LEECH! And Abeo plans

This morning I decided to widen the path to the dam, which means whacking blackberries with Tyler's imported heavy-duty scythe. It's hot, sweaty work! I'm glad it's cool today, I don't know what I'd do if it was hot. It's pretty satisfying work – you can see results immediately. The path is three times as wide now! I got so into it, I gave myself a blister. And I thought; ‘this is where I belong, putting my energy and intention into a lifetime living space. How wonderful. (That’s just a side note. Read on.) As I walked back to the shed for lunch, I scratched my side and wondered at the funny feeling I had there. I lifted my shirt and found a LEECH! Freaked out, once again, and this time it was attached – so when I flung it off into the far reached of the pasture I was walking through, a spot of blood appeared that didn't dry up for five minutes – it's just as Tyler said. Leeches don't give you anything, they don't hurt; they just fall off and you bleed. Later, a red ring appeared around the blood spot – I’ve got a LEECH hickey! I’m just going to close my eyes and pretend I don’t know it’s there.

I wonder if there's a plant here I could use to help stop bleeding? I've been thinking a book of the native medicinal plants of Tasmania or Australia would be great – I'm always asking Tyler or Della, “what's this? Can you eat it? What does it do?” We don't have any local bookstores, and Smithton is too mainstream anyway, so maybe the internet is the best bet there. I can't think it would be anything but fun to wander around seeing what does what. Although my experience with the homeopathic/western herbalist in Hobart was a bit lacking.

When I came in to the pharmacy, I wanted something to help my headache I'd had all night. I'd already tried all the remedies I know, and I needed something. The herbalist I talked to (Jason, I think his name is) concocted a noxious, brown substance that tasted bitter and hot with a nasty, lingering aftertaste. I took it seven times over the course of the day, without change to my head. The next day my head pain was gone, but I don't credit the brown stuff. Hmm, what is western herbalism based off of? Western medicine? Not the best system, from my experience. Maybe learning the local herbs (pronounced with the H) is more of an indulgence than something useful.

Tyler told me the Australian government is going to start censoring the internet here – they're putting two filters on AUS internet: one for porn, which you can choose to have on or not, and the other for ?, which is not an option, it's Australia-wide. What do they need to censor? And, is there a way around this – some way to get internet from somewhere else, like satellite, or to connect to an unfiltered system? We're on the same level as China at this point. Welcome to Communism. Fascism. I don't know if they've done it yet or not; the local access center has signs posted on all the computers saying they're filtered already from “unsuitable content.” Tyler wasn't able to open a You-Tube video about Vote n Vaccination in the US before the election. Why the AUS gov. wouldn't want you to see that, who knows. Maybe they're doing it next. Since voting is the law here.

It's pretty important to me to have access to uncensored information. And it's disturbing that they're not telling us, or giving us a choice. I don't know how to respond to this, except it seems more and more like a police state. You can get a $50 fine for NOT locking your car here. Seriously. I read it in the paper. Don't they have anything better to do???

My first day here, we stopped at the entrance to the block because two motorbikes were blocking the road. Della said, “those bikes drive around through the plantations, mainly on weekends, and they'd better not be on my property!”

'My goodness,' I thought, 'what's the big deal?'

Now I know. It's been nice the last couple of days, sunny and a little breezy, allowing the ground to dry out from all the rain we had. Last night was the first time I've heard motorbikes, and I'm coming to understand Della's frustration with them. It was noisy and disruptive, surrounding our bit of peace and quiet with a distant buzz-saw. Despite that, the sunset was like watching a golden surfer heading out to sea; the clouds wisped like the tide going out. I wanted to stand outside longer, but it was getting cold, and I've learned that if I let myself get cold at night, it takes forever to warm up in bed!

One thing I've been spending more time on is setting my intention for Abeo: for things to go smoothly, with planting and building cool things like brick ovens and solar cookers, AND, for people to visit our community and become a part of it. Building community takes people, and that's what we need here – people! Everything seems to be waiting for this. An explosion of creativity seems imminent!

On the rainy days, I've been going through old issues of a magazine called GrassRoots. I imagine it's like Mother Earth News in the US, but since I've never really looked at that mag, I don't know. GR has articles on sustainable living, permaculture gardens, a recipe section, building with rammed earth, straw-bale housing, choosing poultry and livestock, a huge section for readers to write in asking for information about making soap or starting a worm bin or they're taking a trip around Australia and would like to visit other permaculture farms. They print the address of the person asking, and voila, it's like freecycle before the internet. The mags I've been reading are from the mid-90's. I'm impressed, since so many people were working to be self-sustainable even then, and the information is still viable. I just wonder if they've got a website! Maybe: www.grassroots.com.au or something like that. I don't know, I haven't found one more recent than 2002, and that was their first completely digital issue.

The other mag I've been reading is called Earth Garden, and it's a lot like GrassRoots, it's just fancier. More color, more ads. Same information, more case studies of straw-bale construction. It seems that straw-bale construction is the way to go for a warm house! You end up paying the same amount for a completely natural kind of insulation that works 100 times better. The main thing is keeping it dry; other than that, once you've plastered, that's it. Done. Sounds good to me.

Straw bale me up!

It looks like we might be using straw bales to insulate Abeo house, once Tyler digs it out. However, there was a nasty frost this spring that wiped out a lot of straw-type crops; I don't know if we can afford strawbales this year. That means we might be looking at other options to use as insulation, like bracken or shredded newspaper. Tyler's current house design looks like a simply squeeze horn – the horn opens north toward the sun, narrowing down and back into the earth, forming a tunnel leading to a circular opening that would turn into a tree-dwelling, growing with the circle of pine trees planted around it. A picture might do a better job of describing it. Ah, well.