We came across Al on the wwoofer bulletin board, who was specifically looking for a permaculture property to visit. He flew across from Melbourne at the end of November and generously helped us move house, so shared the experience of our first night sleeping on the land. The shed has turned out to be a magnificent little home, and we have settled in beautifully. We really enjoyed Al’s company for a couple of weeks, gardening by day and holding healthy discussions or watching documentaries by night (lets hope Karim hasn’t turned him into too much of a conspiracy theorist). We also had a few enjoyable excursions to some other permaculture properties, and peaceful walks through our forest where we discovered some fantastic fungus.
We think Al will make a brilliant permaculturist, particularly because of how observant he is. He contributed to a myriad of things while he was here, from planting dozens of pigface cuttings to potting up natives and much more. He built this temporary shadehouse to protect our seedlings until a permanent structure is built…
And joined us at the local permablitz, where the team helped our next door neighbour move huge rocks from the footings of an old stone cottage so he could turn it into a large raised garden bed.
Peter also made the most of our enthusiasm and used Al and I as pack horses to drag posts out of the forest ready to build the shadehouse. This was actually a very easy way to move heavy logs, with no strain on the back whatsoever.
Our next arrival was the chooks, which we already love to bits. As Wellsummers, they are certainly living up to their reputation of being excellent forages, they just don’t stop! Their first few eggs were tiny, with really soft shells, but they’ve since devoured lots of shell grit and over the last few days have been laying some wonderful eggs. They enjoyed the monthly worm prevention mash that we cooked for them two days before the full moon, and we managed to handle them after dark to apply the lice dust and rub their feet and legs with the remedy we made for scaley mite prevention (if anyone would like these recipes don’t hesitate to ask). From left to right, here is Uatchet, Nut, Nekhebet, Ma-at and Isis.
Then Kylie from Hong Kong arrived and spent one week with us. Kylie wasn’t particularly interested in permaculture, but was simply looking for somewhere quiet because it was impossible to find a peaceful place in Hong Kong (night or day). We enjoyed learning more about her way of life, and her visit really made us appreciate our lives here. She taught us some Cantonese words (and had fun listening to us try to pronounce them), and we took her to one of the most peaceful places we know, the Tahune Forest Air Walk. Being about four feet tall and size 4 we had to be very careful not to break her, but there were still lots of things she helped with such as leisurely weeding around the frog pond and plaiting all the garlic we harvested.
Our most recent, and still current, guest is Joan, a carpenter from Spain. I have pleasant memories of people being very happy in Spain, and Joan has certainly solidified that memory by having us in fits of laughter quite often. He had an altercation with a rather large huntsman on day one and screamed “fark! It looks like chicken!!!” He has been such a wonderful guest, building raised beds for the mandala garden, helping to lay the slab and start constructing the potting shed, building a shed off the chicken coupe to store dry hay, a nesting box for the girls and a litter bed for the furry felines amongst other things.
Some friends were worried that I might get lonely down here, but I have to say that between the wwoofers, Peter and Jules helping out, regular visits from friendly neighbours, and helping other community members on their properties, I haven’t been surrounded by this many people since London. It’s also been great for the cats, as a few months ago all of them (except Marvin) would run and hide if someone came over, now they are very accustomed to having lots of different people around.
The wetlands system is working really well, and we managed to complete some artwork down one side of the tubs before the deadline for the article that’s going in the Feb/March Owner Builder Magazine. I painted the first few tubs freehand, but very quickly had severe neck, back, knee and ankle pain. Unfortunately I couldn’t sit down to paint because the area was riddled with bull ants, within 60 seconds of trying to sit down I was bitten on the botty and quickly grew a third cheek, so crouching for days on end it was.
Karim helped me speed up the process by making some stencils for the rest of the tubs, and Joan took some wonderful photos of the finished art for us.
There might also be a profile inside the magazine cover, featuring Atomic and I in the garden…
Well it certainly doesn’t seem like Christmas and NYE took place in the past two weeks, and no doubt next Christmas will be here before we know it. We had a lovely Christmas lunch with lots of other community members in town, and a wonderful party here on the land on New Years Eve with about 30 friends. It was a fanastic night, and we are very excited about 2011. We took the whole weekend off for once and enjoyed taking Joan and another wwoofer from a nearby farm down to Cockle Creek.
Before we sign off, just a couple of things to look out for…
A Tour of the Garden is coming soon. There is so much happening in Zone 2 that we thought it was worth a separate blog update to give some of our permaculture followers a guided tour.
Look out for the Hatsa family featuring in Tassie Mania during the England vs Australia one day cricket match in Hobart on 21st January. There is a chance we may be televised, considering people generally don’t dress up at the cricket in Tassie and we are going dressed as characters like Captain Cook, the Mad Hatter and Dame Edna. Chin chin!
