Category Archives: Animals

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.

Death is so final . . . or is it?

by . Posted on
The most beautiful girl in the world
23 Oct

I have struggled so much this year with heart rending grief.  I have been on my knees, literally, night after night and day after day, howling to let the physical pain out of my heart, sobbing like a small child at the loss of my friend, comforter, mother in a past life, horse.  My hands have ached to stroke her body, feel her under my hands.  I want to smell her, touch her, see her, look into her eyes  . . .

Her death and my huge, uncomprehending loss, has shattered all my beliefs, fractured my spiritual compass and left me adrift on a sea of grief so huge and deep and wide that it has felt like I could never navigate my way to calmer waters.

It’s been a year since she went so lame and we realised that we were nearing the end of our incredible and healing journey together.  A year since I began begging on my knees for her not to leave me and started trying to get my head and heart around the inevitable.  A year ago we were dosing her with herbs, performing regular bowen and reiki on her, carrying her food and water to her, and beseeching angels to heal her.  A year ago she was still here.  Big and beautiful (even though she had lost so much weight), fluffy with cushings winter hair that we were combing out daily, wise, patient, kind, always so happy to see me, always such a wrench to leave.  She was on the other side of the property and there was no way she would be coming home although I wanted her where I could see her all day, every day.  In only a few short months she would be on the other side of the veil . . . I oscillated between great hope and conviction that we could heal her and bone rattling grief and fear that we could not and a parting of the ways was inevitable . . .

I can’t begin to articulate what she means to me.  My strength, my rock, my safe harbour, my great love, my home, my friend . . . a quarter of my life has been spent loving her, learning from her, basking in the happiness of being near her . . .

We have struggled over so many things, not least being my fear of riding her and her unwillingness to let me.  Now I know that battle was so unnecessary.  My greatest happiness was in simply walking beside her on the path, lead rope in hand.  We were such good companions, had such a sacred connection, were true soul mates.

And in the end I had to betray her (or was it serve her?) by releasing her from the pain and suffering of this earth-bound life and into the world of spirit where she could run once more, and do her funny little half rear, and be free in the realms of stars and angels to move onto her next spiritual task.

And, still in shock, to watch her burn and to rake up the remains day after day to keep her burning  while the pink petals rained down where she had lain in peace at last.

And then the pain started.  Not to have her, hold her, see her, love her.  Not to have her sweet, forgiving, loving heart reaching out to mine.  To never see her again except in my imagination and the realms of spirit.  And so she has walked with me and beside me in spirit, has watched me cry and always she whispers:

‘Do not stand at my grave and weep.  I am not there.  I do not sleep.  I am a thousand winds that blow.  I am the diamond glints on snow.  I am the sunlight on ripened grain.  I am the gentle autumn rain.  When you awaken in the morning’s hush I am the swift uplifting rush of quiet birds in circled flight.  I am the soft stars that shine at night.  Do not stand at my grave and cry; I am not there.  I did not die.’

And I scream back WHY?  I want to know why she left me, abandoned me, wanted to leave me?  Why did she want to go?  Why didn’t she want to stay when everything was just about to get so good.  Ben was going to start riding Tinkerbell, and we could all have fun together – my original family and the new . . .

I lost my faith as my heart shattered.  I could see her, can see her, beside me, but I want her in this realm with me.

Noot long after she died I saw so clearly that she had been my Mother in India and I had died as a child and broken her heart which helped my mind in its travels through the wasteland of grief, but not my heart.  And then a month or so ago I saw just how amazing the universe can be – how she chose to come back to earth for another turn in order to find me, because I was lost, and suffering, and rootless and need to find my way home.  And how she chose to come as a horse because she knew my damaged childish heart longed for a horse and that a horse would bring me peace.  And how events conspired (which I railed against at the time) to bring me back ‘home’ to England where I found her and somehow knew that we belonged together.  And how fraught and tense and difficult our journey together has been as I struggled to control her as the horse she was and she strove to teach me patience, and kindness and love, knowing I would need them for when I was a parent.

But I couldn’t see what she could.  I didn’t know then what I know now.  I cursed and fought her time after time and now I miss her so much.  I didn’t realise that every day, every moment, was a gift beyond price.

I was so lost when she found me.  So confused and loveless and sad and needy.  She knew I needed a family and so she prompted me to buy Tinkerbell and Phoenix and fly my family back to Australia with me (thank you Allens – you have blessed me beyond belief).  And together we looked for home.  For somewhere I could settle and love and be loved.  Everywhere we went I found a bit more love and another family – Attunga, Kangaroo Valley.  Until at last she led me home to the banks of the Ellenborough River and my place, my country, my heartland.

And she oversaw my meeting with Ged, my marriage, Ben’s birth, my depression and its eventual lifting.  And then her work was done.  So she left me.  So much richer, so much wiser,, so much more loved . . .but alone in my pain at her passing.

Can I learn to trust the machinations of the universe, seeing that?  Can you?

One day we will meet again.  As Richard Bach says in probably the most wonderful book ever written ‘Don’t be dismayed at Goodbyes.  A farewell is necessary before you can meet again.  And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.’

Farewell, my darling girl – most beautiful girl in the world – looking forward to the moment when we meet again.  I love you . . . thank you, thank you, thank you x

How Chickens changed my life . . . and the psychology of food

by . Posted on
Happy Cows at Avalon
20 Jul

Ho hum. One of the wonders of blogging is the opportunity to connect with others – across Australia and around the world. Last week I became the recipient of a large number of comments on my last post ‘The Carnivore’s Conundrum’ from a host of vegans from across the US of A, because a philosophical professor and vegan blogger had posted a link in his blog, ‘Eating Plants’.

And then I became the subject and target of a great deal of violent vegan activism, particularly because I am soiling my son’s soul by allowing (forcing) him to murder innocent baby animals in order to fulfil some misguided fantasy that he needs meat in order to grow and be healthy. Phew!

As you can imagine, it has all got me thinking . . . and many of the comments have resonated deeply with my soul, because I was a vegan for over 20 years. I too was an angry, militant, neurotic food nazi who drove my friends and family crazy. I was completely committed to my belief that to kill any animal was anathema to the soul, and that we are supposed to live on this planet harming none (meanwhile, with my anger and attacking personality I was hurting the humans around me). I believed in peace but there was no peace or love in my heart. In fact, the reason I love animals so much and crave their presence them is because they radiate the peace that I have so rarely felt in my head, body and heart.

I was in a war zone of my own creation. At war with myself with my enraged, judgemental, critical and perfectionist mindset. At war with the world. I had been anorexic since my teens, and then when I gave up smoking, alcohol, and recreational drugs, I became firstly fat and spotty, and then bulimic. As I began to work through a life time’s rage, the bulimia stopped (thank God, because that complete out of control experience was the most terrifying for this control freak) and slowly, slowly, I began to see that all this control around what I would or wouldn’t eat was a manifestation of my continued eating disorders. There was the paradox, my spiritual beliefs around eating meat were deeply seated, and yet as I explored my psychology, I could clearly see that all these rules and the obsessive, excessive, exercise were all part of the same rigid control patterns. They say that anorexia stems from a desire to control SOMETHING in a life that seems totally out of the sufferer’s control. I resonate with that. And I also see that the childhood sexual abuse and critical parenting which gave me to believe that I was not good enough, unworthy of love etc, made me believe that I was also unworthy of good things, happiness, a nice life, and hearty, healthy food.

As a single person I didn’t cook creatively for myself and had a habitual diet of tofu & veg stir fries, and pasta as my quick and easy comfort food. I was close to 40 and despite all the exercise and vegan food, I wasn’t really healthy. So I fronted up to a fantastic naturopath, Mim Beim, with a wonderfully pragmatic approach to health and wellbeing. She was horrified at my supposedly healthy diet and its lack of protein, which is the building block for the body. We talked about how my veganism was just another manifestation of my lifelong eating disorders. She knew it, I knew it, but we both had to respect my spiritual beliefs as well. ‘Could you eat fish?’ she asked. ‘No way’ I answered. ‘Sardines?’ she queried. I gagged. ‘What about eggs?’ I balked. But she insisted that I must start eating some protein. Finally, I capitulated, ‘Only from my own chickens’ I said. So it was that I bought 6 lovely Isa Browns, or Rhode Island Reds as they are called in the UK and US. I made a home for them, fed them, watered them, cuddled them and loved them and before long they started gifting me with daily eggs.

It wasn’t easy to begin with, eating them, but soon I became used to and learned to love, my poached eggs on toast and I began to feel stronger and healthier. What, I beg of the vegans, is wrong with eggs. These are NOT baby chickens, because there is no rooster to fertilise them. They are eggs, just like most women release every month. Hens just lay them every day. As a by-product of all the good grain and scratching around for worms and bugs. They are an important part of the ecosystem – chooks eat the paralysis ticks which could kill the dog or cat, they provide food for same and their human owner, they rake over the ground and improve it by aerating it, they fertilise it with their lovely nutritious poo, and they are delightful to befriend and be around. Happy, healthy, free ranging chooks lay beautiful eggs which are a joy to consume. We should all keep a few in our backyards and knock the global cage bird egg production industry on its foul (pardon the pun) head . . .

I am a firm believer that the Dairy industry is indescribably cruel. Boy calves born to dairy cows are routinely shot immediately after birth, or just left to die from weakness and lack of food. Some farmers bucket feed them for a few months to be sold and slaughtered for vealers, and we have spent a lot of time and mine bottle feeding dairy born boys. Many fail to thrive because they just want their mothers, and they often haven’t had the benefit of the first essential colostrum feeds. The reality is that male animals are raised for slaughter, the girls are ‘keepers’ because they add to the herd with their breeding prowess. Sometimes we have to help the young to suckle. Sometimes we have to milk the mother and bottle feed the baby until they can ‘latch on’ for themselves. This happens with human babies too. And often the Mumma Cow doesn’t mind sharing a little milk with her human. Although I agree that humans are not designed to consume or digest dairy products past weaning off their own Mothers. But on the farm we do learn to share!

The vegans would have all flesh raising farming cease immediately. But while they focus on factory farming which is abhorrent, what they don’t realise is that there are an awful lot of small farms across the globe who use herbivores to manage weeds and pasture. And if we love these amazing animals and want to share our lives with them how do we do that – just keep them as pets? Or do we kill them all off and just let the beautiful countryside revert to weeds and trees? And do the rabid vegans like the farmed countryside to visit and appreciate and will they miss it when it goes? My dog is a carnivore – how am I supposed to feed him? Isn’t it better that we raise our own animals, giving them happy and beautiful lives, and peaceful deaths (one shot, no fear) rather than hauling them to the abattoir where they smell the fear and the blood?

Humans have always been opportunistic carnivores, mainly eating fruits, grubs and leaves, tubers and herbs. Their diets have been supplemented by what nature has presented in the way of protein – eggs and meat. Spiritually, I agree we must do no harm and tread carefully and gently in this Eden. But I don’t see the problem with unfertilised eggs. And yes, I guess, living on this land that I adore and nurture, with these beautiful, gentle, beings who I love, has changed my mindset somewhat. I remain on the horns of a dilemma, but I feel more empathy and respect for people who are on the land and raising and killing animals for their own consumption like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Jamie Oliver et al. Because they are wrestling with their conscience in very real terms, and they truly respect and love the animals they consume, waste nothing, and honour that a life has been given that they might eat meat.

Vegans also abhor the robbing of honey from hives, but bees are essential for pollination and life. I’m more up in arms about the heat treatment of honey (which destroys all its health giving properties) than the global honey industry. I love our bees and getting up close and personal with them in the hive is amazing. What a lesson in the miracles of Mother Nature. As in all things, we must not be greedy, and take too much.

The vegans are angry about my decision to feed Ben meat. But here he is, growing up on a 400 acre oasis, with the platypus playing in the river, the alpacas providing the fleece for his duvet, the sheep providing the fleece for his underlay and felting projects, the chooks laying eggs for his breakfast and yes, a lamb or two a year and a steer go in the freezer for his consumption. And he loves those animals, he gets to see them being born, learning to live, staying safe from the predatory wild dogs, foxes, eagles etc and growing up happy and very much loved. He also tends the veggie patch with me and he knows where food comes from. He has an amazing life here – rich and varied and full of the miracles of Mother Nature and her incredible abundance. He has a reverent attitude to life, and an appreciation that death is a natural part of life. It comes to us all, and what better epitaph for any of us, than that our lives meant something, that we are remembered with love and gratitude.

I know before I had a child I was full of high minded ideals about how to raise them. It’s amazing how the reality of Motherhood and parenthood changes much of that. Not that there is anything wrong with holding high minded ideals but as my psychologist tells me – there’s no such thing as Mary Poppins and while aiming high is healthy, being a perfectionist is not. I have been a rigid perfectionist for all my life to date, and the person who has suffered most is ME.

My little Libra child came to me to teach me BALANCE in all things and while I may be a slow learner, I am sure that I will get there in the end. Or as my dearly beloved Grannie used to say ‘a little of what you fancy does you good.’

Vegans (remembering that I have been one for almost half my life) won’t wear leather and many won’t even wear wool. But what is worse – the petrochemical plastics and recycled PET bottle fleeces which are produced by first raping the planet for oil, then concocting chemical solutions with their resultant waste products into the waterways etc and then not biodegrading once they are worn out? I would rather wear natural products from the animals I adore, and feel their loving gift to me, and know that once they are worn out, they will natural compost down, giving back to the earth they came from.

The vegans who have diatribed against me refuse to answer the questions about where their food comes from and how entwined they are with its production and packaging. They are more concerned about damning any bloodshed than entering into the very real and live debate that all humans need to engage in about where and why and how ALL their food is raised and grown and harvested and shipped and packaged and priced. THIS is the crucial ethical debate of our time. That we all learn to shop locally, eat with the seasons, know the growers, engage with the farms, meet the farmer and the animals and make decisions based on that solid footing and relationship with the land. As long as foodstuffs are scrubbed, packaged and priced at below production costs, presented in artificially lit supermarket lane ways at bargain basement prices and bearing no relation to the land or beast that produced them, we will never learn to engage with Nature, with reality, with the land that sustains us.

Don’t damn those who are thinking, feeling, and philosophising about food and clothing – embrace and educate them, calmly and rationally. We are all emotive beings and food politics can ramp up the emotional temperature. But let’s open up this debate, open our hearts and minds to lots of different perspectives and arguments and make our own choices without ramming them down everyone else’s throats.

Platypus Tales

by . Posted on
11 May

When I was at school in the UK we learned about the Australian platypus. I thought it was big, like a beaver. It was mythical – like a pterodactyl or unicorn. Most people will never see one in their lifetimes – in the wild or in captivity. And contrary to my expectation and early education, they are small, only about a foot long, in the old measurement.

I was so excited when my Kangaroo Valley neighbour, Neil, said he had spotted one on his early morning run. I couldn’t wait to get down to the spot at 7 the next morning to spy the monotreme for myself. I stood on the timber walking bridge in the early morning chill and mist and waited. Just when I was sure that he wouldn’t show, up popped a small, sleek creature who paddled around for a moment before duck diving back down to the depths.

Mesmerised, I returned again and again to witness what seemed like a miracle. Little did I know that only a few years later I would have the privilege to live on a large farm, bounded by pristine river, populated with hundreds of these amazing little creatures. They are creatures of habit and I can often set my clock by them. Mummy keeps saying I should get a dishwasher but then when would I get to gaze, from my kitchen window, at the peaceful flow and playful platypus in the pool below the house?

They have a reputation for being shy and I never understood why as they don’t mind us, the current custodians of this beautiful oasis, until we started having visitors and trying to point out a platypus to them. Suddenly our platypus friends are in hiding!

I have swum with them a couple of times in the summer. There are three main pools I swim in and I have come face to face with a platypus in each. They look at me calmly and curiously with their small eyes in the white skin surround and then disappear beneath the surface to steer clear of the giant in their water world.

In the first big flood Ged and I experienced on ANZAC day 2008, we walked around the riverscape, marvelling at the force and flow. When we went down to where our concrete bridge normally is, there was a huge expanse of brown muddy water and we stood in our wellies in the first 6 inches or so. I looked down and saw a platypus inches away from my feet for one brief instant, I bent down to pick it up, but it was already gone. I hope he or she survived.

In the last flood we took Benno down to the end of the flat where normally there is a big dipper into the river that we drive down. The flood water was up to the height of the flat and there was a platypus ducking and diving in the murky depths. They are easiest to see when the river is thick and red-brown with mud, as the contrast shows them up more clearly. In the clear crystal pools they can be hard to see for the untrained eye when the rings in the water show only where they were, not where they will pop up next!

Benno has (or had, until the last two floods ripped away some of the riverbank) his special ‘Platypus Walk’ which he would take newcomers to the property on, to show them the places where the platypus eat freshwater mussels on the bank, overlooking their feeding grounds.

We delight in being able to watch them every day. Sometimes we have seen as many as 5 at once in the main pool beneath the house, and once we witnessed (and videoed) what we could only assume to be a courtship and subsequent mating which looked like platypus synchronised swimming and involved lots of fun, frolicking and splashing – what a treat!

My most amazing moment to date came when we were recently down in Kangaroo Valley for the annual show (in which I came last in the over 45 iron woman event!) Late one afternoon, when it finally stopped raining, I went for a run down to Flat Rock. This consists of a beautiful natural bedrock pool which the Aborigines used for birthing and women’s business, and then a causeway of stones worn smooth by the water over millennia. It was twilight as I rounded the final corner and stepped onto the concrete causeway forming part of the road. In the dusk I saw a flash of movement to my left where Gibson Creek murmurs down to meet the Kangaroo. And there in the half light was a platypus aqua planing across the rock in a centimetre of water. He steered himself down through one of the pipes under the road and plopped out into the little pool below where he swam to the debris and roots which hid his home from view. He was only a toddler and clearly having fun – he looked pretty pleased with himself. Platypus have given me many moments of pure, unadulterated, natural magic.

The Babies and the Boobies

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Alpaca hug
10 Mar

We have had almost every conceivable birth difficulty and defect here this year. Waiting and watching for babies is pretty constant for much of spring, summer and autumn.

Firefly was born to Tinkerbell in mid winter. He was all wonky from the first and only after all day of waiting for him to stand up did we realise something was very amiss and whisk them both into the house paddock. We didn’t know if he would make it, did a lot of googling and realised he was ‘windswept’, his legs might straighten or not. But first we had to milk Tinkerbell for the colostrum and try and get that boy on the booby. We soon gave up and brought him into the house by the fire and gave him two hourly feeds. We even had to take him to town with us and leaving him with friends for a few hours each while we went shopping. We got some very strange looks unloading him from the back of the car at the beach for a quick bottle stop! We took him to the vet who splinted the legs and after quite a lot of fiddling to get them right we trained those legs to stand straight and he is an absolute delight. Our kissing and cuddling cria to this day.

We had our first twin lambs but one was weaker and couldn’t get on the booby. I had my first experience of milking a ewe to get some colostrum for him and try and tempt him on to the teat. I guess we should have just taken him away and bottle fed him and we will know for next time, but we lost him, he walked away from his mum in the night and got out of the pen and was dead in the morning. Always a heartache, what a waste.

Then there was Bambi, just came home one day and there she was. Gorgeous doe eyed suri out of Caroline. After doing twice and thrice daily drive bys for weeks, Artimesia birthed when no one was watching and obviously had problems. Because we found her and the baby not long dead, who had obviously died in the birthing process. Wendy we found with a dead baby stuck half in and half out and I discovered the infinite joys of KY jelly and gloves (as opposed to bare hands) when inside and pulling. Poor Wendy. Though she seems much happier to be free of Motherhood and with Peter Pan finally off the boob.

Sapphire birthed little black Lucky on the day we rolled the car and it was wonderful to get home and find a little shadow present for us after what had been a truly horrible and traumatic day. Blossom birthed on the day the lovely sheep shearer came. Found the afterbirth but no baby. There were five of us looking down the riverbank and among the she oaks but no sign all day. Just bizarre. That night Ged went out to shoot a wild dog we knew was around and found instead a cria roaming, looking for his Mum. Ged had gun raised and him in his sights until he saw the long neck. Good thing my man is all sense and eagle eyed, especially with a gun in his hand.

Blossom was so pleased to be reunited with the boy she thought she had lost, so we called him Lost Boy and he got straight on the booby no trouble at all. Then Charity birthed another little boy child who had a hard time getting on the boob and seemed weak and she seemed distressed. We came home from town and found him roasting in the sun down by the river and hauled him up under the lemon tree in the house paddock while I found bottle, teat and cria milk. It was only after his second bottle that I thought to check his bum, something we were told to do with all newborns. No anus opening. Shit!

So I left him with Mum and rang Ged, the vet and Ged again. There was no way we could afford a new arsehole two weeks before Christmas and the vet said the prognosis was not good. Back and forth I went on the phone, to the shed, to Charity who looked at me beseechingly saying ‘do something, do something’ and to that strong little boy who was so determined to live. I even tried to make the cut myself and learned that while vets make it look easy, it’s not. I called him Hope because ‘where there’s life, there’s hope’ and the next morning when he was still as determined to stay here as ever, and both the Bowen ladies had concurred that he just needed a simple cosmetic procedure. I rang the vet again but they couldn’t do him, so rang another vet, struck a deal with him re cost and raced Hope back out to the road so the Bowen ladies could take him into town.

Phew! $500 or so later he is just fine, no problems at all, a feisty, bouncing boy and Charity was so happy to have him home and well. She lost her little Christmas last year, we had to save Hope to give her hope . . .

And then there was Ruby. Born while our beloved Grippers were here after Christmas with one blood red eye (hence her name) she wouldn’t stand up, her neck was bent, she had a strange one eyed view of the world and we worked out that she was almost certainly blind. And after a week of trying to get her on the boob and bottle feeding her, and spending lots of time on Google, we realised she had the very rare choanal atresia which meant that she couldn’t breathe through her nose. She would progressively turn blue while drinking her bottle. We had to say enough and let her go.

Each one has a name, a personality, a soul and heart. Letting any of them go is really hard.

The rest of the lambs were rams and now the cows are setting their burdens on the ground. First Paddy, our Jersey cross whose udder is progressively bigger with each baby and each time we say ‘no more’ but she always finds her way to a bull somewhere! She birthed lovely little Melissa a few days ago and Ged and I had to milk the colostrum out and bottle feed her. I finally really got the hang of milking and feeling the chamber fill and release – beautiful. Then, having persuaded her to latch onto one teat, I had to try and train her to try the other side which is lower and with a stumpier teat. Anybody who ever says breast feeding is easy is a fool – best, yes, but rarely easy!

Honey birthed down in the rain yesterday no dramas at all and just turned up at the house with a littlie going great guns at the milk bar, the rain is so atrocious we haven’t got close enough to sex it or name it, but Ged thinks it is a boy which will fill the freezer later – poor Honey, she needs to have a girl so she can keep it close.

Here’s hoping the rest of the calves and cria come easily and no more problems, we have had a steep learning curve this year, but each experience gives us knowledge, hardens our hands (if not our hearts) and makes us more like farmers . . .

Ode to a Horse

by . Posted on
02 Mar

There is an emptiness at Avalon. A hole where once there was a being of great heart and love. Where once there was the most beautiful girl in the world, now there is . . . nothing.

Seeing the other horses just makes the pain worse. They are all so different. Every animal has its own distinct personality, nature, issues, body, coat, hair, eyes etc. So I will never see or feel anything like Baby again as long as I live on this earth. Never wind that forelock around my fingers, tut tut over the incredible tangles in her mane and spend the time unravelling them. Never stand behind her with her tail at heart height and lean in to her, scratching down her flanks as she leaned back against me swaying in ecstasy. No other horse will ever be exactly the same height and width and weight and soul. No other horse will ever be the perfect fit for me like she was.

Baby had the most beautiful broad back, a joy to sit astride. She had perfect feet – dainty ballerina hooves despite her tendency to run to fat. She was a big, buxom, full hearted brown mama. Full of love.

Every feeling is indelibly imprinted in my hands – the warmth and softness as I stroked her face, neck, shoulder, belly, back and bum. The thick silk ropes of her tail. The fluffy fronds inside her ears, the velvet of her muzzle . . . the unconditional love and understanding in those beautiful brown eyes.

The peace in my heart and restless mind when I was in her presence. The simple joys of carrying water and hay, shovelling sweet smelling manure and whispering sweet nothings into ever alert ears. She has taught me everything I know about horses, she helped me understand the frustration my mother felt with me, she showed me how to look beyond the traditional givens of horsemanship and to listen to the wisdom of the horse. She opened my heart, gave me something to live for in the darkest of times, gave me a purpose, gave me a reason and led me to my dream farm, home, life.

Nothing that I have and hold dear now would have happened without Baby in my life. She changed it irrevocably. She shaped it, moulded it. She gave it meaning and life. Oh, God, I miss her so much.

Big Daisy is my succour, she lets me sob into her neck while she is placidly chewing her cud. They have the same warmth, gentle love and tolerance. Someone asked me how did I feel when I was with Baby and I answered ‘peace’ but more time to think made me realise that it was more than that. I felt love, I felt loved. I felt secure in that unconditional love. I was known and seen and loved regardless by a being with more heart and love than a hundred humans put together. She and I had known and shared and grown together. For a quarter of my life here on earth she was my friend, foe, comforter, confidante and great love.

Ultimately she taught me that the greatest gift we can give each other, share together, is time . . .

Big, beautiful Baby, I love you so, darling, miss you so, thank you for everything, please come back . .

Grief – the loneliest journey

by . Posted on
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

by . Posted on
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.

How a horse changed my life

by . Posted on
31 Mar

My beautiful Bay mare, ‘Baby’ has cushings syndrome.  Which means that the end is in sight.  And so the process of my grieving has begun.  Trying to imagine a life without her in it.  Trying to decide where to bury her.  Grieving all the dreams I had for us which will probably never now come true.

On one of my weeps with Baby over the last few weeks I realised that for all our life together I have been lamenting how our relationship ‘should’ have been.  How we should have been able to ride off into the distance together every day, fearless, bonded, as one, just revelling in nature and each other and the pure bliss of riding safely, harmoniously, peacefully.

My heart had been breaking over the fact that the vision I had always held of our relationship was unlikely to come true.  After weeks of weeping I realised what she has given me, what she has brought me, and how she changed my life and its course completely.

Without her, I never would have bought Tinkerbell who is so completely Ben’s pony. I never would have stumbled across Parelli , I never would have started to heal the relationship with my own Mother (because I finally understood how frustration easily leads to temper loss and violence), I would never have met Peter and Judy, I would never have met my wonderful english farrier friend who gave me back so much self esteem, I never would have met the gorgeous Shane vet, I never would have learned to ride again properly, I never would have gone to Tamworth and met Kim, I never would have gone to Kangaroo valley and met the Grippers, I never would have come to Avalon and met Ged and got married and had a son etc.,

I thought I was saving her but it turns out she was saving me.  Setting my life on a completely different trajectory.  She changed the course of my life.  Everything was different after Baby.  No longer was I a beach girl, but a paddock and bush girl.  My dream of owning land in Australia had to come true, she made it so.  She has taught me so much about horses and she has been a serene, nurturing, beautiful background to my life.  And with her illness has come a return to the pure love we have for each other and the daily communication which had been abandoned in the busyness of Ben.

I know what it is for horse and human to be bonded heart to heart.  We may never have that easy riding relationship I long for.  It would be lovely to think that it was still possible and I guess if I had the time and didn’t have a 3 year old I could work to make it so.  But now I know that doesn’t matter because owning and loving a horse is not necessarily about riding.  I always felt guilty that it was ‘a waste’.  But Baby and Tinkerbell have brought me love, they have been patient with me while I learned, they are still patient with me when I am wrong, they have been my companions and friends when I had no others, they have been my children when I was sure they were the only children I would ever have, they have amused and amazed and frustrated and educated me.

Baby is one of the great loves of my life and I can’t begin to imagine life without her. For over 12 years she has been my friend and comforter.  I can only hope and pray that I have brought something beautiful to her life too and that she can forgive me for the wrongs I have done her and that she is as grateful for me as I am for her.  I wish I had been a better owner, Mother and custodian than I have been.  I wish I had more courage and persistence and patience.  I love her so much and I do know she loves me.

She changed everything.  She is a bright shining angel who healed so many parts of my life, and all the time I was looking at where she failed me and what I had missed.  No one has ever had a better friend than Baby has been to me and to all of us who have ever bathed in her beauty and radiant beingness . . . I guess this is a lesson to look not for what we have lost, or wasted or missed out on but to flip the coin and see what we have gained.

The Carnivore’s Conundrum

by . Posted on
03 Mar

I don’t eat meat but my little pickle does which means that I have had to get a lot closer to meat and a lot more involved with where it comes from, and, as a farmer, where it goes.

I believe that if you must eat meat you need to have raised it, fed it, loved it, looked after it, and attained its agreement to the kill.  And then you kill it or at least be there at the end to ensure it is killed humanely, kindly, with compassion and care.  After all, these are living, breathing, feeling beings with soul.

This week two of the boys went to the fat sale.  Hector has been avoiding this for years.  Mainly because each time my resolve has failed or the river has flooded or the bank balance has been boosted some other way.  Each time I have gone and talked to him and cried with him because his ending has always been inevitable yet somehow he and I had to make our peace with it.  At the end of last year he told me that he gave himself in the ultimate sacrifice and I understood that animals do this for us – not willingly, not happily, but nobly they give the ultimate gift in service to us humans.  For love of us.

And I understand and ‘get’ that – I really do.  But to get cattle to the table, first they are separated from the herd and mustered which can be long, hot, hard work and confusing to yards which often are places of fear – what happens next?  Then they are loaded on a truck – where am I going now?  There is grief at leaving their home, the land they love and their friends and family – both human and herd.

Road travel must be terrifying and then they finally arrive at the saleyards where strangers prod and poke and sometimes hit them.  They are tired, hungry, thirsty, dazed and confused.  And then they are loaded into huge trucks, crammed in together for often long journeys to the abattoir where they will smell the blood and fear long before they are stunned and killed.  Imagine how terrified they must be, how their last moments are filled with fear and the killing frenzy before them.

And yet when Hitler did this to humans it was called The Holocaust – a blot upon our human history never to be forgotten.  I remember it well.  In another life I was in Auschwitz where I scrubbed floors and the lust of two SS officers kept me alive longer than most.  But before we got there we were herded, isolated, starved and prodded and poked and cramped into ghettos then cattle trucks as we travelled to unknown destinations and destinies.  We too were full of fear.  No one, no living sentient being should be treated like that.  It isn’t right that we do this to cattle and sheep and pigs and chickens.  What have we become that we think this is OK?

We have legalised horror and industrialised death and it is not OK. We have to get back to grass roots and get involved with where our food comes form – where it is grown and nurtured and raised, where it dies and how it is treated every step of the way.  This isn’t just about chemical free or biodynamic food or farming, it is a moral dilemma and soul choice.

If we eat meat we have a moral responsibility to those animals we feed off to ensure they are treated with dignity, compassion and yes, love.

I have cried so many tears for Hector this week.  First he sulked and refused to speak to me.  Finally I reikied him on his way to the abattoir and he said ‘I have lived a good life, a happy life, I have loved my life and my ‘girls’ .  Everyone has to die eventually and I have lived longer than most.  I love Ben and would do anything for him’ and finally he and I were at peace.

It doesn’t stop the tears because I miss him and probably always will and the girls are so so sad without him.  He was the best babysitter and the proud and constant friend and protector of his herd.  Hector the Protector, rest assured that we loved you so much and this was not the end I wanted for you.  You have served us in your ultimate sacrifice and for this we sincerely thank you.  Hector, my darling, rest in peace and thank you from the bottom of my ever more vegetarian heart.