Encounters with Tasmanian wildlife (MONSTERS).

I’ve written about Tasmanian locals (legends) and the scenery (mainland Australia on an acid trip) but haven’t yet touched on the island’s most striking feature – mutant wildlife.

Mutant in it’s sheer ubiquity. Everywhere wallabies, wombats, technicolor birdlife, sea creatures. Unfortunately, the simplest way to spot many of these critters is by looking in the gutter by the side of the road. A zoo of haemorrhaging marsupials; go on kids, touch ’em, they (no longer) bite.

The ones that are still living tend to be a little more precocious. Equally as tame.

Sam tells the baby wallaby to ‘smell my finger’.

After the first day of camping one becomes more cynical as to the perceived charms of furry fauna. Whether deliberate or accidental, the food that these animals wrangle from campers is enough to render them tame & conniving. (Hapless folk like us who leave their staples unattended for two shakes of a rabid possum’s tail perpetuate this problem).

Journal entry for 7.5.14.

Drive to Fortescue Bay. Arrive just in time to negotiate our new hunk of off-road technology before night falls.

Sam makes a fire. His life purpose is pyrotechnic. Scrounge for kindling around the campsite. Slim pickings. Still, we’ve a glowing pit in no time, and serenade it accordingly. The wallabies and possums are viciously, opportunistically tame. Can’t leave a morsel alone for one second. The currawongs eye us with human intelligence. They’ve got swagger and murderous beaks.

Next morning we awake to the full spectacle of the location. Wide, glistening bay fringed by forest.

Tackle Cape Huay. A 4-hour bushwalk leading out to a magnificent coastal cape. Millions of stairs, million dollar views and maximum vertigo. Feels like we’re scaling mountains – precipitous lookouts leave little room for clumsiness. The ocean is a bath and we stop regularly to let the impact of the view thwack us. (And because our butts are cramping). 

That night: firewood acquisition success. Raging mini bonfire. More guitar. A possum breaks into our outdoor kitchen and samples everything he encounters. Our staples are pillaged. Potatoes, onion, garlic, swede – all nibbled beyond salvation. WHO THE HELL SULLIES EACH AND EVERY ROOT VEGETABLE THEY ENCOUNTER WITH A SINGLE DAINTY BITE? Ima find you Possum, and whomp on yo ass.

A few days later, the tension escalates; a hostage situation. I send out an urgent SOS via social media:

This may be my last ever update. We’re surrounded by wallabies. They’ve taken hold of the campsite and are patrolling the perimeter with echidna-spike bayonets. Wombats are burrowing under the camper as we speak to bomb their way to food, and there’s a shifty looking possum lurking near the dunny. Send help & decoy steaks. 

And they were never seen again.

The relationship deteriorates further.

Journal entry from 14.5.14:

Dear Diaryyyyyyy,

Today we bought a takeaway piece of Gluten Free Coconut cake from a trendy vegan café in Launceston; a hulking wedge. All the way home it sits at our feet in its plastic coffin, ferried in reverence. As we make camp in the afternoon, we resist demolishing it with a cuppa. Delaying gratification. After dinner, after dinner. So stoic, so steely.

Between meals we walk in the dark to the sand flats, illuminated by a full moon. The estuary’s silver, the water birds, inky. We see a fireball burning across the sky (for the second night in a row). We dub it ‘The Ball Baker’. The first was ‘The Red Helen’. It’s eerily apocalyptic, like we’re the only two humans on Mars. Silence, serenity, contemplation and then – a rustle, a clank. The direction of our van. We look at each other – wide eyed, simultaneous recognition. Leg it back to the camp, hollering and wailing with sick clairvoyance. We know that sound. We know that fucking sound.

The scene: a possum in the cake. Caught in the act, one paw raised in punctuated gluttony. Our cake, our joy. Sealed & hidden amongst the cookware. Left like a child in a car seat. Just for a moment. She’ll be fine while we’re gone, just for one moment.

Hurl abuse and fists at the possum that shows less concern than natural for a wild animal. The cake has been exhumed, lying bereft on the benchtop. Seemingly unscathed, naked & scared. A pattern of muddy paw prints, in on & around the container. Do we risk it? Do we trust google when it warns possums carry an alphabet of parasites? Do we dare contemplate inter-species transmission of the bubonic plague? Yes. For the love of all that is comforting and sugary, yes. The cake must be et.

We scrape it of marsupial traces and pan-fry in coconut oil to sterilise. We delicately halve the battered triangle and eat it meditatively by the fire Sam’s made, with tea spoons and chamomile. No possum’s gonna fuck with our treat.

Yes, I’m painting a grim picture of Tasmanian wildlife. (But it’s mainly for the purpose of getting a giggle. I wouldn’t actually chase down a possum with a big stick and enact corporal punishment. But Sam might.)

Perhaps we gave off a certain tourist pheremone, because even tiny invertebrates joined in tormenting us.

Journal entry for 17.5.14: Cradle Mountain

Alpine beauty, clean & soft. Little tufts of grass & moss cushions. Hash together a plastic bag picnic and guide the obese Amarok to Dove Lake. Eat lunch on our laps overlooking the lake. Take a walk up glacier rock; the wind moves in liquorice strips over the water. It’s icy, my eyes leak & crystallize. The mountain comb is shrouded in low-slung mist, but the surrounds are spectacular. Beech trees are in full autumn get-up, splashed rusty orange across the slopes. Everything else, a palette of green. The water, treacle. Stained from the tannins of leaves.

Do the Enchanted Walk back at Pepper’s Lodge. Totes enchanted. Myrtle rainforest and a friendly stream. We gambol. Find a hollowed out tree trunk to stand inside. Feel small.

Back on the road in the car, not far out, a horror scene. A waving leech on my trouser, swaying, drunk on the scent of blood. My nemesis & childhood foe. Irrational aversion to their slimy, wormy, silent parasitism. Baulk and compose myself. Try to fling it out the window. It sticks on the outside. Sam is alarmed. We’re both quietly shitting ourselves. Without unnecessary fuss, I spy and remove another from Sam’s groin (a masculine nightmare). Pull over and proceed with anti-Leech measures. There is another little bastard oscillating wildly on Sam’s seatbelt. Skin is crawling. We practically strip & check each other over by the side of the road. There are 1000 imaginary leeches in our ears, hair, armpits, undies. We grow up and drive on. I intermittently convulse for the next hour.

DOES ANYONE ELSE REVERT TO OLD-BRAIN FIGHT OR FLIGHT WHEN FACED WITH A MINUTE BLACK BLOOD-SUCKING WORM? WHAT IS IT THAT MAKES THEM SO REPULSIVE? Answer me that, Dr. Karl.

I’ll say something positive now to restore the balance, for these are isolated (harrowing) incidents on an otherwise BRILLIANT road trip around a supernaturally excellent island.

Many Tasmanian critters are so obliging that they’ll latch onto anything you dare to dangle into the water and offer themselves to the frypan gods.

Under a luminous unbroken rainbow no less.  

And so it was that our road trip was punctuated by hilarious, precarious encounters with mutant Tassie wildlife. Anyone else ever been ambushed by furry cake fiends?

People are generally good & very infrequently rotten.

Good apples.

Chris the caravan park janitor just spent half his afternoon tutoring us on how best to fish the nearby waterways. Eyeballs the colour of a sandy-bottomed bay and reflective as salmon scales. I’m still getting used to unsolicited advice from strangers, free from agenda. (Perhaps we affirm their existence with snippets from the Big Smoke. ‘Sydney? Mate, you can have that.’)

And thanks to Chris’s recommendation, I’m now perched on a boulder overlooking a deserted beach while Sam dangles a stinky piece of squid into the Tasman sea. He’s set to land a monster. I’m poised to cheer. It will mark three out of three nights we’ve eaten from the big wet supermarket. First night; mullet – bundled in baking paper with sweet onion and lemon. Second night, Australian Salmon – still twitching 20 minutes later and cooked in nothing but coconut oil & salt. Too delicate & flavoursome to embellish, distract. And with the word from our caravan park fishing guru, tonight we’re expecting a royal platter.

Locals are good. Eternally, unwaveringly good.

Because even if Sam catches a gumboot, we still have mussels in the fridge. Mussels that Bryce from Triabunna bestowed upon us, dusty but dogged, the morning after a rollicking night at the pub. An aquaculture employee, we got chatting to him over AFL at the bar. He manages an oyster & mussel hatchery, passionate about his invertebrate offspring & more than keen to illuminate the whole process. In a display of generosity so common to Tasmanian locals we’ve stopped evincing Martin Bryant and simply started accepting, gratefully, Bryce pulled up at the place we’d made camp the next morning, a little pink around the gills with a gift; a packet of live mussels. Just because we showed interest. Just because he’s a top bloke.

If we were to base our conception of humanity on the media; news, current affairs, magazines, cinema, we’d set ourselves in fearful rigor mortis. Omnipresent violence & hatred scalding our retinas. What else to conclude but that the world is a barrel of sociopathic shrimp & we’re the seamonkeys? Retreat, retreat to the innermost sanctum of safety & slime. Silly, scared little seamonkeys.

Here’s a rainbow to symbolise nice fluffy things.

People are good and I have 1000 examples to prove it.

That time the caravan park owner reopened the reception to let us in after hours. That time my host family sent me on a whole-day Bruny Island boating adventure with one of the top tourism companies in Tasmania simply to say thanks for the work I’d done for them (the same work that was in fair exchange for the hospitality & education they’d shown me. The mind boggles). Countless shopkeepers who have shared stories, advice, discounts, time with us scraggly travellers. The strangers who’ve invited us into their homes for wine, food & friendship. The list stretches on like a string of quality mozzarella.

But what else can I say except: get to Tassie and experience the kinder side of human nature for yourselves? It’s bloody good.

What I learned whilst WWOOFerizing.

My first post on this blog started with “I have three days left of my job.” Well, it was something to that effect. Verification is impossible seeing as I’m sitting on an upturned plastic bucket, using a dusty L-shaped plank as an improvised lap-desk, at the door of the wooden hut that has been my home for the last fortnight – far from any router. The air is sharp, a diamond, free from the opacity of smog and wi-fi. My phone, obsolete. And now I have three days left of WWOOFing, and the lazy Susan has spun.

Three days. I could cry all over my keyboard. A sun shower, a fine mist – complete with rainbow. For it ain’t sadness I’m feeling, but a colourful swelling. An oceanic movement of feeling. Crazy bittersweet gratitude that begins and ends with love.

That, my friends, is a giant, heart-shaped swede. A beating testament to permaculture. A damn good soup.

Let me summarise the gist of this whole adventure with an anecdote.

We went to a paddock party last Friday night on the other side of town. It was like stepping onto the set of Game of Thrones – heathen, bearded debauchery complete with lanterns, bonfires, a wooden Stonehenge. The hosts had gone all out, even supplying a hay-bale effigy of Tony Abbott for guests to skewer with flaming arrows. (Homicidal pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. He burned good).

They’d created intimate alcoves within tents. A smoking tent, a textural ground-level stage, one filled with furs & cushions (the make-out marquee).

And another for fortune telling; velvet interior, luminous orb and living oracle, materializing from the gloom. We requested a group session, four of us crammed into the synthetic wig-wam, bristling with psychic thrill. (We suspended disbelief and took it extremely seriously, investing full faith in the mysterious hag). One question each, frame it wisely. When it came to my turn, I was legitimately stumped.

I had no questions; shocking for someone whose whole life has been an exercise in needing to know.

The magical orb; a marvel of modern LED technology.

(I ended up asking something bland about true love, and was offered a cryptic response. The real interest sparked when the woman shed the theatrics and chatted to us about her off-grid heritage cattle farm. Enlightened producers; you never know when they’re going to spring out from within a burlap sack).

Failing to come up with a burning question for the oracle wasn’t because I’d hovered too long over the cauldron of mulled wine either; it was a sign of change. I came to Tassie to fill in the blanks, to replace question marks with exclamation points. That has certainly happened – on a literal level. Gaping holes in my knowledge of farming, food production, holistic health have been mended.

Yet on a personal level, I’ve moved from needing to know to being ok with the fog.

Fog you say? Here’s some I prepared earlier.

This seed was planted by my first fellow WWOOFers. I was all like, yo dudes, what are your plans? Where do you see yourself in the future? What do you want to be, achieve & contribute? This little tango with nomadic existence is all very cute, but what does reality look like? And the such like.

Aside from genuine interest, that’s how I’d learned to comprehend a person. What to make of them. What they did & the magnitude of their dreams, defined them. However erroneous, it was my default setting (and I’m wholly ashamed. Repent! Repent!)

The carefree WWOOFers answered in the vague.

Heavy questions cuz. We’re just enjoying, revelling, living. Everything’s pretty sweet as is, why lunge wildly for something over there? What is a career anyway? What is success? Why do we always have to be scrabbling for an answer? We’re free, easy & stupidly happy. Quit bringing us down with your future mumbo jumbo. (Except they said all this in endearingly staccato English. And definitely didn’t call me ‘cuz’).

These folk were the nomadic wax heads to my uptight accountant, pelvic floor twitching with retention. How could they be so flippant about the future?

These turkeys are irrelevant. Or are they?

That was then. Three months later, I’ve taken my first tentative steps in no particular direction. It feels good to just, walk.

If I could put a title to this whole adventure, it would be ‘Letting Go’ (alternatively: ‘The epiphanies you have whilst pissing in a paddock at 3am and a little bit sprays on your sock’).

For the biggest lesson of all has been to loosen the grip. Relax. Stop worrying. Get over this egomaniacal sense of entitlement to material wealth, notoriety. Get over myself. Trust in the process, the unfolding. Success is subjective; gratification lies within. Society & its value system suck. Form a new conception of happiness, of career. Says Catie to herself at 3am whilst pissing in a paddock and a little bit sprays on her sock. Eureka!

It’s all very hackneyed. But you gotta give a girl a little leeway when she’s teary. And still choking on the ashes of Tony Abbott.

And that’s why I feel like crying. A literal purge of the liquefied stuff in need of expulsion. All the unnecessary crap I thought was important but upon closer inspection, is just fluff. An emotional enema.

My, what three months away can do for a gal.

Here’s me covered in seaweed. Loving life & ignoring the creeping sensation of sealice on my scalp. 

The day I bought a Rooster for $6 at auction, took it home, broke it’s neck & ate it.

Meet Number 143.

Officially my shortest-lived pet. We shared seven rosy hours before he succumbed to an incurable poultry affliction: headlessness. 

Number 143 symbolised everything I hoped to learn in Tasmania. What does feeding ourselves really entail? How can we better engage with the food on our plate? What are the implications of eating meat, and can we do it with a clear conscience? Am I a killer?

That rooster was crammed full of consumer symbolism, let me tell you. I pulled it out along with his gizzards.

Before spinning the tale, I’ll make a meagre contribution to the Omnivore’s Dilemma (for words from a smarter person please see: Michael Pollan).

I used to be vegan. Then I quit. Reasons:

1. I don’t reckon it’s healthy. Tough to wrangle enough vitamins, minerals and macronutrients from plants. It can be done. By some. For limited periods of time. Kinda. (Am I being noncommittal?) But I won’t ever plug it as a therapeutic, long-term endeavour.
2. We can’t escape death.

Let me expand on number two.

I used vegetarianism & veganism to absolve myself of existential guilt. That I was alive and salivating while something died to mop up the spittle. To feel soothed; salved by a thick, watertight layer of Vaseline – a barrier between me and the great black beyond.

Digging right down deep into this desire to avoid killing, to step so gingerly around every wayward ant that leaving the house became an excruciating exercise in agility, I found a box. And in that tiny, beating chest lived the answer.

FEAR. OF. DEATH.

Who isn’t a little discombobulated by the notion of non-existence? I’ve always had an acute aversion to carking it. The whole thing seems rather inconvenient and I’d infinitely prefer sunning myself by the fountain of youth, with strong black coffee and an apple.

Thus: vocally avoiding animal foods allowed me to deny its inevitability, to feel liberated from the grim reality of carnivorousness. The only downside? The Lion King soundtrack just didn’t have the same ring to it.

Veganism was the steroid cream to my stubborn rash of mortality. It suppressed the fact. But like any persistent and embarrassing skin condition, there’s only so long you can wax immuno-suppressive ointment on again, off again.

I eventually arrived at my own personal truths, somewhere between the last slurp of a spinach frappe and the first bite of beef short rib:

• Veganism could never allow me to escape killing things. Giant soy crops house critters that are pulverised during harvest. Not to mention, these monocrops are disastrous for habitats & ecosystems – true for many ubiquitous vegetarian protein staples. Even if I wasn’t eating the flesh of an animal, chances are one or two thousand had died anyway secondary to production processes. Avoiding grains & soy? The same goes for plain old vegetable farming. Snails are squished, slugs nuked, bugs blasted. They’re animals too, no? And bacteria. Microorganisms. Where do we draw the line between worthwhile and dispensable slimy, sentient beings?

• Veganism royally rogered my health. Can’t elaborate now. Google it.

• I asked myself – are PLANTS sentient? How do we know they’re happy to be plucked, uprooted, julienned and juiced for our benefit? Do they like being placed in rows, sprayed with poison & confined to cold storage? Experiments have shown that plants emit certain frequencies when snipped – even when approached aggressively. I for one consider them conscious, wizened beings (it’s a witchy prerequisite). They’re better than humans in most respects – though spooning a cactus is never as satisfying as a fleshy backside. If we’re going to start fighting for the emancipation of animals, I reckon plants deserve a parade, too.

• And the whole refusing-to-eat-dead-things-in-order-to-shield-myself-from-the-thought-of-my-own-inevitable-demise? I got over it. Fear lessens when you’re living a radical life – it’s a ‘no-regrets’ thing. And the darn tootin strangest thing? I feel better after breaking the necks of three chickens. They reminded me that although I was wielding the knife this time, one day i’ll be wide-eyed with surprise, sucking in a last greedy breath and hitting the deck. And any chickens roaming in the vicinity will make short work of my eyeballs. For payback. And also because they’re thrifty like that. It’s all the same cycle & exchange of energy & life & death & consumption & compost & growth & decay & day & night & summer & winter & asleep & awake & dead & alive & happy & glum & black & white & hungry & satiated.

At the risk of sounding callous, killing Number 143 (and his comrades) was exactly the same as eating meat wrapped in cling film. Except I was forced to participate in the backstage bits we’ve all become squeamish about. And it was hard. And I didn’t feel all lusty and deranged by the thrill of it. It was more like watching the Red Wedding from Game of Thrones. Revulsion, progressing to numb shock, cooking down to acceptance.

Steve & Lisa took me to this hilarious local animal auction where you can bag a living, breathing, feathery bargain for as little as 50 cents. On offer: pigs, sheep, goats, turkeys, home grown produce and small, unwanted children. It’s baffling that you can buy a creature for so little, but it’s testament to numbers of obsolete animals – the weeds of farming. Nobody wants boy things unless they’re good for breeding. Roosters, male calves, goodfernuttin drakes – marked for death by testosterone & testicles.

I bid wildly on Number 143. Poultry poker. I had my city face on; quizzical, daft. When I’d won him with overzealous nods, I asked the bemused crowd…Now what? They chortled & cringed.

Back at home, with a small herd of still-living dinners.

We did the deed at night – the chickens seemed to be calmer in the gloom, and it was fittingly noir.

Grabbing them out by their legs, upside down, we quickly arrange their head under a broom handle – held with two feet – a push/pull manoeuvre and the neck breaks. Throat is cut to stop the blood clotting, coagulating & into a drum. The bodies flap wildly, like wind-up toys taken one rotation too far. And then the nervous energy fizzles. And we grab ‘em by the feet again, plunge directly into a pot of boiling water, lay them on a table and pluck like human epilators. (This part was almost more confronting than the dispatch – something about the bereft follicles, puckered skin – sallow & bald).

The dangling neck where the head came off flounces around, impervious to splatter, clothes like a Jackson Pollock painting – and the only remaining task is to gut the thing. Slice off the anus, make two incisions – top & bottom. Feel around inside, prise viscera gently from the walls of the cavity, pull until aquatic sucking sounds announce the imminent evacuation of all that once sustained a living chicken. Out, like afterbirth. Good anatomy lesson; liver, intestines, stomach, heart – don’t puncture the gallbladder or the bile will seep like an acid sea into the surrounds.

A thorough clean up by Lisa inside, and they’re ready to cook.

And so it was that all my nutritional research and naturopathic learnings and spiritual curiosity and dislike of death were roasted in the oven. And out they came as a simply dressed rooster. And I ate and was human.

Herbal remedies from the garden; cleansing, anti-allergic bitters tea.

My Dad rang me yesterday to relay his blog feedback: stop writing about flowers and harden the fuck up. 

I took his constructive criticism on board and set about creating something vile, something so twisted it could make the hairs on a fairy’s scrotum stand on end. A bitter herbal tea to flatten the floral adjectives sprouting from my fingertips. 

Although these images register the usual level of whimsy, the herbs within are sharp-edged, matter-of-fact, tough. Plus, i’ve included a recipe for a cleansing herbal decoction. Adult, edgy; not a daisy chain in sight. (How am I doing Dad? I’ll make more references to fairy genitalia soon, promise).

I’ve been feeling the need to cleanse. And y’all know i’m not the kind of gal to embark on famines disguised as therapeutic fasts, or any kind of fad detox for that matter. There’s a difference between targeting a known pathogen (i.e weeding out a gut bug with herbs + tailored diet), shifting seasonal gears, conducting a general lifestyle regroup…and the Lemon Detox. Or bi-weekly juice fasts that not only deplete, but thinly veil disordered eating. Those things don’t enter into my conception of health. Soz.

What I feel is a pull towards bitters, herbs that drain fluid, are anti-allergic, supportive of digestion & elimination. The change in season and surplus of pollen, spores and scents has taken a toll on my immune & lymphatic system – silent hay fever. No snot nor sneezing but swollen, headachey, itchy and bleary in the eyeballs.

Allergies are not a simple reaction to an irritant, either. When we holistic types excavate the problem, we hit systemic dysfunction.

An allergy is a sign that the immune system is out of whack. That it’s being mobilised unnecessarily. This can be underpinned by gut problems; a ‘leaky’ intestinal barrier allowing proteins to enter the bloodstream – that the body finds and is all like woah woah woaaaah what you doin’ on my highway, gliadin? Release the hounds! Not only do we allergically ‘flare’ when our gut is spazzy, our liver is implicated too.

You’ve all heard of histamine, yeah? The target of anti-histamines. Claratyne, Zyrtec, etc. Well. Histamine is a super important bioactive chemical that does loads of different stuff in the body, but for now we’ll just focus on allergic responses where it’s released to help deal with a (perceived) foreign invader. Problem is, some people make excessive amounts and/or cannot break it down. Thus, the allergic symptoms continue. Histamine overload. Which brings me back to the liver, whose job it is to remove the stuff. Ding dong! Connections.

In allergic states, my immediate thoughts run to supporting the liver. (The MTHFR gene defect is also implicated. Don’t ask. For the love of sweet brevity, don’t ask).

One more thing – histamine excess may also be linked to overgrowth of certain types of bacteria. Another gut link. Pathogenic bacteria produce excess histamine as a by-prdocut & negatively impact the health of the liver by producing yet more toxins to contend with. The whole, terrible cycle spins in a demented loop, like a wind turbine, by the force of one thousand sneezes.

BLIMEY. Are you all still awake? My mad, balding and unashamedly incontinent alter ego just hijacked this blog post and turned it into a physiology lecture.

ALL YOU WANTED WAS A CUP OF TEA!

And tea you shall have. 

Because I got so excited about all the medicinal plants at my disposal, I did what every good herbalist shouldn’t do and just stewed up a massive pot full. Of every variety. Because I could.

The reason this isn’t necessarily good practice? There’s an art to tea blending. Certain herbs are friends. Others, outcasts who prefer to work alone lest their body odour offend. Chemical constituents interact; some potentize (make harder, better, faster, stronger), others negate. There are herbal energetics at work – cooling, drying, heating, moistening. An astute practitioner respects these principles and makes sensical, matchy matchy blends.

I disregarded the lot and hosted an orgy.

So far, I’ve found approximately 345 787 999 medicinal plants within the garden. With more romping wild outside the perimeter.

Today I chose the following to snap, amputate, behead and boil up in my cauldron:

Rosemary, Birch, Dandelion, Lemon Verbena, Calendula, Sage, Yarrow & Anise Hyssop. I gathered some Chamomile flowers too, but just wasn’t feeling ’em. Don’t worry, they didn’t die in vain. I’ll dry them and turn the corpses into a grassy anti-inflammatory tea.

When I went ballistic and fell down the allergenic rabbit hole, I had in mind the actions of these herbs. For many address the symptoms directly, whilst others support those extra fiddly functional aspects that aren’t always connected. But are.

A brief rundown on why these herbs sang to me (in sweet little eunuch falsettos):

Rosemary: my best herbal friend. For liver detoxification, brain fog, headaches, as an antioxidant, for cooling the constitution, as an astringent, a carminative (soothing for digestion), for ‘space clearing’ and cleansing energy – like a broom; sturdy, no-nonsense, sweeping out garbage.

Birch: Birch! A new acquaintance. A beautiful tree; silvery, hardy, grows in places of pollution – cleansing the soil for a new generation of plant life. A chivalrous chap. All parts can be used. I harnessed the leaves for their diuretic, blood purifying, kidney tonifying, astringent & heating/flushing effects.

Dandelion leaf: A weed. What a weed! Will certainly be growing in your lawn, humble and ugly. The leaves can be eaten fresh or brewed to make tea. They have a kidney affinity; good for fluid retention & renal complaints. Gentle & generally safe. Mild in flavour.

Dandelion root: The root is a liver/galbladder tonic. Detoxifying, promoting bile production & flow. Great digestive & cooling.

Lemon Verbena: A cooling, sedative herb, calming for digestion and with an affinity for skin complaints. Smells heavenly.

Calendula: The lurid yellow/orange flower you’ll see beaming from the photos. Commonly known as Marigold. A beauteous being of skin repair, tissue healing, fungal overgrowth and anti-inflammatory prowess.

Sage: Cooling. The menopause herb. Feminine (slightly oestrogenic). Astringent. Delicious. Antiseptic. Tonic. Just heaps good, really.

Yarrow: Stops bleeding like a champion. Slight kidney/diuretic action. Good for colds, flus, congestion. Looks stupidly pretty.

Anise Hyssop: Good for mucousy, gunky build-up. Coughs & respiratory complaints. Rheumatism. Aromatic digestive. Tastes sweet, like licorice.

Do I need to issue the disclaimer that you shouldn’t start guzzling herbs if you’re taking prescribed medication or have a known condition or allergy? Good. Also, use a credible herbal guide to help with identification if you’re unsure. I don’t want to hear about any death-cap mushrooms being mistaken for mint.

Right. The method. 

Listen carefully. I’m only going to type this once.

Ahem.

Wash, chop, slash, twist, clip, macerate, dunk and shred your herbal specimens. Into a pot with some rainwater, if it’s handy. The ratio? Eyeball it. A reasonable amount of fresh herbs into a litre of water. Ish.

I brought to the boil, stirring occasionally, and then let it simmer for around 30 minutes. Technically the leaves and dainty lady parts don’t need to be so thoroughly boiled. But the roots, twigs and bark do. I opted to give everything a good hot water razzling.

Strain once cooled & store the swampy liquid in a glass jar in the fridge. Sip 1-3 cups daily for an acquired-taste tea; earthy, herbal, therapeutic. Aesthetically satisfying but fierce as a bikie’s handlebar moustache.

There you go, Dad. I’ll await your bitter & ballsy approval.

 

Care to take a turn about the garden?

This post is for Marianne. Get well soon, ya battler.

There’s nothing more civilized than strolling in the garden under a parasol. And from the holy scrolls of Jane Austen, taking a turn about the yard can salve anything from anxiety to spinsterhood. Linger near the hedgerow long enough and some fine suitor is sure to emerge in see-through linen; a loved-up Jabberwocky, sideburns dripping with desire. Garden mincing can be a profitable venture for a lady in lace.

Luckily, I prefer to stomp in snail-smearing wellies and moth-eaten knits. Deflecting marriage proposals with a trowel. Wanna stomp together?

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, The earth laughs in flowers. 

In this garden, it’s a deranged cackle; rapidly turning guttural, autumnal.

Oh, what a terrible tour guide. I’m not even pointing out the attractions. First picture features Sweet Peas (if something can smell exactly like ‘purple’, then this is it) spliced with a pleasing yet unidentified pod, plus yellow Dill blooms.

Above, portrait of a Dahlia – full frontal; buttressed by a gaggle of daisies.

Let’s link elbows and synchronise steps.

These Cyclamen are proliferating at the base of a few surly Birch trees. I didn’t catch it on camera, but a fairy streaked naked across the viewfinder a millisecond before the shutter blinked.

Below: waning summer greenery – an auburn riot. Middle: apples & pears from the orchard; all organic – comprised of nothing but love & carbon. Bottom: spreadeagled Sunflower (the leaves are like candy for the cows; my favourite thing has been to scamper up the side of the hill behind the house to deposit a big container of cast-off leaves to Honey & her young heifer. They spot me slithering under the electric fence and trot over like obese puppies. A tonne of udder bowling down the hill sees me praying to the God of physics that inertia doesn’t apply to untethered cows).

Promenading gives space to conversation. Words of a thoughtful nature, if you’re lucky. Enter, Michael Pollan:

The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and the people can still plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world.   

Yes, rather. We see the fruits of our labour, the sprouts of our sweat. A humbling reminder that living things still flourish in the world, making it better, even if humans are set to default mode; take.

The Macrocarpa pines along the driveway are like sentries; I feel safe in their presence. That’s them big old beasties shown above. Below is a wattle sprig protruding from the bush like a periscope (or Dalek gun if you’re a raging Dr. Whovian).

The garden is glorious, restorative. Please take a moment to inhale while I shove a cubic meter of freshly oxygenated air through the monitor.

On your left you’ll see lines of Sunflowers. Like desperate kindergarteners, hands raised, arms waving, busting to pee. PICK ME! A flower that can singe a Ranga from 12 feet.

My ‘job’ on Thursday’s and Friday’s is flower picking. The labour! The horror! Lisa does a cracking floral trade at the markets each weekend, so for three days we’re nipping, slicing, plucking, bunching & deliberating over the exact readiness of each bloom to harvest – is it far enough along in its development to open on cue for the morose widow, filling her bedroom with buds and blossoms – who really just needs to take a turn about the grounds to secure herself an eligible gentleman? We decide, and behead accordingly.

The randy specimens above left, are Cardoons. Darlings of jades chefs looking for cryptic vegetables to add to the menu. Relative of the Artichoke; a mini thistle. I happen to think they’re fabulous, like a dancing flower from Fantasia.

To the right, the ubiquitous Yarrow. It comes in pale pink, orange, white – a bevy of romantic shades. In herbal medicine we harness its styptic power – stemming blood flow, halting haemorrhage. If you’re out walking in the bush and happen to start bleeding profusely, you’d do well to macerate (chew, crush or generally pulverise) some leaves, flowers and stems – and apply. Seals it up nice & quick.

It’s the end of March! Autumn’s one month in! Tawny leaves offer the illusion of warmth, but the mercury’s dropping. Don’t know what this tree is. Ask someone else.

Martin Luther King said Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.

Amen, wise guy. As soon as I’m custodian of a choice little plot, in goes the orchard. I never want to pay for apples & pears again, nor do I want to eat powdery cold-stored impostors (apples are usually picked before ripe, then stored in big refrigerated warehouses to sell to supermarkets. They can sit around for months before they get to your fruit bowl).

Once you’ve had fresh specimens from the tree of an ancient variety you can’t even pronounce let alone identify, there’s no going back. Current favourites include; Red Cleo, Gravenstein, Cox’s Orange Pippin, Opalescent, Huon Crab & Geeveston Fanny (a Fanny a day keeps the gyno away).

Still enjoying the stroll? We’ll take tea soon, promise.

Above are giant Dill stalks. Smell so good when you crush them, add them to fish, potatoes or chargrilled zucchini rounds with lime. Said Donna Hay.

Below: Amaranth flowers (yes! Amaranth. A designer super-seed that gets the gluten-free crowd hot & bothered. We’ve had to rip a lot of them out at the first signs of seediness because they release about one million and then you have a plague of the stuff. I don’t mind though, as I’ve found a strange affinity for uprooting).

In the middle, Yarrow. To the right, Rosemary stalks; the hardy and humble herb that just happens to be my favourite. Good for sluggish livery types; those with poor circulation, headaches, forgetfulness, yellow tongue and prone to sighing for no reason. Trust me, i’m not a doctor.

Lucky we have parasols as the sun is farkin hot down in Tassie. I scoffed at the locals who cautioned me against exposing unnecessary skin, the ozone tear gaping right above our Southern heads. I assumed they were all Vitamin D deficient cold-climate softies and spent my first month with a scorched forehead. I’m now wiser – with premature wrinkles to prove it.

Below, an apple cluster complete with sun-catching spiderweb. Below, unknown purple flower – can any savvy gardeners identify?

Fall leaves; leaves fall.

I have never had so many good ideas day after day as when I worked in the garden – John Erskine.

Tis true. Rooting around in nature leads to flammable inspiration.

I was inspired to take over dinner duties last weekend, foraging for beans and beetroot and all manner of delicious edibles – surely resulting in the best culinary offering of my foodie career. Quinoa studded with iridescent Nasturtiums (peppery flowers below), freshly grated garden & herb salad and homegrown roast pork with apple, thyme & honey – seemed good in theory. My enthusiasm was promptly pruned by the farm kids who poked at the overachieving dishes, choking down my city twist. Lesson: food this good needs no embellishment. Just plonking it in a bowl or on the barbie is preparation enough.

Above: A Dahlia, fresh-faced & dewy. These are some of my favourite flowers; can be any colour in its most vivid expression. Varying leaf shapes, patterns and structures. My great-grandfather used to grow them & win floral accolades. Wading through the rows, felling stalks with my secateurs – so clean & crisp – releasing a raw, green scent, I think of him.

A high-def droplet.

I met this dude, above, for the first time last week. Golden Rod, a herb we deploy against upper respiratory congestion, inflamed mucous membranes, yellowy secretions (mmm secretions) and as an immune-defending missile.

And to conclude our perambulation, a wasp-eaten apple.

Stay back, they’re feisty. Especially attracted to the sweet, virginal tears of the first-time gardener. Welling up unexpectedly when finding a baby worm (actually called a wormlet. FOR REAL) and holding its tiny writhing body in a palm. Meditating on the simplicity of its existence. The irony that something so phallic should be asexual. Quoting Abraham Lincoln – The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land – and thinking he had it sussed.

And now, I’ll walk you back to reality.

All the world’s a supermarket.

I’ve discovered a curious thing.

Food grows on trees.

After all these years ferreting in grocery stores, harvesting my weekly sustenance and feeling like a right predator, it seems I was actually prey. A feckless sheep, dithering in the aisles. (If PETA had set me free in a forest, I’d have curled into a bleating ball and awaited an air drop of turnips).

Paying somebody to provide calories, vitamins, the fuel that makes my atoms spin was the convention of my consumption. Even in organic land, where trolleys are trimmed with hessian and every egg is emancipated, I was no more meaningfully engaged. Cash was exchanged for a Thing, all packaged and labeled and recognisable only in doctored form (disembodied broccoli heads, decapitated sprouts, circumcised carrots). Edibles fell under the jurisdiction of fluorescent lights, not the sun.

And understandably. There’s safety in buying things from a shop. Certified human food displayed in symmetrical arrangements by genre. Meat, fresh leafy things, sweet fruity delights, cereals, tea bags, tissues. No need to question the provenance, preparation required, potential toxicity. It’s all ripe for the scoffing; our skills of self-sufficiency atrophying as a result.

Then I came to Tasmania. Saw farmers at work, planted & picked things, witnessed slaughter at the abattoir, read about gardening, foraging & bush tucker. Skipped down the road to feast on enough wild blackberries to thoroughly negate any exercise-induced caloric expenditure. Started to live primarily outdoors.

These guys are edible. Though rather cute. Tis a conundrum. 

Each day i’m bonding with nature, planting myself between her luscious humps. She’s my sugar mama.

And I repeat – because I can scarcely believe it – food grows on trees. (Or in Gaia’s reproductive regions, if we’re still on with the rampant personification).

It’s not confined to what we pay for and are handed in a shop. From the weird sticky side doors of fridges where the condiments lurk. Especially not from boxes or plastic bags or buckets procured at the drive thru.

It grows on flippin’ trees.

There’s beauty in the blossoming confidence to feed yourself not from a trough, but from a bough. Or a bramble. Or a backyard chook pen housing one too many obsolete roosters (coq au vin, anyone?). Something terminal has been resuscitated and I suddenly feel like a worthwhile human – simply because I now have a dim conception of how to grow coriander.

Before I hyperventilate with the novelty of it all, let me clarify:

This isn’t a post about how & why to be self-sufficient. Nor is it designed to preach the virtues of rural living (and admonish the urban). It’s not even an entreaty to go forage something from your local median strip.

It’s simply to share a realisation. That we can engage with our environment beyond looking at it & thinking it’s pretty. We can touch it, taste it, begin to appreciate it on a level that indigenous/hunter-gatherer peoples probably did. As a thing that doesn’t exist over there, but in here, in our bellies. In every spherical cell.

It provides for us – and if we respect it, will continue to do so. It’s like the tingling fictional magic of Hogwarts just became a reality. There is stuff to eat for free! All you have to do is peep under the blindfold of economic conditioning and check out them apples falling sweetly from the tree.

Raw milk, cream & butter. Plus thoughts on romanticising farm life.

Garden, circa 7am.

Two things.

Firstly. Everything you see on blogs, in magazines, is unashamedly contrived. Images tweaked and fluffed til they’re perky as silicone implants, pregnant with false promise. You knew that. This blog is likewise stylised – tis half the fun (the other is plastering schmaltzy words on the internet i’ll later regret).

Watering the garden whilst dealing with this view is stupid. See editors endnotes for shocking photoshop expose.

Secondly. Milk provides cream which turns into butter once churned.

If you’re ok with those tenuously linked factoids, we’re on.

We have a joke at the farm that pictures speak one thousand erroneous words. Lisa & Steve have been featured in publications before; photographers descending on the homestead to prop and polish and reposition, turning their lived-in, functional home into a stylised masterpiece. Like nude makeup or Instagram shots of salad, it takes a lot of artistry to appear artless.

(Side memo: every time I see a #healthy #organic #wholefood #glowing #goddess #morefiberthanonepersonshouldsafelyconsume salad on social media, I want to screech YOU EAT MORE CHICKEN THAN THAT, YA MUTT! A few lonely strips of protein lay prostrate on a mountain of sprouts. More to be piled on post-upload, i’m sure. Please stop perpetuating an obscenely unrealistic view of what humans need to survive (and thrive). There are these marvellous things called calories that are both beautiful & essential. Do wonders for the chronically infirm & peckish. Add liberally).

So here’s me waltzing into the farm declaring my undying love for it; a fairyland of naturopathic virtue – snap snap snapping away with my black Hummer camera and adjusting the tone, exposure, contrast – churning out images of pastoral perfection that don’t truly capture the essence of the place. Even though i’m observing it through a rosy lens, relishing the beauty in the new, the green – I want to be careful not to characterise other people’s lives as idyllic, spotless. Because there’s always a backstage. I’m not talkin, like, a Star Wars dark-side with dubious brotherly-sisterly relations – but a reality that deserves acknowledgement. Manic home-business deadlines. Bludgeoned marsupials by the side of the road. Domestic discombobulation, flies in the jam pot. Dead patches in the garden where plants failed to thrive. It’s not all rosebuds with their pouting petals split in a seductive come hither mien.

This experience has been rich, fluorescent, bottomless; may my camera illustrate. But I also want to represent things as they are, not as I expect them to appeal to others. Reconciling honesty, creativity & ugliness; a tough gig. Tips?

This all leads me to butter. For even though I frequently post hyperreal breast-implant holiday snaps, they still have the ability to lactate. The perfect hybrid of plastic & physiology. Here’s some milk that came from the fully functioning teats of Honey, the Jersey cow:

And here’s how it turned from raw cream into the most exciting pat of butter I’ve ever cradled in my adoring hands. Sensual. Velvety. A highlighter-yellow blob replete with fat soluble vitamins (including the elusive K2).

I tittered and giggled and allowed the full force of the novelty to hit me. A weekly routine for the self-sufficient family (one creating mess, taking time) but for me, electrifying. Needless to say, my dairy intolerance took the night off.

Editors notes:

• Milk bottles each turned clockwise by a third to hide black texta date stamps. #airbrushed
• Vintage filter added to hideous pre-vamped view. #airbrushed #hipster
• Soft orange glow layered over butter-making to add warmth (where there certainly was none before). #airbrushed #sarcasm
• House photo rendered black & white to add a moody, heathen, lumberjack vibe. #airbrushed #lederhosen

Let’s stop being rigid & religious about Organic

{image source}

I reckon it’s important to ask questions. ‘Specially of our food. A decorated restaurant can harbour spiteful, soup-spitting chefs in the kitchen. What’s on a label can be as misleading as an election campaign. We’re routinely romanced by pretty words and and their expertly crafted associations.

I’ve spent too long as a sucker and am donning my monocle – one eyeball clothed and a well-waxed female moustache.

Thus, I interrogate ‘Organic’.

The label we love. Crave. Wear. Pay triple for. Hashtag. Tell our friends about, even if they weren’t asking.

Organic is all the rahage.

But when I came to Tassie and met farmers producing conscious food without the Big O Halo – I wondered what was up. Wasn’t everyone farming organic? Isn’t it the gold standard in ethical production? 

Meet Steve – a non-organic farmer who does everything so splendidly, so thoughtfully, that labels are irrelevant.

I soon learned that rigid criteria fosters brittle opinion. A blinkered view of the world. Dry, twiggy knowledge unable to withstand the slightest breeze. Metaphors et al.

‘Organic’ is a label we lean upon heavily. City folk, removed as we are from the potato patch (and that’s not a slur – simply a consequence of occupation) have equated ‘Organic’ with every happy, sun-drenched, straw-hatted & shiny embodiment of ‘goodness’ concievable. The result is, we’ve stopped asking questions. 

But we must. Scrutinising and applying discernment to what we choose to consume is imperative. It’s the only way to ensure we’re paying the right people; supporting who we intend to support & not a monster in drag.

I learned new things about ‘Organic’ when I chatted with real-life, true-that, smart & salty farm folk. They know what’s clever. Here are some counter-points to our current (over-inflated?) opinion of Organic. Please note; i’m omitting all the marvellous, encouraging aspects of organic farming here. Not intended to bash but merely to spank lightly, bringing blood & polite inquiry to the surface.

Here we go:

‘Organic’ is not synonymous with ‘environmentally friendly’.

‘Organic’ is not a guarantee of humane treatment of animals.

Natural herbicides CAN be used on organic farms, such as that derived from Pyrethrum. Problems:

• These crops THEMSELVES require sprays. Pyrethrum is especially precious about it’s personal space; does not like sharing with weeds. Thus, chemical intervention for the natural alternative. Please go ahead and assimilate that irony.

• ‘Natural’ does not equal ‘harmless’. This is a persisting assumption in the realm of natural therapies, supplements, eco friendly, etc. When I prescribe herbs as a practitioner it’s with respect for the potential toxicity of that extract. The dose maketh the poison. Plants are not peaceable push-overs; they got sauce. Some of the deadliest chemicals can be extracted from green things with delicate pink petals and a garland of bees. Back to Pyrethrum, it’s been shown to exert toxic effects on animals and remains controversial for human consumption.

• Natural pesticides/fungicides/herbicides are often less effective than conventional, requiring extra applications. Again we can ask – what is actually the more environmentally harmful practice? One or two applications of a synthetic chemical or many, many of a ‘natural’ one?

Organic farming may require more tilling – to help manage weeds. This continual disturbance of an intricate, fragile, aged ecosystem – the soil – is problematic. Good dirt takes time to mature, like any other ecosystem from microbes, up. Living, breathing, undergoing cycles, requiring years to reach it’s full, filthy potential. Constantly digging it up promotes nitrogen & carbon loss, changes in structure, nutrient leaching, imbalance. An extremely conscientious, thoughtful farmer I met posed the question – is it better to apply effective sprays for weed control, or keep churning the soil at the expense of nutrients & structure?

‘Organic’ does not mean farmers have to show their workers respect, or be nice people. 

Organic products can be made by big companies with the same structures, business models, size, deleterious environmental effects as conventional ones. 

Organic certification is a lengthy & expensive process. The Little Guys can struggle to afford the big green tick. Does that make them any less worthy than a big operation with more might but less attention to detail?

Organic foods aren’t automatically healthy. Not from the mouths of farmers but from me, the heretic Naturopath. Snack foods emblazoned with overlapping organic, all-natural logos are often the most vile arrangements of frankenfoods, high in saturated irony. Organic has nothing to do with nutritional value and everything to do with a set of rules governing production.

With all these negative-nelly points in mind, what’s one neurotic consumer to do? These are things I now consider important, beyond labels and fancy fairtrade packaging. 

1. Knowing thy farmer. Attend markets, open-days, visit personally if you’re able. Good producers will have no qualms with opening their gates to curious consumers. You can get a better sense of how thoughtfully something is being produced via direct investigation rather than any marketing gimmick.
2. Buying local. Food miles count. The energy it takes to ship perishable things around in non-perishable ways is monumental. Organic lemons from the USA should be substituted for conventional Aussie ones; distance wins out. It’s noice to keep the local economy humming, too.
3. Growing things, if you’re so inclined. Become a certified earth child and put green things in the ground. There is no nutritionally superior, energy-efficient or rewarding thing than birthing your own edible babies. Better yet, if you find you have a glut of one particular crop, you can start bartering – swapping yours for theirs – circumventing cash and returning to commodity exchange.

‘Organic’ has captured our attention, encouraged awareness, education & engagement – positive movement, yes. But unless we keep stoking our knowledge, it will end as old embers. Don’t put all your $15 organic, love-child, full-moon harvested eggs into one hand-woven basket. Ask questions, get better answers.

One of the finer 48 hours in this lifetime.

I’m struggling. Really struggling. Tassie has coughed up a goliath gem and i’m paralysed; alarms sounding whilst I gawk like a slack-jawed simpleton, transfixed. I’ve had the most glorious few days yet writing about them seems to take the sheen off their lustre. Need to communicate in simple terms, words only get in the way of poetry.

Since Monday, I’ve been in a permanent state of ! 

Left my Hobart host family Monday morning after a fortnight of light household duties, cathartic rose pruning and hanging with two zany, hyper-intelligent children. The perfect antidote to homesickness. Yet another testament to the generosity & warmth of strangers.

I’d made a little nest downstairs and dismantling it was somewhat dismal. I still experience resistance to uprooting; nerves like rusty spoons before arriving on the doorstep of someone new, offering only a handshake and a boot full of dirty laundry. Luckily before I shipped out, Sarah took us bush-bashing around the ankles of Mount Wellington. After bartering carbon dioxide for oxygen in the forest for two hours, I was replete, pacified.

A dude also pumped my petrol for me at the station on the way. Complimentary. (Has happened TWICE to me in Tassie – I sit like an inadequate idiot while the chivalry unfolds.) Then I ate my takeaway lunch in the gutter, in my wellies, with a plastic knife I found in the boot of my car. Always an excellent omen.

On the road. A self-sufficient farm, South.

You never can imagine what you’ll arrive to. All you’ve got to flesh out the picture is a paragraph on Help Exchange, a smattering of low-res photos and a gut feeling – usually informed by phone or email correspondence. What work you’ll be doing, where you’ll be sleeping, what you’ll be eating, how many mutant possums will be scampering across the roof of your outhouse accommodation at 2:22am each morning, is entirely up to chance.

This is the golden nugget for me. Not knowing. Fingers slipping from the handbrake and careening into whatever body of water awaits at the bottom of the hill. No control, just trust. That everything will be hunky dory. (And failing that, up and legging it).

I have to give myself periodic pep-talks to this effect – get comfortable with discomfort. Learn from it. Inhabit it. Don’t alley-cat around the perimeter when prized decaying pilchards are in the deepest bin. (Speaking of cats, here’s one I prepared earlier:)

A legit farm puss puss, stalking plums

This comprised my wheezy inner monologue as I crawled up the driveway. It soon fizzled into silence. Wonder.

I had a dream the other night in which a floating white orb was hovering above my head, channeling undiluted peace & wellbeing. It was one of those weird amalgamations of slumber & floundering consciousness – I actually woke myself up out of panic. I thought I was dying, unravelling into pure energy. (Maybe I would have died if I hadn’t curtailed it. Threw myself a buoy. Got shit to attend to while I still have arms & legs).

Arriving at this farm was kind of like that. Dreamlike, otherworldly. Asking Are you SERIOUS? in my most nasal American tourist voice every five seconds.

I’m in heaven; dead or alive.

Here’s why:

•  These folk live in a Scandi-inspired wood cabin on the side of a hill, with a cascading garden that perfectly frames the view of the channel. I have the ridiculous privelige of staying in a mini-me one-room cottage attached to the main house via a verdant walkway. I’ve never been so aesthetically satisfied.

• Their garden is a den of temptation. (Except when you pluck the juiciest, blushing plum from its stem you’re not eternally damned. Just free to eat another, should gluttony beckon). I spent some of the first afternoon rustling in the fruit trees, filling buckets full of prunes, plums and sunset crabapples. Foliage at head height and silver-lined leaves, plums a deep, moody violet and a tiny, tittering orchestra of birds. Take a moment to imagine. Drool if you must. I’m permanently standing in a pool of saliva and like hell i’m hopping out.

• Dogs & cats. Pigs & chooks. Guinea fowl & rabbits. Fur & fluff & feathers & zoological love. Did I mention that Felix the cat & Tommy the pooch are besties? Welp, they are.
• I get to harvest flowers. Plucking and tweaking and bunching are some of my favourite pastimes. It does say I’m a girl on my birth certificate, after all. This productive twiddling combined with dirt, blue skies and bumblebees the size of miniature rockmelons makes for work thats more bliss than boredom. I’ll let the snaps speak for themselves.

• When I emerge at 3am from my wooden cottage to take a cheeky pee, the whole galaxy’s ablaze, lighting my way as I trip drunkenly down the footpath.

• The kitchen is the heart of the home. A wood oven infuses the entire place with warmth – it smells aromatic, golden. Bubbling cheese, woodfired pizza, garden herbs – a medley of scents. It also heats the hot water, and most certainly has a pulse.

• Everything is reused, repurposed, fed to the pigs & chickens. The local restaurant is a close ally, supplying gourmet scraps for the animals that would otherwise have been tossed. Five-star cuisine slopped artfully into the trough; high tea of brioche for the hens. Containers, jars, tins – all reincarnated into vessels & vases. Excess fruit is mummified, sealed in the tomb of the pantry. Jams, jellies, preserves providing an injection of berries come winter.

Jersey cow & her calf. Raw milk machines for the family.

• Meals are eaten together at set times. Breakfast is independent, however 11am brings coffee o’clock, 1 or 2pm – a lunchtime spread and dinner by 7. There’s a bell to summon us all from our respective posts around the farm. A bell! I’m now an incredibly well-trained pup, tail oscillating wildly as I gallop back to the homestead for vittles. It’s a routine, a practice, a rhythm.

• Everyone is legendary. I feel part of a team (if I can so brazenly declare it after 4 days). On Wednesday we split and stacked firewood for winter; 12 tonnes of it. Gruelling, sweaty, ceaseless – yet satisfying. I’m slowly learning that when my body bleats ‘sttttttttttop now’ after a mere 2 hours, I can coerce it into another 6 hours of activity – with or without a carrot. The high-fives that ensue after such a slog may be the juiciest treat of all.

A sliver of the stockpile

I could rant, I could rave, I could list one thousand reasons why my heart is swollen from incessant, joyful thrumming. But no amount of gushing can do it justice; it only serves to illustrate how distinctly i’ve been living in contrast. I’m thoroughly inspired.