The Attitudinal
Principles of Permaculture are people-oriented rather than environmental
principles, and we can apply them in so many ways when we deal with our
attitude. These principles have definitely helped us to find some positives out
of recent “negative” events.
A big shock recently
was Karim losing his job after more than a decade of service, especially in the
middle of a house build. However this has allowed Karim the opportunity to work
on the house and feel more connected to it than he previously has been able to.
And he might now have the opportunity to work for someone that he’s known for
many years and has the upmost respect for. Some of you might remember him from
sailing down the Pittwater in his boat… Cheesy I’m pretty sure you were with us
during the “near miss”! They say that a change is as good as a holiday, and
there is no doubt in our minds that this is true, though his “IT hands” are
suffering somewhat.
Another shock was
having our water tanks tested to find that they contained extremely high levels
of lead, which was followed by blood tests that confirmed I have lead
poisoning. Karim’s levels were much lower because he’s been away 90% of the
time since we moved here. Luckily I’ve mostly used a Britta Water filter, as
the level of exposure would have been much higher otherwise. I contacted the
Department of Health and there is now a state-wide product recall in action,
and this story appeared in today’s newspaper:
You might be
wondering what the “positive” could possibly be in this! Well at least we found
out and can hopefully prevent other people from becoming sick. Also, since
experiencing a few years of great rainfall and catchment here, this gives us
the opportunity to increase our water storage capacity for household,
irrigation and fire fighting. Oh, and I get to blame any personal failures on
having lead poisoning!
We also had a
bushfire that started about 100m off our boundary. Luckily for us the wind blew
the fire in the opposite direction, but unfortunately some friends did incur
property damage. Ironically, this was our first night alone on the property
this year, and we spent it sleeping in the back of the car (with the cats) down
near the river. On the “positive”, this has provided an opportunity for us to
learn and implement better bushfire planning and strategies, it was extremely
reassuring to see how quickly and skilfully the fire service acted, and these
fires have brought communities closer together.
Amongst all of this,
the past two months has brought some wonderful people into our lives who have
offered friendship, support, and so much help it is somewhat flabbergasting. At
one point we had six Wwofers staying with us, from Italy, Australia and
Germany, and we made quite the happy family. Some helped render the house, some
managed the garden, some eradicated weeds from the forest, some built a
beautiful little wood shed to store our kindling over winter, and Leeny became
our camp mother. She did the food shopping, made our meals, relishes, jams,
washed our clothes and dishes, and cleaned our living quarters… which isn’t
easy when eight people are sharing such a small space. I think we would have
been lost without her. She took Wwoofer duties to a whole new level, by even
running the bar at our local tavern one night!
A few weeks ago we had
a magical visit from my step-mum Jenny, who lives in Busselton. She’s been a
full-time artist for years now, but was an interior designer before that. We
basically achieved three months’ work of interior design decisions in six days,
kitchen layout and materials, floor coverings, trims, the colour of every wall
and ceiling, lighting, furniture layouts and textiles. It was truly amazing to
have Jenny’s input in the house, and to spend some time together after having
not seen each other for a few years.
A lot of work has
happened on the house in the past eight weeks, and it is becoming increasingly
stunning. We realised that installing architraves on a row of straight windows that
are embedded in a curved wall would be quite tricky, but could also detract
from the curve, so Jack hand crafted the most beautiful curved window sill.
He also installed the
celery top cladding on the lounge room ceiling, and the clerestory wall is now
plastered and primed.
Jenny stayed in the
shed during her visit, and Karim and I slept in the new house. It was
absolutely beautiful, though after having bats visit us in the night, and birds
during the day, we thought it might be time to strive for “lock up” stage and
get some doors on to protect all the work that we’ve done internally. So Jack
installed all the external door jambs, and Grant made three beautiful doors. We
haven’t installed them yet because we were lime rendering last week and wanted
to keep them safe, but they’ll be in by the end of this week.
We haven’t just done
one more coat of render since Christmas, we did the second coat of lime render
outside in mid-January, the second coat of clay render inside in late January,
and the FINAL COAT of lime render outside last week – wwooooo hooooooo! It
looks absolutely incredible, thanks to Kate, lots of other friends and this incredible team who
helped us finish last week, Helen, Chloe, Grant and Drew.
In March last year we
were excited to post the news that we had a front door…
But what the front door
looks like now, plus what we can inside the house, is incredibly exciting as well
as a reminder of just how far we’ve come on this journey.
The whole outside of the
house looks simply fabulous, all it requires now is a final protective coating
with a a splash of colour, which we think we’ll use mineral silicate paint for.
Believe it or not we’ve
also had a couple of social outings. A local pool competition on Tuesday nights
has helped maintain our sanity, we attended a bushfire appeal concert that
featured a Mongolian throat singer who was out of this world, and we visited
the rainforests with some of the Wwoofers… this is Irena from Italy.
We also did a beautiful
five hour return walk through this magical piece of forest.
Once we exited the
shady and wet forest we walked for about forty five minutes across a very
exposed hillside in the scorching heat, and were getting a bit delirious, when
we finally made it to Lake Skinner – the most magnificent spring fed lake.
We have an exciting month ahead in March, my sister
Mandy is visiting us, I’m off to WA for a shindig, we are attending some great
permaculture workshops and are teaching another weekend course on the property.
We hope to have all the internal walls installed this month, plus any other
preparations required before we can embark on the final coat of clay render
inside. Exciting times!
