Rainy Day wanderings - Day 4 of Drizzle

OK, we're on our fourth day of rain here, and the weather seems to be staying the same. Clouds and rain and wind and sometimes some sun – maybe each day is a little less rainy, but it started out being really rainy, so now it's still just...rainy. Ah, the familiarity is overwhelming to me! Gray skies, that cold, damp feeling that pervades my fingertips – it's all quite wonderful, really.

With all this time on my hands, I've gotten to spend a lot of it talking to Tyler and hanging out with Solomon. Yesterday we went on a long walk around the block, down to Abeo Gully where we're talking about digging the first Abeo House, into the hillside, and putting Della's greenhouse. I wanted to go down there to gauge how the blustering felt down there – see if it's more sheltered. It is, a little, and depending on how the wind is blowing, it's a lot more sheltered. Then we walked through the belt of native forest, over a small stream and followed wallaby trails back up to the dam at the top of the block. Along the way we picked up sticks and demolished (helped decompose, really) some rotten logs, then we walked along the dam and threw sticks into the water. On the way back we saw Tyler and Della out digging in the field – what could they be doing out there? So we swung around and brought out more shovels to help with potato planting.

And that's what we did for a lot of the day yesterday – digging a trench, dropping in potatoes at regular intervals, chopping the sod and mounding the trench. I got to hack at the inches of grass roots to break them up, and I found a lot of squirmy white grubs in little holes just under the grass roots. Luckily, I was wearing gloves, because if I hadn't, I don't think I would've picked them up and thrown them out. I'm not sure what I would've done. I might've had Solomon pick them up – he's ok swirling algae around in tanks and picking up beetles and slugs – the grubs don't bother him. Tyler found some and popped them – and I heard it! That was gross. I've still got sound in my head, and I claimed I wouldn't eat the potatoes from that part of the patch.

Seems to be, the thing about farming is that you're taking land from the natural way of things and manipulating it for your own benefit. All the creatures and plants that exist without your interference may or may not be beneficial to your plans, and could result in, for example, hacking thistles or collecting grubs out of the soil – however, these I believe, are introduced species that don't live here naturally anyway. We don't know what the grubs turn into (but I guess they make great chickenfeed) and the thistles seem to be universal. A lot of the greenery around here is familiar to me, right down to the daisies and dandelions growing in the grass. And grass! It's everywhere! You have to clear it out of the way if you want to plant anything, and the roots have made such a thick thatch it takes considerable work.

Back to potato planting – it was a family event. Tyler and Della were digging trenches, Solomon chucked in potatoes at appropriate intervals, and Elly just chucked potatoes. Oh, and I chopped up the sod and put it back in the trenches. It was such hard work I was happy to pause and pick out grubs with my gloved hands, and over the course of the afternoon, I developed a system so I wasn't wheezing all the time – using my legs more than my arms at the end.

Talk about a day's work! I can certainly feel it in my back and arms today. Part of me is grateful for more rain because it means a rest day for me – and we're going into 'town' today (which means Edith Creek, consisting of a primary school, a corner store, a Telstra phone booth and the online access center) to do laundry and internet. The thing is, we've got a pallet of potatoes to plant, and all we managed yesterday was half a bag! There are nine and a half (at least!) more bags to do. I dunno, man, but this family is going to have potatoes up the wazoo-ooo-ooo this year!

One of the familiar plants around here is bracken fern. It grows through a system of runners, and Permaculture One by Bill Mollison (The Authority on Permaculture down in these parts) says you can eat the young shoots like asparagus. So he says. There are also ants here, a particular kind called Jack Jumpers – black medium-sized ants with reddish-orange pincers and legs that look particularly scary. Apparently they are – they bite ferociously. Fortunately, crushed-up bracken rubbed on the bite relieves the pain. Just a bit of bush knowledge I thought I'd pass on to you :)

Something I'm really appreciating about Tyler and Della is the way they're always considering the environmental impact of their actions and decisions, looking to recycle where they can or just use what's there instead of buying new. This has benefits on two fronts: using less, and costing less (for the most part). In this vein, I've been doing a lot less dishwashing. We just use the same pot for dinner every night, which usually consists of something being brought to a boil, and I think of the leftovers inside as bonus flavoring. We all have our own bowls we reuse every day as well – I never thought I'd find the family that condoned bowl-licking, but this is common, accepted practice here. It took me a couple of days to get into the habit (yes, it seemed a bit weird at first, breaking such a taboo as a guest) but I've certainly gotten better at it! It also makes me wonder what else do I do out of habit that's unnecessary? Ive stopped wearing underwear (personal preference there) and bras, I use a handkerchief instead of kleenex or toilet tissue, I long ago adopted a stainless-steel travel mug and metal water bottle. I must say I'm grateful to use toilet tissue in the toilet instead of pages from the Sear's catalogue, although if we find a nice, soft, organic alternative I'm not opposed to that! If you think of anything else, let me know...

I've been making two lists of plans for Abeo: one to happen this summer, and one for sometime in the future. The first thing on the summer list is plant potatoes. Other things are: things to do with the excavator: dig ponds, a new dam, housing for wind power, and underground house. Repot bamboo seedlings, build solar oven, build wood-fired brick oven for baking and carbon sequestration, build greenhouse for Della, build shadehouse, make a hay cooker, bring electricity and internet to shed, and I'm sure there's tons I'm missing, probably in the planting area. Ah, well.

Long term plans include building a community house for teaching and housing students and visitors; build the road into a loop to make it more pedestrian-friendly and to follow the land contours; develop natural amphitheater site and plant bamboo at top as a windbreak; plant evergreens like giant Sequoia's, fir trees, monkeypuzzle trees; plant oil crop like olive trees, pecans and walnuts, pumkins and flax; inoculate stumps with shiitake mushroom spores and fence area down by the manferns to start the mushroom farm; explore hydro-power possibilities; build an astronomy observatory; start an alpaca farm so we can make our own clothes. And again, these are only some of the possibilities. Talk to Tyler and he'll fill your ear up!

A couple of last things before I go: Tasmania-wide, the soil is low in Phosphorous, selenium and iodine, and maybe copper. We don't know about these soils since they haven't been tested, and who knows what people before us have put into them. A lot of the farmers around here use super-phosphate fertilizer, which is unsustainably mined from somewhere and leaves heavy metals like cadmium behind. We're looking into seaweed pellet fertilizer, which might have phosphorous in it – I don't know. Della's the one who's researching that.

Another thing is how comfortable I feel around the Abeo family – I feel accepted for whatever I'm doing and I'm constantly thanked for whatever I'm doing, whether it's cooking dinner or planting potatoes or making hot water. It's easy to talk to Tyler and Della and it's easy for me to take that for granted – it's what I expect in a community, and it's so easy to slip into without realizing. This is definitely something I want to mindfully appreciate and take into account! It's the people that make the community, it doesn't seem to matter where you are or what the conditions. As long as the community is there, almost anything is livable.