Author Archives: sophie

The Business of Birth

by . Posted on
04 Aug

I pulled my first calf this morning.  That makes me a farmer for sure.  I learned how to do it by reading James Herriott’s books – it just goes to show how useful reading is in later life!

We have been waiting and waiting for Daisy to give birth.  Every morning asking Ben ‘do you think Daisy will have had her calf this morning?’ and then going off for a drive to find her still pregnant, udder full to bursting, waddling on the pasture, unconcerned.  This morning still no calf but as I walked back from the gate where I had been chatting to the fencing man who came to do a quote, I saw that she had started labouring.  All our little herd were around her giving quiet support and protection as she engaged in every animal’s most primal act.

I watched in the sun as she pushed and rested.  Backing up as she pushed, tail held high and then snatching at grass in between times.  After a while I realised she didn’t seem to be making much progress and when she lay down walked over slowly to check.  Two feet still in the sack protruding and no sign of the nose so I grasped the forelegs, broke the bag and tried to pull.  Nothing happened so I put both hands in to feel for the head.  It seemed to be quite a way in and I could feel the tongue lolling out of the mouth and so I pulled with left hand fingers hooked in the jaw and right on one of the forelegs and urged Daisy to push.  One huge heave and the head was out but no signs of life.  Another and the baby was out and on the ground but inert and very dead looking.  I reikied it and stroked it hard and talked to it and exhorted it to live.  Paddy came over and licked it while Daisy rested for a few minutes.  Finally it breathed and the heart started.  It was probably only 2 minutes but it felt like a long time . . . I briefly considered picking it up and shaking it or whirling it around me head but it was pretty heavy so lucky it started breathing without my having to resort to such extremes!

Daisy got up and busied herself with cleaning the ground of the detritus of birth before she attended in any way to her baby.  The calf flopped and wriggled, wet and fish like on the ground, in its first attempts to ‘find its feet’.  Finally Daisy turned her attentions to her child, licking and nudging her to stand and then when she did, cleaning her up as she shivered in the sun and sneezed all the amniotic fluid out of lungs and head.  Daisy was in true primal mode.  Normally she is so placid and relaxed but this was high drama and urgency – cleaning up so as not to attract predators, getting that calf on its feet and moving so it could run away from any attack.  All the other cows were there as a shield, watching with interest, not getting involved, but lending support just by being there.

Daisy expelled the placenta and promptly ate it, scrubbing the grass clean with her tongue.  Still the baby hadn’t had a drink and it was clear that there was a time for everything.

I left them to go for my run and came back to find a girl calf with a full belly happily sucking on her Mother and Dais licking me as if to say ‘thank you’.

But then I wondered – did I need to intervene or was it all unfolding perfectly?  Was I right to get in and help or was I unable, like so many doctors, to just sit and wait and watch and allow and TRUST?

We don’t do trust, us human beings, do we?  We don’t trust nature or ourselves or our children, friends or family.  We don’t trust each other, we don’t trust that there is a force far greater and more powerful than us which rules the heavens, has natural laws and knows far more than we do.  Or is it just that we are so scared – of death, of standing by, of the rawness and urgency of life at its most primal, that we feel we have to DO something, we can’t just sit and wait and be present in the moment and conscious in the flow of life’s great mysteries.

It was a beautiful thing to watch and be part of.  It was a beautiful day.  And now I have more empathy and sympathy for those medicos who insist on pulling and grabbing and cutting and sucking babies out.  It’s fear and awe.  I need to learn to wait and watch and so do they.  I’ll never know whether Daisy needed my intervention this morning or whether she was just fine on her own.  Neither will they.  We all need to trust the Mother, trust the baby, trust the process, trust the forces far greater than us and just enjoy being witness to a miracle.

Earth, Our Mother

by . Posted on
30 Jul

Like every woman, she is complex, changeable, volatile  . . .  and beautiful, oh so beautiful. Different in every changing season, every face of her more beautiful than the last.  Wild, unpredictable, untameable she is glorious in her power and wonder.  Groomed, tamed and tamped down in manicured precision she is muted but beautiful still.

She nurtures us, feeds us, embraces us when we need to breathe and think.  She clothes us, cares for us, picks up after us and deals with our detritus of daily life.  She loves us despite our taking her for granted, littering her pristine playgrounds and murdering our sisters and brothers in furry, feathered, finned flesh.

She has put up with us as we have emptied her reserves of fuel like a child sucking on its mother’s breast, furiously, feverishly long after it should have been weaned.  She has birthed us and given us her all as every good Mother does until she is depleted, exhausted and tired of our endless demands and selfishness.

She has put up with our growing pains and we have tried her patience through toddlerdom, school and adolescence.  Now she just wants us gone – why don’t we grow up, wise up and ship out?  And leave her to rest, decline and die in peace?

We have tired her out but with her last reserves of energy she is raging at us – why won’t we listen?

Why do we think we can take, take, take and give nothing back?  Did she teach us nothing?  Have we learned nothing in all our years of evolution and living with her?  Or is it still that this patriarchical society we have created where technology is the craven image we worship has to learn to love and wonder at woman in all her power and glory before we can honour the Mother who gives us our daily bread and so much more?

If it is not our generation who stop the mining, raping, pillaging madness then who?  If it is not us who demand clean, renewable energy and power and an end to poisonous chemicals and GM, then who?   Who will protect this beautiful Earth we are so honoured to call home for our children, who will?  If we don’t stand up and fight these greedy, blood sucking corporate parasites, who will?

She is so fragile this beautiful Mother of ours, right now, sucked dry.  And we have all the power and technology and the intelligence and the heart to stop the hunger, feed the world, and live in harmony with this beautiful Mother who has given us life.  It’s not too late to honour and learn from our indigenous communities and harness the forces of this tempestuous Mother of ours to give us all that we need and more.

Yes, it is a big fight.  Yes, it seems impossible.  Yes, the forces we are battling against are huge and powerful with deep, deep pockets lined with our hard earned wealth.  But David slew Goliath and us little, little people with our big hearts and our wisdom and passion can swell this groundswell into a roaring tsunami for change.  We have to.  Tired as we are, bowed as we are, so is our Mother and she needs us to speak for her, to help her, to work with her, to love and understand her.

And so doggedly, we must plod on and hope that in our lifetime things will change.  That not only Earth, our Mother, but all women, young and old, will get the respect, love, compassion and gratitude they so richly deserve.  Vive la revolution!

A Stranger in a Strange Land

by . Posted on
17 Jul

I can’t remember ever not feeling like I didn’t belong.  My Mother always used to say ‘why can’t you be normal?’  But I didn’t want to be normal if it meant telling lies, being dishonest, playing games with others in order to subscribe to the British stiff upper lip and ‘what will the neighbours think?’ way of life.  I rebelled, and fought and raged against the machine.  I have for 45 years.

But it must be so peaceful being normal, going along with the flow, working for ‘the man’, believing what the media tells you, telling lies (big and small) so as not to offend people, eating meat, drinking alcohol, taking pills for headaches etc, eating fast food, drinking too much coffee every day etc.,

Just being like everyone else.  Being ‘normal’.  It would be great.  Instead of all this wrestling in my heart and soul, this determination to live long and well and healthily, this aversion to putting toxins or poisons in my body so I can be ‘present’ and ‘real’ and ‘here’ and make the most of my time on this beautiful planet rather than deaden or numb or placate myself with platitudes and packaged food and pills.

Right now I long for such oblivion.  I’ve got such a headache from all the tooth problems I have had recently and I’m so tired of being shattered and broken open as my heart opens finally and I see myself for who and what I have been all my life and I don’t like it, and there is nowhere to hide.  A holiday in the form of alcohol or drugs is so tempting, but I guess I won’t, I’ll keep soldiering on and doing it my way (raw, unadulterated and conscious) and keep on keeping on.

I guess it’s rather like our birthing choices.  The masses choose to do it medicated, pain free, in an institution and with as much intervention as possible.  The small minority choose to do it naturally, at home, conscious, drug free and strong, powerful and raw.

I’m not alone.  There are others, making the same choices, with the same beliefs and passions and commitment to fully experiencing their lives, themselves, this time round.  But we are far flung and all walking lonely paths, ridiculed by the media, the masses and the mob.

So be it.  At the end of each day and at the end of my life I have only myself to answer to . . . was I brave, was I strong, did I learn, did I change, did I feel, did I make a difference, did I love enough, is the world a better or  worse place for me having walked it for some brief nanosecond in its history?

Right now the answer to those questions is not good or heartening – it is deep, dark and uncomfortable, but there is an egg of hope in my heart that I can face up to myself with a little more love soon.

At least I am delving and digging into myself, at least I am asking myself big questions, at least I am brave enough to see myself, to know myself and still be standing tentatively on the planet.  Maybe if there were more people doing this work, the world would be a kinder place.

Don’t be a sheep, little lamb, be a shepherd!

Midwinter in my Soul

by . Posted on
10 Jul

I have struggled with depression all my life.  Great times when it seems that the beast upon my back has left me and I can bask in ordinary, happy living things like normal human beings.  And then with no warning that dark, dense, weight is upon me once more and I am bowed down, struggling, wading as if through earth rather than air such is the impossibility and intensity of every move, every moment.

So many times I have thought I have beaten it once and for all.  Each time I am wrong.  I have had long dark nights, and sometimes even days, when suicide has beckoned me, called me, wooed me, whispered to me and seduced me with her siren song of peace.

Still I am here.  This bout, whether it is menopausal, hormonal, mid life or a spiritual crossroads, the crux upon which the rest of my life will spin, is very bad.  The good news is that deep down in my hole I seem to have some clarity.  We know that I have seen myself as I truly am in all my horror and am still reeling from that.  I can’t seem to see anything about myself to like or to redeem me.  That has been pretty painful.  For weeks.

Yesterday I decided I was a good cook.  Today that I can sing.  All very nice but these are neither moral highpoints or gifts to those around me or the world.

Right now the thread anchoring me to the planet is that Ben asked the other day when I was singing ‘When I wish upon a star’ for him, if he could wish.  I said, of course.  ‘For anything?’  ‘For anything, my darling boy, what would you wish for?’  ‘You’ he said.

In my tears this afternoon I realised that my heart and soul right now are at midwinter.  I may not be able to see anything but the bleak desolation of a sleeping earth (and feel its weight pressing upon me) but just as I can see the potential when I plant a seed or clear the land, so too can someone, somewhere (call him or her what you will – I call it God) see beyond this darkness of mine into a spring when some little seed will germinate and grow and one day there will be a blossoming and one day I will flower fully into myself – all the brighter, more beautiful and more precious because of the struggle through the darkness into the light.

And I heard a song I haven’t heard for a long, long time:

Some say love it is a river
that drowns the tender reed
Some say love it is a razer
that leaves your soul to blead

Some say love it is a hunger
an endless aching need
I say love it is a flower
and you it’s only seed

It’s the heart afraid of breaking
that never learns to dance
It’s the dream afraid of waking

that never takes the chance

It’s the one who won’t be taken
who cannot seem to give
and the soul afraid of dyingthat never learns to live

When the night has been too lonely
and the road has been too long
and you think that love is only
for the lucky and the strong
Just remember in the winterfar beneath the bitter snows
lies the seed
that with the sun’s love
in the spring
becomes the rose

The Darkest Day

by . Posted on
17 Jun

Ged and I had a huge row.  And after we had time to think and review and lick our wounds we had a very painful conversation in which I really saw that my anger and rage and railing against everyone and the world is intolerable.  So destructive.  And I knew deep down in my being that I needed help.  I have spent 14 years on the mat or on the punch bag and STILL I am angry.  15 years running and STILL I am angry.  The door of my blame was swung wide open and I saw that it was only me to blame for all that was wrong in our marriage and my life.  It wasn’t a pretty sight.

In fact, I was so devastated by the picture I saw of myself that I truly believed that there was no place for me in this world.  That Ged and Ben would be better off and happier without me.  I felt that I was so difficult to love, and so little loved by so very few, that somehow it would be kinder to all not to have to struggle with me and my emotional tornadoes any more.  God knows I have long wanted a rest from them myself and have begged for the burden of this anger to be taken from me.

I was so raw but also still so frustrated with myself, the situation, Ben, everything.  Shannon and Nathan came and to my great shame when Ben was (yet again!) putting stones down the pipe into the septic I snapped and grabbed him by one arm and hoisted him up in the air and then plonked him down on the ground 4 metres away.  It was exactly the sort of thing my parents would have done.  The only thing that was missing was the stinging smack.  But the energy was the same.  And that beautiful boy doesn’t deserve that, he deserves so much better than a mother like me.  I see so clearly that he could have someone young and pretty and joyful and light filled.  Instead he has got me.  I have already damaged him, and I don’t want to any more.  I want him to retain his crystalline goodness and beauty and his angelic love.  Please don’t let him be polluted by me and all my bile and rage and spite.

So I went for a run all churning up inside with such self hatred and self disgust, such sorrow and pain, such self loathing, fear for the future and despair at myself and the chaos I have created.  I only got as far as the Angle Creek ridge before I had to sit down and howl.  And it was then that it became clear to me that there was no place for me in this world.  It’s by far from the first time I have felt this but I hope it will be the last.  I decided to go up the logging track above the Eyrie and find a tree.  Of course it wouldn’t be today because I didn’t have a rope but at least I could make a plan.  And so I stumbled with every step, blinded by tears and despair at this being I was whose only peace was in letting go of life and all the things that I love the most and have made me the most fulfilled and happy – my husband, my beautiful boy and my land.

When I got up to the top I found such incredible beauty and peace.  Boulders and cliff faces tumbling down into a flora filled abyss, trickling streams from the deluges we have just experienced, and such serenity.  And there was I in my darkness looking for the perfect place to put an end to my sorrow once and for all.  Looking for a place to die.

The difficulties are immense.  I didn’t want to damage or harm my beautiful angelic boy so best to do it while he is so young and won’t remember his Mama who loves him so much.  I didn’t want to be found by anybody so that they would be traumatised by the experience.  I didn’t want to hang.  I had my lovely wool jumper around my waist and realisd I could use that so I fashioned a slip knot around my neck and boulder hopped looking for the perfect tree, the perfect spot.  There were plenty of places.  And my mind had become quite clinical and calculating about the whole thing.  I can’t now believe that I walked around for so long with a noose around my neck.  I don’t know what stopped me there and then but I decided to walk on to the area I had earlier envisaged as the ‘right one’.  In the walking I removed the jumper from my neck and somehow found a little peace and respite.  I think I thought ‘tomorrow’.

So I kept walking up the narrow track Judy had worn on her Vision Quest to find the open area she had told Ged about.  It was there, on the other side of a fence, bathed in sunlight and sheltered from the wind.  A little clearing in the forest.  I found a spot and lay down to rest, exhausted.

And felt the peace and warmth of the sun penetrate my cold body and soul and light and life re-enter me.  I felt healing angel hands of love and light soothe me, stroke me, heal me.  And finally after all my pleading over the last few years (‘take this cup from me’) that this rage and darkness be removed from me, I saw and felt it lifted away.

And I felt peace.  In my heart, in my soul, in every cell of my body and I knew I had the strength to return to my life, resolved that I and it would be different.  I had seen myself in all my truth and it was a horrible sight.  Somehow I had to pick myself up and piece together a way of being and living in spite of my horror at who I was and have the honesty to try and fabricate a new path out of the ravages of the old.  Somewhere in me there is a goodness and a love and a heart and if I can hold on tight to those and if not forgive myself for all the rest but at least let them fall away and hope that others can forgive me.  I have been the monster my mother called me in my teenage years, I see that now.  (She was right! )  But just like an addict who finally wakes up to herself (and I am an addict, after all) and sees the damage and destruction she has wrought and goes forth to carve a new path, so too can I.  I don’t know how.  I feel very shaky – my world has been rocked to its foundations and there is very little of the old me I can take forward from this point on but I have to be brave enough to find a way.  One day at a time.  With an open and humble heart, an open mind and a willingness to see and embrace opportunities to change and grow and become a better, kinder, nicer, more loving, giving and whole person.  For my own happiness, for my husband, my marriage, my son.  And just hope that they can forgive me all the pain and sorrow I have caused them, please forget who I was, and love me enough to hold my hand as I walk forward seeking a new way to be.

Our first Koala

by . Posted on
Our First Koala
27 Nov

We have to make a new enclosure for the Alpacas with a shelter so they can get out of the weather, so Ged has been up in the bush with Nathan, who is the fiance of Shannon who helps with Ben and Ben adores!  Shannon volunteers at the Koala Hospital and has worked in bush regeneration for years in Sydney so she is our resident expert on all things native.  When I found scat and scratches on trees a few months ago, she checked them out and confirmed they were koala marks and droppings.  I have since examined every tree I come across and according to the markings we are over-run with Koalas!  As I spend my life looking down at the ground checking out the grasses and weeds, and where to put my feet in case of snakes, I haven’t seen any . . . so I have been training myself to look up all the time but haven’t seen anything bear shaped.

But when the boys were up in the bush cutting down tallow woods and I had gone up to report another tractor fault (oh no, Mummy broke the tractor AGAIN!) Nathan spotted a koala watching in horror as they chopped down another major food tree.  The poor thing lost 6 trees from its home range that afternoon and now I have made Ged promise not to cut down any more tallow-woods, they are sacred trees at Avalon from this moment on . . .

Anyway, he was beautiful.  Not old and very healthy and just stunning to see one on our own property.  Incredibly exciting.  I had a koala as a small child (probably made of roo or wallaby  skin in those days) which I wore all the fur off with my loving.  I was as excited as any child to see this one (if only he would come down for a pat and a cuddle!)  Ben was nonplussed as he sees them at Billabong Koala Park all the time!
And it just goes to show the power of positive thinking and what you focus on comes to you . . . for 3 years I haven’t even thought about koalas but for the last three months I have been thinking about them, looking for them, calling to them in my mind . . . and now one answered that call!  thank you, Mr Koala . . .  here he is  . . .

Fashion on the Farm

by . Posted on

We robbed the hives yesterday fashionably attired in our whites and veils while Pickle sat in the car supervising with a bottle.  He was fed scraps of honey laden comb to keep him quiet as we moved frames and boxes and coaxed the bees off the frames we were taking home.  He would imperiously yell ‘more’ and ‘honey’ when his supplies ran low!  Later, when I was uncapping the honey stores in the kitchen and ged was chopping up veg for supper I said ‘It’s addictive, isn’t it, this self sufficiency business?  The more I do it, the more I love it, and the more I resent paying anyone for my food.’  We carried on working and then I said ‘The funniest thing for anyone to witness though is my transformation from Margot to Barbara . . . ‘

He looked at me, undyed hair streaked with grey, worn and honey strewn shirt, jeans and thick socks, at our unkempt house with the piles of never-ending washing to be put away, the cat and dog lording it by the fire, the home baked muffins and cookies on the kitchen bench and the oranges and lemons in baskets awaiting the honey to be made into jam.  He laughed.    ‘You’ve come a  long way, baby!’

A Musing on the Meaning of Life

by . Posted on
15 Mar

We almost lost my niece, Isabel, a week or so ago.  She was very ill with what everyone thought was a tummy bug, but Millie was worried and took her to hospital after two days of throwing up and tummy pains.  By the time the specialist decided to operate and got in there, her appendix had burst and it was all apparently a horrible mess.  After the op she just kept on throwing up and she seemed to be fading.  Ged and I got our hands to work sending Reiki and we both got that she was going to die.  I can’t begin to express how precious Issy is in the family – the only grandchild for my parents before Ben came along  but she has held the honoured, and probably onerous, position of only grandchild for over 10 years now.  Of course she is spoilt, and like all kids she can be a proper little madam, but for Millie and Phil she was the first and as it turned out, the one and only, of the family they had dreamed of (and there’s a helluva lot of heartbreak there), for my Mother she has been the longed for grandchild and I am sure a chance to be a better grandmother than she was mother, and for Melissa the closest it seems she will ever get to having a child, and for me, the hope of a happy child in our family.

Anyway, she almost left us and I could see, in my mind’s eye, the horror and the shattering grief and the hole in all our lives which would be left if she departed and I remember being frantic that she must stay and saying over and over again ‘You’re not going to die, Issy, you’re going to be fine’ but with this cold hand of dread clutching at my heart.

She was, is, fine.  she turned the corner and now she is home and well.  But we are changed.  All of a sudden death came knocking at the door of our lives and a shiver ran through our family.

We all take everyone and everything around us for granted yet nothing is guaranteed.  We moan about the facets of our lives which are too much like hard work but we don’t excise them.  We think life is meant to be hard or a struggle or about acquisition but it’s NOT.  It’s about the heart, about love, about joy, about sharing.  About the miracles that abound every day that we are too busy to see . . .and yet, even having had this revelation, I have slipped back into my own man-made monotony and material world.  WHY?  Why are we so shallow, so caught up in our own emotional ebbs and flows and not centred on joy and happiness and concentrating on that, allowing that in.

I feel like I don’t KNOW how to be happy, that I am always looking for what is WRONG, not what is RIGHT, and GOOD and LOVING.  That’s my family background of constant criticism and nit-picking STILL running the program of my life.  How do I let it go.  Just let it go . . . just hand it over to God and he/she tosses them into the brazier behind and they are gone . . . ashes to ashes, dust to dust, embers sparking against the celestial sky.  Phew, I feel lighter already . . . now can I embrace my life, open my heart to those who love me and be free, happy, joyful . . . we shall see . . .

Where are all the Elves when you need them?

by . Posted on
24 Dec

I could do with a little tribe just to pick up after his lordship . . . .as quickly as I go around decorating the christmas tree, picking up toys, cleaning the floor, putting back the drawers and cupboards there’s a little mischievous elf behind me creating chaos . . . . and we have one incisor down and one still cutting through – which means a little clingy, non-sleeping man and a very frustrated Mama!  It’s christmas morning here already and the house is clean (finally!) the lawn is mowed, I have spent all day doing a christmas pudding (my first!) with dried fruit that has been stewing in brandy for 18 months – it’s pretty potent!  Thank God for Google – wouldn’t have had a clue without the master at my elbow!  We are off to bed and still got to make the salads and the mayonnaise and the brandy butter and white sauce in the morning as well as enjoying Ben enjoying his presents.  It’s been a crazy week with trying to finish work, do the shopping, spring clean the house etc . . . and Ben is almost walking on his own!

Mummy's little helper

Walking Boy

Messy, me??

Blue eyed boy

Boys will be Boys!

by . Posted on
20 Nov

Last Thursday not long after Sandra had arrived to look after the not sleeping (again!) Pickle for the afternoon, I was finally doing a wee when I heard a scream and sobbing and I raced out and grabbed my baby from her. His mouth was full of blood and he was hysterical so I just held him to me and reikied him and murmured ‘it’s all right, it’s all right’ in his ear while he cried  . . . and cried . . . and cried.  All I could see was the top of his golden head and the blood all over my white t-shirt and the stain kept growing and growing.

I had no idea what he had done and I wasn’t going to be able to look until he calmed down so I just kept holding him and loving him.  At one point I pulled off my tee shirt because I thought the blood must be upsetting him more so I was bare breasted Mama, fiercely protecting her cub.  Finally I took him outside because nature always calms him as it does me, and we stood by the flying fox and watched the river as he cried.

After a while he wriggled to go down and I let him and crouched down with him, but as soon as his feet hit the ground, the sobbing started again.  So I sat legs akimbo and pulled him to my chest again and waiting til he stopped.  He stopped and I pulled away and it all started again, crying like his heart would break.  I could even hear the emotions as they tore through him – ‘the world isn’t a safe place any more’, ‘I hurt’, ‘it isn’t fair’, ‘life isn’t supposed to be like this’, ‘I hurt’ and there was nothing I could do about any of it just be there – I couldn’t turn back time, I couldn’t make it go away and I couldn’t heal it – what sort of Mother was I?

Eventually he stopped and I took him back to the house and poor Sandra who had the guilt of being the one in charge eating her up.  More Emergency Essence and we stripped him and put him in a nice warm bath to get clean both physically and energetically – wash away the trauma, rinse away the pain.  Sandra played with him while I made a bottle dosed with Arnica, chamomile and more Emergency Essence and at last we could see what he had done.  Top teeth through bottom lip, one tooth right through to the outside by the looks of things.  Hard to say but looked like the teeth were all still where they had been.

OMG my poor child.  No blame, just sorrow – it could have happened with any of us, and once they start standing upright some big fall is inevitable.  But if I could turn back time  . . . I would in an instant.  If only we could erase all the pain and hardship from our loved ones lives, if only we could rewrite history and change the bad decisions we have made, the unnecessary pain we have put them through, the terrible things we say, the thoughtless things we do, the hurt we inflict whether knowingly or unknowingly.  If we could edit our own lives as easily as we edit words on a page, how different we, and the world would be.

Sad & sorry but still beautiful, two days later