The Dying Art of Rural Living

We cleaned up at the Comboyne Show yesterday.  First prizes for my Kangaroo Valley apple mint, chutney, dozen eggs; Ged’s honey and supreme exhibit as well as First Prize for Ben’s painting in the under 8’s division.  Second prize for my lemon marmalade.

Quite a swathe of approbation for our year’s faming endeavours.  But what would have been the story if the competition had been more robust?  Because the sad fact is that the Comboyne and other little farming community, shows are becoming an anachronism in our fast paced, iphone, ipad, internet, super and hypermarket world.  We have lost touch with rural life, we have forgotten how to bottle and preserve, how to make jam and marmalade, how to grow our own, feed ourselves, make gifts of the gluts and salt and sugar away excesses to feed the winter mouths and months.

We buy what we want, when we want without a care or conscience for the food miles it has travelled – strawberries from South Africa, asparagus from Thailand, tomatoes from Italy.  We are like children in our carelessness – grabbit and run and to hell with the climate or the genetically modified sprayed with every chemical crop.

But home grown, home bottled food is goodness in a jar.  You can taste the sunshine and the love (sometimes if you get a little crunch you can taste the dirt as well!)  And what can be more satisfying a sight than a pantry stuffed to the gills with goodies from the garden – chutney, jam, marmalade, honey, limoncello, mead, candles, soaps etc.,  Made by Mum with love.  And mostly given away in true farm generosity.

There is an up side to the global financial crisis.  And that is that we will halt or stop or maybe only question our rampant consumerism and learn some good old fashioned arts and skills and values – self sufficiency, being neighbourly, growing our own, celebrating the harvest, seed saving and plant sharing.  Eating more veg and a whole lot less meat.  Make and mend, making do, going without and even making our own.

These are dying arts.  My Grandmother was the Queen of all this and more – recycling, reusing, storing, saving, baking, sewing, knitting etc.  I used to mock her and she never approved of me and my wild ways and raucous laugh – now I wish she were here to help me, teach me, guide me.  Because what she knew then we need to learn now.  And our humble hearts will reap abundant harvests as we learn to sow our seeds and wait patiently while they grow.

I shall be actively encouraging more competition for next year’s show and a revival in the art of living rurally.

Swarm

I was slashing on a hot spring day on the ‘other side’  and swung past the bees as I often do to clear the long grass around their hive entrances.  Never before have I been stung but yesterday I felt them land on me and I swiped them away.  One protested with a dying deed into the crown of my head and it really hurt!  As I swung past again on my next round they landed on me again but this time I was smart enough to do nothing, still smarting from the last bee’s dying wish.

Today I almost ran into a swarm building on a long low branch of a big she oak along the river flat by the teepees.  Missed it by an inch or so thank goodness!  No wonder they were all so cranky and aggressive yesterday.

I rang Ged who is the bee expert (he loves those bees!) and he got very excited and said he would capture the swarm and put it in the last remaining empty box when he got home from Sydney.  Sure enough when the sun was warm we all drove over to watch the bee whisperer at work.  The swarm had completely changed shape in the intervening 12 hours and was now hanging like a flag down from the bough.  Ged put on his white jacket with hood and veil and tucked his jeans into his pants (they do like to climb up trouser legs) and gave the bough one good shake into the box and most of the swarm had a new home.  A few more shakes and some gentle sweeping with the bee broom and we had captured our first swarm.  It was amazing . . . my husband the apiarist and more lovely runny honey for Avalon.  Yay!

Queen Bee & the Workers

The boys are back in town!  Scottie bought a mate up with him for a couple of days this week as Gary couldn’t make it and Bill the painter has been here stripping the external windows right back and priming etc.  So Avalon is a hive of activity and the Queen Bee is happy!!

Talking of bees, we have ordered a hive for the Spring from a local Bee Farm as we have both always wanted to have our own bees and honey.  Have also ordered a ‘Starting with Bees’ book from our friends at River Cottage, and have asked the local apiarists who are setting us up to teach us everything they know – should be fun!
We are ever more like the Ark – two crazy cows, two hefty horses, two delinquent ducks, two house animals (Phee and Mischa) and ok, ok, FIVE hens.  But there’s not much you can do with only two eggs a day.  The ducks really have been a special needs case since the drowning of their two brethren (they had climbed into the chook’s water bowl and then drowned in too much water when they were little).  They spent weeks and weeks refusing to come out of their little shed and we had to tempt them into water with ever bigger troughs equipped with standing stones and log and plank ramps etc, and when we threw them in the river they ran back home as fast as their little waddling legs could carry them!
We were slightly despairing that they might every become normal and then the other night we had a lot of rain and decided to take the cars out to be on the safe side and Ged wheeled me across on the flying fox first (and let me tell you, you know you’re very pregnant when manouevring yourself in THAT confined space!).  I had the torch and played the beam out over the river to guage the rising tide and what did I see but two white ducks paddling around in the pitch black . . . I told you they were special!!
Scottie makes the missus happy!