for me so I could complete my own process and let her go with love. She had waited patiently for me to be able to let her go, to make the call, to allow Ged to do what he had long felt he needed to. He didn’t want to do it. He was crying too. But we both had to do the right thing.

I am ashamed to say that I have allowed her to suffer. That she has had some bad days in the past few months. But she has also had some great days, and has looked really well and healthy and happy. I can see now that I should have been braver and more prepared to ‘bite the bullet’ or let her. But I forgive myself for following my heart to try and heal her, for sharing the time that we both needed to get to know one another again after months of not seeing each other while she was in The Point Paddock. Like all of us, I have made mistakes, but I know that she forgives me and that she, more than anyone, understood my heart and my unwillingness to let this great love of my life, go.

All through my childhood I wanted a pony with every fibre of my being. Horses were my peace. My restless spirit was calmed and my heart healed in their great, gentle presence. I was in awe of them, loved them with a terrible neediness, and was sometimes frightened of them too. But my heart reached out to them and was soothed by them. I was 34 when I first saw Baby. I had to look after her for a few weeks at Glasson’s with a couple of youngsters. She was beautiful, round and solid with dainty little ballerina feet. And there was something of her in me – looking, longing, for someone to love her. We were the same, and so we found each other. And so began a great love story which has changed so many facets of my life and brought me here, to Avalon, and Ged and Ben. She is the Star Horse I wanted all my life.

Baby chose her spot to die, it was under a native tree,(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brachychiton_discolor) with star shaped pink flowers falling from on high at intervals. So she lay down on a bed of petals and was showered with petals where she lay. In the morning I went and placed flowers on her, folded up her old yellow stable rug that she had loved so much and placed it beside her with yet more flowers on it. I cut off parts of her mane and tail so I would always have something of that beautiful body and so I could have some keepsake jewellery made from it. And finally drove away. Ged went over and felled a huge old, dead, tree close by, and built the most beautiful pyre for her – truly a zen work of art. And when Ben was asleep I went over and took down the electric fence, and added all the broken branches and sticks and twigs that had been annoying us over the last few months and more flowers and then I lit a little fire at the base of the pyre, and Ged lit the rest. She burned bright and beautiful, with showers of champagne sparks high up into the air. Everything about her was so beautiful, and she loved, she loved us all, with all her huge heart.

To have loved a horse, to have earned the love of a horse – there is no greater honour in life. To walk with a horse and to know one walks with you in spirit, that is one of life’s richest blessings.

She is running once more in the fields of the blessed, dancing in the Elysian fields, happy, at peace and sparkling with light. We will never forget her. She will always be here at Avalon and at my side. It has been a privilege and a gift to have known, owned, and loved her.

A very Lucky Day for the Love Family

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A very Lucky day for the Love family
03 Dec

On Wednesdays Benno goes to swimming lessons and we go to town for the weekly shop – animal feed, essentials and fruit for the 3 foot fruit bat! Normally we are running late, but last week we were even early, despite Tinkerbell having escaped from her starvation paddock and spending time putting her back where she belonged.

We have two new Swedish wwoofers and they were in the car with Ben and I too. We were all set for our big sojourn in the city. A little sleepy but fine. About 25klms after we got off the dirt and onto the highway there was a bang and that unmistakeable noise of a flat tire. The car swerved violently and skidded and I managed to steer it down in the grass gutter and along the side of the rock wall for about 20 metres before the car was spat out onto the highway and the impetus flipped it onto the passenger side. We traversed the highway on our side for approximately 50 metres at a 45 degree angle and ended up trapped by the guard rail on the opposite side of the road.

Ben was crying and saying ‘I don’t like it, I don’t like it, make it stop’. I kept repeating like a mantra ‘It’s OK, it’s OK, we’ll be ok’. Like a prayer.

I turned the car off and turned around to look at him and talk to him and try and reassure him. We were all suspended by our seatbelts. I spotted the sunroof, so trepidatiously I turned the car back on and flipped the switch which slid the sunroof all the way back. A man was there and he reached in and got Ben out. Next was Lovisa in the front passenger seat. Then Elin in the back. Finally me. With my right foot glued to the brake and hands clenched on the steering wheel, it took a minute to work out how to extricate myself without falling on my head.

Everyone was fine. The girls and Ben were crying and I immediately started removing everything from the car. I don’t know why except that I always seem to need to be doing especially when my heart is racing and adrenalin coursing through my system. I think I thought that the police would be there immediately and we would be taken away, or the car would explode or something. I may not have a TV but clearly in my life I have seen too many movies who paint a very different picture of reality!

I still feel guilty that I didn’t just grab onto Ben and hold him until we had to be prised apart. The tyre was still intact, no blowout, but the tread had sheared off the tyre just like a retread. It wasn’t a retread though, I’ve never put retreads on any car I’ve owned.

We were so lucky. Lucky that nothing was coming the other way. Lucky we didn’t have someone up our arse. Lucky that the guard rail, which only started 3 metres before, was there to save us. Lucky that there were people to help us. Lucky that people stopped to slow down traffic and keep us safe as we sat on the side of the road for an hour waiting for the police and a lift away from the scene. Lucky that neither of the passenger windows or the windscreen smashed. Lucky that the car was so strong and didn’t crush or crumple. Lucky that we had the sunscreen so we could get out so easily. Lucky, so lucky to be alive.

There was another story on the road that day and thanks to any number of angels looking out for us, and protecting us, and our lives were saved.

Suddenly everything and everyone is beautiful and I realise just how precious this life, this body, is. And I can’t even express the fear and horror of what could have happened to Ben.

Suffice it to say that I am changed by that split second on the road that day. By what might have been. By what is. I was derailed and I am picking myself up, dusting myself off, saying a sad goodbye to my beautiful car and my previous way of being and walking into my future with a different attitude. Living in the present. Phew!

The Renewable Revolution is HERE

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History in the making, The Renewable Revolution is HERE and NOW – JOIN IT!
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=14374

Two hundred years ago, the Industrial and Agricultural Revolutions were in full spate, with first a trickle and then a flood of machines, which facilitated increased production, and the mechanisation of every form of agrarian and industrial pursuit. Prior to the invention of the steam engine and the mechanisation of production, invention of factories etc., the Domestic System meant that each family was involved in its own cottage industry, which contributed to the whole. Production was small scale, involved the whole family, and home based. Communities were self-sustaining and interlaced, travel was limited and expensive and a high value was placed on goods, workmanship and food, where the manufacturer or producer was an integral part of the population.

The invention and then improvement of the steam engine, and the subsequent increase in demand for coal changed all that. Previously mining had been small scale, local and shallow. The huge demand for coal to fuel the new machines meant ever-deeper exploration of the earth and the invention of factories started the migration of workers and the centralisation of population into the cities that housed them. Production was increased across every sphere but life started to become very different. Instead of home based industries, which accommodated the family in every age and stage, and embraced community, the smoke belching cities became a magnet and families were divided into those who went to work and others stayed home. Entire families went to work in the new factories and the mines in order to increase income, which was often a pittance, workers were crowded into slums with no sanitation where disease was rife.

While the poor gravitated to the cities with the promise of a better standard of living, all that was created was a new class of ‘working poor’ with just enough for a subsistence existence, literally ‘working for the man’ who owned the factory, the slums, the factory school and the shop where they spent their meager earnings.

The Luddites rebelled by smashing the machinery that replaced their skilled artisanship with cheap, unskilled, labour and mass production. Many of these rioters and wreckers were either executed or transported to penal colonies in America or Australia. Riots swept the U.K, culminating in the Peterloo massacre. The Luddites might have been a restless minority and seemingly achieved little, but like the 1891 shearer strike and riots in Australia, the underbelly of unrest politicised the country and led to the rise of the trade union movement.

Two hundred years later we are totally dependent on coal and the mechanisation of every facet of our existence. Little could any Lancashire Luddite have dreamt how mass produced our clothes are now – let alone that they are mainly made of plastic, not the wool they carded and wove with such skill and dexterity. No Farmer would believe our vast treeless plains of GM crops or acres of monoculture cropping. They would shudder at our industrialised feedlots, poultry houses, and egg production. We have industrialised and made factories of every facet of our lives – our schools, syllabus, day care centres, farming, and supermarkets.

And while we have gained in convenience, we have lost in connection as we become ever more dependent on machines and ever more removed from the land that feeds and fuels us.

But there is a groundswell moving in the opposite direction (some would say backwards). Seeking to create intentional communities, sharing transport, centred on home based businesses. City dwellers relieving themselves of the rat race and going back to a simpler, less stressful way of life. Seeking self-sufficiency and a more meaningful relationship with the earth, their children, neighbors and family.

A growing number of global citizens who see that our reliance on fossil fuels feeds our ‘greed is good’ mindset and is destructive – to the planet, to the atmosphere, to our connections to each other and community, and to our connection to Mother Earth. These visionaries have led the Renewable Revolution by showing us that we can indeed have all the machines we are so dependent on, but that they needn’t be destructive. That Nature’s abundant resources can fuel us. We don’t need to keep digging deep into the earth, destabilising our foundations, when sun, sea, wind and water can give us all we need in terms of power.

The Industrial Revolution was driven by a monied few excited by the linings of their own pockets, while the Renewable Revolution is being stymied by the same monied minority scared of what the future holds if we cease to be reliant on their coal and oil.

In Australia those people are larger than life and twice as vocal. In the U.S. they are more veiled and powerful behind closed doors. But the populace sees the sense in solar, wind and geothermal and no amount of naysaying by the power brokers will convince them otherwise. Because ordinary Australians look up and see how much sun we are blessed (and sometimes cursed with) we feel its heat on our skin, we experience the abundance and so harnessing it makes total sense. If the grey and gloomy skied Europeans can be leading the world in their take up of wind and solar power, why are we lagging so far behind?

Is it simply that the powerful few have Government so tightly in their grasp? Like the Luddites they will have to accept that progress is inevitable, we have to keep evolving and the new revolution is literally ‘back to the future’ – powering our lives and needs without pollution, high prices and petrochemicals.

A hundred years from now we will look back on the late nineties and noughties as The Renewable Revolution. We need to embrace it, advocate for it, force Government and Industry to accept it and welcome in the dawn of this new age.

The water disconnect between city and country

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http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4379820.html

We have to start to think before we unconsciously consume. We have to take responsibility for our waste and use resources wisely. Turn off the taps, waste not and want not, and stop seeing farmers as the enemy, writes Sophie Love.

We’re celebrating 40mm of heaven sent out here on the farm. It’s not enough, but it’s a start.

After three months of no rain the earth was cracked, scorched and rock hard causing pain and joint problems for older humans and horses. All the grass was dead and the bush, normally throbbing with life, was eerily quiet.

The wild dogs and cats have been foraging closer to the river and we have seen wallabies with their heads ripped off and have feared for our lambs and cria. The paralysis ticks have been abnormally abundant and we have two alpacas down with paralysis and we are tick checking all stock daily.

The river is at least two feet lower than normal, and lower than where it sat at the end of a five year drought. After five years of relentless flooding, that hardly seems possible but it is true. The river is our lifeblood and watching it drop daily is very depressing, as is the lack of growth in what should be the surge of spring.

Down in the big smoke (Sydney) a few weeks ago I saw sprinklers merrily soaking lawns and, when I enquired, was told that no water restrictions were in place. Hello?

Turning on the radio in the car as I race around feeding animals (we can’t get radio in the house), I hear news readers and radio jocks lamenting the storms in capitals across NSW and Queensland while we, their country cousins, are dancing, singing and screaming with joy at the sound of rain on the roof.

The disconnect between city and country is scary enough around food, but when it comes to water, on one of the driest continents on earth, it is downright terrifying. Australians consume more water, per capita, than anywhere else on earth, yet we refuse to consume recycled or reclaimed water. Why?

The CSIRO stated way back in 2004 that Australia could lead the world in water recycling, and State and Federal governments alike have invested public money in feasibility studies over the past 10 years. The only implementation issue every study identifies is the Australian public’s outright rejection of treated waste water.

Across all States and Territories of Australia, recycled water is used for industry and irrigation of parks, playing fields and golf courses. NSW’s Goulbourn Valley sees the benefit in using nutrient rich recycled water for irrigation of farms in one of Australia’s natural food bowls. Our most populated city, Sydney, recycles just 3 per cent of its water.

As more and more Australians travel the globe, they have showered, bathed in, and drunk (doubtless in blissful ignorance) recycled waste water in England, Spain, Florida, California, Singapore, Arizona, Belgium etc. So why are Aussies baulking at boosting their domestic water supplies with recycled water?

Why are our city slickers still so stubborn? Too precious apparently to sully themselves with treated sewage. Still over 60 per cent of the water supplied to Australian homes becomes waste water, which is minimally treated and pumped straight out into our rivers and ocean outfalls. As a nation of beach goers and fish eaters do we still really think that is a good idea in 2012?

In addition, when it rains in the suburbs and cities all that glorious water is seen rushing down kerbsides and stormwater drains where it increases flood activity in rivers and pollution in the seascape. Why aren’t we harvesting it?

It is incredible that such a young country, with such a dynamic and diverse population, seems to be so far behind the rest of the world in harnessing our natural resources. How can we possibly become waterwise if we don’t pay a premium for water usage or accept the inevitable and embrace recycled water?

Federal and State governments need to be prepared to make hard choices, however unpopular they are, in order to safeguard aquifers, serve Australia’s population growth and increased water usage for generations to come.

We are no longer a few hundred reprobates in Sydney Cove, but a population of almost 23 million, still acting like children in our wanton wastage of water and resources. Most Australians use approximately 400 litres of water a day each – that’s 1.5 billion litres of water down the pan every day. I wonder how much rain needs to fall each and every day to supply that much water? Do city slickers ever think about where their water comes from? Or make the correlation between rain and water usage? Judging by the distress the radio announcers greet grey skies and precipitation with, I guess not.

Fringe dwellers have to stop pumping effluent out into the seascape and start pumping treated water back into their homes. Treated effluent can be used as fertiliser on outlying farms, or compressed into bricks to be used as solid bio fuel. Every home needs to provide its own water for plants and lawns from a home purchased rainwater tank (pray tell why city dwellers get rebates for rainwater tanks, while people in the country, who rely on rainwater for all their needs, get none?). Tap water in most Australian cities is already full of chemicals and fluoride, a few more won’t even be noticed. And for those who care about what they put in their bodies, there are plenty of filtration systems to detox the water for drinking.

As a global village and as a nation we have to start connecting with where all these things that we take for granted actually come from – milk, vegetables, meat, water, power, clothes, fibres etc. We have to start to take responsibility for our impact on the environment and start to make conscious, informed and educated choices.

We have to start to think before we unconsciously consume. We have to take responsibility for our waste and use resources wisely. We have to stop acting as if the drought is behind us, and accept the fact that Australia is a land of dramatic climatic challenges, that climate change is a reality and both city and country have to work together to harness our resources.

Turn off the taps, waste not and want not, and stop seeing farmers as the enemy – we are the canaries in the coal mine, warning that all is not well with the rape and pillage of this great land of ours. Listen before it is too late.

The Circle of Life

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Our first live twins
09 Nov

The reality of life on the farm is a constant experience of life and death. As natural as each other – essential even, but as great is the gift of every addition to our lives, so stark is the loss of those taken away.

Stardust dropped a perfect baby girl when Pamela last came to visit so we called her Pashe (pasha) in honour of the two extraordinary women who have shared their ‘paca passion with us and provided us with most of our flock.

Then our first lamb appeared.  Another girl birthed on the river bed under the house so we could watch from the window.  Ben is our eagle eyed spotter for birds, birthing, and anything that changes the gestalt!  We were so proud but no longer had she landed than the alpacas told us that a dog was about one morning so Ged got his rifle, sighted and shot it.  But the lambie was gone.

Next we had another little girl lamb born and both Mother and us were so careful and protective and locked them up at night for several days and watched like hawks – so far, so good.

Then Tinkerbell finally unpacked a little white boy on a grey and cold day.  We wiped him down and warmed him up with the homemade rug because he was shivering so much.  We left them alone to get on with the beginnings of life until we realised that Think was off foraging and the poor little lad was still unable to stand.  And when we got him up we could see that his legs were all wonky.  Still, we managed to get him under Tink for a couple of colostrum feeds before she flatly refused to do more.  Her vulva was very stretched and she was clearly very sore so we left her to do her own thing and recover while we took over the bottle feeding.  Firefly slept by the fire inside for the first two nights of his life, then I rugged him up and rigged up the old playpen on a deep bed of straw on the verandah and he slept there for ten days or so.  During the day he was mainly just lying in the sun, healing, and getting up for his bottle.

We even had to take him to Port Macquarie one day because if you’re bottle feeding a baby you can’t leave them at home!  He got passed around from pillar to post and surprised a few beach goers.  I took him to the vet for splinting but after a few days a friend noticed that it was rubbing so we took it all off and then tried a few different configurations before finally those bendy legs started to take weight, Firefly took heart and his Mum had hope.  Then he was back on the boob, off the bottle, and standing on his own four feet (finally!)

We had our first twin lambs but the runt wouldn’t get on the boob despite our best efforts and my first ewe milking (easier than I thought!). We had them in the pen on straw but he wandered outside in the night and died. We should have brought him in the house and bottle fed him but we thought he would be ok with mum.

I have been watching the alpacas obsessively for weeks as we have so many babies due, but last weekend I took off for a couple of hours of chainsawing (the noise of the chainsaw is sweet music to my ears after weeks of 4 year old prattle!) and when I came back one of the alpacas that I didn’t even know was pregnant had birthed and the baby had died in the attempt. A lovely white girl . . . gone.

And every day when I go to feed my beautiful horse, Baby, I wonder will she still be alive? She is in so much pain and can barely walk but I just can’t give the instruction for Ged to pull the trigger until we have explored every avenue and tried everything to make her well. I just can’t picture my life without her in it. And as much as I believe in spirit, as much as I see beyond the veil to the other side, I just want to be able to touch her, feel her warmth, stroke her mane and look into her big, brown, beautiful eyes.

At the moment she resides ‘on the other side’ of the farm and she can’t come home because she can’t walk that far. I know in my heart and soul that when she is gone it will be the thus, she will be ‘on the other side’, exactly the same. She will be running in the Elysian fields, full of life. I just won’t be able to touch her except in my mind, memory and heart.

The longer I am here on the farm, the more ordinary conversational terms have great meaning – bite the bullet, stay of execution, the circle of life etc

Harry is in the freezer and on the table and even I, vegetarian for 20 something years, have enjoyed him. Hector is gone and just alive in my heart where I miss him still. Christmas will forever hold a very special place in my heart and a feeling that we failed him. They live on, these lost ones, that we have loved, however briefly. And maybe, just maybe, we are being trained to prepare for death, to cease to be scared of it, to accept its inevitability, and even, one day, embrace it.

Experience abundance – plant a veggie patch!

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Veggie Patch
13 Oct

So many of us are trapped in our poverty consciousness – strapped to the relentless wheel of working for the man, paying off our loans, credit cards and mortgage, and never seeming to make headway in our consumer culture. We have lost sight of where our food comes from, don’t know how to get our hands dirty, or experience the satisfaction that comes from a hard day’s labour done (or feel the pain of a back which has worked hard!) And yet, the hardest part of growing your own food is deciding where to designate as veggie patch, fencing it from predators (when it comes to the veggie patch, chooks, wallabies, rabbits and birds are all predators!) and building the raised beds or digging over the dirt initially.

Once all that is done, the rest is not so hard and really needs just a few hours of dedication once a week and daily forays to pick, squeeze, marvel and wonder at. Oh, and, deep watering once a week if the sky is not complying with sufficient heaven sent. Weeding steals the most time so careful thought and research as to the best way to discourage them from daring to venture into your patch is time well spent at the outset. The first principle of organic gardening is to cover the soil, so I think copious amounts of straw and newspaper really are the best bet. Finally, all those piles of used and unused paper, can be recycled in an intelligent way, without resorting to council waste services, or plastic weed mat.

Ged is very good at doing the deep digging to save my back but when he’s not around I enjoy it – it’s very satisfying watching the soil get richer and more chocolatey, flaking off the fork like a good, crumbly cake. Of course, we have no shortage of poo here but it has taken me 3 years to learn that it’s quality, not quantity, that counts. While all the horse and cow poo has undoubtedly enriched the soil, it has also imported grass seeds which means more weeding! Alpaca poo – now there is a wonderful, magical, pellet to enrich the soil and create black velvet . . . and no weeds (don’t ask me how they do it!)

I have bought plenty of plants from Bunnings and other nurseries over the years and many, if not most, have died. Certainly the fruiting plants have soon turned up their toes. But then I discovered Diggers and Heritage Fruit Trees and now I have wonderfully healthy plants. Last year was my first year buying from Heritage Fruit Trees and within weeks of putting in their blueberry and raspberry plants we had fruit and Ben spent all summer finding and eating their generous output. Want to get a small child interested in fruit and veggies? Plant a patch and watch them eat peas, broccoli, spinach, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries and even garlic chives and nasturtium flowers, fresh from the garden! Ben has become so used to being able to eat plants that our problem is getting him to check first whether he can eat something either in the garden or the wild! His eagle eyes are the keen spotter of wild raspberry plants in every crevice of the farm and we have to go on wild raspberrying forays all through winter – yum!

I love the fact that Diggers are working with Seed Savers in the US to share and keep heirloom and heritage seed varieties. Now that the evil Monsanto (manufacturers of Round Up and Round Up resistant GM crops – did you know that GM crops are sprayed with Round Up to kill weeds but the crops grow regardless, absorbing all those lethal chemicals into their cellular structures?) have taken over Yates seeds and are on a mission to buy all seed producers and purveyors, we owe it to our children and the future of the planet to be very very careful where we get our seeds from. After all, there is no life without seeds and a world where one monolithic chemical company owns all the seeds is seriously scary.

When I first heard of planting by the moon I thought it was very woo woo but now it is second nature. Weeding with the waning moon, planting on the full. Plants and seeds needing to grow downwards (carrots and parsnips or plants needing to send down strong roots) go in on the waning moon and seeds and plants to reach up to the sky go in on the growing (waxing) moon. Planting by the moon was developed as part of Rudolf Steiner’s system of BioDynamic Farming, but has now become a widespread and commonly understood method of planting and harnessing nature’s forces. The more I know about Steiner the more I respect him – he was a man well before his time.

I have been known, midsummer, in the cooler midnight hours to be out in the veggie patch, stark bollock naked, preparing the ground and planting seeds under the bright silver light of the full moon in all her resplendent glory. But really you would need to be a gardener to understand that!

Put in the seeds, water them, and watch them grow. Now that the earth and sun are warm it is amazing how quickly little seeds (and some of them are very little!) turn into little plants reaching up to the light. With the current dry it looks like we are going to be spending a lot of time watering, but I find holding the hose in one hand, and weeding with the other is quite a satisfying way of tending my patch (multi-tasking as ever!) I have spent years neglecting the patch from one week to the next and then being overwhelmed by the weeds so I think little and often is a better way forward. I am still such a beginner veggie patcher, and learning all the time. At the moment my favourite relaxing bedtime reading is a bit of Peter Cundall – I find him very reassuring!

What I do know, is that those few packets of seeds (and it is worth buying good organic seed) yield an incredible abundance for the kitchen, our bellies and the freezer. At times that abundance can be overwhelming, and finding creative ways to deal with a glut stretches the imagination, the powers of good old google, and the forbearance of the family at mealtimes. But that’s Mother Nature – so generous, so richly abundant, nurturing and fulfilling. Never an empty plate, never any excuse not to create something healthy and nutritious and fresher than fresh to feed both our bellies and our spirits – true soul food – sewn, nurtured and reaped in bountiful harvest by our own two hands. It doesn’t get much better than that. And as we experience this rich bounty, and the over abundance we are given, we realise that there IS enough, there is always more, that we are enough and are good enough to experience the best life has to offer. We learn to nurture ourselves as well as others. To feed ourselves with love. That each has its time and its season (all the old truisms are true!), that we need time to grow, that death and decay are essential and feed the soil, that the circles, cycles and rhythms are endless (sometimes relentless . . . ) and the world and her mysteries will still be here turning, revolving, evolving long after we are gone.

We reconnect with our primal natures. With man at his most basic – feeding the land, sowing the seed, reaping the harvest, loading the table and giving thanks, grateful thanks for the bodies and minds and hearts to enjoy it. And even when the earth seems dead and dormant, there are seeds and bulbs underground lying, waiting to burst forth in the warmth of spring. And we realise that every age, every part of life is beautiful. We lose our dependence on and despairing hankering for the blossom of youth and we learn to relish our own process and ageing and acquired wisdom. And as we reconnect with the earth so we realise that we will return to it one day and that is ok. We can feed a tree, provide shade and shelter, look pretty eternally and leave a legacy, however insignificant, as one who loved and tended and learned from the land.

Self sufficiency can be hard work, but it is so satisfying and to know where your food comes from – literally from paddock to plate is such a good feeling. I hate how removed from our food and its sources we have become. How the sterile aisles of Coles and Woolworths with their glaring lights, dyes, sprays and additives entice us to part with our hard earned for things that we literally wouldn’t feed to the pigs here.

And yet we can all grow a little ourselves and learn to reconnect with nature, with food, with what fresh food REALLY tastes like (grow tomatoes and you will never buy another tomato again!) In a tub, in a pot, on the verge, in a little plot at the end of the garden, we can all start small and grow fresh, chemical free, real food. And something magical happens when we grow things – we reconnect with our source, with spirit, with light and rain and the seasons. With the moon, with the earth, with its creatures great and small. We dig our hands deep into the soil, get dirt under our fingernails and get real, real fast.

Ditch the plastic fantastic and the greed of the gimme, gimme, gimme, instant gratification of the relentless consumer society and cultivate a little patch of dirt. Chuck in some seed, enjoy a daily sprinkle session and wait . . . I promise you won’t be disappointed. But I warn you – it’s highly addictive, this gardening malarkey. My Mother sent me a postcard once which said there were 3 phases of the female life – horses, hormones and horticulture. My poor neglected horses are testimony to the fact that horticulture has bitten me hard.

A Cleansing Fire

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Ged watching his fire
30 Sep

Pyromaniac that I am, I love the burning off season. Lines of fire, snaking across country and into the bush, lighting up the late winter nights with their warming glow. I love to light them, putting a lit match to the bladey grass and hearing it snap, crackle and roar. As a general rule, we don’t burn Avalon, because we believe in repeatedly slashing the grass and mulching the land to retain moisture and build up the soil levels to create healthier soil and pasture. 5 years ago when we came here, the land was all bladey grass, bracken fern and fireweed, now we have beautiful native grasses, kikuyu, clover and oatey grass, and the bladey grass is almost gone. Burning bladey grass might give you green pick for the cattle, but all you get is more bladey grass, so it never made much sense to us. However, as a way of seeing what is there in areas that have not been slashed, it is invaluable, and as a way of quickly clearing the land without slashing, it can be useful. But not our preferred way of doing things.

Anyway, the Friday before Ostara, the spring equinox and the real Easter in the southern hemisphere, it was a dull day, with moisture in the air, no beating sun and the hint of rain to come, so Ben and I thought we would just quickly light some fires to burn down into the weeds along a section of the river bank and into the neighbour’s paddock, which she has always invited us to burn. We lit a few fires along the fence line which blazed up briefly and then fizzled so we figured they would be out momentarily and went home for lunch. About 4 hours later we drove over to feed the horses and I saw the wall of smoke . . . ‘I think we have a problem’ I said to Ben. He wasn’t concerned. He’s heard Mummy say that before when she’s inadvertently burnt a paddock!

We drove over the ridge and saw a line of flames licking voraciously at everything in its path. 500 metres from the site of our start up fires and travelling in the opposite direction to our intention! We weren’t going to even try to beat this one back, it was going to have to keep gorging until it was replete. All we could do, was damage limitation. We drove down to the horses and set them free. Then we splashed water all around the water tank above base camp and removed all the water pipes, stand pipe and hoses. Then back burnt around the tank just to make sure. Next we drove through Henry Hollow and up into the Dam Paddock and there we stopped in shock and horror. We were faced with a blackened wasteland and facing us were the bee hives standing sentry like and stark white against the ash. ‘The bees! Daddy is going to go mental’ One hive was already swarming. One was still smouldering. All our lovely workers, all the new frames and comb all ready to be filled with lovely, life giving honey. All my fault . . .

We rang Ged and told him the bad news. But it was to get worse. By the time he came home two hives were burnt to cinders and we will have to start again with nucleus hives. He found a hive of European bees in a fallen tree and bear like tried to extract the comb and honey and then persuade some to take up residence in some of our boxes but they didn’t want to relocate despite their hot home, so that didn’t work out the way we planned it either. The fire continued on its merry way all night and for two days thereafter, clearing, cleaning, exposing.

At least we are rid of the high load of dead grass before the predicted drought gains intensity – although the ground is already so dry, the river lower than it was at the end of the last drought, we are desperately begging for rain. And the fire has cleaned up and rid us of old stumps and piles we inherited from the previous owners. And the exciting news is that what we really wanted to burn, the oasis with the spring in the middle, is now accessible and we can see the tree graveyard in there. This is obviously where they used to go to extract millable timber, cut fence posts and strainers etc. I spent two days in there, black from head to foot, lugging logs and branches and chainsawing wood to make it manouvrable, feeding the existing fires to clear areas of all the fallen timber. There’s another 6 months work in there but it will be beautiful when it is done. A lush green forest, a shady oasis in the middle of the pasture where the stock can retreat to on hot days and Ben and I can wander in awe.

We have to take the long view in farming. And I am learning that stressing achieves nothing. There was no point in trying to fight that fire, she obviously wanted to be burnt. And now she is.

Working in the blackened aftermath over the weekend, I meditated on the cleansing fire, the phoenix arising, and the rebirth and renewal offered both by the fire and the first days of spring. How it was possible to rebuild and restart in the ashes – relationships, friendships, dreams, plans, futures. Here is the cycle of life in all its stark reality – death, decay, rebirth. Every aspect of our lives affected by these never ending circles and rhythms if we could only realise it, and stop demanding the excitement and blossoming of eternal spring. We have to learn to live with the circles and cycles, see them, accept them and even embrace them as essential for our evolving, revolving life on earth.