November 2006

11 November

Lots of thngs happening around here. Nothing much new on the house front however - a request for another diagram from the council and a mention of things being through soon, but still no sign of the go ahead. Trev, however, has discovered a new way to fill in time (I'm sure he will resent that phrase very much.) No he wont - ed. He bought himself a small amp for his guitar and, considering it's a small shed without a lot of sound absorbing surfaces, I spend more time in the garden than usual. I'm not sure if he did it on purpose, but after beating a hasty retreat to the garden, and then, upon judging it safe to return, hearing him say to Caleb, 'Well Caleb, that was on quarter strength, let's turn her up full eh?' I decided to do a prompt pirouette and disappear back out to the garden. Which has been a tad disappointing, what with the frost, wind and even a little bit of snow damage. (It was late October when we had a small settling of snow, only enough to make a few snowballs for Caleb to throw). We've also discovered a strange little jumping, black, soot like insect, which has eaten the pumpkin seedlings, and it seems mice have enjoyed chomping on my watermelon seedlings.

We're getting there, even when it means tramping outside at 1.00am and finding plastic pots to up-end over potential frost victims and to cover the potatoes with mulch. Eventually we'll overcome the temperate issues. I'm sure. I hope. Maybe. At least the wind has dropped off. "Seasonal changes", the locals tell me; winter to spring - it's windy; summer to autumn, - it's windy. But they all say this year has been especially bad.

We seem to have a handle on the rats - (sounds like something out of transfiguration with McGonagall in Harry Potter).I used a big black bucket half full of water with a piece of dowling inserted through a couple of holes on either side, near the top to make a walk way for the rats. The object is to get them to fall into the water and drown, so I placed a loose piece of steel piping (ex camping chair) over the dowell, making it a precarious balancing act to get to the piece of food, which is suspended from the steel on a short length of string. I used one of Trev's homemade donuts as bait and when the bait disappeared but there appeared to be no rat, I abandoned the project. Today I emptied out the bucket to find I had caught the rat! We just couldn't see him and now he's been sitting at the bottom of the bucket turning into rat soup. Gross. However, Rat Extermination plan number 2 appears to have worked. I'm not keen on rat poison. Apart from the fact it's cruel, it can also result in the deaths of other animals and birds when they decide to chow down on the sick or dead animal. So we weren't up for that. Instead, I used small containers of icing sugar and plaster of paris (possibly just as cruel, but without the add on effect). They eat the delicious mix and, at best guess, the plaster of paris draws moisture from the digestive tract and sets in their intestines, resulting in death by constipation. Not the best end I'm sure, but as they had peaked in number and as going into the bathroom was becoming an event accompanied by a great cacophany of assorted shrieks and screams and the bloody soap kept going missing, leaving their calling cards -the dark little oblongs in its place ... it had become a priority. We have a tiger snake population around here that are keen on mice and rats and we don't need them in the shed - a broken arm this year is all I want to have to contemplate!
It appears to have worked - oblongs are gone, the bait is no longer being taken, and the soap no longer has teeth marks in it.

Trev bought a second hand steel greenhouse frame for $150 and has since covered it and connected dam water access to it. He's also planted the mandarin inside, and I have all my new seedlings (bar the mouse eaten ones) thriving there. It should allow us to grow tomatoes, chillies and other delectables all year round.

Nuju is 'running with the goats', a lot, and they've been caught on film getting up to hijinks. Mind you, Annabella has been caught jumping on Caleb's trampoline. The two of them together, jumping on the trailer and upending it, both getting an enormous fright and running off up the hill like naughty children. Nuju has even been seen to watch Annabella eating grass and, just to fit in, stands alongside her and grazes too.

Trev made a fantastic fetta and spinach pie, where the only things in it that weren't from the garden were the corn, onion and the pastry. Which is great; we're slowly getting back to the garden based diet again.

Trev's cheese making has now extended to his first Wensleydale - (think Wallace & Grommit), which is a sharpish hard cheese and is ageing in a cupboard as we speak.

It seems as though Trev is doing everything around here - well, it's mostly right. I must admit weeding still seems to be my preserve, as is planting and watering and fertilizing and cleaning out the goat pen, all very mundane. I'm definately the unskilled labour element around here, and of course I'm working 4 days a week. Caleb is doing well. His thumb bent for the first time this week, so his nerves are on the mend; just a bit more to go to relieve the numbness in the tips of his fingers and he'll be back to normal.

My mother received the daughter's award for most inventive recycler this month. She sent me a packet of bread bag clips; she thought we might be able to use them to tie up grapevines. While we had a bit of a laugh (I admit it - I thought sending bread bag clips from NZ a bit extreme), and god knows we're not extremists around here... (she whistles quietly looking in any other direction bar the computer). But it makes me recall all my mother's other recycling efforts, which were not environmentally driven, rather the product of years of making do with what you have. I recall the newspaper wrapped food scraps, the rewashing of plastic bags and hanging them on the line and I still haven't forgiven her for making me a pair of 'trousers' out of foam backed upholstery and not only taking me out in public with them on, but for the whole day, during which I sat very, very still and concentrated hard on not ripping them off in said public. I get rashes even thinking of them. But there you go, great example of recycling foam back upholstery and child cruelty. (She knows I've not forgiven her yet).

At the Hobart Sustainable Home Expo, I bought a copy of a DVD that I'd been hearing about for ages, but had yet to track down, (little did I know it has just been released online at youtube for free, so if you have broadband you can watch it too - dial up - forget it - likely to bring on bouts of epilepsy, blood pressure, or other stress related disorders. THE END OF SUBURBIA: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream. Basically, it's about Peak Oil - which is the top of the bell curve of oil production. (though of course we don't produce oil, we just pump it out of the ground - it was produced 340 - 410 million years ago during the carboniferous age). and how we have peaked with oil production and are now on the downhill slide - which means that with our population growth and the speed with which we use oil on the increase (about 2.8% more each year), we are now facing the demise of the oil fuelled age and life without an abundant oil supply which subsidizes our food supply (for every calorie of food we eat in Australia it takes 9 fossil fuel based calories to produce), our clothing is made from it, our shoes, our cars, our computers, phones, fridges ... you name it, is based on oil, and oil is a non renewable, limited source and we have no other abundant sources of energy available that will keep us going at the rate we are currently living. Try imagining what life will be like, when we can't rely on transport - fertilizers, plastic ... the list keeps going ... and we have to exist not on sunlight energy trapped in the form of oil sequestered deep within the earth for energy, but the day by day 'allowance' that the sun provides. Think mass starvation and wars for a kick off. -(I hate to be alarmist and one of those doomsayers we all hate to hear, but that's the picture that is forming in the minds of even the oil merchants.) I'll plonk in a list of different Peak Oil sites to have a look at, assuming of course, you're not already aware of the coming oil crisis.

Life After the Oil Crash
The Association for Peak Oil and Gas
Wikipedia's Peak Oil Link

There is something terribly commonsense about the fact that if you earn $1000 a fortnight that if you keep spending ten times that you will end up in trouble.


Energy is the same story - it's all terribly commonsense, yet with governments elected for four year terms and economics demand that they only look ahead that far - then the long term picture gets left out of the frame.

It's interesting to spend a day not taking oil for granted and everything you do tracing the oil in the scene and going, oh, no more ... synthetic clothing and probably not a lot of cotton or natural fabrics available, because we use oil based energy to convert cotton into clothing and then transporting it with more of the same. I have visions of myself in rabbit skins. Not a pretty picture, though I'm sure Nuju (who loves running around with a skanky bit of rabbit skin he found), will find it very attractive.

partially edited by Trevor Ronald Wittmer .... who is a Lynn Truss 'stickler' and whom finds bad grammar a hangable offence :-)







November 12

"Hey Trev, could you please come here and tell me whether this is a snake beside my foot or a lizard?" I can see it's head and I'm too frightened to move unless I get to identify the rest of it as a snake. But, no, it's a blue tongue lizard who has already realised that the greenhouse is not just good for planting in, or even for hanging out your washing (perfect clothes dryer), but is great for the cold blooded. I'm happy for this guy to share my space, eat slugs and snails.


November 18

Someone emailed us recently and mentioned that their friend believed we'd gone 'without a dollar' as a ploy to make some. We guffawed loudly. The state of publishing in Australia is such that becoming rich by writing a book is a near impossibility. There are very, very few who make a living from writing. We knew that before we wrote the book. It was never going to be a financial proposition for me to take 6 months off from paid income and expect to make it back via a published book. We make around $2.70 per book sold. And even after selling well by Australian standards, it doesn't amount to much. But, like we say, it was never the ambition.

So having said that I'll now add that we are going to make the book available from our website. Yeah, it means we get a slightly bigger slice of the pie, profits raised will go towards a beehive or two. Buyers get a copy signed by all three of us. At this point it's only for sale from Australia till I figure out overseas postage costs. I'm trying to make it a shared onus. Living the Good Life is currently available in NZ; The UK version is due for release next month. But it's still not available in the US - though interestingly we've had quite a few US readers who have managed to get hold of a copy. Anyway, I'm prattling. Asking for money, even in exchange for goods has never been easy for me. Both Trev and I are the kind of people who talk people up - 'No, surely you should be asking more for that, why don't you double your price, we'll pay it!'

Caleb is practising his autograph as we speak.


Click here for Living the Good Life book sales






















November 30

So much is happening! The garden is growing, the goats are eating the garden, there are chooks rescued from chook hell and the momentuous occasion occuring tomorrow in which we have officially been on Tasmanian soil for one year! Hopefully the council celebrates the occasion too... by sending us our building permit, they made a council promise of this week (council promises are not equal to other promises it seems). Trev & Caleb have been out sailing, fishing and we've all been socialising up a storm. However I'm really only popping in to post this the Global Warming Action Mind Map that Sharon Genovese sent me this morning. She drew it for her daughter Jane who presents to schools and is working on an environmental presentation. www.learningfundamentals.com.au It may take a while to load, but worth the wait.

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