changes

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I‘m lying between garden beds in the sun. I’ve spent the day weeding, whilst the boys got on with the bar roof, it’s been so long since I’ve been in a veggie garden even the stinging nettles and snapping roots of thistle can’t get take away the buzz. Being in the woods has made me realise how a well managed Australian Permaculture gardening is like a well managed woodland, a healthy mix of plants of all ages, things self seed when the time is right, survive if they have the sun or die off if there is not enough, the forester knows when to intervene or not. Bens veggie patch is very English beds of one thing spaced for sun earth between.

It’s all rather idyllic, fluffy white clouds and white chickens slumbering in the sun. I’m preparing the beds for their summer occupants, everything but the weeds in their English rows. Under the soil there are treasures: tiny self seeded potatoes, a frog that leaps from the dirt to give me a heartattack.

An email from Dylan’s mum has interrupted our fantasy, we knew it was coming one day but we are reminded that reality awaits us back home. The house is being sold, nobslipping back into the same old routine, we have decisions to make, big ones, I guess it’s a good thing. Where is home? This is our chance to rent a house in the country, just the two of us after years of 6 or 7, are we ready? We’ll be returning home with the change in our pocket, it’s time to take stock.

An orange butterfly floats into view. We must be mindful, look to the future, whilst still glorying in the present. For now there is sun, the sound of hammering and a row of leeks waiting for a weed.


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Ingredients

15 rhubarb stalks, diced
2 granny smith apples, diced
1/2 cup honey

1/2 cup brown sugar
1 butter pat, cubed
3 cups spelt flour

I thought it might be fun to add some simple recipes I’ve tried backpacking. They will often contain harvested ingredients, be very simple and sometimes even only require a campfire or camping stove. This one we used a woodfire oven, but it can easily modified so you cook the rhubarb in a pot over the fire with the addition of some water and the crumble toasted separated in a pan and sprinkled on top.

Rhubarb crumble

Mix the rhubarb, apples and sugar together in a baking dish. Bake for 30 minutes at 180C, or until soft.

Meanwhile use your hands to combine the butter, sugar and flour until it is like breadcrumbs, but more on the lumpy side.

Cover top of cooked rhubarb mixture with crumble and bake for a further 30 minutes, until browned.

Serve with ice cream!


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extraction

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I was standing ankle deep in mud with oversized bright orange overpants, bright blue raincoat and a green bike cap, I looked like the lovechild of Mario brothers and an oompa loompa. It was raining and we were putting chains around logs, attached to a pulley around a tree attached to Ben in a 4wd. We slogged up the hill guiding the logs out of the way of stumps and ruts, throwing a fluoro vest in the air when we hit a snag, Paul throwing up a yellow hardhat further down the road for Ben to see in his rear view. It sounds awful, but it was actually kind of fun. For a day that is, we had our hats off to Paul and Millar who did this all winter.

Up and down we went, by the end the logs had dug themselves a trench and as Paul said it looked like we were just taking a log for a walk. It would have been a sight to see, mud from head to foot. At the end of the day we had 16 logs at the top of the hill and we were relieved to know that today was shower day. The day the fire was stoked and the apprentices invited in to Ben’s house for a shower and a meal.

It was nice to see the house in the flesh, actually lived in. Ben was running an experiment, that being letting the house age without maintenance to see what would happen. He said that things that use to annoy him because they were mistakes are now his favourite parts because they remind him of the people who helped him build the house. An Australian who had never done a tenon joint before (it wasn’t that good, but it didn’t fall apart), the squeak upstairs because some other fellows put all the joins in the same place, did they ever build their own house? It was a lovely attitude to have.

Clean and ravenous, a feast was delivered. Every dish had something from the woodland. I never knew how delicious crispy chard stalks with capers could be, I vowed never to throw out the stalks again. Then out came more delicious cider and Millar returned with tales from the welsh border. Then my rhubarb pie fresh from garden to oven to table was devoured, a nice comforting meal after a long day.


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organic pool

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“His middle name isn’t really ‘Pagan’, it’s for marketing.” Ben laughed looking at the DVD for organic pools by David ‘Pagan’ Butler. Not even hippies are immune to advertising tricks. Pagan or not Ben’s organic pool was a stunning oasis. As we worked on battening his curving bar structure the water glistened invitingly. Paul kept checking the temperature 61F, it was a beautiful sunny day, just three of us on a roof.

The curving structure was going to have a green roof, nestled into the hill, disappearing. Straight trees are always sort after, but here Ben found a use for the bananas, it was beautiful.

As the sun sank low over the trees the pool became a little less inviting, but we had promised ourselves a swim, and no matter how frigid the water we were going to do it! (we were due for a wash) I jumped, head going under, it was about the temperature of the Antarctic waters of the Victorian coast, so really nothing new, but it wasn’t a hot Australian summers day. Paul and I surreptitiously washed when Ben was looking the other way, we didn’t wan him to think we might be encouraging an algae bloom.

Once we numbed it was lovely with the stones and the irises around us, the occasional newt blinking up at us. Chickens enjoyed the last rays of sun next door and an old oak was lit up in Golden light.


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last day

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Last day of the course, and people began trickling away through our fingers around midday. Even Millar left to do three days on a forestry course in Wales. So it was just us, Ben Paul and James left. We were feeling rather melancholy, when Ben suggested we hang around a few days, clouds left and we set about settling in with a big fire and baked bean supper of scrounging left by the other timber framers.

Dylan and Paul discovered they had a mutual love of Brazilian Jujitsu and decided to have a roll on the grass. We all thought it would be a bit of a laugh, but 5 minutes in a sort of homoerotic vice grip on the grass we wandered away bored to leave them too it. The results were uncertain, but both were covered in mud.

Only James kept up the carving that night and it involved nothing lewd, he quietly was turning a stick into links in a chain. He had already made a spiral and a captive ring, there was no end to his talent and patience! Dogs begged for food around us and the cat sneakily leapt on benches to steal bread and we all felt at peace in the woods.


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