In which I major in Big Dreams and some minor wistful thinking

I am desperate to start shooting some rolls of film around the countryside.  Spring really is about to burst forth, and already the yellow wattles are blooming everywhere.  The paddocks are greening up, the lambs are frolicking and the abandoned, dilapidated wooden farm sheds with their broken down windmills are taking on that particularly picturesque hue, especially in that magic late afternoon light that Australia does so well.  

Each week the Wednesday afternoon girls get together for a walk somewhere in the neighbourhood (and driving there has reminded me of all the places I want to shoot). When I say neighbourhood I mean that term very loosely – it encompasses any plot of land within the shire boundary, so we might drive for half an hour, even, to reach our walking destination.  Then we stride around for an hour, or generally a bit longer, on walk trails mostly, but sometimes on private land by prior arrangement.  The ladies I walk with are very knowledgable on all topics to do with local flora and fauna, as most of them either do paid work or volunteer in the local environment society.  

They are in their 50’s with grown up children and have accumulated a wealth of experience in all aspects of life.  I enjoy their company immensely and don’t find it at all odd that most of my friends in this town are actually my parent’s age.  There are also major benefits to hanging out with people who are past their childbearing years: they have loads more time and attention to give me; no kids hanging off their skirt demanding something or just whingeing; and have a much wider repertoire of (uninterrupted) conversation that doesn’t revolve around lack of sleep and washing nappies.  

These ladies also have developed a variety of skill sets that I call on often to help me advance my rural lifestyle.  Two of them helped me plant out the bulk of this year’s revegetation project last week (DH and I finished it off over the weekend, putting in a total of around 30 reeds and sedges and perhaps 150 upland trees and shrubs) and a third is always at hand for advice on weed control.  Before the walk today three of us got together and sowed, in trays, about 70 species of summer vegetable and parked them in J’s greenhouse until late September when the ground will be warm enough to plant them out.  It was so much fun to do together something that could have been a major chore alone.  I love the companionship of living in a small community: the sharing of time, resources, skills, exploits – these qualities truly make life so much richer. DH mocked me when I was designing my potting shed to accommodate a bench large enough to fit about 20 seed trays and 6 high stools.  “I don’t know who you think is going to be coming over and doing this with you” he said, “It will be mainly you working in here on your own.”  I beg to differ.  And so do my friends!

When we get our greenhouse up and running (maybe 2 years from now?) it is going to be MAJOR.  Built from cob, it will have sufficient space to house several large permanent garden beds (in which I will grow cold intolerant plants such as ginger, tumeric root, curry tree, lemongrass, along with early crops of summer herbs and vegetables) and a big area in the centre for the seed trays, which will be mist-reticulated from above.  On a timer system.  We have started collecting (scavenging) glass already, and scored windows from two combi vans at the tip a while back.  Very exciting.  With cob, you can just build in windows wherever you want, so they can be all higgledy piggledy and it doesn’t matter.  You do need to make sure it doesn’t melt, though, which is why the spray area will be in the centre, and the beds around the walls will be reticulated by a dripper system (we use miniscape).  Which is much more water efficient anyway.

The shade house is taking shape already.  The holes are in the ground, the poles have been collected and creosoted (against termites) and five poles have made it into the ground.  We have designed it so that you can walk through the shade house into the potting shed and then through that into the harvest shed.  You can also walk into the potting shed through the back of the wood shed.  The shade house will be constructed of jarrah posts and shade cloth with a built in reticulation system so we can leave the pots to themselves if we go away in the summer; while the potting shed will be jarrah posts and tin, with a tin roof interspersed with sheets of alsynite (a polycarbonate roofing that lets light in) and will contain a sink for washing produce, pots and trays, and a large seedbank.  Plus a tool section.  I’m drooling just thinking about it.  Imagine, I might be sowing my autumn crop in that very space!

The harvest shed will be made predominately of cob, so that is going to take a while to get going as we are not at the cob building stage yet.  We decided on cob because it has such great insulating properties, and we want to keep the harvested crops as cool as possible.  I want high ceilings so I can hang a lot of garlic and onion from them.  I want one wall with a very narrow shelving system where I can put all my preserves and pickles layed out in single file.  And I want several tin-lined boxes filled with straw dug into the ground along that same wall, so I can lift the lid and access my vermin-free stores of apples, pumpkins etc.  The harvest shed will also house an upright freezer so I can snap freeze peas/broccoli/broadbeans etc; hoard tomato sauce and chicken stock, mulberry and passionfruit icecream etc.

Having held this hippy kind of dream for some time (I grew up on a semi-self sufficient property, but an hour’s drive from my current home, in fact) I  have been somewhat further inspired to go completely overboard in this domain, by Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal Vegetable Miracle.   If you love the idea of growing what you eat, and trying to eat locally, I highly recommend her book.  However, if you are, like me, seriously suggestible, I advise you to proceed with caution, lest you find yourself chalking up a lifetime’s commitment to your allotment!  I don’t for a minute think it saves money, or time, but the seeds I use are all traditional open pollinated non-hybrid varieties and mostly heirloom, so it means I can harvest and re-use them, knowing that I am preserving plant heritage for the future.  I also know that I am not eating GM food, or poisonous chemicals.  Besides which, the taste of a homegrown product is so superior, I almost can’t bring myself to buy a tomato or an apple anymore.  And what happened to strawberries?  It’s like they had their flavour completely removed.  Anyhoo…

The harvest shed will open out into the courtyard, in which we will have some sort of a pond growing water cress and water chestnuts; a pizza oven; an open fire for standing around, and some bench seats etc.  This area is all a bit vague at the moment as we are not up to planning the details at this stage of the proceedings.  Seeing as how we kind of have enough to be getting on with elsewhere.

We are getting closer to the final design of the fowl yards, however.  People often ask us if we have chooks and are surprised when we answer in the negative.  Of course everyone who lives in the country has chooks, it’s a given.  And, yes, we will.  But I refuse to have a temporary chook pen, because I know how temporary pans out.  After a while it becomes permanent. Unsatisfactorily permanent.  And I have big dreams for Chook Hilton.  Another cob structure, (in fact it will be our guinea pig) it will be designed in three parts: chooks/ducks/geese.  The ducks and geese will share a run (but not a pen) and have access to the wider garden area and the brook.  The chooks will remain in their (very large) run as they cannot be trusted in a  garden environment.  We will be able to access their eggs from the outside of the pen, through lift-up hatches.  The doors to all the pens will back onto the compost bay area (already built and up-and-running) so we can clean out their pens straight into the compost bin.  Too easy. Then re-fill with clean sawdust straight from the sawdust bay.  Too easy.

We may even have this built by the end of the year.  DH is keen to make a start on playing with cob and this will be the first thing we build because it doesn’t matter so much if we make mistakes.  Then comes the harvest shed, then the green house.  And in about ten year’s time, after much experience, comes the MUSIC STUDIO.

Oh yes.  Professional grade.  Built from cob, but also built into the side of the hill (hobbit-style), it will be very very soundproof.  What this means for me: no more drums underneath my bedroom on a Thursday night when the boys come over to practice.  And no more tiptoeing around my house for a week or two every year when the band comes down to record.  Whoo HOOO!!!  Also great for DH, of course.  We haven’t got firm plans as it is so far down the track, but it will be big enough to accommodate bands and have a self contained shower/toilet/cooking area so we don’t have to have hoards of folk trooping through the house using the amenities.  Also handy when we have large amounts of guests to stay simultaneously, like, at Christmas!  Because we have two titles (one 3 acres, one 7 acres) we will be able to get away with building a structure that will be considered a dwelling (ie: it has a sink and a stove) and this is the main reason we didn’t join the two titles together when we bought them.  

Adjacent to the studio site is a natural amphitheatre that runs down to the brook line.  We are going to plant a semi-circle of sheoaks at the outside edge, this year.  If you have ever heard the wind whistle through sheoaks, you will know why.  There is something very primal about it.  My parents have a coastal property in the Margaret River region, that is a 5 acre bush block mainly populated with sheoaks and blackboys (don’t sue me, but I refuse to call them grasstrees) and it is the most amazing experience to camp there.  The sheoaks drop a thick carpet of soft needles that dampens outside sound, leaving the high-pitched whine/whistle of the wind through the trees to come to the foreground and dominate the surroundings.  In the Northern Territory, Aboriginal people maintain that the wind through the sheaok will ‘sing people to sleep’.  It is certainly conducive to meditation.

Anyway, I digress.  A lot.  Actually I am not sure where I am going with all this, just sort of meandering around and mapping out my dreams.  I haven’t even mentioned the guest cottage, which we plan to do up (this is pictured at the top of my blog).  Nor the gardens on the North side of the house, where we plan to do greywater recycling through a series of reed beds.  Nor the Zen garden on the East side, which we are starting to plant out with camellias and a black bamboo screen.  Nor did I mention the 20 cubic metres of sawdust I had delivered on Monday, ready to create great swaths of paths around these garden beds.  Or how I still want to grow saffron on our south facing rocky slope, and that next year I will see about importing about ten varieties of garlic that look interesting.  Then there’s the hazelnut and oak trees we need to get in if we are to dabble in truffles.

But guess what?  And I can’t believe I failed to mention this yet – THE BATHROOM RENOVATION IS FINISHED.  Yes, we are finally showering inside once more.  And it is pure bliss.  I will endeavour to get around to taking a pic or two and posting them.  When I figure out how to do that.  What I won’t do is go into detail about how red-tailed shark almost met his end during the transfer of the fish tank.  Because it all had a happy ending and that’s the main thing.