Another Rite of Passage

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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

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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

A tinder dry tale of a late winter fire

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Comboyne View
09 Aug

Last Monday I was in town (which isn’t usual) and happened to hear on The Country Hour that the RFS was bringing in the fire permit season a month earlier than they have for the past few years. It used to be 1st October. For the past couple of years it has been 1st September. Now they were saying 1st August.

That meant we had 3 days to do a month’s burning! Farmers generally burn off in August – after the frosts have killed the grass and the air temps have increased. So bringing forward the deadline was a foolhardy decision by the RFS. It would have been better to have told us all in June or July that if there was no rain, they would be bringing in the permit season earlier.

I had been for a big walk, high into the bush the previous day, looking for the star picket post remover which seems to have vanished into thin air! I hadn’t been up there for maybe 6 months and I was amazed by the depth of the leaf litter and the branches and other debris littering the bushscape.  After 7 lush wet years and then the high, drying, winds we have experienced lately, I was walking on 6 inches of crackly, slippery, dryness and navigating fallen tree limbs very few feet.

We hadn’t burnt up there for about 4 years and clearly, if we wanted to be safe in the event of a catastrophic fire summer, we needed to light it up.

We don’t like to burn, unlike many farmers who use it as an intrinsic part of their overstocked cattle feeding regime. But occasionally we use it as a tool to clean up an area or lighten the fuel load to protect us against a hot summer fire.

With the forecast el nino spring and summer, and as we back onto State Forest, we feel compelled to protect ourselves. Our lovely neighbour has been asking us to light up behind part of our property and into hers for years. So we lit into the bush behind us, Ged stayed home and we had our English wwoofers, Ben & Naomi on hand in case of escapee blazes (we have all had one ‘get away on us’! and burn a paddock we didn’t intend to!)

All went well for a couple of days but on Friday when little Ben and I began our descent off Comboyne mountain after preschool we saw a haze of thick smoke in the valley and were worried! As we drove along the final stretch of Tilbaroo and looked over to our land, we saw a spreading grass fire where we definitely had no intention of burning!

Through the gate, through the river, up the bank, hooting and shouting to Ged ‘the farm is on fire!’  He leapt in his car with the fire beaters and we stopped long enough at The Tree House to hoot and yell the same dire message to the wwoofers and then we all raced over to ‘the other side’ as if we were competing for the world rally racing championships!

Little Ben and I checked the bees while the boys raced into fire fighting mode. The bees had fled and Ben and I were devastated. Not again! (I was responsible for the last getaway blaze & have been banned from playing with matches for life!) We met up with the boys and sent Naomi & little Ben home (I need to do a poo, Mummy!)

It didn’t take long to get it all under control. The bees came home and are busy, busy. But the bush is still burning. The neighbours say it hasn’t been burnt for 20 years or more. Better a cool winter burn than a raging summer furnace travelling at 30kms an hour – with the tops of oily eucalypts alight, fireballs and radiant heat.  Unfortunately State Forests and National Parks are little managed, so we are giving them a long overdue clean out and in this valley we can all feel a lot safer and more prepared for whatever Mother Nature may throw at us in terms of drought . . .

The valley still has a smoky haze, the helicopters are keeping an eye on the fires on distant hills and we can relax, hoping that this will keep us safe this summer . . . the river is SO low, the creek is almost dry, the dams too.  When we arrived here the drought was ending.  We have had 7 years of flood and fertility.  This is going to be a new experience for us on this land we love.  But we will weather it.  And we will grow and learn.  We have to.  That is the lesson of Mother Nature who tempts, taunts, tries, feeds and clothes us.  Like every woman she has many moods and is sometimes swift to change them.  Like every woman she makes us happy when she is balanced – sun and rain.

Right now we are praying for rain . . .

Mid Winter Hibernation & Healing

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monarch butterfly
20 Jul

Varicose Veins are another of the delightful things I inherited from my Father – together with his nose, long, gaunt face, hair trigger temper and belief that I know best about all things.  There isn’t much I can do about my nose or the shape of my face, I have worked very hard on my arrogance, unasked for offering of advice and my anger and temper.  My personality has changed, but the physical attributes remained.  When I first saw myself in profile aged 15 I was devastated and begged my Mother for a nose job when I turned 18.  It never eventuated.

And after years of aching, itchy, legs and never being able to bare my legs in public in the summer, I decided to put myself in the hands of a vascular surgeon.  Luckily she was a lady and a nice one at that.  She listened to my horror of anaesthetics, scalpels and hospitals, and made me feel safe.

I went on a waiting list that was anticipated to be at least 6 months, and forgot about it.  Then came a phone call – could I commit to a slot in 10 days time as Wauchope Hospital had had a cancellation.  Ged agreed to be home and I grabbed it.  Better to be sick and wearing support stockings mid winter!  Then there was a huge debate about my refusal to have an epidural.  Some people are scared of flying, some of horses, some of heights – for me it is epidurals.  There’s no way anyone is going to stick a huge needle down into my spinal cord.  Ugh!

Finally the anaesthetist agreed to a General Anaesthetic for me and I was booked in.  Rather like childbirth, it is a good thing I had no idea what I was in for beforehand!

Up really early on the Friday morning and drove myself and JP to Wauchope, for him to drive the car back home.  Nil by mouth and all that, but clutching my thermos of tea for after the op.  The hospital was extremely efficient and everything happened very quickly.  I was first up so straight into the hospital gown, the anaesthetist came to meet me and I made him PROMISE not to do an epidural (!) and then the surgeon came to mark up my legs.  Quick as a flash I was in pre-theatre and needled and the next thing I knew I was out, freezing cold, teeth chattering and nurses flitting around me asking about pain and temperature and trying to stabilise me.  Then I was out in the day surgery warmth and drinking my tepid tea before staggering into the loo to get dressed.  In and out must be their motto because they rang Ged to come and take me away before lunch and he decided to take me straight home.

Of course I was flying from the anaesthetic for days.  We had our big mid-winter party on at the weekend so were surrounded by friends, and I mainly sat with my feet up in our newly configured sitting room, knitting. I even went for a walk on Saturday although that was pushing it!  I supped champagne and enjoyed being Queen for a few days.

When the drugs started wearing off my legs really ached and I wondered what on earth I had been thinking.  Then I really crashed with a temperature, throwing up and diarrhoea.  Not sure whether it was flu or opiate withdrawal.  Whatever, I was a groaning, shivering, blob under the duvet for 2 days.  Thank God Ged was there to keep the wheels turning while I hibernated.

It was great to be able to give in to my body’s demand for rest and recuperation, rather than forcing myself up to look after Ben, pushing myself beyond my limits as I have done so often over the last 5 years.

I knew when I decided to have my varicose veins ‘stripped’ that it was an outward, physical, manifestation of the inner work I have done over the last few years – letting go, forgiving, changing.  And in succumbing to the surgeon’s knife I was ripping out the old, outdated, gnarled and twisted that I no longer wanted or needed in my life.  Prescribing myself a new beginning.

Under the duvet I let go . . . I meditated on my last foray into a world of opiates and the heroin withdrawal I masterminded and oversaw for my friend.  I repeated silently to myself ‘I lovingly forgive and release the past’ as I slipped in and out of deep and dreamless sleep.

And I healed.  On all sorts of levels.  I rested.  I stopped cranking the handle and the world still turned . . . I gave myself permission to retreat, recuperate, be vulnerable and weak.  I let those who love me care for me and see the control freak felled to her knees – vulnerable and pathetic. It’s only me who has a problem with that!

And when I arose after my exile of travelling dark recesses of my soul and psyche and passaging in places of pain, I was different.  MUCH more relaxed, with my sense of humour returned to me (how I have missed you!), a sense of balance and proportion about work and play and a real readiness and willingness to listen to others, to learn at the feet of masters, and to give myself pleasure and nurture myself with the things and people I love.

And as I recognised that I needed to grow and change more, to journey along more challenging healing paths to the heart centre, I began to look for places and people to help me.  I found a book I have had since 2004 and have put off and off and off embarking on.  Sequel to the life changing ‘The Artist’s Way’ it is Julia Cameron’s ‘Vein of Gold’ which demands daily walks, morning pages and a voyage of self discovery through the trivialities, tedium and trauma of one’s past.

I pounced on the book like an old friend and readily committed to the journey.  Perfect winter work.  As we hibernate, heal, connect deeply with our most immediate family and friends and ourselves.   Mining ourselves for our riches, dreams and inspirations.  Plotting our futures and pathways to our goals as the winter winds howl and the cold scratches at the doors and windows with its icy fingers.

Winter is time for inner work and introspection, just as summer speaks of reaching out to friends and the world, partying and celebrating the warmth and fertility.  Just as the land sleeps and rests so must we.  It is good for me to finally learn to rest and not to be constantly questing, working, doing.  The seeds of deep change are being planted this wintertide, and despite my averse reaction to drugs, hospitals and surgery, I can see that science can complement metaphysics to effect deep change and transformation.

Will I submit for the other leg too . . .. ???!!!

Wild Horses

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Brumbies from Guy Fawkes Heritage Horse Association
29 Jun

For a horse lover, it is the stuff of legends, bush ballads and rangers of yore – taking wild horses from the Australian bush and making lifelong friends with them.  Call me a mountain dreamer, but it’s always been on my to do list. I found out about the wild brumbies of the Australian Bush many years ago, and the plight they face as their numbers expand and various State and Federal Governments dream up ever more evil ways to get rid of them (aerial shooting).  These are the iconic horses of Banjo Patterson, Ned Kelly and the original aboriginal horsemen (and women).

Small, compact, strong, hardy, kind, gentle and sure footed, they have turned their hooves to everything from cattle mustering, polo, transport and more and have stood shoulder to shoulder with Australians as they settled and dominated their landscape.

Never a fan of a big horse (too far to fall!) as I started seriously looking for a horsey heart to love in some vain desire to fill the hole left by the irreplaceable Baby, it was clear that we would have to go and look at some brumbies and see if we liked the reality as much as the idea and ideal.

On a bitterly cold May day we took the Dorrigo road out of Guyra to the Guy Fawkes Heritage Horse Association holding property and waited for Erica and Digby to turn up in their ancient Toyota.  I spent the time picking the paper like everlasting daisies – like little golden suns.  There was a beautiful Palomino stallion in the yards and Ged and I talkedto him through the rails as we waited for Digby and Erica to calmly and quietly herd the horses into the yards for us to look at.  So many horses! So hard not to fall in love!  I immediately fell for a pretty bay mare but she was sold, next I set my heart on a stunning buckskin mare and we spent a long time looking at her but finally noticed that her hocks were blown up like footballs.  Something wrong there so Erica said she would turn her out and wouldn’t sell her until she was well.  Meanwhile Ged and the stallion were deep in eyeballing conversation.  There was an undeniable connection between the two alpha males.

Erica suggested another buckskin mare with foal at foot that we might like ‘out the back’ so we set off in the jalopy with some hay, calling ‘c’mon’ and watching horses emerge from the scrub.  A few times we got out and got close to horses but we couldn’t find the buckskin!  At one clearing I got out of the car and turned around to be met by the curious stare of a horse who was the reincarnation of my beautiful ‘Baby’.  Hot tears streamed down my cheeks in the cold wind and I turned to Ged ‘doesn’t she look just like Baby?’  I couldn’t hear him, but he took one look at my face and told Erica we would definitely be having that little bay filly.  Still no sign of the bucky and we had to go as we had left Ben with a friend.

We had also agreed to take a 25 year old wild and pregnant mare who we felt sorry for.  The horses are trapped with hay in a series of yards in The Guy Fawkes National Park, and then trucked to this holding property where they were branded, wormed and sold out into the wider community as projects, pets, and horses of all disciplines – never for meat.

I paid for ‘Second Chance’ as I called her and had a sleepless nights over the old wild mare.  Finally Erica called me and said the sale of the stallion had fallen through – did we want him?  I hesitated for a moment and then said ‘It’s Ged’s birthday in a couple of weeks, that can be his surprise present’ and I explained my reticence about the old girl.  Erica understood and agreed to keep her through her dotage.  So the truck was booked, the Stallion paid for and the new steel yards to hold them, ordered.

These cheap horses were starting to cost a fortune!  Oh well, we desperately needed new yards, anyway.  As ever, at Avalon, we need a deadline to move heaven and earth to get things done!

It was so exciting having this huge secret to keep from Ged.  A couple of times I thought I had blown it, as I am the world’s worst poker player, and everyone around us knew of the surprise.

The week before I rang Erica and asked about the Buckskin mare – after all, if we were paying for a truck, we might as well fill it up!  She checked her out and said the hocks had gone down a lot, but still a bit swollen so we could have her at half price (pregnant to boot!)  I can never walk past a bargain so the deal was done!

Then we just had to wait for the yards which came early one morning and were erected incredibly quickly by the manufacturer (a nice man from Tamworth) together with our friend Ian (who is fixing the road with his excavator) and the lovely Jean Philippe (our French wwoofer from last year returned to his Aussie home from home for a month of hard labour!)

All was ready for the arrivals and two days later they weathered the winding road down the Great Dividing Range and leapt out of the truck into the new yards littered with piles of hay.  They were calm from the outset.

The following morning Ged, Ben and I walked down the paddock together to inspect the new arrivals as Ged & Ben had come home after dark the night before.  It was such a thrill to see the look on Ged’s face when he saw the stallion and to be able to say ‘Happy Birthday, Darling’.  What a fantastic surprise and wonderful gift.

Day by day the ‘bubble’ of space they have needed to keep them separate from us has got smaller and smaller.  Even the stallion is able to be just a metre away from whoever is feeding them.  Food is a wonderful ice-breaker!

We are gradually giving them more and more farm to explore and graze.  I spent some good ‘join-up’ time with Second Chance in the round yard yesterday.  The buckskin is called ‘Beauty’ and the Stallion is ‘Sandy’.  Watch this space for developments as they journey from wild and unhandled to friends and companions for life, and our hearts are healed and horsemanship expanded along the way.

Back on the Vegetarian Bandwagon

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21 Mar

When we killed our first two pigs towards the end of last year, despite my tears at their demise, I launched myself off the vegetarian bandwagon I’ve been driving for over 20 years.  Boots and all I landed firmly on the side of the carnivores as I feasted on the fat of the land – literally.  While the boys were savouring the meat of the bacon, I was supping on the fat.  We were like that old childhood rhyme – ‘Jack Spratt could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean.  Between them both, they licked the platter clean.’

Even while my tongue and tastebuds were revelling in the taste and sensations in my mouth, and my belly was full at last, my mind and soul were wrestling with the implications of my newly formed enthusiasm for flesh.

I read ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma’ and more as I tried to make sense of this physical need to be satiated with the flesh of another, while the soul abhors the loss of life integral to the process from paddock to plate.

On the farm, life and death is often very arbitrary – just like human life.  Animals can be here one day and gone the next – flood, snake bite, wild dogs, weakness, paralysis tick etc. Witnessing the cruelty of nature made me think that our considered culling was pretty tame by comparison, notwithstanding the fear the animals feel as they load and leave this land that they have always known and loved as home.  As they leave their families and friends to destinations unknown and uncertain.

I love these animals, each and every one, and their grief is heartbreaking as they go.  Yes, they have had wonderful peaceful, joyous lives, foraging as nature intended and they wouldn’t have been born and had the experience if it weren’t for the human need and love of meat.

I’m not condemning anyone else’s choices.  We will still be raising animals for sale, slaughter and feeding my two carnivorous boys.

But maybe the wholesale slaughter of my beautiful sheep by the wild dogs, or tempting the pigs into the trailer for their final journey to the abattoir, or the freezers full to the brim of dead pig at the moment, or looking at this year’s crop of calves and how beautiful and full of life they are, has turned me from my thirst for flesh, back to the the peaceful serenity of veg.

Maybe I’m just sick to my stomach of the swathe of deaths we’ve witnessed over the last few months.  Never say never, I might be tempted by the smell of bacon in the future, but for now I am clambering wearily back onto the vegetarian bandwagon.

These animals are my friends, and I don’t want to eat my friends . . .

Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep . . .

by . Posted on
28 Feb

I do know where to find them.  All dead.  All gone.  Bodies strewn around the farm in various stages of decompositions.  Wanton wastage to the wild dogs.  All my beautiful children gone.  No more kisses at feeding time.  No more chasing them away from the alpaca food bowls.  No more racing antics as they run from one to the next . . . no more watching them grazing quietly on the hill above the house, or racing down same helter skelter when I go to the feed shed with the yellow bucket.

No more pitiful bleating when bollocky boy loses the flock (again!) and wanders the farm over trying to find them . . .

I woke up at 5am on Monday and went to the loo.  Looked out of the window into the grey gloom and saw three sheep being herded in terror.  Raced into Ged and woke him up to get the gun which was locked away in the gun cabinet.  By the time we were both up and dressed there were only two sheep huddled on the hill and no sign of the wild dog.  Typical!  There never bloody is when Ged and his gun are around.

Still, we went for a drive and a wander and luckily found the third sheep hiding with her head under a fallen she oak down by the river, her body screened by a huge clump of weed.  She was exhausted, terrified, in shock.  We fetched the Emergency Essence and dribbled it into her mouth and on her poll.  We reikied and talked to her.  She didn’t appear to be injured and eventually she got up and wended her way back to the others.  She was limping on a foreleg, but otherwise seemed ok.

Ben and I spent the day building a yard below the hill where they have been camping out with the thought that we could tempt them down there with food.  We laboured hard and were proud of the results and our efforts.  But of course they were so traumatised by being hunted every night – so skittish and scared, that they wouldn’t come near us or our brilliant construction.  So we just had to pray.

On Tuesday at feeding time first I tried to tempt them down, and then, in frustration, tried to herd them.  Which is impossible with just one person.  It didn’t work.

On Wednesday the prayers seemed to be working, since nothing else was.  On Thursday we came home and couldn’t see any white woollies on the hill.  I raced in to put supper in the oven and then Ben and I drove up to the top of the hill.  Two sheep.  One badly injured.  We tried to tempt them closer with food but instead they limped off the hill, down the flat and up into the bush.

I had to leave them there and feed the small person and got Ged to sing him to sleep over the phone so I could go out and feed the alpacas.  Then I ‘went bush’ and she had lain down in exhaustion and let me pet her and examine the injuries.  I assured her that she would be ok and went home to fetch a bucket of hydrogen peroxide, clean cloth, and a syringe of penicillin.  Cleaned and dosed her up and realised there was no way I could leave her stuck in the bush all night.  She was a sitting duck, or a lying sheep.  Easy prey.

(Language takes on a whole new meaning out here on the land with Nature as your friend and foe)

So I had to get her home.  We weigh about the same and at first tries it didn’t seem possible that I could move her out.  But sheer grit, determination (some would say bloody mindedness!) and adrenalin fuelled my endeavours.

She was on a hill of loose rocks and leaf matter so my feet could get no purchase and a couple of times we slipped and went roly poly together as I tried to haul her out.  Finally she was wedged by some young trees and I couldn’t budge her.  So I had the bright idea of getting bandages and ropes and hauling her behind the car (I admit that Ged and I started watching Django last weekend which may have inspired me).  I retrieved what I needed from the shed and bound her front legs together (back legs would have been better but one had a deep two inch rip in it that was bad enough already without further stress).  I positioned the car and was about to attach the rope when I realised I couldn’t drag her past the trees.  Back to the drawing board.  I tried to persuade her.  I lifted her up onto her feet and finally she got the messages I had been exhorting into her ears.  And me holding her up we walked step by step down the hill.  I told her that she need only make it onto the flat and then I could drag her behind the car but she was very brave and we probably did 50 metres before she stopped and said she could go no further.  I felled her and bandaged her and ‘hog tied’ her and very very slowly dragged her behind the car to the house.

In retrospect I should have made a sled.  I’ll know for next time.

Got her home, cleaned her up again and liberally administered the Emergency Essence and Reiki.  Covered her with a red blanket so she looked very Red Cross Emergency victim.  And went in to clean up me and the house.  By the time Ged came home (a day early to try and shoot these bloody dogs) she was doing well.  Ged stayed home on Friday to nurse her and work while Ben and I went to preschool and yoga respectively.

When I got home she looked fine.  I didn’t check her before we went to sleep.  But I woke at 3 and after tossing and turning for a while decided to go outside and see what, if anything, was happening, before waking Ged up to go for a walk with his gun.  Fleur as Ben and I had named her when we talked about her in the car yesterday, was in trouble.  Wedged upside down on the hill by the fence.  Breathing really laboured.  Eyes dull, leg so hot and throbbing.  More Emergency Essence, more Reiki in the rain.  But after 15 minutes or so she started spasming and then there was a slowing of the breath.  And then the final breath and she was gone.  I came in and had a hot sweet tea.  And then lay in the dark sobbing for the rest of the night.

Such an emptiness in my heart and on the farm without our little blobs of cotton wool littering the landscape.  I love their wise citrine eyes, the short crop of black hair on the head and legs, sinking my hands deep into their luxurious fleece and imagining all the products to enrich our lives.  I love the shearer and the huge event that is the annual shearing, I love their sweet faces and eager antics to steal every last morsel of food from the alpacas.  I have loved them from near and afar and now they are all gone.

Our last remaining has long been crazy and won’t come near us and I don’t like her chances on her own.

What a waste!  Like a fox in a hen house, the wild dogs have just brought them down, gnawed at them and then abandoned them to the ants, goannas and eagles.  It has just been sport.  Hunting practice.  And it has felt like a war zone.  And now there is a war.  Me against the wild dog population.  I am going to learn to shoot today.  And I am going to hunt them down.  They have wilfully destroyed my ovine family.  It’s personal.

Kitchen Witch

by . Posted on

I have been introducing Ben’s friends and their mums to our home made answer to the sugary tomato ketchup (which they all love!) and it occurred to me that I should share some of our home made solutions to the huge amounts of sugar, e numbers and other chemicals to be found in almost everything on the duopoly supermarket shelves.  So:

Homemade Tomato Ketchup

This is so simple, cheap and easy.  Just get a jar of pure tomato paste and add balsamic vinegar to taste.  Gives you that lovely sweet/sour flavour and is full of tomato goodness.  You can either mix it directly in the jar or spoon out the amount you need into a container and mix to taste.

Salad Dressing

This can be made either with or without honey.  You can add stevia if you like that sweet and sour flavour on your salad.  I like it without, the boys like it with honey, so here it is with:

Big tablespoon of honey, big tablespoon or two of french mustard (sugar free is VILUX), pinch of salt, freshly ground pepper, good glug of balsamic, double that amount of apple cider vinegar and then add oil to the consistency you prefer.  Yum!

Quick & easy salads

We buy sundried tomatos in bulk and then just add a few to boiling water once a week and store them in the fridge as a mainstay of our salads as follows:  whatever greens are in the garden (currently bok choy and kale, often spinach, rocket in summer) chopped with scissors into a bowl.  Chop sundried tomatoes similarly and add pitted olives, cherry tomatoes if available, and sometimes quinoa if there is any leftover, chopped bacon or roasted pumpkin.

In the whizzer:

Easy peasy beetroot and carrot just chopped in the machine – kids adore it!  Also can add an apple and some raisins for a sweeter salad.  Homemade coleslaw is also a winner – cabbage, carrot, raisins and soya mayo (the only one that is sugar free!)

Home Baked Beans

Baked Beans are such a comfort food.  Rich, thick and tasty.  We make a huge pot at a time and then subdivide into freezer portions after feasting.  You can either soak and cook dried beans (soak overnight, then cook for about 3 hours until soft) or just rinse canned beans.  Make a thick, rich tomato sauce withe onion, balsamic, tomatoes, tomato paste and then add the secret ingredient when you add the cooked beans – molasses (to taste). This gives the sweetness with added iron and minerals – really good for you.

Lentils

Another firm family favourite is lentils,  chop and fry an onion in oil and balsamic (are you beginning to see a pattern here??), crush garlic and add to pan and then add water, miso paste and vegetable stock until you have a nice thick tasty stock.  Add the soaked lentils (french puy lentils are best, but any will do).  Cook for an hour or more until rich and tasty.  Add chopped spinach (fresh or frozen) just before serving so it is still green and just wilted.  Serve with croutons (toast cut into squares) and grated parmesan on top – delish!

Waking up in a War Zone

by . Posted on
07 Feb

Last Saturday we woke up to a bloodbath.  First our lovely German wwoofer, Matthias, found one dead sheep, then another, then another. Floating in the river or dead on its banks.  Four beautiful girls, all with puncture marks on the inside of their hind legs, victims of a concerted attack by a pack of wild dogs.

We walked the river banks and bed looking for the rest of the herd.  We found one girl resting between two logs with blood around her.  We turned her and found that she had been ripped open and mauled.  The only solution was going to be a bullet, so we fed her and I wept tears of despair and frustration at the senselessness and waste of the attack.  Like a fox in a hen house, this had been a terrorist attack with no other purpose than the thrill of the hunt.

The herd that we had built slowly over so many years, who were so friendly and relaxed with us, decimated.  Mattie had found another dead sheep earlier in the week, and the dogs had taken the lovely little lamb a few days before.  Clearly lamb is on the menu for the feral dogs this autumn.

Mattie is a sensitive soul who returns to Germany to begin his training to be a vet.  I mentioned to him how the energy of the farm had changed overnight – from a peaceful oasis to a place of grief and devastation.  ‘It’s like a war zone’ he said.

We dragged the carcases of my lovely girls into a row beneath the house so that Ged could sit and watch, sniper-like, overnight in the hope that the predator perpetrators would return to feast on their kill.

We found two sheep exhausted and terrorised, perched like goats on a rock on the far side of the river, barricaded behind branches and logs.  No amount of coaxing or tempting with lucerne could get them out and we could see they were injured.  We had to grab them and carry them across the river and tend their wounds.  They hid for two days this week, just so weary and stiff after their night of abject terror.  The little boy recovered mid week and came calling for food at feeding time.  But the ewe was still secreted away at the top of the hill, dragging her leg behind her when she moved.  Mattie and I tried to catch her twice but for a three legged sheep she sure can run fast.

Finally, on Thursday night, we cornered her after she had fled from us down to the river.  In a scissor like movement we approached and she made a dash for it.  Mattie’s long legs in pursuit and he managed to grab onto her fleece and amazing held on and wrestled her to the ground.  We turned her onto her back in shearing position and found a huge bulge of infection around her rump but I couldn’t squeeze it out.  I administered the milky penicillin and then we lifted her, with great difficulty, into the back of the farm car where Mattie held her while I drove to the yards so we could secure her for a week to heal her.

Needless to say there’s been no sign of a dog since.  The howlers are coming at 6 tomorrow.  Normally I have a very live and let live philosophy to the wildlife we are privileged to live alongside.  But when our babies are hunted down I become biblical.  An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

The howlers are coming at dawn tomorrow.  I want 5 dead dogs, especially that big black one which has been terrorising the alpacas and sheep for so long.

What a waste.  The wild dogs normally take one or two sheep a year and we accept that as our rate of attrition, but this has been appalling.

The only consolation is the old farmer’s adage ‘where you have livestock, you have dead stock.’ And apparently we had to have this devastation before taking defensive action.  My poor girls.

Pig Tails

by . Posted on
02 Nov

On the recent holiday Monday we had a rare family outing.  To the abattoir with two very fat pigs. As a recent convert to the joys of bacon fat after over 20 years as either vegetarian or vegan, I knew that I needed to see the full journey of my meat from paddock to plate.

I didn’t want to go.  But we were combining the pig delivery with a pick up of new bees, and hoping for some fun time in between the two.  Of course the pigs were impossible to load on the trailer (all animals know where they are going when the day comes) so we were late and then when we finally found the abattoir (no signs) a semi trailer of pink pigs had just arrived before us and so we sat and watched them being unloaded, squealing at the cattle prod and blinking at the light in the bright spring sunshine.  They didn’t look as if they had ever seen daylight before.

I stood by the trailer and looked my pigs in the eye, crying softly and whispering, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry . . .’

Needless to say, the promised fun time, didn’t eventuate!

I had been warned by a neighbouring newbie pig farmer not to go to the abattoir and for my husband to go alone, so I was terrified of what I might find.  It was clean and quiet, but then it wasn’t a working day.  Behind us in the queue were farmers with cattle and sheep.

I went around the corner of a building to do a wee and there saw the slurry pit and that did smell, and no matter how brave I am getting, I wouldn’t want to go on a slaughtering day.  When it came to our turn the men were patient and kind to us, the pigs were unloaded into a concrete stall, awaiting branding by the local LHPA inspector the next morning before they could be ‘processed’.

Needless to say, I was the only emotional female there on the day and I am sure there were a few smirks about my blubbering, but the farmer unloading his sheep looked at me with empathy, no one likes this part of the job.  I was asking him about the skins and where they went.  The abattoir worker told me they put them out for tender and were processed in China, no one is Australia tans hides any more.

As it turns out, there was a bit of confusion about my pigs and they had a slight stay of execution until the afternoon on the following day.  I don’t like to think of them in that concrete cell listening to the dying of their fellow animals and knowing that inevitably their turn would come.  Like a short term death row.

Pigs are the most delightful animals.  Funny, naughty, friendly and affectionate.  Actually, all our animals are like that.  Each with their own unique personalities, very few without a name. Every soul on earth deserves a name.  The animals are not lesser than us (on the contrary, they don’t have to work for a living, and are peaceful, joyous, living in the moment highly evolved beings).  And yet we kill them and eat them.

I have long held a theory that there is a scary dichotomy in the fact that the holocaust is seared into our memories (and rightly so) as the most horrific atrocity ever committed on earth, and yet we cram animals into cattle trucks every day, all over the world, without telling them where they are going, and execute them en masse.

My only consolation is that I know that my animals have lived a good, healthy, fun life on pasture.  They have been loved and well cared for.  And I see nature’s brutality and arbitrary cutting down of animals – the perceived waste when an animal dies of natural causes and is left to decompose and just feed the wild dogs, goannas, eagles and other scavengers.

Still, I wrestle with my conscience when I eat meat even though I do feel it is good for my physical body.  I wrestle with my soul beliefs often, and especially when I have to look an animal in the eye as I load it for its final journey.  No one wants to die – human or animal.  We all buck at the very idea, and fight to the bitter end.  Animals are no different.  They deserve a lot more respect, dignity and thanks for what they sacrifice for us.

Every meat eater needs to visit the abattoir once, and farms many times, to force themselves to become acquainted with the animals they feast on.  We have become so divorced from our food sources and as a result have become gluttons for artificially coloured, pre-packaged meats from supermarkets, with no thought for the lives they have lived or how they died.  Animals offer us such love and joy in their lifetimes and the ultimate sacrifice to fuel us.  My five year old is such a little carnivore and he knows he is eating ‘Harry’ (steer) or his pigs ‘Lilli Pilli’ and ‘Blackie’ and tells lovely stories about their lives.

Next time you tuck it into meat on your plate, spare a thought for the animal it came from, and please start asking where it lived, how it died, what it ate, where it roamed, or if it was able to roam at all.  Get to know a farmer, familiarise yourself with the animals, bring some consciousness to what you eat . . . please.