A Day At the Farm

“I’d rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.”
~ Emma Goldman

I slept in yesterday. Til nearly eight am. Pure luxury! I’ve had a month of restless nights thanks to Lyme disease, so to sleep so deeply and completely was bliss.

Our farm is a hive of activity right now. We’re fencing, planting, and mosaic-clearing to make way for a replanting of indigenous species to replace the camphor, privet and lantana that we’re ripping out.

That means we have a tribe of workers to feed. I’ve found that workers always work better on full stomachs. 🙂

The men started early, down in the river paddock laying water pipe to the stockyards. I cooked them breakfast when I woke up. A fry-up of our own organic sausages, green tomatoes, herbed scrambled eggs and many pots of tea.

When the men went back to work I baked fruit cake, and put a pot of chicken soup on the stove. That meant dinner was sorted and my cake tin is full again.

Then I settled down to some writing time.

After lunch I supervised the clearing of a huge grove of bamboo right beside the carport. It’s a beautiful plant, bamboo, but a real fire hazard. Last year, when there was a bushfire miles from here, a small patch of the bamboo litter ignited from a drifting ember. Luckily we were home and able to put it out straight away. But with Australian summers the way they have been, coupled with our unpredictable rainfall, the bamboo had to go. My recent psychic experience with bushfire, and having clients who have lost farms, homes, animals and livelihoods, we aren’t game to take unnecessary risks. Ben cut out usable lengths of the bamboo and the rest will be used for mulch in the newly cleared places.

To finish the day Ben and one of the men brought several wheelbarrow loads of bunya nuts up to the house, and we stood around shelling them, while the men enjoyed an after-work beer. It’s another bumper crop this year, and we sorted and weighed about twenty kilograms of bunya nut kernels to store in the deep freeze until we send them off to local restaurants or to the bush tucker wholesalers.

Of course I’ve kept ample nuts for ourselves, and there is still at least a ute load of extra nuts the size of cannonballs in the grass under the trees that we haven’t yet collected.

This morning we’re off to the Mullumbimby Farmers Markets to meet friends, have a little breakfast and a good coffee, and buy good fresh bread, eggs and a basket full of fruit and vegetables.

I love the depth and variety of this life, here at the farm. And it certainly keeps me grounded for all of the other metaphysical work I do!