Flood Street Farmlet

Return To Sender

2011-06-17T22:27:00.002+10:00

Unfortunately the pending sale of the block of land did not proceed. I find it odd that people will commit to purchasing a real estate if they're not sure they can obtain the finances. Our potential purchaser jumped in, then tried to find the finance, and when that didn't work out, well, we get a situation like this one! What's worse is we also get a bill for the services of our solicitor every time someone leads us astray in this fashion...

So we're back to square one. Subscribing to the belief that everything happens for a positive reason implies that there must be some underlying convoluted spiderweb of cause and effect ongoing that will deliver some beneficial outcome. That we can't currently comprehend that reason just means we've got to be patient and wait for it to be revealed. Either that or we get bored of waiting to understand and forget about the whole lot :-P

Things are in their wintery state here at the farmlet, though it's been warm enough to start the buds on the fruit trees swelling up and we're not even half way through the season.

I've managed to get a few long-pending jobs complete around the place. The new duck mobile home first, then I remodelled the chicken house. It used to be a raised floor affair, with doors that were the entire sidewall. This was very awkward for a number of reasons. Cleaning out underneath was difficult, and not all the manure fell through, negating the primary reason for having the raised floor. Not being able to access the inside without climbing into the shed was another downside. I pulled the floor out, then altered one wall and put in a normal door, so it's now a standard walk-in shed. This has opened up more room for perches, and allowed the lower walls to be covered where they used to be mesh, making for a cozier environment.

Other than that I've finally replaced the sheet-of-mesh style gate into the vegetable patch with a proper hinged swinging gate, which includes a genuine springy return apparatus to keep it closed (an occy strap). The gate-balanced-across-the-opening style gate that was at the other end of the patch has also been upgraded by welding on some tube and bolt hinges, so both accesses to the patch are now much easier to use. Whether this means we'll do any more weeding remains to be seen.

I've also turned my old bit of railway line anvil into something that more resembles an actual anvil, by way of copious numbers of cutoff and grinding discs. This should make hammering out metal a bit easier and allow some more creative action. Now I just have to get into it and do some before winter comes to an end and we're back into bushfire season again!

The lambs have been turned into a number of tasty dinners, with plenty more to come, and we're slowly making our way through the excess of cockerels, small and large. Four bantams make a superb winter stewy-casserole type thing.

Hope winter is treating you all well!

Signed & Sealed

2011-05-26T19:16:00.001+10:00

But not yet delivered!

Today saw the signing of the contract for the sale of our block of land. Ahead is the exchange and then the wait until we can settle. The interested party mentioned in the previous post came back to us after some time with a revised offer which was much closer to the mark. A polite and swift round of negotiation later and we were theoretically over the line. Less than a month later and we are two inky scrawls even closer.

Some time in the near future we're going to need to get out there and collect all the "resources" that I'd so lovingly gathered and carted and stored out there. I'd say some of it will go to the tip, but the majority of it is potentially useful, and can be used almost as well here as it could have been there. I'm hoping at least that I can bring the sawmill back, it's always been pleasing to me to know that I'm in possession of such a deadly implement, even if it's not hooked up to a power source...

The whole experience has certainly been a learning one. We've got a fair way to go to get back on track, but this is the first positive step in that direction, and it's exciting to finally be taking it. As much as we will miss the land, we wont miss the grief that went along with it.

Things have otherwise been trundling along, the new duck house I'm building is slowly progressing, and our bowls pairs game went well last weekend. This Sunday we will be in the semi-final, which is exciting for a novice. Hopefully I'll also get the duck house closer to completion as well.

Remember Me?!

2011-05-04T19:32:00.002+10:00

It's been a summer of ups and downs, and there's been a great deal on socially that has hindered a lot of the plans for more productive work. I will start out saying that taking up lawn bowls is not something that should be considered lightly if you value your weekend freedom! On the other hand, it's great for making friends and having a good time. We've managed to get out and about on the odd occasion too.

The picture to the right is an old log cabin we found when we went wandering off the beaten track out in Nangar National Park, which is just out west of us. Judging by it's construction method it's been there for a very long time (in Australian terms) but I wonder why it's not signposted or highlighted in any of the information about the park at all.

We've also had a couple of floods, a fair serve of rain, and not a lot of excessive heat, which is always a bonus here. I think we only put the swampy on twice through the summer, and only then because I must be getting soft :-)

Floods in January

Our fruit trees did a marvellous job of producing fruit, the fruit flies did a marvellous job of infecting it. We did get a few apples and a fairly good serve of peaches this year, though we lost at least ten times more. The crop of quinces on the tree was astounding, but sadly all of them went to the chooks. Pomegranates have been pretty good, though even they don't seem to be immune to the fly. We'd even started spraying chemicals around, figuring we were buying fruit from the shops that had been sprayed, so we'd be going one better spraying our own fruit to save it. If we're to try that again next year we'll need to be a lot more consistent and organised with it if we're to make it worth the effort.

The vegetable garden has produced a moderate amount for us, beans were good as always, and we did get to pick some tomatoes for the first time in a few years, even without a lot of spraying. A lot of spaghetti squash, a fairly typical serve of zucchinis, some celery, a couple of eggplants and a range of other odds and ends such as cucumbers and chillis to round it out.

We did have some nice pumpkins but unfortunately they were left to dry in a spot accessible to the puppy and so we didn't have quite so many pumpkins after all. We also had the best year for luffa gourds so far, with two finished and another on the way. Not sure how far three luffas go toward fulfilling our annual requirements though!

Compost cage

We've been using a compost cage in one of the new beds, which we fill up with the weeds as we pull them out. The idea is that the compost is created in situ to fill up the new bed. It started out full, at a metre high, and is now down to 40cm odd, so we're either going to need a few more, or a lot more weeds!

Sheep have been added to the yard again, and they've managed to decimate a few favourite trees with their enthusiasm, but it wont be long now until harvest time, then we'll just be left with an old retiree, Pinky, to help keep the grass down, eliminating the need for a lot of the mowing.

The chook population has exploded with a good batch of light sussex from the incubator, and probably twice as many wild-grown bantam chooks which are now running feral around the place. We're slowly harvesting our way through them, though that particular project may receive added attention after one of the hens with chicks in tow decimated the newly planted bed full of our winter seedlings the other day. DW was most unamused by it.

There have been a number of problems on the infrastructure front, with leaking pipes in between the floors of the house and a few other plumbing issues, all of which have been resolved but have taken their toll on our patience with the place. The termites have now been declared eliminated thanks to the efforts of our pest controller, but we've not even idly considered any of our other plans on that front given how much other stuff has been on.


Pinky the ancient ewe on the right

I got a few odd jobs done over the summer, the new vegetable beds are still a work in progress, but are probably over half way towards completion now. The chook yard has been modified to expand it a fair bit, and the nursery area has also been "upgraded". I still haven't finished the new duck tractor that I wanted to build a while back, though I've almost got the frame welded up, so it shouldn't be long now. A fair bit of new internal fencing has also been done to accommodate the sheep, though I want to do a deal more to let them into other areas that we currently mow.

The block of land is still for sale, we've only had one person express even a vague interest which quickly died out when we confirmed that we weren't going to drop the price to the level they desired. We have lowered the price to a last-resort level in the hope of getting rid of it, so the only other thing we can do at this stage is keep our fingers firmly crossed. Seems the real estate market is a bit stagnant at the moment. Hopefully we'll live through some mistakes to be able to learn from them :-P

Arrowroot

Our first Black Walnuts

Many of the leaves are still clinging tenaciously to the trees, though there are some bright yellows and oranges on the pistachios out the front so it shouldn't be long before it's looking distinctly more wintery. A lot of the fruit trees have already lost their leaves without the intervening display of colour, so hopefully they grow back again come spring! We did have to do a bit of supplementary watering at the end of the season, but nowhere near as much as we would in a typical year.

With luck winter should be a bit more peaceful on the social front so more can be done around the place, such as finishing the new vege beds. I'd also like to tackle building a furnace and a smoker over winter now that it's fire season again, though that will have to vie with woodchopping in order to keep the place warm, so I'm not holding out too much hope! Doing at least one of the projects would be good!

Olives pickling using the salt method

Update October 2010

2010-10-08T19:48:00.014+11:00

How's that for a title?! Yeah, I thought so too.

We're now a month into Spring, and the place is finally starting to look a bit tidy and a bit like something is happening. During the Winter months with the shorter days it's dark by knock-off time, so I get nothing done around the place during the week. Once Spring rolls around, and especially when Daylight Savings starts, there's at least an hour or two of sunshine & gloaming after 5pm that can be spent in the yard, so I get something done nearly every day.

Most of the long grass has been slashed for mulch, only the rocky hill to go, and a lot of the fruit trees have been weeded and mulched. Speaking of fruit trees, the cherry, pears, quinces and plums are all in glorious flower, and the apples are getting close. The almonds are developing a fair crop of fruit for once, so as long as we can keep the birds off them we might actually get some.

The glasshouse is chock-a-block with seedlings, waiting for the last frosts (or our best guess). Some of the new beds are prepared and almost ready to go, properly surrounded with hardwood. I need to get out to the block and collect some more timber to continue with that particular project, but unfortunately the ute I was borrowing from time to time has had a run in with a big kangaroo, so is no longer available. That's a situation I'm really going to need to work on, as there is so much stuff out at the block that needs to be moved, and lack of transport seriously limits the scavenging opportunities a fellow can avail himself of.

We've had somewhere around 15 chicks over the last few weeks, 5 hatched out by a bantam, and I'm pretty sure we've got 10 left out of 12 or so eggs that hatched in the incubator. Not a bad start to the year, and we'll be trading some incubator time with another gentleman for a couple of chooks of different breeds.

Something that really needs to be put on the to-do list is an alteration of the chicken house. The raised floor idea is nice in principle, but it makes all management operations a PITA, even mucking out the pen, which was the original prime motivation for going down that path. The question is whether to build another nearby and move the chooks to that, then disassemble the old one, or to try and retrofit the old one by removing the raised floor.

We've planted what seems like a squillion trees, though it's probably nowhere near that number, the highlight (for me) being that the front hedge is finally underway with elms, grape and a couple of odd trees for a dash of spice (quince and lilac). The DW has planted out a fair raft of stuff up on the rocky hill, and we've even reclaimed the small lawn out the back from the oversized trampoline and put in a (yet another) quince and a ginkgo. The wild hops has also been planted next to one of the box elders, and my birthday mulberry is in the outer chicken run where it's excess fruit will one day contribute to the chook system.

Here's Lilly, Lil, LillyPilly or #@&*! Mongrel, depending on her behaviour at the time (the latter being reserved for special occasions such as when she chewed our first ginkgo tree off just above ground level a couple of days after planting it.) A gorgeous border collie x coolie who can already leap our fences in a single bound.

Crime In Oz

2010-08-27T18:45:00.010+10:00

As a member of the SSAA (Sporting Shooters Association of Australia) I've been bombarded with a lot of propaganda from them about the Green's stance on firearms ownership. I thought it worth looking into the reality of the situation, to see just how much of our crime is carried out with firearms. The SSAA offer the statistics covering illegal vs legal firearms involved in crime, so I looked up the more general information on the rate of crimes involving firearms compared to other types of weapons or no weapon at all.

The ABS only offers statistics from 2001 onward, that I could find in a quick search. The figures used are drawn from the document available here titled "VICTIMS, Australia - Publication tables 2.1-2.8" These figures are for victims of crime, and I feel they'd better represent levels of crime rather than using the figures for offenders. Victims report the crimes even if an offender isn't caught to provide statistics.

Starting with crime in general, it's divided up into a few categories, and as can be seen in the graph below, murder and attempted murder are almost invisible in the mass of other types of crime.

We're seeing rates of 260 odd murders per annum, and about the same of attempted murder.

Considering all types of crime, the following graph shows the rates of crimes that involve firearms compared to those that don't.

Out of the mass of crime, those involving firearms are a minuscule proportion. Only around 3.5% of crimes involve the use of firearms. From the SSAA:

The AIC’s ‘Homicide in Australia: 2006-07 National Homicide Monitoring Program annual report’ stated that 93 per cent of firearms involved in homicides had never been registered and were used by unlicensed individuals.

Similarly, the AIC has most recently reported that a miniscule number of only 0.06 per cent of registered firearms are stolen and that handguns are the least likely type of firearm to be stolen.

Only 0.06% of registered firearms are stolen... Handguns are the least likely to be stolen...

In 2009 there were 35,111 crimes (or victims) and of those, 3.5% involved the use of firearms, so that's 1,228 incidents involving firearms. 93% of those involved the use of illegal firearms (the ones that wont be affected by any changes to our current gun laws.) Put the other way, only 7% of those crimes will be potentially impacted by proposed changes, or about 86 crimes per year, or 0.25% of crime.

So what is the basis for the Green's stance? They want to:

28. progress gun law reform, including prohibition of the possession and use of automatic hand guns in the community

Yet time and again it's been pointed out that undertaking gun law reform doesn't impact crime, it only impacts the rights of those who already do the right thing.Criminals will still be criminals, and still have access to illegal firearms. Most crimes involving weapons are carried out with knives (2-3 times more common than firearms in all categories of crime). Following a change to laws around 1997-1998 would we expect an ever increasing decline in knife related crime? The percentage of robberies carried out with knives has remained stubbornly around the 20% mark for the period 2001 - 2009, and around 30% for murder and attempted murder.

Now, I like the Greens, most days, and as far as policies go they've got more that I'd support than most any other party around. The trouble is the only policy they'd have a real chance of getting through would be this one, precisely because it makes no sense, yet it plays on people's ignorance of the facts and the fears that have been manipulated so that once again the mass of public opinion is demonising one group whilst at the same time ignoring reality, and ignoring the true sources of problems.

Why is it that NZ can have a more permissive range of rights for citizens with respect to gun ownership yet not descend into an absolute hellish chaos as anticipated by the gun control groups?

Just in finishing, the following graph shows change in amount of crime as a percentage of the baseline crime rate in 2001. The numbers have been generally improving since that time, though there was a marked uptick in crime in 2006. For some reason crime across all categories increased, but there was a 200% increase in murders involving firearms, and a 400% increase in kidnap/abductions involving firearms. I wonder if there was a big influx of black market firearms in that year, or whether a new breed of organised gangs moved into the the market?

As we progress along the road to a civilisation post-peak everything it will be interesting to see how this last graph may change over time.

Preparing For Spring

2010-08-25T21:40:00.007+10:00

We've had busy, and interesting, times in the month (?!) since the last post. Spring is definitely on it's way, the almond has been out in full flower for a couple of weeks, and many of the other trees are getting close. The peaches are showing pink and the oriental plums are about to burst.

Work has progressed slowly on putting new edgings on the vegetable garden beds, and a number of long outstanding jobs, all small enough, have finally been completed. It's funny how you can work around a problem, even if the solution would only take moments. The door to the chicken yard was one of those. You needed to lift it to get the bolt into the hole, yet fixing it by expanding said hole took less than a minute with the trusty brace & bit.

I've made a new gate to go beside the greenhouse area, to replace the wooden not-quite-a-gate that is there now. I'll need to put a new post in due to some configuration issues, but that job is almost done.

I also finally got the spring seed planting underway, with a half dozen trays of seed in the glasshouse. Looks like we'll need to put the shadecloth back on again though, as it's warm enough in there to dry them out in a couple of hours, even when there's a freezing wind blowing outside.

The pruning is now complete, and I've transplanted the currants into new homes amongst the lower orchard. They were slightly up-hill from that location, and the difference in soil between the two spots is amazing. Where they were was a gluggy grey clay (not helped by the ducks enjoying the spot) their new location is a richer, more friable red-brown clay, so hopefully they'll benefit from that as well as the shade afforded by the trees. Their prior location is going to be turned over to maincrops for a couple of years at least. I think potatoes in raised beds for a start to get the soil improvement process going, then maybe winter grain of some kind.

To finish off I'm going to leave you with a planting list, mostly for my own benefit, and your interest, if you can muster such for trays of dirt that may one day bear life. I generally keep a spreadsheet of such things, and promptly neglect to keep it updated. Maybe in blog form it might inspire me to keep better records?

Spring Planting : Glasshouse : 21st August

Broccoli	Di Cicco Early.
Capsicum	Californian Wonder, Chocolate.
Celery	Golden Self Blanching.
Chilli	Anaheim (We maintain plants of about 4 other varieties in the glasshouse that are now getting on for 3 years old)
Cucumber	West Indian Gherkin, Lemon, Marketmore.
Eggplant	Casper, Early Long Purple.
Herbs & Misc.	Meadowsweet, Echinacea (purpurea & angustifolia), Cumin, Chicory, Angelica, Pennyroyal, Sweet Basil, Nasturtium, Luffa.
Pumpkin	Jap, Waltham Butternut.
Rockmelon	Planter's Jumbo.
Squash	Spaghetti.
Tomato	Burwood Prize, Peruvian Cherry, Cherokee Purple, Roma.
Watermelon	Orangeglo, Keckley's Sweet, Small Shining Light, Sugar Baby, Moon & Stars.
Zucchini	Golden Arch Crookneck, Fordhook.
Trees	Tree Lucerne, Jelly Palm.

Thoughts On The Glasshouse

2010-07-22T21:18:00.018+10:00

Thinking that we'd make better use of the solar radiation around-about we took the shadecloth cover off of the glasshouse last week. Not sure if it was the cover providing a little extra insulation that has saved us to date, or just the strength of the frost, but last night we had something of a disaster in the glasshouse. It looks like most of the cotton plants have been badly hit, and a few of the chilli plants, which we've had growing for about 3 years now, also copped a hiding. The tea plant and avocados seem okay, but they may take a bit longer to show the effects.

At the moment the glasshouse is just, well, a house made of glass. Nothing in the way of thermal mass to store heat, and enough loose joints to make sure it doesn't quite work properly. Over the last few weeks, reading along with John Michael Greer's series of posts about Green Wizardry I've toyed with a few ideas about how to make it more useful, or more correctly, how to make it do what I think it should do.

The first of these plans was a great little home made solar hot water panel along with a series of drums containing water. Excellent thermal mass, and should do a good job, it could even be supplemented with a wood/biomass system if needed. In considering how well it would work I got to thinking about the basic design of the glasshouse itself. It's a prefabricated unit of aluminium framing with thin single layer glazing. It's glazed all around, even the roof.

For a start, this is not the most ideal structure, given that the sun only shines from the east, north and west here, south of the Tropics. Why have glass, which is not the best insulator, on the south side of such a building? Why have it on the south plane of the roof, when it's usually so hot in there by summer time that it needs to be cleared of all plants anyway?

I toyed with the idea of covering the back and top with fibro panel or similar, which would allow for the inclusion of insulation, but that still leaves the front faces to lose heat, not to mention the question of whether the frame would support that extra loading.

Having given it more thought I am leaning towards reconstructing completely. It's current location is next to a four foot and more high rock and earthen wall. With a little planning this could be extended and expanded to form three sides of a new structure. By glazing just the northern facing aspects there would be as much light, and not nearly as much heat loss. If the design is clever enough then the glazing will be removable during summer to allow it to function as a greenhouse, eliminating the need to have plants migrating in and out as the seasons progress. And if I try to be really tricky I could build in water storage to act as thermal mass, and that thermal mass might even be able to double as place to grow up a few water plants and fish, allowing the glasshouse structure to fulfill more than one role, and provide for more than one system.

Obviously heating the water with a solar panel might not be such a good idea if one was growing fish in it, but there's nothing to say we can't have two water storages, one heated, one ambient, or even use a different form of thermal mass for the heat providing side of the equation.

In other news, all is going along in it's wintery fashion here, we've had some beautiful days, and some awfully frosty nights. Half the pruning has been done, and work is progressing (only slowly) on the vege garden renovations, primarily due to a hectic social schedule, including birthdays, lawn bowls, and even a trip to Abercrombie Caves (well worth a visit if you ever get the chance) to fill in those two days that separate work time.

There is also the fact that most jobs I do tend to turn into an experimental or creative endeavour well outside their original scope. Cleaning the chicken house out a couple of weeks back, which would normally take about an hour, if not less, turned into a three hour job. I'd often longed for a long-handled scraper to assist in pulling the muck out from underneath the raised house. This time I succumbed to the urge and built one using the steel sheet from an old computer case, a couple of bits of angle iron and tube and a hoe handle I'd purchased but not yet fitted. It works wonderfully, and the DW only rolled her eyes a little to find that the cleaning operation had taken so long and gotten so sidetracked. I imagine that next time it wont even take 15 minutes to get the whole job done!

Do you know where you're going to?

2010-07-06T20:07:00.000+10:00

"Do you like the things that life is showing you?"
Diana Ross - Theme From Mahogany.

Talk about slack blogging! I'd almost forgotten how it works...

Having been so slack there is certainly plenty to talk about now, though the primary reason for the absence, work, will not be discussed except to say there has been plenty of it, and making time for blogging has sadly been low on the list of priorities. After a long day in front of the computer, more time there to blog just doesn't seem so appealing.

Things are starting to quiet down now, marginally, so the time and inclination to gather thoughts and put keys to electrons has arrived!

The farmlet has been cruising along in winter mode, though I guess it was barely Autumn last time we spoke. We've lost two of the older chooks (6+ years old) but all the other creatures are doing well. The vegetable gardens have been planted out for winter production, and are currently (slowly) undergoing a makeover, as time permits. Recycled hardwood timbers are forming the surrounds, with crushed granite for the paths. Getting rid of the grass paths should go a long way toward making managing the weeding easier, and the proper raised beds will provide better drainage and growing conditions, hopefully. We've also made a new space for a perennial bed, currently with our new rhubarb patch, mints and horseradish, which has cleaned up what was a dauntingly disappointing corner of the patch previously.

So where are we at the moment? The last few posts we were in a quandary about where we were headed. We were off to Victoria or Tasmania, but weren't really sure.

The last couple of months have included a development that helped provide a bit of external impetus and a good dose of clarity. The development is more of an un-development, being that we've discovered a happy family of termites munching away at our house. This is not so surprising for an Australian house, but it is concerning if you're trying to sell the place. The inspector reckons they've done a fair bit of damage to the place, but without pulling plasterboard off we can't know for sure.

So we were faced with reducing the price we had put on the place in order to secure a sale, either that or doing some reconstruction to repair whatever damage there was. Combining this with our uncertainty over the idea of moving and we were seriously doubting the sensibility of the idea.

In the first case, we were torn about moving away from here. We've got a lot of good friends, and it's a great community. Whilst the climate is not ideal, and it's a long way from the beach, the community advantages (among others) outweigh the disadvantages as far as considering it from a post-peak oil survival situation.

After a fair bit of soul-searching and considering various scenarios we've decided we're going to stay on here, at the very least until the kids finish their schooling. Stability during those years of life is just as important as any other considerations. And beside that, the Permaculture Designer's Manual has a very good section on designing for deserts if things get really bad here :-)

So where to now? We've started re-assessing the place in terms of layout and planning, re-considering things so that we can attempt to fit even more producing plants in. There's certainly plenty of space here.

We will need to work on the water situation a bit, but there's nothing out of the ordinary that needs to be done there.

The main issue is going to be the house. Our two storey architectural monstrosity is not the best construction to start with, throw in some termite damage and I'm going to sleep daily wondering whether I'll be waking up downstairs in the kids room...

There's a nice spot in the front paddock that can fit a house in, and we've had a brief discussion with Council about it and they can't see any problems with building a new place and then demolishing this one. We've played around with some basic designs and think we can fit a complete single-storey house of equivalent usable size to the current one, into the same footprint as this one (yep, that's how badly this one is laid out!) Given that we already have a livable, if not enjoyable, house on-site considering owner building isn't so far fetched either, though I know DW will want it to be complete within a reasonable period.

All that remains is to sell off the farm block to free up some cash flows, though we can begin certain elements out of our normal budgets with a bit of saving. Planning our own house will be a new experience, and we'll need to figure out things like whether we see a draughtsperson first or an engineer, but all of that sort of stuff should be exciting enough, and keep us occupied while we wait to sell the block. And if it never sells at least our neighbour out there has a nice extra piece of land to use, and we've got a good, if distant, supply of firewood, while ever we've got fuel to get there.

It's funny, but when you're thinking of leaving a place you see it in an entirely different light to when you're thinking of staying. For one thing my shed is much better organised and a lot tidier now (lol) and we've planted a many more trees already. All the other projects that I'd been putting off for a long time, expecting to commence them when we moved to a new place, have also had another look over, things like forges, furnaces, potting sheds, cellars, biogas systems, a pumping system for the pond, the list goes on. Not going elsewhere gives me plenty of time to concentrate on being here, so there should be plenty of activity to report on in the future!

The Political Indigestability Of Peak Everything

2010-03-03T18:18:00.001+11:00

Peak Everything is a unique problem, in that it doesn't have a solution, it's not something we can resolve through this or that course of action. It is, as has been pointed out by John Michael Greer, a predicament, something that must be adapted to.

It therefore stands to reason that whenever we're engaged in debate over responses to Peak Everything we will only ever be discussing politically unpalatable "solutions". Politicians like to have clean cut problems that can be addressed by throwing money (variously transformed into resources) at them. The whole notion of palatability resides in how the voters will perceive the response and what impact that will have on said politician's chances of being re-elected.

Peak Everything has only unpalatable responses, which is one of the primary reasons it is not brought to the attention of the public. One of the greatest, if not the greatest, crises to face humankind is swept under the rug as it is not an issue that a politician can address. It's not something they can come riding to the rescue over, they can obtain no glory from it, so they find themselves in a situation where they are better off ignoring it totally, or lying outright about it.

The nuts and bolts and tiny grinding gears of any society are rarely brought to the attention of the masses when a politician is standing before the crowd. They're only interested in addressing the big ticket, high value items that have a lot of political gravity associated with them. Whilst it would be in the best interests of the working person to be familiar with the drudgery and dull numbers of running a society, it is rarely brought to our attention primarily because a politician's job is not to inform about the state of things, but to offer dreams and visions of what could be. It's only via promises of a different, inevitably better, future that a politician can keep themselves in a job.

Therefore humanity is now faced with a crisis that the politicians will never address in a wholistic sense. They're never going to consider the broad scope of the predicament and come up with responses to address it. What they will do is address individual crises, one at a time, in isolation, and in proportion to the number of voters affected.

Addressing crises on such an ad hoc basis is invariably going to be counter-productive. A program that spends resource A solving problem X is fair enough in a world without the resource constraints of Peak Everything. In a world of Peak Everything, such a program is going to cause knock on effects, where solving X leads to shortages in resource A that cause problems Y and Z. If Y and Z are problems with little political visibility then they can safely be ignored until such time as they cause further problems that are politically visible. If, on the other hand, Y and/or Z are already politically visible then the politicians are immediately going to find themselves scrambling to solve the next round of problems, and so on down the line.

That in itself is a valuable indicator of the state of world affairs. Admittedly politicians always seem to be running from one crisis to the next, which is how politics (or at least the media circus that surrounds politics) works. An invisible politician is good to no-one, so it makes sense to have them always running around solving problems. The true indicator will be when every solution they propose and implement immediately leads to a slew of greater problems, and they seem ever more frantic due to their inability to do anything about the majority of them.

Waiting for a politician to do something about Peak Everything is a fool's game.

Take the simple scenario of food supply. In order to preserve votes politicians are inevitably going to provide emergency food relief, but only to larger population centres, in times of food crisis. It's extremely doubtful that they would go door to door delivering such food, and more likely that they would set up distribution centres in central locations. This would, in the event of a long terms crisis, cause the population to crowd about these centres, shifting population densities from locations that could conceivably be turned over to provide basic levels of food subsistence style, into shanty towns that have little hope of looking after themselves. How would they then deal with the myriad problems of shanty towns? Or the influx of refugees from those unprepared regions that aren't receiving food aid?

Whilst population centres do offer a number of advantages, it must always be kept in mind that those advantages come with a price and a risk.

The price is lower autonomy and the prospect of not being able to look after yourself to the best of your ability. For example, even though you might be an excellent vegetable gardener, you may forced to work on a farm for ten hours a day growing broad beans and only get minimal rations in return, in contrast to being more isolated and voluntarily working on your own farm and receiving a hearty meal containing a variety of foods.

The risk? Simply that everything is dependent on the sense, fortitude and goodwill of others, most importantly politicians. Solving X that doesn't really affect you might lead to Y and Z, which both do affect you, but not the majority of voters. You've then got twice as many problems, and you're largely reliant on others to solve them for you. If they decide they cannot run the pumps to get water to your part of the city because they need that water to irrigate the fields in another part of the city you've now got to make alternative arrangements, most likely packing up and moving to where the water is.

Life is going to be uncertain as we head into the age of Peak Everything, the trick is determining where the risks are going to be minimised. Making that analysis depends on examining as many scenarios as possible, covering as many factors as possible.

Religio-Industrial Vegetarianism And Peak Oil

2010-02-23T17:43:00.054+11:00

We are currently seeing something of a push by the various vegetarian lobbies to make their diet the official methodology for saving the world from climate change, among other scourges. Everywhere I look these days it seems there are various bits of media chaff designed to convince meat-eaters to give up our evil ways and jump on the bandwagon to save the earth. If only we would all stop eating meat then we would have nothing to worry about, all the plastic consumer crap that pollutes the earth would implode and leave us once more inhabiting a pristine wilderness with clear skies.

Once again we are plagued with a religious radicalism, forced to endure half-truths and strawmen set up to direct people along a narrow road toward a mis-Utopia masquerading as a logical solution to our woes.

Sure, everyone should choose a path that fulfills their ethical goals and lies in line with their moral compass, and many of our problems today stem from the fact that people neglect the re-assessment and re-evaluation needed to chart such a course. There are a lot of problems in the world, but it's certain that none of them can be solved with vegetarianism as a blanket prescription.

Where does the food that vegetarian's consume come from? Sadly, it generally comes from farmland, and may pause on it's journey to the consumer in a factory for further (no doubt energy intensive) processing, typically to be massaged from it's native state into something more closely resembling meat (eh?)

Isn't vegetarian food grown on the same farms where the plough tears through the field, spewing the denizens of that dark and earthy realm out into the harsh sunlight, killing them indiscriminately? Who actively takes on the karma begotten through this slaughter? What about the effects of the pesticides and fertilisers that the earth is salted with in order to raise yields to economical levels? What about the displaced fauna, the birds, rodents and other mammals small and large?

I don't read of many vegetarians that give these issues much deep thought, and any I've pointed it out to stridently insist that what I do is so much worse. Microbes don't have souls, so it's all good from a vegetarian perspective.

Is it? Any thinking person will agree that grain-fed meat must have a cumulative impact, with the burden of both grain growing and raising animals, but there is nothing natural about this kind of meat production, and certainly nothing redeeming, so I would never think to promote it.

What if one were to eat only pasture fed animals? We have a situation where the animal grazes, the worms and other soil organisms are not killed off, and, to an extent, other mammals can live side-by-side with the stock, and birds are only minimally disturbed, usually when the animal they are perching upon decides to take off across the paddock. It's not always an ideal relationship, the farmer still has to ensure the pastures aren't being consumed more by natives than by our introduced food-on-four-legs, but it's a start.

Let's consider it from a basic energetic perspective.

Let's imagine a field, say 2 hectares, with a DSE (Dry Sheep Equivalent) of 3. A DSE of 3 means that each hectare could support one ewe with lamb. A sensible farmer might run two ewes on this land, each bearing one lamb. As the lambs grow, the ewes drop back to requiring 1 DSE each (for a total of 2) and the lambs might require 1 each as they grow, for a total of 4 DSE, leaving 2 DSE, so effectively this small flock could survive on that land.

This gives us 2 sheep for meat each year. Let's say we grow them up to 36kg to try and make the most meat out of our land. This will give us a cold carcass in the area of 15kg, for a total of 30kg of meat for the year.

Lamb, depending on the cut, might give us about 800kJ of energy per 100g, or ~~240,000kJ~~ (see note below) 60,000kJ of energy in total. To get this energy we don't need to waste buckets of fossil fuels ploughing, harrowing, sowing, spraying and harvesting our crop either. And considering our interest in all things "Peak" animal farming is a valid possibility for a small family.

Note It's been rightly pointed out that I've failed to take into account the muscle to bone ratio in the above calculation. 19% was suggested as a reasonable figure, which would reduce our energy to 48,000kJ. But, but, but! We must also consider that the 800kJ of energy is for lean meat, and in a normal diet (mine :-) ) none of the fat escapes the dinner table. Finding nutritional figures for full-fat meat is difficult, but http://www.nal.usda.gov/ tells me that even with 1/8" of fat left on the lamb chop has an energy of 983kJ/100g for 58,980kJ. We're also leaving out a lot of other useful sources of nutrition such as offal and bones so we could reasonably expect a total energy in excess of 100,000kJ when all is said and done. I'll provide a figure of 60,000 above to be mean to my cause.

How would we go if we put this land down to soybeans? With a yield of about 3 tonnes per hectare we would harvest 6 tonnes from this land. Soybeans have an energy content of 1.25kJ per 172g for cooked mature beans. Total energy returned: 43,604kJ! We would exhaust ourselves trying to grow and harvest this crop manually, especially if we had to live only on the energy it provided.

So we get 5.5 times more energy off the land by growing sheep! And that's before we even begin to consider the energy costs of production, and the fact that we haven't had to sterilise the earth to grow our sheep. Let me tell you, if we were doing it all by hand (as we well might be once peak everything kicks in) rounding up a couple of sheep is a lot less energy intensive that harvesting an hectare of grain...

Further to these typical production practices, we can envisage a more advanced system drawing on the practices of permaculture to inform a better way. As far as the smallholder is concerned he or she wants to maximise production of food for family and friends in the face of an uncertain future, one where the spectre of Peak Oil, even Peak Everything, and climate change looms above all plans.

Such a smallholder will not be interested in hand ploughing a field, broadcasting the seed and then scything, gathering and winnowing the crop. Far too much energy would be expended, to the extent that the farmers would starve trying to feed themselves.

Far better to build up an integrated pasture and forest system, whereby various animals can graze (sheep, goats, ducks, chickens) in harmony, maximising meat production beyond the numbers supplied above, as well as providing sideline benefits of vegetative produce.

In essence, grain production is a dead-end path. Once yields come close to the theoretical maximum there is very little that can be done to increase them further, without building your own genetic engineering lab and releasing all kinds of virulent filth upon the earth. Fundamentally, each additional species you introduce to a grain field reduces the overall productivity of your main crop.

Only through a synthesis of animal and plant within the growing area can increased yields be realised. While ever we are stuck in the two dimensional realm of the grain crop true productivity gains cannot be made, and so we cannot hope to live well in an uncertain future. It would seem, given this amateurish analysis, that suggestions we will find humanity's salvation via vegetarianism are misplaced. It's doubtful we'd even find the salvation of a single post-peak oil family. In fact, turning the earth over to grain fields might just make all our problems worse.

If you're hoping to survive peak oil, my advice would be to stick with the mixed agricultural systems that are emblematic of most "primitive" societies, and then whenever you meet someone claiming to have discovered the means to salve all of humanity's ills in one convenient spiritual package you will at least have the energy to run as fast as you can in the opposite direction.

And So It Goes

2010-02-12T17:27:00.000+11:00

It's been almost a month to the day since the last post, and I can't say a lot has happened in that time. I'll be meeting with the real estate agent on Tuesday to organise for the block to be put on the market. We had had some interest from someone that was looking to buy the neighbouring property, who wanted our block for it's access to the water, but in the end they decided they wanted to be closer to the nearby city. At the time it was a positive sign, because selling the block is going to be challenging, to put it politely.

We're holding off marketing this place now, until we sell the other block. We need a place to live while we wait to clear that one out and consolidate our lives. Just got to hope everything doesn't come crashing down around our ears in the meantime, on both the personal and global levels. It's still up on the internet site, and if it sells, well, that's the way it's meant to be, but we wont be pushing it via an agent for now.

I finished the tiling in the kitchen, well, almost. DW has asked that we tile the back of the cupboard that faces out into the room, rather than trying to do anything else with it, so the job got a little bit bigger, but it shouldn't take much. It's looking a lot better in there, that's for sure.

The newly planted trees survived a bout of heat and have made it through to our current rainy period. It's still hot, and strangely muggy, but at least we're getting some rain, and all the weeds look so nice and green :-P

Further sad news on the vehicle front, we are now without any kind of work vehicle. After the adventure with the little truck, not two weeks ago the trusty ute died on me, right in the middle of Sydney, on the way home after attending meetings for work. It made it all the way down there okay, but just couldn't struggle back, throwing the timing chain as I was motoring back along the M4. Needless to say this has left us in a pretty tight spot, especially considering we've got so much stuff to move around the place to get all the plans in order. There is something of a synchronicity in this as well, even though a negative kind.

Yet again I'm left wondering about the validity of any of the plans we dream up. The Universe is either challenging us or obstructing us, but it doesn't appear to be giving us anything in the way of clear guidance. The various things I read around the place tell me we're heading towards ever more trying times, yet we find ourselves in a position that is, if anything, even less prepared than we were two years ago. It could well be that that is the message, that we need to clean everything up, get it all sorted out, before we can move forward. It certainly started out by cleaning two useful vehicles (and associated expenses) out of our lives :-) Off to a good start perhaps!?

Let's Try Again

2010-01-13T17:45:00.001+11:00

Welcome 2010...

The summer holidays are over now, for me at least, though the kids are still bouncing off the walls for some time to come. In the rush of the festive season we didn't get up to much, though we had plenty of time to sit and consider our options in amongst the celebrations.

Once Christmas was all wrapped up we shared our plans for moving on with the family, and surprisingly got a positive response from all of them, though of course there is the expected concerns over moving so far away and not being able to see the kids as they grow up.

I've spent a lot of time browsing the online real estate via Google Maps, and searching the weather records for ideal spots in our wide brown land. There are a few areas down south that seem to fit the bill, with regions getting in excess of 800mm, and up to 1200mm per annum of rain, with fairly moderate temperatures. There are even some nice properties in those areas within our anticipated price range.

We have also looked over at Tasmania, but the east coast, where most of the properties are available experiences very similar rainfall to our current location, and I haven't yet seen a decent property on the west coast where they do get the rain. The northerly regions were also promising, but they've been ruled out as they'll be experiencing wilder weather as time goes by, and already suffer from things like fruit fly, ticks and disease carrying mosquitoes.

So we've picked a direction, and now have to get the sale of our current properties out of the way so we can start afresh. In some ways it's very exciting, but it's also very daunting as we've collected a lot of useful stuff over the years that we'll most likely have to get rid of. Getting rid of it means starting out with next to nothing again, and getting a property up and running requires a lot of bits and pieces. At this stage we're going to have to jump that hurdle when we come to it. It may be practical to transport a lot of stuff to the new place, in which case we'll select the valuable items that are hard to replace and pass the rest on.

So the first half of 2010 sees us struggling to cope with financial problems thanks to the good old tax office and a complete lack of good, timely, advice from the accountant, and our attempts to sell our properties. With the greatest of luck the second half might see us in an entirely different place!

We've started planting some of the trees we've been growing up here to take to the new place, no point trying to cart them to the new place, and no point planting them at the new place where we wont be able to give them the care they need. We still might put some more out there in winter time if it hasn't sold, as we have a lot of trees and there isn't enough space here to plant them. I guess we could also have a plant sale...

Fun times ahead, let's just hope the world situation stays relatively stable or improves a bit even, at least until we get all this sorted out!

Best wishes to you all for a peaceful and prosperous 2010!

A Finished Shed

2009-12-15T15:20:00.000+11:00

Yes, we finally did it. Weekend before last we were able to complete the shed! With help from DW and DM the gutters went up, the roof went on, and and all the final bits and pieces were completed. I can't say it was fun, a day on a glaring and hot roof isn't the most pleasant way to spend time. It's strange, but now, at the end of it all I'm left feeling a bit empty and unsure of where to go next.

That is not helped by some recent bad news. We heard from the accountant who tells us that thanks to some new rules we wont be sharing our partnership income the same way this year, which hands DW a refund, but lands me with a very hefty tax bill, due by March (on top of covering the two BAS statements that come in quick succession early in the new year)

Sadly that was not the end of our woes as the faithful truck sprang a big leak in the radiator on Sunday. Unfortunately I was stuck on the highway with nowhere to pull off for half a kilometre or more, so by the time I rolled to a standstill the cabin was filled with smoke and the temperature guage was maxed out. There was a small bit of luck, having a great friend who just happens to be a diesel fitter, and is well equipped for such adventures. He was able to pull me out of the awkward spot and over the course of the day we got it towed back to his place and then proceeded to pull the head off and see what damage had been done. The initial investigations proved inconclusive, no obvious evidence of damage to the head, so he's getting a second opinion over the next couple of days.

Needless to say it's been a trying week. Last week and the one before I was asking the Universe for a sign, for some direction about where to head with our lives. It's usually pretty good to us, though as with all such things the signs are never clear, but usually enough to go on with. Not sure how to interpret this turn of events at all.

Admittedly some clarity has come out of it. DW is not happy here, or with the new place. It's only marginally moister than the current location, and a fraction of a touch cooler, which isn't enough in the grand scheme of things, factoring in climate change. One of the biggest issues is we're still faced with at least a year of work before we can think of moving onto the block. And that means at least a year before we can think of doing anything much out there, especially to do with larger animals.

So we've discussed our options. One of those options is a move to a better climate with more reliable rain, and a move onto a place that already has a house upon it. That way we can move and start, in one go, just like that, rather than selling one place, moving, building, moving, then starting. Given we're currently supporting two mortgages that would if combined buy us a reasonable place somewhere else, what's not to like about the plan?

Perhaps all this grief over the new block was the Universe trying to give us a sign, and now we're getting a bit of punishment for not listening in the first place? lol! Then again, maybe it's totally the opposite? Aaargh! I'm afraid to ask for more signs so perhaps we will have to soldier on in a state of uncertainty (not that there is ever real certainty).

So, where to now? Christmas holiday plans are pretty well ruined. There'll be no transporting of stuff to the block thanks to the death of the truck (unless by some miracle we can fix it this coming weekend) though there is still plenty of opportunity for cleaning up around the place before the festive season. Beyond that, it's a matter of making a decision and acting upon it. During our conversations the following list of desirable traits in a new property has come up:

Only 1 to 1.5 hours from the coast.
Plentiful rainfall through the year - median of 800mm plus.
General temperature range up to 35 or so.
Water, preferably on a river or large perennial creek. Even better if we can float in the tinny all the way to the coast and have the kids row us back after a day of fishing :-)
House and sheds.
25+ acres (we figure higher rainfall means better carrying capacity, so we can do more with a smaller amount of land.)
Reasonable soil.

Not a lot to wish for, is it now? lol! While we're at it we better wish for people to buy our current properties, otherwise all these plans are coming to a grinding halt before they've even started moving...

All the best for the summer solstice celebrations and/or Christmas!

Framed!

2009-11-26T10:37:00.008+11:00

Well folks, it's been a while... and we've certainly had some "exciting" times since the last post.

The weekend after the last post we were at it again out at the new block. I arrived early but only had a couple of odd jobs to do collecting materials together and getting things organised. Once the crew arrived we got started, and despite a couple of scary moments due to lack of adequately robust bracing we got all the portal frames up and a good number of tophats on to hold it all in place. Thanks to the poor quality screws supplied in the kit we'd run out by late afternoon, having thrown about half of them away.

It was late afternoon when we packed up and headed for home, with Brother M following me back on the scenic drive via Canowindra to enjoy an evening of wine and conversation, and home made pizza, at the basecamp (FSF is basecamp if we consider the goal is ascending Australia's rather flat topography by 300m to the new place...)

The following day was one of rest and recovery, and a fair bit of pottering in the back yard. I also nipped into town to pick up some materials to make potato cages, and to try and protect the nursery stock from the ravages of the guinea pigs. I've resisted potato cages in the past for various reasons, but figured I may as well give them a go and see if we can up production on that front.

The intervening week of work was not very exciting (easy to predict given I can't recall mentioning work here too often) but at least it passed swiftly into the next weekend. I went out alone to the block on the Sunday only to find that disaster had struck.

Once again inadequate bracing and not having all the purlins installed had brought us to the brink of destruction. The Saturday night had seen ferocious winds, which continued through the Sunday, and the shed frame was on quite a lean thanks to one of the support ropes snapping. Thankfully it only took about an hour to straighten everything up and re-anchor it all, then I got started putting the last of the purlins in and sorting out some of the mistakes I'd made along the way. In the intervening week I'd splurged on a tek screw gun (so much for simple living!), and bought a big box of real tekscrews. Failure rate is less than 1:10 now, which makes the job a whole lot easier.

By Sunday afternoon, and not too late at that, the shed frame was completed, and anchored a bit more firmly than before. Let's hope it's still standing this Saturday when it's time to start putting some cladding on it. Getting close to completion now!

Once the shed is complete we can clear this place out and really get moving!!

The heat has been taking it's toll in the garden, and DW thinks that mice are also getting into things. Not sure how we're going to deal with that one, the indoor cat is not going to be allowed out for that job. We had trapped the guinea pigs too, but they managed to escape again, so we're back to square one. Ducklings and chooklings are all powering along, it won't be long before we've got to organise accommodation for them all. Speaking of which, we'd better do the same out at the new block before too long. I seriously doubt anyone is going to let us rent and bring along twenty-odd chooks and 9 ducks...

Attempt Number 2

2009-11-10T14:03:00.003+11:00

The weekend before last was our first attempt at erecting the shed frame, and let me tell you, it was something of a disaster. I arrived out on site nice and early and got started preparing things. It was the first time I'd loaded the generator onto the truck to take out there, so there was a fair bit of screwing things together to be done before everyone started to arrive at 10am.

Things went well for the first hour, then trouble struck in the form of a generator that ran erratically, allowing at most one screw to be placed before it went off into a flurry of stuttering that prevented anything but hair pulling.

A quick call to Dad who was on his way through Bathurst and I'd arranged for him to purchase one of the cheap and nasty generators from the local big-box hardware stores. The hire company was shut over the weekend, and other loan options were hours away, so the only option was to purchase if we were to salvage anything from the event.

Everyone had arrived by the appointed time, and we got the new generator out and set up, then commenced installing the first frame. All appeared to be going reasonably well (with the exception of a number of missed steps thanks to the panic induced by the loss of the generator, something I was to discover later) but for a few organisational issues. Once that frame was up we started screwing the braces to the second frame and the drill stopped working. Thinking that we'd be smart and put one of the cordless drills on to charge whilst we figured out what to do about the dead drill and we came to realise that the second, new, generator had also failed.

Unbelievable! We tried a few things to get either of them back up and running correctly and ended up sorely disappointed. In the end we unbolted the frame we'd already erected and packed everything up then went for a drive around the place to show Dad, who was experiencing his inaugural visit.

The old generator was in the workshop the next week, the new one is sitting back in it's box waiting to be returned. On Friday I got the call that the generator was ready to be picked up, so I made arrangements to collect it Saturday morning. They gave me the sad news that it was making some strange noises and might not have long to live. My fingers are firmly crossed that it makes it through the next couple of weeks to get the shed finished.

Sunday was spent out at the block again, finishing all of the preparation work that had been neglected in the panic the previous weekend. This time around everything is pretty much ready to go, so it should be a matter of erecting the frames and stitching them together with the tophats. Sounds easy enough on virtual paper, but the experiences of the last attempt have shown me that things don't always go according to plan. I'll let you all know sometime next week how things went!!

Back on the home front, we've now got 11 new oak trees sprouted, and just over a dozen tallow trees. I was able to collect a lot more seed a couple of weeks ago, so as soon as the toilet roll collection is large enough I'll put in another big batch of those.

The baby chickens are growing at an alarming rate, and eating to match, and yesterday we hatched eight out of twelve duck eggs that we've had in the incubator. Some were reluctant to leave their eggs so DW helped them along a bit, but they don't seem any worse for it.

We've planted out the first batch of tomato, zucchini, melons and pumpkins from the glasshouse, though some of the tomatoes are a bit worse for wear (ie dead) as the couple of days after planting got rather warm. I'd tried planting the tommies into half toilet rolls this year, thinking to save on potting mix, but it seems they needed to be potted on anyway so I've exchanged the extra potting mix for stunted plants that keel over when the sun comes from behind a cloud. All is not lost of course, but we'll be a bit behind for tomatoes this year.

We've also got an unusual problem in the strawberry patch. It seems the feral guinea pigs, currently living under the stack of timber in the carport have discovered the patch, and make daily excursions there to feast on the bounty. Time to trap the little fellows and return them to confinement I reckon.

We Know Not What We Ask For...

2009-10-29T13:54:00.003+11:00

I have often been labelled as pessimistic, though I often like to think of it as making sensible choices as to what to be optimistic about. A recent post through the peak oil mailing list I subscribe to was both troubling and illuminating at the same time.

The article "Obama Turns to the Financial Elite for Campaign Cash" starts out describing the exorbitant amounts spent in U.S. political campaigns, and points out that some of this has come from the very Wall St. institutions that the taxpayers over there were so busy bailing out just recently. It's all stuff you've no doubt read and been outraged at before, but here's an example to give the gist of it:

“The investment community feels very put-upon,” he told the Times. “They feel there is no reason why they shouldn’t earn $1 million to $200 million a year, and they don’t want to be held responsible for the global financial meltdown.”

The “investment community” feels “put-upon?” This, as Wall Street prepares to dole out $26 billion in year-end bonuses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The near-record figure represents a 40 percent increase over 2008. At Goldman Sachs, the bonus pool has doubled.

Wow! Yet the masses just trundle along hoping to get ahead. Sure they must get outraged, rant at the nightly news, or drink or shop themselves into a stupor, but short of outright revolution there's little they can do when the political system is tailored to circumvent any hope of achieving real change.

Whilst the article goes on to further highlight the various outrages perpetrated by the current administration in collusion with the financial elite, it is the final paragraph that is the most troubling:

A solution to the social crisis is impossible outside of a frontal assault on the power of the American financial aristocracy and the social inequality that pervades every facet of life. The vast wealth monopolized by Wall Street must be confiscated so that it can be utilized to create jobs, fund health care and education and raise living standards. These tasks can be achieved only in struggle against the Obama administration and by workers mobilizing themselves independently in the fight for a socialist alternative.

I'm not sure about the U.S. but here in Australia our political parties no longer fall on either side of a Left/Right divide. In their efforts to secure the majority of the vote both sides have come closer and closer to a "null space" between the two ideological extremes. They seemingly stand for nothing beyond feathering their own nests and doing the minimum possible to secure a comfortable chance of re-election.

Unfortunately the called for solutions on either side of the divide (more socialistic capitalism, more capitalistic socialism?) miss one critical point. We are facing a future where there will be no more prosperity for any but the ultra-rich. It doesn't matter how much money is re-distributed from the wealthy to the poor if that money is worthless because society's resource base is stretched beyond bearing.

So the poor wish to rise up and join those with a standard of living that will soon be impossible to maintain. All the effort and energy put toward revolution will be wasted when everyone arrives at the finish line and discovers there are no more prizes to be handed out.

Sure, if there was a revolution tomorrow we have a few more good years of productive capacity such that a couple of billion flat screen TV's could be produced and handed out in a socialist undertaking to improve general living standards, but once it's gone, it's gone. I guess if it's not wasted on flat screen TV's for today's poor it will only be wasted on newer models of flat screen TV's for today's rich and middle classes.

The trouble is that no-one really wants to recognise that the revolution should be in the opposite direction, away from riches and toward frugality. The only way to save ourselves from future poverty is to consciously devolve to a comfortable poverty, starting today.

Productive jobs in a consumer society are a relic of a dying age. If people want to secure their future then they should be creating productive jobs for themselves in an neo-agrarian society, not clamouring for revolution to redistribute money so the delusion of modern wealth can live on, more thinly spread, for another decade or so.

Where we need the revolution is in reclaiming rights to land, water, clean air and self-determination and self-care.

We can live without great wealth if we have enough space and water to grow our own food. We can live without great wealth if we are allowed to utilise the resources that fall upon or exist within the space we inhabit. We can live without great wealth if we aren't held up to maintain the standards of the wealthy when we erect our homes, or to abide by the myriad rules created by people with nothing better to do, and no more noble way to earn a crust than making other's lives miserable through endless regulations.

We don't need to be saved from ourselves, for that saving is set to be doing a whole lot of killing where it now mandates solutions that are just not suitable for the future we face. Try erecting a one room shanty made of native stone on your block of land and see how far you get before the local council is there with the sheriff to see you off! Yet a one room dwelling with outside toilet would have to be one of the most sustainable and suitable homes there is. When there are five or ten families doing the same on a block of land, there you have a potentially sustainable future with a low ecological cost. You wont see that solution at the top of most people's list!

The greatest dilemma of those not of the rich classes is securing our right to live in a comfortable poverty in the face of all the wealth, or in spite of all the "wealth" (the term is used loosely!).

At the moment we don't have a chance. In order to achieve the simple goal of living off the land we need to struggle to make enough to support all the parasitic classes that feed off potential landowners, then we need to struggle with the powers that be just for the right to dwell upon and work that land. Options to circumvent the various strictures are closed up as swiftly as they are found, so governing bodies attempt to ensure each family remains isolated, unable to pool resources with others, unable to draw upon their own resources.

We don't need a revolution to bring us more jobs and more opportunities in a dying system. We don't need more chances to ensure our excursion into overshoot territory is as damaging as possible.

What we need is a revolution to allow us to live in our place on earth in a comfortable poverty of our own making, and to allow us the opportunity to make the most of that as we each see fit. We need a revolution to protect all of that from those who would own every acre of the world and every man, woman and child upon it, yet would not step foot outside their tall towers, much less grub in the dirt to make a real living alongside us.

More than anything we need a revolution in our understanding of our place upon the Earth, a revolution in our relationships with one another, and with ourselves, such that we would demand these things in the first place, such that we would demand less rather than more.

This is the crucial revolution, and sadly the one that we are least likely to see.

Rain, Rain Don't Go Away, Just Change Your Day!

2009-10-26T12:46:00.005+11:00

There was a spell of nice warm weather there for about a week, and even our trip to Sydney took place in perfect conditions, but I was left wondering at the irony of life when Sunday morning dawned miserable and wet. Whilst we do need as much rain as we can get scheduling it during the week would be a bit more considerate.

After spending about an hour trying to decide whether to venture out in the rain and get the shed started, or to stay in and potter about under cover, getting a start on the shed won out and I loaded up in the wet to go over to the block. It was dry, though still cloudy and threatening rain, from about half way there, so I allowed myself a little hope that it would remain so for long enough to get the portal frames bolted together.

Four finished frames

About twenty minutes after arriving, having sorted out the materials and just teetering on the cusp of getting started the rain began, and didn't let up until half an hour before I reached the end of the work. Of course it remained sunny for the rest of the afternoon and didn't start raining again until the evening. Funny that!

Whilst it was wet I still managed to get the frames bolted together, now they're all resting waiting for next weekend. I've got a small crew together to help out with putting them up, so as long as the weather is nice we should have the worst part of the job over by this time next week. I don't enjoy trying to get things square, level, parallel and in tune with the environment, it takes a lot of fiddling and back and forth measuring and adjusting. I certainly appreciate the need for it, but I can't bring myself to find any joy in it, it's a frustrating job of push-me-pull-me, inching slightly closer to perfection until a slip shifts the whole lot out of place and demands we begin all over again. I should stop now or I'll talk myself out of the project LOL!

Back on the home front the Chinese Tallow seeds I put in a while back have all started to sprout, eleven of them are pushing up above the soil. I had to collect the boys from school last week, so grabbed another pocket full of them. I'd despaired of finding any after searching the Orange cemetary for the trees that had been there many years ago, but failing to find them, and was most pleased to find that there were three trees right outside the kid's school gate. Talk about having your eyes painted on...

Chinese Tallow trees, future bio-diesel plantation

We've also got a lot of cuttings in the glasshouse that are coming along well enough, and as long as this latest spell of wet weather doesn't bring the frosts back we should be able to start planting out the tomatoes and other frost sensitive vegetables which are growing nicely in the warmth. Outside in the greenhouse areas we've got 9 lovely new oaks coming up (we're going to have one big oak grove out there!) and all the other stuff is growing nicely, even after being trashed by the chooks on Saturday. We'll need to pot a lot of stuff on for the season as there is no point trying to plant it out now with the heat of summer to come (if indeed it does...) so we've got a bit of work to do there. It will save us a bit of time in the end as the worst of the pot-bound plants are needing water every day now.

The new oaks and a couple of pots of weeds saved from last year...

The duck eggs in the incubator should hatch in two short weeks, and as you can see below the silky chooks we hatched out are growing swiftly (though not 'big-ly')

Four of the new chooks.

Founded

2009-10-19T17:42:00.000+11:00

It's official, sort of! The first ever permanent construction (or part thereof) has been completed out at the new block. It was a tight race to the finish, with just enough material available to finish off the last hole for the footings, and it's all done.

We could commence construction of the shed next weekend, as that will have allowed the required 7 days of curing, but we're off to Sydney for a day to visit family, so apart from bolting a few of the portal frames together it might be a matter of spending time tidying up the site and getting the "floor" levelled. I don't fancy getting half way through putting the frame up and having to leave it for a week, it would only take one decent storm to lose the lot... Patience will prevail and I'll get as much prepared as possible for the following weekend, and I'll even draft in some helpers to get the critical elements up as swiftly as possible. Better make sure the generator works as well, sometime between now and then.

Seems like we're coming out of the winter weather at last, the recent rainy spell didn't result in the severe frosts that earlier ones brought trailing along, so it might be time to plant out the tender vegetables soon. Certainly hope so!

We've hatched out 8 new chicks in the incubator, then a few more for another friend, and we've now got some of the Indian Runners on the go which are progressing well. We're going to have to look into finding a new male from somewhere if we hope to breed any more of them up to avoid inbreeding problems, especially as we have no idea whether the current ones are closely related or not.

The DW has put on a test batch of lilac wine, whilst we wait in eager anticipation for the elderflower harvest to begin. Shouldn't be long now! We're going with champagne yeast following some good advice, we'll be sure to let you know how it goes.

Anyhow, I'm off to enjoy some of the Daylight Savings inspired after-work sunshine. I'll try and get some pictures for next time, all this text must be hard on the eyes!

Post PE Insurance

2009-10-02T13:29:00.001+10:00

Getting a liferaft up and running is a big job. It takes a lot of time, energy and resources, it involves a massive commitment and great changes. It's something that's obviously not for everyone, for a start there are many out there who don't really believe that this great edifice we've created, civilisation, will do anything but continue on it's merry way, despite all the evidence to the contrary. The belief in the magic of science, so often discussed in the pages of the Archdruid Report, soothes people's anxiety and allows them to continue on in the day to day drudgery of modern life.

One only needs to take a look over at Factor e Farm to see how hard it can be to get lifestyle changing enterprises off the ground. They solicit funding for their work in designing replicable technology that will hopefully assist people on the downslope of the resource consumption curve, and they have a job getting enough to do the work.

When it comes to less world-changing enterprises it's even more difficult. Most liferafts aren't intended for general consumption, the public perception is that you're looking after yourself and your family, and that you are operating from a defensive position against all of the consumers "out there".

As I've stated before, my vision is for a different kind of liferaft, one that is actually the seed for a future community.

Obviously if you are floating in the sea on a plank of wood after a maritime disaster you cannot fit all of the passengers onto your one piece of wood, but within reason a person would help as many as possible to survive. Sure, tough decisions would need to be made, but it's also obvious that selfishness inevitably leads to self destruction.

So it occurred to me this morning that perhaps there is a way forward for "liferafters" who share a similar train of thought, and who are resource constrained and feeling pressed for time. Liferafters are preparing for the worst, and the various shades between that and the best. They are unique in society in that they have the strength of conviction and belief in their understanding of the world situation sufficient to actually make changes to the way they live. The majority of people do not fall into this small demographic slice of pie.

No doubt we all have friends, family and acquaintances who, whilst concerned, do not share the same level of conviction, or the same feeling of impending doom. They are basically betting that things will continue on the way they are, at least for their lifetime.

Then there are those who are more serious, but are weighed down by the fact that in order to survive today they must exist within current society, must hold down jobs and work for a living. Not all of us are fortunate enough to be in a position where we can hold down a job and work on out liferaft from a suitable location (I try to thank my lucky stars as often as possible!)

So what's a citysider, who seriously believes that we are headed downhill, to do?

Enter Post PE (Peak Everything) Insurance.

Now, without a doubt, most of us are generous enough that when the chips are down we will take in any friends and family that straggle in from the cold. The only problem with this approach is that the resources on the liferaft would then be strained in proportion to the number expecting succour, and so everyone's chances of survival are reduced. What if there was a way that our city dwelling friends and family could contribute to the day-to-day development of their future salvation?

As we all know, insurance is a means to bet on the prospect of future disaster. What greater disaster do we face than the decline of civilisation?

If our city brethren were to enter into an agreement with a country liferafter whereby they contribute a small amount on a monthly basis as insurance against future problems, they would be covering themselves against disaster. This contribution would facilitate the advancement and preparation of the raft at an increased pace and level. I'm dubious about the potential for people to be able to sell off their city homes in times of crisis and buy into intentional communities at the last minute. Once the crisis hits such courses of action will be mostly unavailable. This offers a backup plan for those hoping to one day escape the rat race for their own piece of paradise.

Obviously there are a range of technical issues. For a start, what are they guaranteed to get on policy payout day? How is the trigger of the policy defined? How much should be charged, and what happens if they have a change of heart? What happens if they make it onto their own raft? What happens if they cannot make it to their chosen destination? What if you decide to pack up and leave the ranch prior to collapse?

The idea is in it's formative stages, but some of the following ideas may be headed in the right direction.

What do they get?

The most basic answer would be survival. Food, water and shelter. Any good liferaft will have systems in place for this, so the insuree would be guaranteed a share of these resources upon arrival. Shelter may be the most problematic, but a simple solution would be for the raft manager to keep a collection of tents, one for each family subscribed. Some form of communal housing might be more appropriate if the subscribers are generating a sufficient inflow of resources. In a crunch many peoples of the world pack more than three or four individuals into a single room, much less a three or four bedroom house...

Once the policy holders start to trickle in the labour force on the raft is increased, so work on more substantial accommodation can begin. Of course pre-prepared dwellings would be the ideal, but most councils currently frown upon starting new villages on farmland unless the landowner is willing to jump through hoops ad nauseum and sign away their soul and that of their children 7 generations hence. Once any form of disruptive collapse begins, sufficient to trigger the policy, then it would also be anticipated (perhaps too optimistically) that governing power's grip on our lives would be relaxed a little through simple inability to police such matters in more remote regions.

How is the policy triggered?

Given that there are already portions of society who have lost their homes thanks to the current economic downturn, it's quite conceivable that the week after next someone from your group of policy holders could face hardship to the extent that they need a place to stay. I would say that in the end it will come down to an agreement between the parties involved, and will depend on the stage of development of the property, the current regulatory environment, and personal willingness. I'm guessing that if you're the kind of liferafter who is willing to consider such a plan in the first place then you would be thankful for a few extra hands working around the place anyway, if some early dispossessed turn up on the doorstep.

Once there is any major disruption to food, water or similar resources, then we're going to see the majority of policy holders turn up ready for work.

What to Charge and a Change Of Heart?

Latter first, the simple answer would be to treat it the same as any normal insurance. If you opt out, you get nothing back. Insurance is a bet on the future, not a normal investment. This would need to be made clear from the start. In this way it provides certainty of title to the liferafter who may otherwise be concerned over partners opting out early in the piece to take a Caribbean cruise for instance, but does not rule out future arrangements in that regard as times get tougher.

The goal would be to set premiums at a level that the person paying them feels the same as they would about normal insurance. Charging enough that the person would be better paying off a mortgage on their own block of land will not really be conducive to success in achieving your policy signing targets.

On the other hand you obviously don't want to charge so little that you cannot achieve anything useful with the incoming funds. $5 a month will get a lot of subscribers, but it's not going to go anywhere toward setting up infrastructure to support that mass of people if they all turn up in a year's time.

There is a very good chance that your policy holders will be friends and family, so the idea would be to set the rates at mutually agreed and acceptable levels. After all, you are entering into an agreement designed to benefit both parties. They should understand the need for the investment, that the better you fare in preparing the place, they better chance they will have if things turn out badly. This must be balanced by the depth of their belief in what is approaching. If they don't see the value, they're not going to pay a cent, but then I doubt you'll be discussing this with them in the first place.

You could also offer other benefits to go along with the policy subscription. Perhaps an annual camping trip or farmstay, or a permanent camping spot for whenever they feel like getting away. Depending on how close they are you could even share the products of the farm, half a lamb now and then, box of veges fortnightly, you get the idea. Insurance with a CSA box drop as a sideline, better than a homeloan with a holiday thrown in!

It would also be good to consider having working bees with all policy holders so they can get to know one another (if they don't already) and so they can provide a bit of extra labour towards some of those larger projects, or the ones you normally wouldn't bother with if not for the festive atmosphere a working bee generates. It would be important to make sure they feel included in the development of the liferaft, and get plenty of chances to check on their future.

You would need to be clear about how much input they could expect to have before policy payout. If it's going to be a dictatorship, let them know from the start. In most cases I'm pretty certain they'd be willing to accept that you're running the show, at least until everyone makes use of the policy, when different arrangements would most certainly need to be made. And I'm equally certain that if they had a particular fondness for Cornish Aromatic apples you're not going to object to them planning ahead and planting a couple of trees in the corner of the orchard.

What happens if they make it onto their own raft?

This is another that can be answered by saying "it's insurance, not an investment", but once again that would be simplistic given we are talking about people we have some care for. This one does have a relatively simple answer though, so long as they make it onto a liferaft within reasonable geographical proximity.

Part of maintaining a seed style liferaft is building up a stock of organic materials that can be used as a seed to set up other people. There's nothing to say those people have to be right next door, so the obvious solution would be to guarantee a good stock of starter plants and livestock to anyone that has invested and ends up going out on their own.

In addition to that, one would hope that over the course of their insurance policy they've made a number of visits to your liferaft to pick up valuable practical skills they wouldn't have a chance to learn otherwise. In this way the policy can also be considered an educational subscription that has prepared them for their own adventure, all for a low subscription price with a free set of (hand forged) steak knives!

What if they can't make it?

We have no idea how things will turn out, and as always there are no guarantees. Perhaps it would be useful to formulate a plan to collect policy holders in the event of massive societal disruption. A number of plans might need to be put in place for various scenarios. A city locked down by the government to prevent unrest during times of food rationing is a different kettle of fish to one shut down by fuel shortages. The key here is communication, staying in touch with one another, knowing plans and sticking to them as best as possible. Further to that, knowing that if a person needs to deviate from the plans, that deviation will be along a predictable path so that there is a chance of meeting up is important. Arrange message hiding places, set CB frequencies in advance etc. In a nutshell, be prepared, but be prepared to be adaptive.

Most important of all, make sure they know you're going to help them out. I cannot imagine anything worse than sitting in the midst of a city gone mad, after investing hard earned money in salvation, thinking you'd been left adrift.

What if you decide to pack up and leave, before crunch time?

This one is a bit more difficult. We don't usually appreciate it when the insurance company holding our policy collapses and goes out of business, leaving us in the lurch. This will come down to an agreement between the parties involved, but I'd imagine some sort of reimbursement from the proceeds of the sale of the liferaft, if alternative arrangements cannot be made. After all, the property will have been improved in some measure by their inputs (combined with your own hard work, of course), so perhaps arrive at a mutually agreed termination figure to cover this eventuality. Remember, one day you might be knocking on their door for help...

If they put in $100 a month, then by the end of 5 years they will have contributed the princely sum of $6000. If you have 10 families subscribing, that's $60,000. As long as you haven't wasted that money you might realise at least 30% of it in asset-type improvement in value, or mortgages paid down, so could consequently offer that back. Remember, it's not about making a profit, it's about improving everyone's prospects.

In Conclusion, In Collusion

I'm sure there are many more issues to explore with this idea, but in it's initial form it offers a number of advantages to the socially isolated liferafter who has remote accomplices who are not ready to bail out on modern society. It's not quite an intentional community, and it's nothing like doing nothing at all. It's a way for those who really are concerned to make some concrete efforts to help save themselves. As mentioned before, you'd probably take them in anyway, but perhaps they will see some value in entering into such an agreement. For those that don't bother and rely on turning up when things turn sour, well, ultimately, you get to decide who does which job... be creative in your choices...

Conditions "out there" are getting more troubled. We might not have ten or fifteen years to get a place up and running, so added streams of resources would accelerate development and improve survivability for all involved. It's a win-win situation for those who are seriously concerned.

You're not going to take this idea to all of your friends and family, but if you're anything like us, you know a few firm believers who are just not in a position to make the move, so they may leap at the chance to make some concrete arrangements without having to give up everything they've got and head out bush.

I'd also advise only discussing it and entering into agreements with those who possess that inner certainty about our destination. None of us need legal battles or family fractures on the eve of societal decline, things that might arise by taking on people who don't truly appreciate the full spectrum of issues and potential futures. At the very least make sure they're willing to write off the loss...

Comments? Further issues? Extra ideas? All welcomed!!

Annual Roundup 2009

2009-09-30T18:07:00.001+10:00

Yet another birthday has arrived, though being blessed as I am by having it in early Spring, it doesn't seem like a cold Winter wind creeping under the door and making my joints ache, it's more like a fresh beginning. Something about birthdays, they always get me to thinking about where I've been and where I'm headed to, so this post is something of a self-indulgent ramble through the past and a smattering of thoughts on the future.

Sadly, Winter has passed me by once again and seen no progress on the fire based hobbies of charcoal production and blacksmithing. With fire season once again soon to be declared such plans need to be put off until Autumn rolls around again. I say no progress, but that is not entirely true, because there has been some sideline style progress given that I've collected some beverage cooling units, similar to condensers, that will work wonderfully for cooling the pyrolysis oil that I'll get from charcoal making, so with the exception of the connecting pieces I've got all the elements ready to go. Perhaps further progress can be made over the hotter months by way of assembling a unit ready for testing once the time arrives...

We've now owned the new block for almost two years, and believe me that time has flown by. We have the 5 year deadline on the house footings, which at first I thought was years away, but now I think will sneak up on us alarmingly swiftly. Given that three quarters of a year has crept by just trying to get the shed up (and I've little doubt the rest of the year will join it before it's done) we'd best get our act together!

Peak everything, which featured so predominately and urgently on the horizon not a year ago has faded from the public mind to a degree, at least in some circles, though in others there is renewed and ever increasing vigour as we see Transition Towns popping up all over the place, Councils creating peak oil plans et al. Our own plans are tied to our new block of land, and so have stagnated in the same degree. The urgency is still there, but I'm calm about the future now. No matter what comes our way we're equipped and skilled to handle it. Even if we had to walk away from both properties we would still survive somewhere.

I no longer try and convince or cajole people into believing that a great disruption is headed our way, that we are destroying our Earth, gutting it for short term pleasure. I've even managed to largely avoid arguing with the nuclear pundits who cannot see the grim realities of their chosen mode of salvation. If they succeed in destroying the Earth then we wont be around to worry about it anyway.

I've moved beyond ambiguous acceptance, uncertain belief, and into the realm of certainty. No, I'm not certain our current society will collapse in my lifetime, but I am certain that our current way of life is just plain wrong. I can see where I need to be, though I am still caught in the struggle to get there, and I've little doubt that the journey will last me my entire life. We need to adopt The Simpler Way, to do away with the devices of distraction and trinkets of turpitude, and to re-align our lives with Nature.

It is a difficult struggle, both personally and at the family level. I'm plagued with questions as to how our children will cope. If change in the state of society does not arrive in our lifetime then they may resent the lifestyle that we have chosen to strive to live, unless we are careful and cunning in the way we present that lifestyle to them. Then I wonder why I wonder, as they already have a keen awareness of many environmental issues, though they have yet to draw the threads together into the tapestry depicting humanity's horrific devastation of it's home that I see before me whenever I have the unpleasant opportunity to see the daily news. Perhaps they can be readily coaxed to make the changes that I struggle to enact? I only came to an environmental awareness as I reached my teens, so maybe with suitable nurture they will be driving the wagon whilst I struggle to climb aboard?

One way or another, the Simpler Way will be our only remaining life-giving choice. It won't be take it or leave it, it will be take it or leave... People don't much care for predictions à la chicken little, but I really don't think we've got more than 5 years before the next wave of economic decline, and I seriously doubt we're going to see any vast improvement in the condition of the biosphere in that time, extreme behaviour from Mother N. will be more and more the norm.

This doesn't dwell in the back of my mind, it is more like a filter through which everything I see must now pass. The carefree, junk laden, overly endowed days of our lives might be coming to an end in the near future, to be replaced by an age of hardship and toil and struggle for survival, so all the easy moments need to be cherished. Cherishing similarly needs to make way for work, lots of hard work to get things prepared. There are of course no guarantees, everything that is prepared can be taken away in an instant, but the act of preparing in and of itself educates the mind and body, prepares them for future problems and the labour required to enact the needed remedies.

Spring has bloomed, the leaves are clothing most of the trees, and there is hope for a bountiful and prosperous season ahead, but this year it will be about making hay whilst the sun shines, feathering the nest (building it might be a good first step ;-) ) and battening down the hatches, for there are more storms on the horizon.

On Even Ground

2009-09-21T16:53:00.006+10:00

It has finally begun, after all these long months we now have a level shed site, and therefore an official start on the shed construction.

Early Saturday morning I was finishing up packing a load to take out there when DW informed me that she'd just taken a call from our neighbour to let us know he'd be doing the work that very day once I made it out there. I rushed through the rest of the packing (without forgetting anything this time, last time I forgot the thermos, it was still sitting on the bench when morning coffee time arrived...) and made it over there in good time. After unpacking the load of stuff he arrived and we set about deciding on the best approach. Shortly after that the bulldozer roared to life and he was off and ripping.

After ripping, the first loads of dirt are pushed around.

Thankfully there were only a couple of patches of stone in the spot we'd selected. In other areas there are great reefs of stone sticking out of the earth, and finding one of those would have brought the project to a standstill. There were a number of adjustments made through the day, but before sunset it was done.

All done! The water level featured in an earlier post came in very handy.

I'll need to let the earth settle for a couple of weeks, so weekend after this next one I should be able to begin laying the shed out and digging the holes for the footings. Once they're dug it's time to grab the cement mixer, get a load of concrete mix and start filling the holes. When they've cured the rest of the project should go up quickly.

I'd been keeping myself occupied during the day working on the southern fence for the new orchard, and managed to get the netting up before dark. I'm going to save doing the barbed wire on all of the runs until last, seeing as it's the most exciting part of fencing.... not! Only one side to go on that project and we've got a fenced off orchard out there. Combine that with a tank on the shed and we can start planting this autumn (if not a couple beforehand).

The new orchard's southern fence.

On the home front there was great excitement in the house this morning at the sound of cheeping chicks. We'd tried incubating our own eggs a month ago, but nothing came of it, seems we have yet another dud rooster. We got a few eggs of some mixed bantam breed and put those in, and this morning we have six new chicks!!

The vegetable garden is powering along, as are the seedlings in the glasshouse, and there's only a few trees that haven't flowered yet. Sadly most of the almonds on the older tree are gone already. The parrots have a habit of nibbling all the flowers off and dropping them on the ground. If only they had the forethought to hold off nibbling early then they could come back later and get the fully grown almonds. Seems it's not only humans who don't have the sense to think about the future :-P

The Madness Continues

2009-09-14T17:35:00.001+10:00

It's been a very busy couple of weeks around the place! Between work and play-work there hasn't been a lot of time for much else, but over the weekend I managed to take a few pictures so that you can see what we've been up to, as well as reading the usual verbiage...

The toilet roll seedlings

We did make it out camping, and a great weekend it was. Started out a little windy, but shortly after erecting a screen of tarps to reduce the worst of it it all died down. The night was incredibly cold, and we woke to a thick frost and a case of the shivers which took a while by the fire to subside (I'm sure it wasn't totally due to the wine consumed the night before, the frost must have been partly to blame!) In addition to a long and leisurely walk to the creek we did a bit of digging in the crystal mines and found a few nice specimens, though nothing truly remarkable.

Before leaving we also marked out the new spot for the shed so that the neighbour will be able to pop over whenever he has the time and inclination and level the site for us. The location isn't quite as good as the last with regard to preserving the views, but it shouldn't do too much harm. At the very least it will divide it up into "garden rooms" with framed views lol!

Chooks on patrol

This Saturday just gone I took off out there again, though it was a slow start and I didn't make it out there until 11am. A good part of the early morning was spent welding two pipes into one longer one that was going to be the final stay for the eastern fence of the orchard. I'll admit now that I need a lot of catchup practice on the welding...

The stay went in swiftly upon arrival, so I dove into putting that fence up, being the longest and most daunting. It's only 50m long, but still daunting, so I hate to think what some of the longer ones at 200 - 300 m long will be like, though I might be able to take a few days for them. I had planned to tie salvaged chicken mesh over the top of the hingejoint to stop the goats from getting themselves stuck but pulling the mesh out of the dump turned out to be a whole lot more complicated than I'd anticipated. I ended up wiring the remaining portion of a roll of foot netting over the bigger holes where they usually run into trouble, and finished up the rest with more hingejoint offset enough so the holes are now too small to fit a goat head. I've now only got the 18m and the 30m sides to go. I'm thinking I may need to fork out the money for a roll of netting, though I'm going to try pulling the mesh out of the dump with a winch first.

The eastern fence

I also had a chance to speak to the neighbour, and he thinks he'll be up to do the shed site shortly. Fingers crossed it might be ready for next weekend, then we can begin the joy of digging the holes for the footings! Can't wait!

Spent Sunday getting back into cleaning the farmlet up. As long-time sufferers of this blog may know we were hoping to go on the local market in Spring, which is now here... Still a bit behind that schedule.

Started the day out fixing the front fence up so that it looked more neat, and contemplated the fence that needed to be cut to get the sewer through, and gave up thoughts of trying to repair it after the adventures with the other one (short lengths don't strain well... even after many years of trying) I think we'll get some lengths of pig mesh or sheep yard mesh and make a solid fence that way.

Following fencing we went to the local Show for a while. The kids had a ride on a pony, a few zooms down the jumping-castle cross slippery dip, a browse through the exhibits for the competitions, and a look at the four-odd specimens of poultry entered this year, and the various goats, sheep and cattle. After that it was a jump on a different castle, a dagwood dog each, and then a sit-down in the shade while they judged the junior show princesses and jackaroos, and then held a fashion parade. A choc-top each, which required a fair bit of cleaning up afterward, and we judged the show experience complete for another year, so set off back home.

Orchard in bloom.

A delightful (27 degree) afternoon was spent compiling a load of rubbish for the tip, which was carted off, and then trying to hide the greater amount of stuff that I brought back with me. I'm now the proud owner of a good stack of short pieces of corrugated & colourbond roofing, and a weighty pile of star picket pieces in various lengths. The roofing will be ideal for chook sheds and similar projects, and the old star pickets will be great to cut down for stakes for building garden edging. A most profitable excursion! Rather than unload all that lot I started adding to it all of the remaining outdoor goods that can safely live outside over at the new place, which further helped to clean the place up.

We've decided that as soon as we have the shed built we're going to market, we're not going to worry about the millions of jobs that we could complete in order to try and get a better price. we'd end up staying here forever! If we're going into a rental next then we need a place to store everything, so the shed is a priority, but once that's done, no more excuses!! So maybe there is only 3 or 4 weeks to go? Maybe...

Spring Madness

2009-09-01T18:11:00.000+10:00

It's been a while since the last post, busy and exciting times in the lead-up to spring. Last I checked in we'd done some initial work on the new orchard. This has moved along a little bit further, we've got the stays in on two of the posts (major achievement, I know, but we did do some other stuff as well). I'll need to weld a couple more up for the other three posts, then it will be time for some wire.

We spent a great family day out at the block weekend before last, cooked some sausages over the fire and took a leisurely walk down to the creek and then back via the big hill, with a stop-over at the old dump where we scrounged up some interesting bits and pieces.

The seeds for spring also went in that weekend, a variety of things planted up in toilet roll tubes. Only the basil and cucumbers have emerged so far, fingers are crossed for the rest as some of the seed is getting on a bit, highlighting the need to rotate seed more often. The problem faced there is that some types of seed have so much in a pack one could never get through it all before it declines in viability. Might be worth establishing a seed trade network for the spring flush, where half packets of varieties are sent off about the place. A much better approach than planting a tray of four year old seed and losing two weeks waiting for it to fail to germinate.

Last weekend started out rainy and miserable, with patches of sunshine, so after a quick trip out to the block to pick up some firewood we took a trip into town to do some shopping. I'd been working on two old lawnmowers for the last few weeks, trying to get them running reliably, but in the face of wifely displeasure at the ever lengthening lawn and the lack of suitable parts it was decided that a new mower would be the safest course of action. I've had a lot of lawnmowers over the years, but thinking back on it this is only the second one we have ever bought, and the first ever push-mower. The first purchased was the trusty old ride-on we got when we moved out here. Fifteen odd years of patching up and holding together with wishes various old pieces of junk has come to an end and we are now the proud owners of a new mower.

Sunday started out with assembling the new mower and taking it for a quick test run (the lawn was still wet from the rain overnight, and we all know mowing wet grass is bad news). This was followed up with some remedial work demolishing the old septic tank and filling it in, along with the addition of a few bags of lime. Yes, you guessed it, yet another milestone. The Flood Street Farmlet is officially connected to the Cudal Sewer!! No more swampy side paddock in the depths of winter when DW has put one load of washing too many through. No more glorious unsavory smells to chew upon during balmy summer evenings.

Once I was sure I'd survived filling in the tank (the sides of it were foot thick concrete made in the old style, without reo, but virtually indestructible to the tools of a mere mortal. The small sledgehammer is a ruin, swinging the large one almost killed me) it was time to clear out the old tin shed, and repair the door. By mid afternoon I had the truck loaded up with more 'materials' to go out to the block, another pile destined for the tip, and the shed had been updated with a hinged door in place of the sliding one that refused to slide. It's now the home for the bikes so that there is enough room for shiny new mower in the big shed. Amazing what a fellow can achieve when the safety of his new mower is at stake.

The letters to officially surrender our shed DA were sent today. That should eliminate all the fancy roadwork requirements, bringing us back to square one, an intersection and stock grids on the laneway. I'm not sure how we'll tackle those, but we'll find a way. The shed will go up under the exempt development code in a different location. I was lucky enough to talk to a member of the Department of Planning last week, and a member of the Department of Lands just before that, and neither could see any validity in Council's claim that we did not have legal access to the block. Given that, we're willing to try our luck and if Council decides to get stroppy about it we can meet them in court over it. As always, if we knew then what we know now, well...

This weekend, if all goes well, is camping time. It's DS1's birthday and Father's Day and calls for a weekend of celebration. Fingers are firmly crossed for some nice weather so we're allowed to go! Hopefully we can spend Father's Day doing some of the things I love, like preparing shed sites and installing fences!! If we do make it out then it's guaranteed we'll enjoy a quiet evening around the bonfire with a glass of red or three, the perfect cure for the hassals of modern bureaucracy.

Miniature Monolith & Rabbit Stew

2009-08-17T17:38:00.001+10:00

The weekend began with a trip out to the block to do some more work on the fence for the orchard area. I had thought there were only two posts available from the cattle yard demolition I'd done some time back, but upon arriving out there and surveying the materials stockpile I discovered the third necessary element for the fence. Fantastic news as I now had enough to get straight on with the job, no money needed!

I completed the first two posts before lunch, one next to the concrete post to hang the gate off, and the other further down the hill to form the south-eastern corner of the interim fence. Later on we will have another gate there to let us into what will be the lower front paddock, but at this stage we can just drive around it, so there is no need to expend the extra resources to put in the extra gate.

House Yard Plan. Orchard to the right, with three vege yards for rotating, chooks digging in between. Combined glasshouse/chookhouse planned as well. The gateway in the pictures below is just above the three rectangular yards, on the left.

The new fenceline will enclose the existing route of the "road" from the front gate, so we're shifting that so it runs along the new fenceline. One problem this created was that it ran straight over the top of an outcrop of rather large stones. After some lunch I thought I'd take a break from digging post holes and got stuck into digging out these obstructions, optimistically expecting that it would only take a short while to clear the taller ones out of the way.

Course of the new roadway looking roughly south from the front gate, the white tape is the fenceline and you can see the gateway-to-be down the end.

Sadly it wasn't to be so easy, and three hours later I'd evicted a sizable boulder from the roadway's course. According to some rough calculations it's about 300kg, which is rather heavy. Once I had it out of it's hole I shifted it back up the hill a bit and decided, rather foolishly, to stand it upright as a feature stone in what will one day be the front yard.

The monolith and attendants

Needless to say, once this was done I had serious second thoughts about setting to digging the third post hole needed to finish up the orchard fence outline. Bravery, or more foolhardiness, overcame me and I began digging, to find that the ground in the spot that had been chosen (on a map drawn about 70km away in the comfort of home) was soft and easy to dig, and right on top of the remains of an older fence post. Where the other posts had taken about an hour each, this one was planted within half an hour. The gods were certainly looking after me!

I took a quick wander around to see if I could bag a bunny for some stew before heading home, and got lucky again. We'd discussed it that morning and wanted to show the lads how a rabbit is skinned and prepared for the pot, so the unlucky bunny was loaded into the truck for the journey home.

Sunday had been selected as a day to be spent at home on the farmlet, catching up on some of the myriad jobs neglected in the drive to get some things done at the new place. A bit of maintenance fixing the laundry flyscreen door to ensure it latches properly, replacing washers in the bathroom (including an educational exercise for the lads and lots of willing assistance) and then it was out into the yard to skin the rabbit which had been hanging overnight. Eldest turned a bit green and headed off to engage in other pursuits, but mid-twin kept up the questions and was most interested to see what went on inside a rabbit.

Once that was done it was time to tackle the machinery crisis we are facing. Our push mower threw a vital component some time ago, taking with it some other vital components, and was considered well and truly dead. We'd borrowed and picked up a couple of other non-functional mowers that I was sure could be restored to working order. I concentrated on yellow Victa, a stylish, fairly recent (10 years or so?!), model that had all it's parts. After cleaning carbies, spark plugs and flushing fuel tanks the problem was isolated to a blocked muffler. Much banging and soaking and blowing later I was able to get it started and running. I promptly re-assembled all the protective and dress cowlings, and then attempted to start it again, without success. Aaaaaarghh! I'd had enough for the day, so it was relegated to the to-do list, once again.

We sampled the rabbit stew, and it was promptly consigned to the category of dog food. The flavours were interesting enough, but after chewing on the same small piece for a good five minutes and not having any impact upon it it was decided that actually consuming it might turn the kids off rabbit stew for life. Next time we'll have to let the creature rest for a few days perhaps? Might have to do a bit of research into preparing rabbits for the pot, something I should have done it prior to starting out! Needless to say, the bolognaise we had in it's place was very nice...

Rough Outlines

2009-08-11T18:38:00.001+10:00

If you've ever spent time at the drawing board you'll realise that you start with the rough outlines, and then progress to add in the details. It doesn't matter how many times you're starting over, the process is still roughly the same. We've heard from our certifier, and he's still waiting on a response over the issue of legal access from a planning friend of his, but otherwise the news is good. We can surrender the development consent and get rid of the new conditions, and they can't modify the house consent conditions to add on the things they have put onto the shed.

As long as we can proceed with building the shed under exempt development we can take this course of action. Once again it's back to the intersection and stock grids, but that's better than the alternative. We've gone to the Ombudsman as well, following on from the suggestion from Andrew and Heather of Tenderbreak Permaculture Farm. We haven't heard back from them yet, I imagine the wheels of power turn at about the same pace no matter where up the ladder they are situated, and I don't hold out a lot of hope, but it's a good feeling all the same, to know that we've told someone in power about the kind of professionalism that comes out of our Council.

This weekend just gone I actually got to spend two whole days out at the block. It was beautiful. Satuday was spent felling a rather large dead tree that was situated smack bang in the middle of the future orchard, and because the rest of the family was there as well we all went for a walk down to the creek, then up the rocky hill and back towards home base.

On the way back there was a little experience that just goes to prove that you're never too old to lack common sense. We found an old wheel laying in the grass up the top of the hill, the tyre still in serviceable condition, so it occurred to me that it would be wonderfully amusing to show the kids how it rolled down the hill. Once everyone was suitably gathered and attentive the wheel was set free. It rolled off with enthusiasm, and about 50m into it's journey I took the time to consider where it was headed, with some prompting from the DW. Straight toward the boundary fence with the neighbour, a creaky old thing of wooden posts and rusting wire.

Needless to say, I watched in horror (and I must admit a great measure of excitement) as the wheel gained speed on it's journey toward the inevitable collision. It struck and lifted two of the large wooden posts out of the ground as the netting bowed inward, before propelling the wheel back. We watched from the top of the hill as it curved off down toward the creek, completing it's journey in a slow spiral in the flat above the empty dam. Quite a momentous journey, and the kids absolutely loved it, funniest thing they'd seen all week!

The big strainer, and remains of the big tree

They all departed about 3pm, leaving me to finish up a bit of wood cutting, and to put in the big concrete strainer post that was going to help form up the orchard fence. That was a mighty traumatic job, luckily the neighbour came by and lent me a hand getting it up and into the hole. After that it was getting dark, so off home.

The next day started with a trip to the FIL's to pick up some old apple bins, as I'd packed the four remaining oak trees in the truck and intended to finish planting them out. With 6 bins loaded up I headed back out to the block, and started the day with some tree planting. The afternoon was then spent chopping up more of the newly felled tree, and after struggling to drag the wire rope back up the hill to pack it away I was well and truly done for the day.

The Oak Grove, with 5 oaks in bins

Back on the farmlet, our neighbours had acquired a couple of ducks that they then discovered were a bit large to be pets for their grandson, so we were called up and asked whether we wanted them. The DW was very enthusiastic and the appropriate arrangements were made. Yesterday we became the proud owners of a breeding pair of Indian Runner ducks!

Back to the Drawing Board

2009-07-28T17:40:00.002+10:00

We seem be to going around in circles at the Farmlet at the moment, which I imagine must be a bit frustrating for you who take the time to read this. Unfortunately that's the sorry tale that is to be told, so unless I choose to say nothing at all, it's what you get ;-)

As a bit of a test I called up the Council yesterday to challenge them about the need for 50m of RG2 roadway connected to the intersection. Council's policies (I should point out that they are new policies only accepted by Council back in May) state that the old RG1 standard of single lane gravel road is now non-existent, except for right-of-way situations serving only an average of 16 vehicle movements per day. The result of the conversation was as useful as I'd expected. I was told that for each allotment the average was 8 movements per day, how people would use 8 vehicle movements per day I don't know, some people obviously drive way to much! Even if we dropped the kids off and picked them up from school that's only 4 movements per day, and living in the country if you drive out to drop the kids off then you keep on going if you need to. As there were two allotments up our lane (and it seems we have to pay for both of them) this equates to 16 movements in total, and the RG1 standard was only applicable for less than 16.

I tossed and turned last night rather than sleeping, and then realised just after midnight that the Council offers a 2 movement discount to encourage development. Silly me for missing that in our conversation.

First thing this morning I called up a business that does road building to get a ballpark figure on how much the roadworks were going to cost. At the end of it we arrived at about fifteen thousand dollars to do the upgrade (yes, $15,000) all of which should have been levied on the guy doing the subdivision. Strangely, all of which was levied on the guy doing the subdivision, and was passed on to us in the purchase price. Hence our extreme reluctance to spend more money on it. But I'm getting the distinct impression that Council aren't overly concerned about spending our money for us.

I called the Council guy back again after finding out this sum, but was directed to voicemail. I'm figuring that the calling number display alerts them to the fact that it's me so they avoid taking the call now. I left a message outlining the reason for the call, particularly to discuss the fact that he hadn't taken into account our supposed discount, and indicating that I would like a call back to discuss the issue.

After much discussion with DW we came up with a last resort plan. I don't expect the response from Council to be positive. It hasn't been to date, and even the most positive things have carried with them heavy burdens in the way of additional conditions, typically to make up for all the stuff they forgot in previous versions. There's a special brand of ineptitude being cultivated up there.

So our cunning plan is to ditch the shed development consent and to build the shed under the new NSW exempt development rules. The certifier was pretty certain that Council's idea of legal access to the block was flawed and that the current state of the access shouldn't hinder building under those rules.

This eliminates all of the conditions that have been applied to the shed, including the road upgrade. We then fall back to the conditions on the original house consent which included the stock grids and the BAR/BAL intersection. I'm guesstimating that more than half of the cost of the works would be tied up in the 50m of roadway, so for roughly $7,000 we should be able to upgrade the intersection. Another $6,000 for putting in the stock grids, and we arrive at a total of $14,000 of work.

Sure, that looks pretty close to the other number, give or take a thousand.

Did I neglect to mention that in addition to the road upgrade we also needed to fence off the road reserve? I've estimated that at $5,000 odd dollars for materials, so the total for upgrading the road and fencing would be (conservatively) around $20,000. This way it stops at $14,000.

An additional benefit would be the scrapping of the new condition that was applied to the house consent (which is a dubiously legal condition at best, so I've been informed), which required that we do the roadworks before pouring the footings on the house. Under this new plan (which is a lot like the old one) we can do most of the house before having to worry about roadworks.

So I keyed a letter off to our certifier to request clarification on all of our understandings and intuitions, and now await a reply from both people. Whilst I wait I'm left to ponder the situation. Perhaps there is something we haven't achieved that we should have, and so we are being sent in circles until that achievement is made? The universe, by way of a friend, was kind enough to supply us with building materials, tools and other goodies on the weekend, so it's still looking after us, there's little doubt about that. There must be other processes in motion, things happening behind the scenes that need to catch up and arrive at a particular point for us to move onward.

So, depending on the answer to my email and phone calls, we might not be proceeding with locating the shed in the spot that we've picked out and done work to clear up. Not such a bad thing perhaps, though I've now got to go back to the drawing board and pick another spot (more than 15m from any boundaries IIRC). Tricky on our hilly country, but as you might have guessed, I don't mind a challenge, though I'd prefer it if it wasn't the same challenge over and over and over again...

Two New Trees

2009-07-20T17:48:00.001+10:00

I began the weekend without any real idea of what I was going to get up to. The family is all away on holidays, so I had to take into account that I needed to be around to feed the animals at the FSF, so spending the whole weekend camping at the new block was out of the question. In the end I decided I'd nip out to the block on Saturday and plant a couple of trees and chop some firewood.

Planting trees out there is quite an involved job. Not so simple as digging a hole and bunging the tree in, that's for sure. That's part of it, but once that bits done then it's a matter of preparing an apple bin by removing part of the base so that it can fit neatly over the tree. Then a couple of posts are hammered in around it, and then mesh is strung around the posts. Finally a row of rocks or timber is laid against the two sides of the bin that aren't enclosed all the way to the ground.

The Stone Pine

What all this effort? Well, goats and hares of course. Both would make a quick meal out of the young trees, and at this stage of the game there is no point fencing off large swathes of land for tree planting as we'd never be able to keep up with the maintenance. So for now we're going to stick with a few strategic trees in apple-bin safety systems.

These are the first trees we've planted out there since just after we got the block, when we planted the commemorative oak. The two new trees are placed in strategic positions. Another oak has gone in, this time in the spot that is going to become the oak grove, just down the hill from the house. The other was a stone pine (Pinus pinea) and it went in the spot where we're going to have a grove of, well, stone pines...

They're not much use on their own as poor isolated trees, but they are intended to be symbolic more than practical at this stage. In future, whenever I look at, or wander past those spots I'll be thinking to myself "there's the stone pine grove" and so on. It helps cement the idea and the vision in place in my mind, and that helps make the reality so much easier to create.

The only features that actually exist on this plan are the boundary fences,
and even they're not necessarily in the right place...

Had tea in town on Saturday night with the parent's in-law, and arranged to pick up the next day a load of bent and rusty old star posts that were on offer. When I arrived to do this the stack turned out to be a lot bigger than expected, and there was a concrete strainer thrown in with it, which would have been a bit big to be unloading at home and then reloading to take out another weekend, so Sunday was spent with another drive out to the new block to unload the bounty.

All-in-all a great weekend, though perhaps not as productive as possible given most of it was spent driving around. Seems to be the common theme over the last few months, more time driving than working. Still, with the number of posts gifted to me I should be able to put a fence around the orchard out there, and then some, which gets us that one step closer, and that's always a good thing!

In other news we've got our construction certificate for the shed now, so we can begin whenever we please. Problem being that I've got to go to Sydney this Friday, to return on Saturday arvo, and then will be spending Sunday with the family for the first time in almost two weeks. Maybe I can convince them we need to be catching up over some nice hard digging out on site :-)

Bolt Gets It Right

2009-07-20T08:30:00.003+10:00

Andrew Bolt, columnist for the Herald Sun [blog], and frequent talking head on various TV shows, has got one right.

I was "lucky" enough to catch him on one of the TV news-faux-mercials this morning.

Generally he has little idea about the problems facing our world and society, arguing against human-induced climate change for instance, and overall having very little understanding about how the underlying problems of resource depletion have created the troubles we see all around us. Ask him what a war on terror is about and he's sure to think it has something to do with bombings by radicalized groups, failing to make the connection that it's more about subduing the terror that arises in the hearts of all patriotic westerners when they think of going without their privleges, all of which are thanks to oil.

Well folks, this morning he got it right. He uttered words so profound I was momentarily flabbergasted.

He subtley pointed out that last night's win on MasterChef was more a demographic decision than a true judgment of the skill of the participants. Perhaps he has finally found his niche, a spot in the heady world of international affairs where his incisive insights can be put to truly beneficial use.

:-P

The Party & The Cleanup

2009-07-13T12:15:00.001+10:00

The big birthday party was a bit of a success. I spent the Friday afternoon and evening cooking up some treats and preparing the meat, so on the day we started with profiteroles, then had lunch of fennel pork belly and roast vegetables, following that with a birthday cake (fudge chocolate with vienna filling and icing and a bit of blackberry jam) and a piece of lemon meringue pie (sadly the lemon bit was runny, but it was still edible). We all enjoyed the time together, the weather was nice enough, not the sunny days of the week before, it was overcast and a bit chilly, but still nice all the same. All in all a top event!

After the main festivities were completed we sat around the campfire into the early evening, roasting marshmallows with the kids until their bedtime, then it was quiet time with the brother, listening to some old hits on the local radio station, sampling some red wine, singing to the better tunes. Campfire time was cut short when "I can't stand the rain" began to play, and, inevitably, it began to rain.

Sunday dawned cloudy, and after a suitable period of morning recuperation I packed up copious amounts of hot water for coffee and set off to the new land, hoping to get through most of the preparatory work needed in getting the shed site ready to go.

Shed site before. It is going to sit across the picture, and the bins further
back will impinge upon it's footprint. The fence to be removed runs from the
second post on the right across the picture to the left.

Started out with measuring up the location for the shed according to the submitted plans. I'd made a couple of last minute on-paper changes to the location to accommodate some other tentative future plans, so I needed to know where the shed was really going to go. Once this was sorted out it was on to removing the small fence that formed the back boundary of the shed yard. As the first picture shows, there's also a lot of materials stored in the region of the shed site. Once the fence was down all of these needed to be moved, which was the largest part of the job. There must have been a couple of ton of steel in there at least.

Shed site after. The fence is gone and all the resources are moved into a neat stash
out of the way. You can just make out, if your eyes are sharp, some white posts,
far left cutting across the shadow, in front of the right-most bin, and then a
couple more cunningly hidden on the mid-right.

Amazingly I made it through it all, and had time to chop a small load of wood before dark. Then it was off for home again. The next major action on the shed project should be getting the earthworks done, which will most likely involve a bit of (internal) road building as well.

Below is a picture, for no particular reason at all, of the wonderful old sawmill we were gifted with. It's going to need a bit of work before it runs again though... Nice old piece of machinery all the same.

Step 2(a) - CC & Fencing

2009-07-06T15:48:00.004+10:00

We've got the ball rolling to get a construction certificate so we can put up the shed. It should be finalised by the end of the week if all goes well. We wont be able to get any real work started until the weekend after the next one, as we are celebrating a family birthday which will consume a large proportion of the weekend. And well it should, celebrations are very important things!

The weekend just gone started out rainy and cold, so Saturday, apart from visiting the poultry show in Orange, was spent in the shed tinkering on a project (sorry, cannot reveal this one as it is the present for the aforementioned celebration).

Sunday dawned cold but dry (except for the ground which was a slushy mess, which is proper for winter, finally). I set out for the block with the intention of installing the patch of boundary fence needed so I can open up the end of the shed yard so the bulldozer driver can push dirt to the correct spots, and collecting a little firewood.

The fencing was a challenge, 100 odd metres of fence, constructed in a new style. I'm used to fencing to exclude sheep and dogs, not goats which present a problem as they get their heads stuck in the fence due to their horns, so they need a particular sized netting to minimise this problem. Unfortunately I also took on board some other suggestions, and my experience and skill was not up to the new process.

The new fence is on the left. The shed site is behind the tree in the distance.

It went up in the end, but it's a bit floppy in the belly because I couldn't get a tight enough strain on it. As I was running out of time I had to tie it up and leave it as it was. It wont be experiencing stock pressure from within for a while, and only cattle and sheep on the far side so it will do it's thing, but it's not my finest fence. With luck I will get a chance to do some remedial work to it down the track, but I'd say after I've finished the shed!

I still need to remove the scrap of fence that is in the way, and then shift some of the stockpile so that the shed site is clear and there is enough room to push dirt around. Then comes the real challenge of the job, that of getting the site level. There is about a 40cm drop from front to back of the shed footprint. What's worse is that the area in front of the shed is probably 40cm - 60cm higher out to 4m from the opening. We can't have drainage issues, nobody wants water flowing through their work and storage space, so we're going to need to creatively shift dirt around to avoid this issue. That's the challenge for the next free weekend...

Victory, Sort Of...

2009-07-02T13:18:00.003+10:00

The new development consent arrived in the mail today. It largely fulfills the agreed outcomes of the meeting with Council, excepting the fact that they've inserted a clause that means we have to upgrade 50m of the laneway along with the intersection, to the new standard. I guess it's Council policy to provide a little bit of punishment with every success. You might think you've reached an agreement with them, but it seems they're always going to try and squeeze a little more out of you. At least we don't have to upgrade half a kilometre of laneway...

All in all, the result is good enough for now. We can get ourselves a construction certificate and build the shed, which was the original goal of the project. Once we've completed that bit, it might be time to take the whole sordid tale to the mayor and his cohorts, and then to the media, and see if we can get some of those conditions altered further in our favour. After all, I was reading in Council's business paper that they've approved the new road specifications, and it states that RG1 roads will only be allowed for right-of-way lanes and those experiencing less than 16 vehicle movements per day, contrary to the guy's statement that the RG1 standard no longer applies at all. We wont stir the nest for now, we can proceed with our plans for a bit until we run up against the requirements of the new conditions, but at some stage we're going to need a better reckoning, just for the principle of the thing. If we let them get away with it, who's next on the list to suffer?

So, from here, it's construction certificate, then a bit of earthworks, then some building. I'll need to put in a bit of extra fence before then, hopefully I'll be able to do that this weekend, and I must also shift some of our stockpile around so that the dozer can get in there and push the dirt where it needs to go. Exciting, productive work, rather than the mental gymnastics and social sorties required to date.

One-Person Water Level

2009-06-29T14:52:00.013+10:00

As an antidote to the recent rounds of gripes and groans, here is a water level I built on the weekend, with instructions on reproducing it. This is an upgrade from one I built a long time ago out of a juice bottle, a lump of wood and some clear tubing. It's from a design my mother passed on to me, though I'm not sure that her mother passed it on to her...

To begin, you need some materials:

A water drum with a tap, or similar vessel. It needs a tap because this is the advanced version. If you want to build a simple one, any old water container will do, though it needs to be big enough to hold enough water to fill the piping you use and then some.
A length of clear plastic hose. I went for 12mm diameter hose, 2m of it. This matches up to standard 13mm irrigation fittings, making the whole project possible. If you go with a different size hose you'll need different fittings.
A length of wood for your staff. I made mine out of a 2.3m length of 70mm x 20mm pine, trimmed back to 2.2m as my length of tubing was only 2m. No point carrying around extra wood :-) I routed the edges to make it easier to hold, and to look at, then gave it a few soaking coats of linseed oil to help preserve it.
A length of old measuring tape. You can skip this bit, especially if you are only using the level to create, well, levels, rather than to measure contours etc. I took mine from an old 30m reel tape that had lost it's end, the cloth tape is easy to work with. You could use a bit of old metal tape measure if you desire, but be careful cutting it!
Some pipe clamps, 3 or 4 saddle clamps, a couple of short lengths of 13mm irrigation pipe, a 13mm elbow joiner, and two 13mm to garden hose couplers.
Suitable length of garden hose with couplers. I got a 15m garden hose with fittings for $8 from the local super-hardware. I could have as easily used the one in the garden, but the DW might have gotten a bit upset if it wasn't returned promptly, so I thought it best to spend the extra to get a dedicated one. The beauty of this design is that you can couple as many hoses together as you want to make the main line, all for a lot less expense than buying clear hose for the full unit. Just be careful your drum is big enough to fill the hose and then some, and that there are no leaks along the way.

Putting it together...

Starting with the drum. Take a short length of the 13mm tube and connect one of the hose couplers to it and clamp in place. Then push the other end over the outlet on the tap of your drum and clamp it as well (make sure you put the clamp on the hose before pushing into place!) The drum is now ready to go. In the picture below there is a cover over the end of the hose coupling, so it might not look exactly as you'd expect.
Taking your plastic tubing, thread a clamp on, then insert the elbow, securing it with the clamp. Push a short piece of 13mm irrigation pipe (6cm or so, just long enough to cover the ends of the two fittings with a slight gap between) onto the elbow, clamp in place, thread your next clamp on then insert your other hose coupler and clamp in place. This is now the bottom of the tube. The open end is the top.
After preparing your wood for the staff, if you're going to use a tape, thumbtack this (if cloth tape, screw if metal) towards the outside edge of the face of the staff, leaving some space at the top and bottom.
Screw, with a large flat headed screw, the top of the clear tubing at the top of the staff, as close to the centreline of the face as possible (doesn't need to be exact of course, unless you're particular) You should make sure there is 10mm - 20mm of tube above the screw so that it wont tear out too easily. When screwing it on you don't want to completely seal the top of the tube, you need to allow air in and out to allow the water to level. A firm but not overly tight connection is best. Also try to make sure the elbow and coupler at the bottom is facing outward from the staff face before you screw the pipe in place.
Straighten your tubing out down the length of the staff, space your saddle clamps out and drill some pilot holes, then screw the clamps down over the tubing. You want to make sure your last clamp is right down on the elbow installed previously so that it helps to stretch the tubing out nice and straight.
You're finished the construction stage!

Using the level... Preparation

Turn the tap on your drum off, then fill it with water.
Place your drum in a slightly elevated position near where you want to take your levels or work out your contours. You'll need a fairly rugged stand due to the weight of the water in the drum, so a toolbox, garden chair or something similar. Keep in mind that the height of the drum helps dictate the height of the water in your staff.
Plug one end of your garden hose onto the drum. Plug the other end onto your staff.
Making sure you've got a grip on the staff (nothing worse than the staff falling over and draining when you're miles away from a source of water) open the tap on the drum, and loosen the lid to let some air in.
Walk around with the staff, not only for the exercise, but to help get the bubbles out of the water in the piping. Your staff is now ready to put to work.

Using the level... In Action - Levelling

Pick the spot you want to level everything else to. This is ground zero.
Place your staff on that spot. With a pencil mark the height the water comes up to on the staff.
Place the staff in another spot. If the water rises above your previous mark then you're lower down. If it sinks below the previous mark then you're higher up. You can tell by how much if you've attached a tape to the staff by reading off the difference in centimetres (or inches if you put your tape on that way around!) between the first and second marks. When the water is at the same mark then you're at exactly the same level. Great for setting up concreting, paving etc.

Using the level... In Action - Contours

For measuring contours we need to do a bit more preparation, namely measuring out a grid on the ground. Something like 5m intervals is good if you want a reasonable picture of your plot of ground. 1m grid if it's a small spot and you need incredible detail. 10, 20, 50 if you're less enthused about the idea of contour maps than I. You need to do your best to make sure your grid is as square as possible.
You can also measure at intervals along structures such as fences and buildings, and between points. The key, with either grids or features, is to be able to place the measured point on a map back in the "lab".
Once you've marked out the spots you want to measure you then run around with the staff. Pick the highest point as zero (or the lowest, or any old point, as long as you record which one it was) and mark it on your staff, then record each spot as a value below or above that (so -5cm, or +8cm) for each of your points.
Hopefully you included enough lengths of hose to get you around the whole job without moving your water drum, but there are certain occasions when you'll need to move it. Points beyond your reach are one, the other is cases where your slopes are bigger than the height of your staff. If you go below or above that the water drains out and all is lost :-)
If you need to move the drum, mark one point from your current measurements as your new "zero" for the second set of measurements. Once your drum is moved, re-measure that zero spot, make a new mark on the staff and measure all changes relative to that mark. Imagine you are working down a hill, your bottom-most mark is at -0.9m from your original zero. You move the drum so that this mark is now 0.0m (the new zero.) The next measurement you take is 10cm below this (-0.1m) Therefore, relative to your initial measurements it's -1.0m.
Once you've completed all your measurements you need to return to the "lab" and set to work analysing your data. Draw your map, mark in your points, and then mark in all the differences in heights. At this stage you need to make amendments for any changes in the location of the drum as described in (5), so that you end up with a series of measurements all relative to your original starting point.
Once you have all your relative height differences, you need to pick a starting height and point. If you're lucky you'll know the height of somewhere upon your property, relative to sea level (via topo maps etc) if not, pick any arbitrary value, much higher than the difference between your lowest and highest measurements. If your difference is less than 20m then you can safely select 20m and work from there for example.
Add or subtract each value from that 20m successively across your grid of points, pencilling them into your map.
Once this is done you can either roughly guess your crossing points, or you can calculate them using trigonometry. Lets say we have two points 5m apart, one point is 24.4m, the next is 25.2m. We know that somewhere on that line the 25m contour passes over. 25.2m - 24.4m is 0.8m. We can divide the 5m into 8 parts, and mark in that the 25m contour passes 2 parts short of the 25.2m point, or about 1.25 back (or alternately, 6 parts ahead of the 24.4m point, 3.75m ahead)
We can also use a fancy formula that gives us the same result: distance = (rise to meet contour x original run) / original rise. So distance = (0.6m x 5m) / 0.8m = 3.75m so our 25m contour is 3.75m from the 24.4m point.
That's all there is to it. Calculate where all your proper contour points are then play join the dots!

We Might Be Getting There...

2009-06-25T19:26:00.004+10:00

The meeting with Council on Monday went well enough, considering that they weren't about to start taking our desires to heart and doing the best by us, they've still got their own goals that run perpendicular to those of us mere residents of their domain.

We had a win on the requirement to upgrade the entire length of the laneway to our block, but even though the previous developer paid out a hefty sum to get this same Council to upgrade the roadway for the subdivision in the first place, we're still going to have to build their intersection for them, and that will need to be to the appropriate standards.

They've also indicated that they're willing to alter the timing for when this requirement needs to be met. We can do it prior to pouring the slab on the house, which means we'll be able to build the shed sometime this year, after all. That is, of course, assuming they cannot think of anything else to hit us with.

So, six months down the track and we're pretty much where we hoped to be sometime back in January. I posted a letter off to them today, requesting the changes discussed in the meeting, and the manager there stated at the time that he would deal with it very quickly. As long as I haven't missed out any words like "reflections" or included any words that shouldn't be in the letter, then by this time next week I hope we will be in possession of the appropriately amended document. From there it's construction certificate and the joy of building!!

It was touch and go there for a while. The DW is still keen to pack the whole adventure in and spend our hard earned money on something that already has a house etc. and I must admit that over the last few days, or weeks, I've considered the same myself. At the moment I'm in the mental gutter, not quite knowing where to go with it all, not really wanting to think about it, but still picking at it even though it's painful. Stupid behaviour for a grown (if not mature) person. ;-)

Theoretically, once we are over these initial humps we should see some clear sailing ahead. The private certifier is to take care of all the future inspections, with the exception of the sewerage system, and once we have the laneway sorted out to pour the footings then we should be able to take advantage of the new exempt development rules and do pretty much what we want. It's just that, faced with $3k of fencing, and a rough estimate (from Council) of $5k of roadworks for the intersection (I hate to think of what upgrading the entire lane would have cost) we've still got a fair bit to spend before we can begin thinking about all the spending we need to do on the house.

Weighing up against the idea of giving up on this path and setting off down another is the continued high price of land with houses on it. Anything with a house in the district is going for well over $400k, especially if it has water. At least we have a nice parcel of good land, with water, all for a decent price. Just a shame we can't take it to a different Council area LOL!

I think in a couple of days, once the strain of travel has worn off, the weekend has rolled around, and we've had a chance to play out there again we'll begin to forget all the stress and concentrate on the good aspects of the whole thing, and all will be well again. I hate being uncertain about planting trees, and I know they're itching to go in the ground :-)

A Quick DA Update!

2009-06-22T09:59:00.003+10:00

We got our amended development consent on Thursday of last week. "Not happy Jan" as they say. Besides determining in our favour on the zincalume issue, and letting us know it's okay to fence the road reserve rather than putting in stock grids, they've now decided that we need to upgrade the entire laneway to RG2 standard (which is essentially 2 lane gravel through road standard). This is for a lane servicing a single dwelling, on a dead-end road, coming off an RG1 standard lane.

So I've called everyone (well, not quite, but close) in preparation for a meeting with Council today. Discovering gems like the fact that the Council built the existing road at great expense to the subdivision developer. So they charge one guy for it, then charge another for it again. Nice one. Not sure if they are allowed to do that under Section 94 rules...

Lots of deep breathing exercises, a dozen drafts of notes, a final succinct summation of the issues. If we don't get satisfaction we'll be taking the whole sordid case history to the Mayor, and if there is no satisfaction there, then we'll take it to court, the court of public opinion that is. For a Council that wants to promote development they sure are going about it the wrong way.

I've got to go away for a few days after the meeting today, so I won't be sharing the results until later in the week. All fingers crossed!

Slow Grind The Wheels

2009-06-15T13:38:00.003+10:00

Of bureaucracy...

We're still waiting on our DA amendment to allow us to build our shed. I've been flat out with work the last few weeks, but it hasn't been enough to keep the mind off it ;-) They assure me it will be this week. Tuesday in fact, but that seems so close that it must be wrong, lol!

These slow grinding wheels help reinforce the idea that we will not receive any salvation from above with respect to all of the problems we face. Government is glacially slow at the best of times, without taking into account the political expediency of short term gain proceeding long term goals.

I'm currently reading John Michael Greer's The Long Descent, which is great stuff so far. A lot of the territory is familiar given that I religiously read his blog, but it's great to read it as a single narrative, and there have been a number of new gems in amongst it. I expect that there will be more as I get into the latter half of it. I'm looking forward to passing it on to the DW, as she has only heard his message secondhand via my babble, I think she will enjoy it first hand.

I managed to score a number of orchard trellis supports that had been welded up out of star posts. An hour or so with the angle grinder and I now have fifty odd star posts, enough to build a fence around the stage-one orchard out at the new place. In amongst getting the roads and fences done for the shed DA (fencing there needs to be all new materials, so recycled stuff is out) I will hopefully have time to whack that fence in so we can consider planting something out there this year. Our lonely oak, planted not long after purchase, is hankering for some companionship!

I've got a pile of old mesh and wire in one of the gulleys. I'm thinking as a remedy for the need to go all new on the council improvements I might go all recycled on the orchard fence. Not sure how greatly I fancy untangling old wire netting though, so there will be more thought applied between now and then...

If I do get my DA this week you could be in luck with two posts, though it could well be a scary rant on the subject. Until then, keep well!!

Change In The Weather?

2009-05-22T14:59:00.004+10:00

Normal for out here is clouds flowing in from the west, and occasionally dropping a bit of rain on us. Infrequently we might get clouds from the north to east quadrant of the sky that would occasionally drop a bit of rain. I remember sitting at a barbeque with friends across the road a couple of years ago and everyone commenting on the clouds from the north that were dropping a light sprinkle on us, saying how unusual it was.

In the last couple of months we've seen clouds come in from the east to north-east more frequently. At least two or three times this year already, and it always seems to co-incide with the big storms off the coast up in Queensland/Northern New South Wales. I'm not sure whether they will bring us any rain yet, the ones flowing in today don't seem to be putting a lot of effort in, but it's still early yet. They might put in some effort around 3pm. My fingers are firmly crossed as we haven't had any since the camping trip.

A more traditional westerly storm back in March

We didn't end up making good on the plans to go out camping again, ill kids don't mix well with the cold autumn nights that go along with camping out here. Maybe if we'd gone then we would have had more rain ;-)

I also held off on tree planting, I'd like to wait until the fruit plants are dormant, and I'm going to get another load of sheep manure from a local farm so that the other trees can get a good start in life. To be honest I'm also a bit reluctant to stick them in. I want them in the right spots, so I don't have to adapt plans around them later, and it's rather difficult to anticipate every possibility. I did nip out there last weekend and do a bit of measuring and planning. The time between now and planting can be spent designing the best plan of where the various things should go. I've only drawn up a hundred or so variations to date, there can't be many more possibilities!

I also managed to get out into the berry patch here and give it a good weeding and clean-up. Just got to try and keep it that way! Our new chooks have final reached laying age, we got our first egg yesterday, and another this morning, so we're off to a good start. I also had a chance to fire up the forge and hammer some hot metal, very satisfying after all those months. I made a rough imitation of a hand-held weeding hoe, though it didn't turn out much like I'd hoped. I'm going to try making a trowel and a replacement handle for our frying pan as my next projects, hopefully this weekend if time permits.

Kitchens & Furnaces

2009-05-06T15:24:00.006+10:00

Yet again the universe has conspired to assist us in it's own peculiar fashion. We received news last week that someone working in at the Totally Local store in Orange had acquired a complete kitchen from a fire damaged home. The kitchen itself was unharmed but for some soot & smoke. Knowing that opportunity might knock a couple of times, but that it was always best to secure a bird in the hand rather than watch any number flutter away into the bushes, we reassigned some priorities, reconsidered finances, and purchased it.

New Kitchen

It's a lovely piece of work under the grime. Looks to be Tasmanian Oak, and modern stuff, well, more modern than our old kitchen, which is the slat fronted doors that were popular some time in the 70's, if then. I carted it home late last Friday, and we set about cleaning it up and deciding where it would all fit in. I should say, the DW set about cleaning it, I set about building the bits that went toward installation, and undertaking said installation. Not that I don't like cleaning... well, maybe I don't :-)

Old Style Kitchen Cupboards

So far we've installed a big pantry unit and a trio of overhead cupboards, one of which contains a rangehood unit. Beautiful stuff! The previous kitchen was sadly lacking in storage space, all of it below-bench and poorly organised. The pantry unit alone has allowed us to move all of the foodstuffs from the other cupboards into it, with room to spare. There is one corner unit we can install, then the rest requires the services of a plumber to set up the tap. That will allow us to remove the last of the old stuff.

We had been contemplating getting new benchtops made up for the old kitchen, they were, to say the least, tacky, having been cobbled together from various pieces as we changed the layout over the years. With a new kitchen, it will be worth the expense of getting benchtops to suit, so that's one of the upcoming projects once we have it all installed.

Due to the way it needs to be laid out we'll be left with an odd corner where we currently have a cupboard and the drawers. As we want to completely exorcise the old kitchen I'm thinking it might be a good spot for a built in shelf unit.

Having a decent kitchen will improve the saleability of the place greatly. The previous kitchen was tres tack to say the least, even dodgoir. The new one might not be tres chic, but it will be a vast improvement.

On the farm front, no news yet on the status of the DA amendment. If the weather is nice this weekend (predicted not, which is understandable given it will be a full moon) we will get out for some more camping and a big tree planting day. Hopefully even if we don't camp there will still be time for a bit of planting.

Getting stuff in the ground and growing out there is very important in the grand scheme of things. We can survive in a tent, but cannot survive without food. Whilst I hope that society will run along smoothly enough that we can complete all our plans, a realist would know that such a dream might be a bit of a stretch. A relatively abundant and safe food supply out there will increase our options and level of security. We could of course live off rabbit and hare, but DW does like her greens!

The big post-peak oil preparation project for this winter was going to be a charcoal making system, to complement the blacksmithing. In my wandering about the place and researches, I've come to the conclusion that this would be better as a combined charcoal-wood oil system. There's no point wasting the byproducts of charcoal making, indeed many of them would be very useful in other areas of the household system. Tar for preserving wood and methanol for making biodiesel for instance.

In thinking about a design for such a system, I thought to myself, why bother creating a furnace just for charcoal making? What else can we use a furnace for? In the past I've thought of metal casting, glass blowing and pottery firing, all of which go toward making a comfortable life. A single well designed furnace unit should be able to accommodate all of these activities. So I've come up with a preliminary design for a multi-purpose furnace. A grating will support either a charcoal/wood oil drum, a crucible for smelting metal, the same for melting glass, or a series of racks to allow pottery to be fired. One piece of infrastructure to suit many tasks!

The main modification I've thought of since doing this model is the inclusion of an extra door above the grating. When working with glass you need access to the crucible to draw out material, whilst leaving the rest nice and warm. Depending on how tall it ends up being it might be possible to do this from the top, but then the glass worker would get rather warm...

I'm also thinking a big lid with a chimney wouldn't go astray. A bit of work should allow the furnace fire byproducts to be harvested for further use as well. It's obviously not the kind of system that will be running all the time, so the outputs cannot be relied upon for critical purposes, but surely the heat or the kinetic energy from the flue gases can be put to some use? Turning a turbine for a bit of extra electricity? Pumping water? Direct heat for a glasshouse? I'm sure something will come up!

Was Easter That Long Ago?

2009-04-23T12:07:00.005+10:00

It seems like only yesterday!

We went out to the block for a couple of days camping over Easter with my brother. It started out rainy, but by the time I'd erected the camp kitchen covering (of dubious utility in the end) the rain had eased off and it looked like we were going to have a great time of it.

It was great to get out there and not be thinking about working there, just to enjoy the place. We had a campfire on the Friday evening, and retired relatively early after a big day getting everything together.

On the Saturday morning we took a walk down the eastern gulley, discussing the geology of the region, and examining the rocks in the outcrops we came across. We found some nice specimens of sedimentary rocks that had been broken and reset during their lifetime, where the alternating bands of coloured stone had shifted in relation to one another. I'll remember to get a picture of some next time I'm out there so you can share in our excitement ;-)

After that little jaunt we set out for the creek. We'd brought the inflatible boats along so the lads could have a float about which they enjoyed for a while. They've got a bit of learning to do before they get paddling under control though!

After doing that for a while we wandered up the rocky hillside, then returned to camp as there was quite a storm brewing on the horizon. It set in after lunch, torrential rain like we would only expect whilst camping. DW packed the kids up and headed home, whilst brother and I resolved to brave the elements and camp onward.

The rain calmed down in the early evening, so we sparked up another fire and he cooked me up a camp stew. That and a couple of beers helped keep the chill at bay, and by bedtime there were hints of moonlight through the clouds, offering us the promise of a sunny dawn.

Sadly, that wasn't to be, with even darker clouds on the horizon the next morning. We madly packed up the site and set off home, resolving to choose better weather next time. All in all it was a great time, and it helped clear the head of all the issues surrounding the place. It's funny how spending time out there doing jobs prevents me from remembering the other reasons why we liked the place, just for the sheer beauty and peacefulness of it all. Being out there has reaffirmed that, and made me keen to get on with the project so we can live out there (sometime in the next 10 years ;-) )

To that end, I stopped procrastinating over designing the intersection for the laneway, finished drawing it up and had it submitted to council not long after Easter. Back to the waiting game again, but with a bit more enthusiasm than we've had in recent months.

April 30 (if all goes according to plan) sees the end of the fire danger season, which will mean we can camp out and have a fire whenever we choose, rather than needing to organise permits in advance. I think the odd weekend campout will do us all the world of good! I can do a couple of days (or half days) of work there, with a relaxing evening around the campfire to finish it off.

Photos courtesy of Mr M.C. used with kind permission!

Forged Iron Product Process

2009-04-03T16:37:00.005+11:00

The diagram above presents a generic model for creating products. It's the same as pretty much any process diagram, in that it has inputs, processes, outputs (product) and a feedback loop. When looking at the overall household system, we can break each input to the household down into one of these models. The products of one model will form the inputs for another model and so on down the chain.

It's useful to consider things at this degree of detail for a couple of reasons. First and foremost it allows us to consider just how much hidden activity goes on out in the wider economy to supply what seem like simple goods into our households.

Below is a more complex diagram that details the major components of a model for any forged item. This covers a kitchen knife, a fork, spoon, fire poker, coat hook, gate latch etc. items commonly seen in our households.

As you can see there are a number of inputs, two of which could be considered "consumables", one other material item, "other tools" which covers things like hammers, anvil, tongs, swages etc. Then there is labour and skill. I have distinguished these two items because feedback has an important effect on them in particular.

As we undertake the process of forging, and examine and use the finished items, you provide yourself with feedback that goes toward the development of your skill. More skill equates to more productive and economical use of your labour. Feedback also affects the other items, both via the conduit of skill and directly. You may use less inputs next time around, or slightly different inputs, perhaps your charcoal wasn't as well made as it should have been, so your feedback from this process actually affects the production model for charcoal.

Labour and skill we provide from ourselves, but what of the other elements. The other tools might be forged or cast items in their own right. Of course they could be purchased, but we are considering the systems in totality, examining just how much we would need to do if we were to supply everything ourselves. Metal certainly deserves a more detailed analysis, but for this post we will simply accept that it can be either recycled or extracted via mining.

The final diagram for today is the product model for charcoal.

In it we can see that the basic process takes wood and a pyrolysis unit and produces charcoal and sundry other outputs. In a more detailed examination it would be worth considering what those other outputs are, as they would certainly be useful, but for today we only want to know that they exist. We're most interested in the charcoal.

This diagram differs from the previous ones, in that it includes two other product models within it. You have most likely already noticed that I've used the bluish colour to represent the entire model. So we see that wood is a product of a forestry or wood production process. The pyrolysis unit also is the product of another complete process. You can probably guess that both of these processes will contain a wide range of inputs, which are themselves the product of other processes. We now begin to see the depth of the systems that operate to provide us with the knife and fork I will soon be using to eat our evening meal.

In the next post following this theme I hope to draw some common processes out from the much larger mass that goes into the household system. These common processes will be selected due to the fact that they lie at a root level, or are fundamental to a large number of other production processes. Besides the sheer joy of the insights, this will also allow us to get a grasp of the fundamental skills and resources we need within a community in order to maximise resilience.

Letter To The Editor

2009-03-31T14:41:00.002+11:00

Our local politician, John Cobb, is kind enough to supply us with a piece of his mind in the local rag "The Central Western Daily" and today's piece was all about the proposed "carbon taxes" and how they will affect exporters. I cannot find an online version of his piece, though his view is expressed at the end of the following article HERE.

Mr Cobb has expressed opposition to the scheme on the basis that it will decrease the competitiveness of Australian agricultural exporters in overseas markets as well as allowing increased access to Australian markets for foreign agricultural imports.

The actual piece in the "Federal View" section went on at great length about how agriculture was going to be affected economically by any plans to mitigate climate change. This continued economic focus is really starting to wear on me, so I penned the following missive and shot it off to the editor. I wonder if they will publish it...

Re: Tue March 31st 2009 - "Carbon tax a burden for exporters" CWD

I should first point out that Mr Rudd's plan is not a carbon tax, it is a cap and trade scheme. That Mr Cobb cannot distinguish between the two shows that he wasn't paying enough attention during the briefings, if indeed he attended them at all.

A carbon tax would be a much better approach to the problem, but given most politicians make their profits from the big end of town we certainly aren't going to see a real solution of that nature. Can we all say "coal industry stranglehold" in unison?

Our economy and our community is going to suffer greatly under the burden of climate change. This is accepted fact as far as the majority of scientists are concerned, the exception being generally the few who are well paid by various heavily polluting industries.

Agriculture, the industry singled out by Mr Cobb, is going to suffer more than any other due to climate change. Will working to preserve exports save the dairy farmers from endless drought? Logic would say not. Our farmers need more than such a spurious claim of support.

We either need to change the way we live, to accept that there are hard limits on our greed, and hard choices to be made, or we need to give up now, and enjoy the party while we can. We need to stop wasting time and money pretending to make plans that we're never going to bother with. An Earth Hour once a year is just not going to get the job done.

If we choose to think about the future we are leaving our children and grandchildren, then we need to tell these politicians that we care more about people than the economy. Yes, it will hurt, but the future is going to hurt a whole lot more if we don't do some hurting now. Are we adults going to bear a bit of hurt, or are we going to leave it to our children to bear it?

A bit of thought might allow our leaders to conclude that if we adopt stringent policies and place taxes on carbon emissions at home, then we should have the right to levy similar taxes on imports where the originating countries do not adhere to such policies. We also set the stage for a real world-wide legal argument over the future of our species, for the exporters in other countries will surely get a bit upset over those taxes.

If we place a large carbon tax on imports from countries that do not have such policies our exporters are protected, our local industries are encouraged, and we work to combat further climate change. We get three advantages where John Cobb is offering us one, and a dubious one at that.

What the EL?

2009-03-13T12:19:00.005+11:00

Two posts in one week?! Something must be up :-)

Just this morning I had a call from a local mining company, who have the EL (Exploration Licence) on our new block of land. This wasn't totally news to me, our good neighbours had warned us that they'd been paid a visit not long back.

It was an interesting conversation, the crux of it being that they were going to be doing a special scan of our area some time this year, and if they found anything interesting they'd take it from there, perhaps with some exploratory drilling, and then negotiation to purchase what they needed if their drilling confirmed their scanning.

I informed them of the status of our plans for the block, and asked them if they could get in sooner rather than later. We'd much prefer find out that we have to move on sooner rather than later. I can imagine the disappointment I would feel after planting a few hundred trees to suddenly find the whole lot was scheduled to be bulldozed. He mentioned that he would mention it to TPTB, though I don't know how we'll fare having such things rescheduled to suit our insignificant plans.

All this time we've been asking for signs, looking for inspiration as to what to do, and then this comes along. Perhaps all the council slowdowns and hiccups have been for a good reason? Maybe we've been put off precisely because these folks want to dig the whole lot up, and so there was really no point to progress in the first place? If this exploration does uncover something, will the relevant content of this blog form a body of somewhat circumstantial evidence as to the existence of Universe-directed synchronicity that moves in a direction to make our lives better?

The DW and I have discussed it, and resolved that we'll take a slowly slowly approach for now. We'll proceed with the plans for the shed, even though that means doing some work for council at our expense, but we're not going to panic about getting our adventure up off the ground to a great extent until we find out what the mining guys want.

If nothing comes of their investigation we can proceed with greater surety. Their technology is pretty advanced being able to view down to 2km under certain conditions, to see what is under the ground. They reckon that if they don't see anything under the ground worth having, then there isn't anything under the ground worth having. If they do their scan this year then we can get back on track for the next one, and only be an extra year behind, yet still a bit ahead given that we should have the roads and shed sorted out. Given the way synchronicity has flowed on this whole endeavour, I'm placing a bet that they will find something, sad as that will be.

As an added bonus, I've hit them up for a look at our underground realms if they don't find anything. Having an interest in rocks and geology and bones of the earth sort of stuff being able to see what's down there will mollify me greatly, and will be like winning even if I don't win the bet. Maybe there are underground caves? Buried rivers? Long lost kingdoms?? lol!

Plod, Plod, Plodding

2009-03-12T10:12:00.004+11:00

Things are moving along slowly with the new farm, we've partly secured the ability to put a fence around the road reserve rather than having to install stock grids on the lane, which will reduce our costs by a few thousand dollars, expecially given we can do the fencing work ourselves. We've got to submit a DA amendment for this, and also to have a zincalume shed. Yes, even though the DA specified zincalume, and the guy from council said he would re-issue it, they obviously scoured through it to find a way out of that, discovering that I hadn't included the words "not create reflections" in my DA's statement of environmental effects. That I'd said it was mostly not visible, and where visible, only from distances over 400m doesn't seem to count. Council staff are not to be expected to draw the logical conclusion that an invisible building cannot give off reflections.

The shed is to be located up behind the trees, just right of centre.

At the moment I'm waiting on council, yet again, to let me know what to do about the design of the laneway intersection. I need to submit a plan for that with the DA amendment, and it needs to be up to BAR/BAL standard, which means "BAsic Right/BAsic Left" hand turns, or slightly widened at the end for layfolk. The trouble is the sample diagrams council sent me are for roads 6m wide or more, not for country lanes about 3.5m wide. It seems they need to think carefully about this matter, as I've been waiting three days for a response telling me what I should do. All the while our shed is slowly degrading out on the block.

On the money making initiative of council, the laneway plans are a prime example of their efficiency. When I first enquired I was told to submit plans with the DA amendment application, with the basic idea being they would review them and get me to amend them where required. Great idea, another DA amendment fee each time I had to upgrade the plans would make them rich I imagine. So I set off on a different course, chasing up everything that's needed to create a good plan, first time through. That way I shouldn't need to amend it, and so shouldn't need to pay out more money. The problem with that approach is actually getting the information from them in a timely fashion. In five more days it will be a month since they issued the dodgy DA, and all that time has been spent trying to get them to provide authoritative answers to the issues they've raised so that I can submit an amendment. These guys are certainly not improving people's impressions of councils.

Oddly enough I was at a community forum with our current council, and they admitted that they were having trouble with communication, but had identified the issue and were working very hard to improve their performance. I wonder if they could send some notes over to the new council?

I didn't mention it in the last post, but I guess you can gather from the proceeding that we've decided to forge ahead, at least with the initial stages of the project, and will re-assess it at a later date. The DW was feeling very, very down about the whole thing, and was more than keen to pack it in. At the time we went over the fact that there wasn't much chance of us being able to sell the block as the next people to look at it certainly weren't going to take on all these troubles. Thankfully, a bit of optimism has returned. At the very least we will get the access problem sorted and get the shed up. This eliminates the only major problems with council, and so gives us, or the people we sell it to if we decide we've had enough, a free run at building the house, oh, and using the block, seeing as we supposedly shouldn't even be out visiting the block without that legal access via an open laneway. :-|

Just a quick addendum on the current place, the blog is called the Flood Street Farmlet so I should mention it occasionally I guess! We've had a few bits and pieces of fruit, peaches and plums were hit hard by the fly, same for the tomatoes, though we did have some nice ones. Sadly we let a lot of maintenance slide trying to get things going over the new place, and moving stuff from the FIL's out there, which consumed a few weekends. Cucumbers are this years great success story, they've been just great, and we've had some really nice corn. We've had a few drops of decent rain and things are looking good.

We've had few bites on the sale of this place, though quite a few visitors through the website for a good look. I really do need to update that, as we've also completed a lot of outstanding tasks, though of course there are still a lot more...

The Household System

2009-03-03T10:53:00.004+11:00

A busy household is a complex system, made up of innumerable processes that take various inputs, and produce a multitude of outputs. We don't often stop to consider how complex a household is, especially if we take full advantage of the ability to outsource many of the processes that go into them, an ability that is increasingly more at risk from disruptions of various kinds.

I guess the first question we need to ask is, what is a household? There is a dictionary definition, but I want something that describes it in real world examples. Is an inner city apartment with a working couple with no kids a household? Sure it is. What about a village home with a few fruit trees and a couple of chooks in the back yard, owned by parents who commute to the local big city and have half a dozen children? Of course it is. A household is going to be any place that people dwell when they aren't working, any place that they consider home, any place that is the focus of their lives (with the exception of the work obsessed of course!)

All households have "needs", or inputs, required in order to function. For most these would be things like water, food, electricity, gas, clothing, furniture etc etc, which for the inner city apartment all come from beyond the boundary of the household system. They may even go so far as to order in cooked meals, or go out for dinner, further reducing the number of processes carried out within the household (ie cooking & cleaning) by outsourcing those processes to people within the economy. Or perhaps they have a balcony vegetable garden, and love to cook at home, in which case they have brought not only the processes of preparing and cooking food within the household, but also growing that food.

In thinking about things like peak oil and climate change, I feel we need to re-assess how much we outsource to the wider economy. Outsourcing carries with it certain risks, which are relative to how critical the outsourced process is to survival. Below is a diagram representing the various inputs to a household, and how critical they are to survival (roughly). It's rather arbitrary, due to the sheer number of factors that could influence such things, and some groupings ("Sundries" for example) contain some items that are a whole lot more essential than others.

The main point to be gained from the diagram is that some items are inherently much more critical than others. Water is the easiest example to consider. Without it we come to a gory end. In general the majority of our population here in Australia relies on external agencies to ensure the security of their supply of water. There is a growing trend in recent years towards pulling this input back within the boundary of the household, but in large measure, if anything were to go wrong with the municipal supplies, most people would be up the proverbial creek without a paddle.

We can assess our priorities by considering things from two perspectives. The first is criticality to survival. The second is ease of inclusion within the household system. Water is, relatively speaking, easy enough to include within most household systems, at least for the time being, and it is critical to survival, so it should come out at the top of the list of things to take control of.

On the other hand, sundries such as beauty products are not essential, so can be left outside the boundaries of the household system, except where their production might be a rewarding pastime or a source of income. Food, in contrast, is critical, and not always so easy to reliably include within the system. It's critical nature far outweighs any consideration of the difficulty of including it, so it should be up there just after water.

Another important factor to consider is that not all processes are simple, and this is even more the case when we look at things with an understanding of the potential impacts of peak oil. What happens if we can no longer get cheap tools and machinery imported from China anymore? How do we achieve even the seemingly simple task of making a loaf of bread if the supermarket is running low on everything, and the power is out? In the modern world it's as "easy" as nipping to the shop for the ingredients, measuring them out, throwing it all in the breadmaker and forgetting it until we hear the bell ring. Things could be very different in the future.

We need to look at the complete end-to-end process and see what each step of it requires. We need to break down each process and consider all the hidden processes that contribute to the functioning of our top-level process. Then we can get a true understanding of what is needed, and decide whether having a loaf of bread is critical enough to warrant doing the work needed to incorporate it into our household system.

To illustrate further, let's revisit the water issue. Incorporating water into the household system requires a number of inputs that are only available thanks to modern society. Water tanks, piping for storm water, pumps, piping, valves, connections and taps for delivery. Stop and think for a moment how you would put together a water system if you couldn't visit the hardware store for some PVC stormwater pipe, or some copper or poly pipe to get that water into the household. A couple of pieces of galvanised sheeting could be bent into a functional stormwater pipe, and you could use a bucket to get the water indoors, but where do these items come from, if not from the hardware store?

From time to time over the next few months I hope to look in more depth at each of the elements in the diagram above, explore some processes in depth, and try to get a picture of what elements can profitably be included in a household system, which parts should be rushed into ASAP given that they can best be achieved whilst modern materials are available at cheap prices, and which can be developed at a later time using whatever is to hand.

It will also give a clearer idea of what should be outsourced to the community level, and how far from the household that can be without greatly increasing the level of risk. A disruption in the supply of beauty products from France is not going to be a life threatening problem, but lack of food from the farms only 30km away just may be.

Ultimately it may provide something of a whole-household model, and give a good picture of skills and supplies are needed to convert the household from being a net importer to a net exporter, which will be the key to surviving the future.

These posts will all be labelled under "The Household System".

Up For The Challenge

2009-02-20T12:09:00.004+11:00

Not a lot of happy news I'm afraid, so if you're feeling sensitive, time to turn away now ;-) I know I said I'd include the word "rant" in the title, but it didn't seem to fit.

We received our DA for the shed on Wednesday.

The first question that needed to be asked was, why was it approved at all? Keep in mind the DA specifically requested a zincalume shed. A clause in the DA approval specified that our zincalume shed needed to be clad in "colorbond type material" to meet council requirements. Yer what? A quick laugh and a bit of gloss and we are assured this clause will be struck and the DA re-issued.

Hold on a moment. What about the three thousand odd dollars for signs for the road, which was reduced to under one thousand as a result of an amendment issued by council? How did the big number sneak back in there? I'm afraid we don't have the paperwork that we sent you on hand. We'll have to look into it.

And the access that needs to be determined in consultation with council, which, strangely, was determined in consultation with council some time ago, and built already? Ahhh, sorry, don't know nuffin about that, we will need to investigate and get back to you.

Six weeks of investigation and they seem to have spent most of that time avoiding all of the information about what has already happened!

But wait, there's more! We haven't even reached the bad news yet...

It seems that in order to build anything on a block of land you need to have council approved access to that block, otherwise you're considered to be accessing the block illegally. Council have taken the laneway and entered it into their registers as "their road", but it is still open to the neighbour's paddock, and blocked by a gateway, which makes it not a road, in fact it's a Clayton's road. The road you have when you're not having a road.

So before we can build the shed we have sitting quietly rusting in the paddock we need to build an intersection and install our stock grates so the neighbour doesn't have to have his paddock fenced off from the laneway. Cost to build a shed? Priceless!! We have yet to see our certifier, who may allow us to build the shed but not put anything in it until the road is done, but I may be clutching at straws there. Sadly, steel materials left stacked in less than ideal conditions rot a lot faster than they do when built into a proper structure. Time is not on our side there.

So over the last two days we've been in a doldrums, and a state of flux over all our dreams for the future. Where do we find over 10k (moderately educated guess until we get a real quote from council) to fix that road? If it's going to take a year or two to save that cash, how does that affect all our other projects? Are we looking at being 10 years away from moving out there? Will I be 45 before we can even take up residence? Or closer to 50 even? Are we going to need to go (further) into debt to build roads and houses so we can get out there whilst we are in the prime of our lives?

Do we abandon the block, sell it for what we paid for it, count the expenses to date as lessons learned, and work on purchasing something established, with, at the very least, a real road out the front? Would anyone buy that block of land given the need to build that intersection and then the house we've picked out? (offers welcome in the comments ;-) )

I believe that the universe conspires to assist us in our endeavours, but I am left now wondering whether she is trying to give us a different message, or whether we are being challenged to test our fortitude. At this point, we must await further signs to clarify the issue, and shall have to muddle on until then. We are up for the challenge without a doubt, but we don't want to be swimming against the current if we're supposed to be downstream somewhere...

Windy Old Friday

2009-02-13T13:38:00.003+11:00

First, a couple of pictures of the new place for your viewing pleasure.

Below is the beginnings of the orchard, a pair of neat rows of holes, all filled with golden, black coloured, goodness. The rabbits haven't been digging into it as I had feared they might, though the goats have been wandering over it for some reason. Apples will be in row number 1, to the left, row number 2, probably odd fruit like plums, pears and peaches. I intend on at least one more this season, for the grapes. I've got four or five varieties so far, just want some of the wine varieties to cover the drinking side of the grape equation.

Next is a sepia stained picture of the tree we felled. This big fella was a little close to both the house and shed sites for comfort. Being dead it was only a matter of time before it decided to start dropping bits of itself across the landscape. There's a fair bit of firewood in it, and I'm toying with the idea of making one of the big logs into the base for a picnic table, but I'll have to see how I go for time and enthusiasm. Why the arty sepia? It was taken on my mobile, which provides for washed out photos, so a bit of playing around produced something more palatable.

Still no DA for the shed, sadly. I called them up yesterday, then again this morning after they didn't call me back as they had said they would. The news is not too promising. Sure we've been told we should get our DA by the end of next week, but in passing he mentioned that it's taken so long because he had to review the whole history of the previous subdivision and the DA for the house. Then he mentioned conditions relating to road shoulders and access to the block. Seems ominous considering it's just for a darned farm shed for storing some of our stuff out of the weather.

I guess I'm working myself up into a lather over nothing concrete, and fearing the worst, but I've got past experiences to guide this anticipatory enthusiasm. I'll let you know now, if things don't go well when I receive the offending document the blog post to follow will contain the word "rant" in the title to forewarn you :-) If it's really bad I might just insist on council buying the block of land from us and we can pick a spot in a region with a more reasonable bunch of bureaucrats. I'm also toying with the idea of creating a "council watch" website, where we can post horrendous stories of their malfeasance, and view a matrix of their authoritarian-ness, region by region. Might help me if we decide to move on rather than put up with the ...

On a much more positive note, it's Friday. Yes, that's the one. I like posting on a Friday, because it's when half my mind is turned to plans for the weekend, and that invariably involves assessing what has happened before. I've got more to say then, twice as much in fact. Half about what was, half about what may be.

I'm slowly working my way through the seedling trees in the greenhouses, potting them on. The Black Wattles in particular, as they're growing well, and will do even better with an upgrade prior to planting out this winter. I shall occupy some time this weekend finishing that task off (5 down, 24 to go, though I did take care of some other bits of plant life last time, fig and lemon verbena cuttings that have taken well, etc. I actually got around to turning the old chook yard into a new greenhouse, and shifting the plants out of the glasshouse that didn't need to be in there, which then led to the potting on mentioned in the first place. It's a long and winding road for sure.

You can see the remaining wattles to be potted on mid-top of the image above. To the left are three avocado trees, these will need to go back in the glasshouse for winter, they don't like the frost. I've got to pick a nice microclimate out at the new place for them, and that requires a bit of observation through winter. At the bottom are half a dozen or eight or perhaps even nine (lets make it ten shall we?) carob trees, grown up from seed.

On top of that I'm going to get our generator up and running. Did I mention we had a generator? Won by the skin of the teeth on eBay week before last, a beautiful old 16hp Briggs and Stratton motor on a 7.5kVA/6kW Dunlite generator. Should be enough for all our tomtoolery out at the new block, including welding. All it needs is a new spark plug and a bit of fresh fuel (oh, and a new air cleaner element, but that can wait!).

No doubt there'll be a trip out to the block on Sunday, most likely for another round of digging holes for trees... We've got to have somewhere to put all of these, eventually!

Not The End Of The World

2009-02-04T12:53:00.002+11:00

Presented below is a rough poem about peak oil and the future that came to me the other night. I hope you will indulge me, and not run screaming for the door.

The end of the age of oil is
Not the end of the world
The end of collective fantasy
Following Father too long
While Mother has been beckoning
Back to her embrace

Time now
To quench the fires of industry
To still the broken atoms
To put aside spear and shield
And find what we've forgotten

Time now
To dirty hands with Mother Earth
To go gathering up the bounty
To take up the scythe and staff
And seek out what's within

Black gold fools gold
Has blinded us too long
True gold black gold
Reeking earthy mold
Virulent life
Verdant trees
Blue raincloaked skies
And crystal streams once more

Jan 09 Activities

2009-02-03T11:25:00.005+11:00

The weekend before last I took advantage of the offer of free sheep manure and collected a big load of the stuff. Half of that went on topping up vegetable beds here at the farmlet, in preparation for the winter crops. The other half took a trip out to the new block with me this weekend just gone.

I measured out two rows 40 metres long, and dug myself 30 holes in total, on 2 metre spacings. We've decided on the espaliered high security orchard up near the house, as this will be easiest to maintain and protect over the next year or two. In the plan I'm allocating enough room for 5 such rows in total, giving space for 75 plants, though I'm only going to tackle two this season, or maybe three.

Espalier orchard is the long lines to the top right.

We'll get 15 trees from Woodbridge, enough for one row, and stock the other with grapes, unless I get really keen and put in an extra row further down the hill, and get enough extra work to afford more trees from Tassie. The holes are now filled with the black gold, and I've got my fingers crossed hoping the rabbits and hares don't dig it all out making themselves new burrows whilst we're not there.

I've yet to decide on the best way of fencing them in and protecting them from said rabbits and hares, it's either a small fenced area to keep the goats out, with individual guards round each tree to protect from the vermin, or aiming for a truly high-security rabbit and hare proof fence around the whole lot. I'm doubtful about the reliability of a fence around the lot, and it would be quite a bit of work, so I think we'll end up guarding each plant.

Site of the new espaliered orchard.

I'll need to go and get another load of manure, and should be able to put in a heap of random trees in the forest area with that bounty. In addition to the high security espalier I'm thinking a food forest style arrangement may work well further down the hill, with trees on their own roots rather than dwarfing stock.

If we want to plant even half of the stuff we've got here in pots I've got a lot of planning to do between now and winter (and a lot of digging!) Where am I going to put the woodlot? What about all the odd fruit trees, such as figs, pomegranates and citrus? Where do I want the stone pines and carobs to go? Besides having to pick a nice spot for these things, I need to make sure it doesn't interfere with future plans such as the olive grove and stock routes.

Still no DA for the shed, I called them on Friday and they tell me it's with the engineers for a checkover, and should be out to me before too long. My fingers are firmly crossed.

We desperately need some rain across the region, but I'm thankful we're not suffering as our southern friends are. I've attended only one firecall so far this summer (touch wood), and I don't think there's been too many more than that. They really need to start working on that old inland sea idea :-P

2009: 11: 2

2009-01-22T13:16:00.004+11:00

Welcome to 2009!

For those who enjoy looking beyond the mundane, we are entering an eleven year, or a two year, depending on how you like to reduce such things. I generally think in terms of one to nine, especially when thinking about years. It's interesting to note though, that the number eleven, at least according to this site has the following meaning, which could be quite portentious:

11 is not an easy number, especially for material interests. You want to avoid heavy speculation, for example, . There is a huge potential for loss in high risk material concerns, .

And:

Some of the more challenging traits associated with the number eleven may include any of the following (other considerations in the charts collectively either support or mitigate the energy): Nervous energy, intense fear, unpredictability, unrealistic outlook, lack of discernment, religious dogma, fanaticism, insecurity, ...

If we consider the number two, it's generally considered to be a split from unity to either co-operation or division, or to consideration of duality. Being a bit irreverent, I also like to consider numbers in terms of Tarot, where two gives us Balance, Contrast, Partnerships, Choice etc. Two is also considered to be the number of Karma. It can also be about questioning which path to take. (from http://www.tarotteachings.com/meaning-of-two.html)

So we're in for quite an interesting year (as if we needed numerology to tell us that ;-) ) I can envisage that a lot of the world will be playing out many of these things over the coming year, faced as we are with an increasingly worsening economic crisis, with peak oil and climate change hovering on the horizon of our collective mind, and the fact that our leaders are scrambling for politically palatable solutions that continue to serve the interests of the big end of town without ruffling the feathers of the flock.

Back in the mundane world, we've taken delivery of our shed and are now waiting on our development application to be approved. Once that's through we will get a construction certificate in short order and will be set to begin. Having a shed on the new block is a big mental step, in a way it cements our relationship with that patch of the earth, as well as providing infrastructure to be able to get started on numerous other projects. Once we've got a tank stuck on there we'll be able to water things. Once we can water things, we can plant things!

Over the Christmas break we were lucky enough to source as much sheep manure as we are willing to dig and cart. Our plans to put in the initial orchard at the new place are thus given a great boost, as we can prepare each hole with this brown gold. We're still vacillating between an old-style orchard for aesthetics, or espaliered orchard for practicality. Given that one aspect of this enterprise is increasing our resilience as we head into the low energy future I think the espaliering will win out. It gives us greater security as we can net the fruit much more easily, protecting it from the voracious birds. At the very least we will have a high-security orchard as well as some traditional orchard.

In addition, I'd like to get some of the many trees we've grown up here out onto the farm. We're planning a forested area down one of the slopes from the house, though it's going to look a bit odd to start with, given we'll most likely be using apple bin tree surrounds to protect them from the goats and hares.

We got ourselves a new rooster, from Bron at crankycockatoo, and he has settled in wonderfully. He's calm and cool, even with the kids running around, and hasn't attacked anyone, the primary reason for changing from our previous fellow who was as vicious as a pit bull. We'll be getting ourselves a few point of lay chooks in the near future, as the current ladies are getting a bit old and don't produce many eggs anymore. Being sentimental as we are we'll probably keep the old birds on as mulchers, rather than trying to boil the woodiness out of them to make a meal.

This weekend we're going to be knocking down a big dead tree that sits right next to the house and shed sites, and I'm sure we'll manage to think of something to do for Australia Day as well, most likely celebrating in the traditional fashion with a BBQ and a beer or three.

I'd like to finish up with a question: Is it true democracy if you cannot walk away from it? Is it a truly free society if you cannot abstain or secede?

All the best for the year ahead!!

Weekend Report

2008-12-15T11:35:00.002+11:00

Friday was full of rain, and boded poorly for the weekend ahead. We'd planned to go fishing at some stage over the weekend, but with the rain looking to be set in, we weren't sure when we would get the chance.

Saturday dawned clear of rain, though still cloudy with a bit of a biting wind. We decided we'd best get moving on the fishing plans, so set out to Lake Carcoar. After about an hour of driving we pulled in to find "no fishing" signs (hidden amongst the plethora of other things you aren't or shouldn't be doing out there). Sadly, as the lake is down at 14% or so of capacity there is a problem with toxic algae, so they've put a stop to fishing. All the lads had dropped off to sleep about 10 minutes before pulling in to the lake reserve, so we quickly settled on a trip to Lake Canobolas, which necessitated completing the round trip via Orange and out to that lake.

It worked out well in the end. The lake was fairly quiet in terms of visitors, most being turned off by the poor weather. The eldest son caught his very first fish, a redfin carp, with the gear he got for his birthday back in September. It's the first time we've had a chance to get out fishing since then, and I hope a catch will make him remember the experience with something other than dread.

After an hour or so we packed up the gear and walked over the top of the dam wall to the swings on the other side, and spent a while on a few trips down the flying fox (great fun, even for the big kids), and then headed off home again.

Sunday came up rainy again, so after congratulating ourselves on choosing to go fishing the day before, I got ready to head out to the new block to do up some measurements for the placement of the shed. Once we sign on the dotted line and get our engineering drawings back I'll need to be able to put in a DA, so need to know the best spot for it. Not sure if all of that will happen before Christmas at this rate, we keep getting stalled by different things. As always, such stallings are sure to work out for the best, so we're not too concerned, though we are keen.

I was back home by midday, and spent a bit of clear weather making the kids a tarzan rope swing, and clearing out some of the dodgy stuff in the greenhouse and potting a few bits and pieces on into larger pots. We've got a fair idea now of what hasn't taken from the winter cuttings, so we'll have to start a summer cuttings round very soon.

In the garden we've had an amazing abundance of fruit this year. We've been eating berries and currants for weeks now, and we've still got a lot to go. I guess we'll have to get started on some jam making soon. All the primitive plums are loaded, ripe and ready to go. Our first Japanese plums are showing a good amount of colour, and should be softening soon. The peaches, well, the birds are starting to sample those, so hopefully there'll be some left for us when they're ripe, as they're still pretty green at the moment.

On the selling front, we're holding off on going to the real market for now, interest rates have declined enough that we will be able to put money into the new block and pay for the usual stuff, though I guess it's risky if we hit a period of inflation due to declines all round in the economic world. At this point it's a wait and see approach, at least until after the silly season.

As of next week I get my annual (sort of) holidays, so hopefully three weeks of relative bliss. In case I don't post before then, I wish you a merry festive season, and all the best for the year ahead. Things are going to be challenging all round, which should make for interesting times...

Max And Cornelius

2008-11-23T10:38:00.003+11:00

Max Powerdown and Cornelius Copian were stuck in a small village, surrounded by trackless desert on all sides. They had no idea which direction to travel in, nor how wide the expanse of desert was. All they knew was that they needed to escape the village, which was slowly dying, and move to a better place.

Within the village were two stalls. One, a purveyor of food, the other selling second hand wares and handcrafted goods. Max and Cornelius each had one hundred dollars in their wallets to spend.

Cornelius examined the food stall, and then moved on the to second hand wares shop. He was inspired by what he saw there. An old boiler, some lengths of copper tubing, and a serviceable pram immediately caught his eye. He considered for some time, and then decided that the best course of action would be to spend his funds on these items and cobble up a steam powered perambulator to speed across the desert, though this would mean using up the best part of his monetary resources. Max on the other hand, had considered these things, and believed a different approach was in order, stocking up on food and water, and a slow march across the desert. The funds he would be left with would allow him to take advantage of any opportunities or cope with any problems that might arise during the journey.

Max and Cornelius discussed their respective plans, going over the merits and problems of each. Cornelius proposed that Max invest in his project, allowing them to purchase resources to build a steam-car twice the size to accommodate both of them. Max argued that this would require twice as much wood and water, and so get both of them only half as far. On the other hand, he indicated, if Cornelius were to purchase food, sacks and waterskins then they would be able to carry much more food and water, as well as having more monetary resources available during their journey.

"Who knows what we might need to purchase once we make it out of this infernal desert?", Max finished.

The two argued for some time, and eventually agreed to disagree. Cornelius spent ninety-five of his one hundred dollars on the items to build his steam-car and set to work. Max spent thirty dollars on three sturdy extra-large waterskins, a large hessian sack and enough food to last himself two weeks. Climbing to the top of one of the stunted trees that surrounded the oasis at the centre of the village he examined the desert around and picked a likely landmark to aim for, a rocky hill out at the edge of the horizon. After drinking deeply from the oasis and filling his waterskins, he slung them and his sack of food over his shoulder and set out.

Two days later Cornelius had completed his steam-car. He filled it up with water from the oasis, collected a load of twigs and branches and set a small fire under the boiler, stowing the rest on board. Climbing the tree as Max had done, he spied the same landmark and determined that it would be his destination. He purchased himself a sweetmeat for luck with his last five dollars and boarded his steam powered perambulator, setting out at a clipping pace across the sands.

By evening Cornelius reached the rocky hill, and found Max camped there. He was hungry and thirsty by this time, and asked Max whether he might impose upon his generosity and share his food and water. Max considered this for a time. Cornelius indicated that it would be to their mutual benefit, as once he was free of the desert he would send help back. Max thought this was reasonable enough, so shared food and water with Cornelius.

The next morning, the two scrutinised the horizon from the lofty vantage of the hill, and spied a thin streamer of smoke out at the horizon. They agreed to make it their mutual destination, though Cornelius would need to take a more circuitous route due to a wide expanse of rocky ground visible in the near distance. By their calculations Cornelius should reach the destination in about two days, whilst it would take Max six days, even by the more direct route.

So they parted, Cornelius speeding ahead in the steam-car, Max trudging along at a measured pace.

The source of the smoke turned out to be further away than they had estimated. On the second day of travel out from the hill, the steam-car was still a day away from what could now be seen to be another small village. At that point, the last of the wood burned away in a puff of smoke and the steam-car shuddered to a halt.

Cornelius did some quick calculations and judged that Max was still two days behind, but somewhere over to the west in amongst the rocky ground. He, on the other hand, was still two days walk from the village. A check on the boiler revealed he had enough for a day of travel at most, but nothing to carry it in.

Should he drink his fill and hope he could make it to the village? Should he push his steam-car to the village, even though it would require so much effort that it might take him three days to get there and that he may run out of water before he reached half way? Should he head west in the hope of catching Max? Cornelius was at a loss, and slumped down into the sand in a state of despondency.

Meanwhile, far behind, but still well provisioned, Max trudged along in stoic fashion, unaware that his fellow was caught in such a plight.

Livelihood Security, Worlds Apart

2008-11-07T16:31:00.006+11:00

The FAO or Food And Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, has a publication available called "The household livelihood security concept"

It is interesting reading mainly because it highlights something of a disconnect between attitudes toward the condition of people in the third world, and a certain blindness to the plight, soon to be so greatly magnified, of people in the first world. We suggest and assist people in the third world to actively work to improve their livelihood security, yet in the first world we often have rules, regulations, economic and social hurdles to taking similar affirmative action to ensure security of livelihood. Indeed we actively encourage people to be more dependent on external agents for our livelihood, we are exhorted to it with every advertisement we see.

The start of the paper discusses how the idea of food security was once based on national and global food supplies, and how this changed when the people researching in those areas realised that it ultimately came down to whether individual families had access to the resources needed to secure the food. In a nutshell, a country could be awash with food yet people could still be starving if they didn't have a penny to their name.

Ideas about food security developed from the 70's through to the present day to gradually include a deeper understanding of the factors that contribute to food security. It was discovered, for example, that people don't necessarily choose food over all other needs when they have constrained resources:

People may choose to go hungry to preserve their assets and future livelihoods. It is misleading to treat food security as a fundamental need, independent of wider livelihood considerations.

So for example they might choose to go hungry rather than eat the seed for next season's crop. This evolution in understanding has resulted in the "household livelihood security" concept.

Household livelihood security is defined as adequate and sustainable access to income and resources to meet basic needs (including adequate access to food, potable water, health facilities, educational opportunities, housing, time for community participation and social integration). Livelihoods can be made up of a range of on-farm and off-farm activities which together provide a variety of procurement strategies for food and cash. Thus, each household can have several possible sources of entitlement which constitute its livelihood. These entitlements are based on the household's endowments and its position in the legal, political and social fabric of society (Drinkwater and McEwan, 1992). The risk of livelihood failure determines the level of vulnerability of a household to income, food, health and nutritional insecurity. Therefore, livelihoods are secure when households have secure ownership of, or access to, resources and income earning activities, including reserves and assets, to offset risks, ease shocks and meet contingencies (Chambers, 1989).

The ironic thing is that aid organisations are developing programs to improve livelihood security in third world regions, but right here in the first world we are beginning to see cracks appearing that indicate that we have very little in the way of livelihood security, or even an understanding of how to go about getting some.

From WSJ - More Utility Bills Go Unpaid we read that more and more people are having their essential services disconnected, leaving them without many of the elements of "household livelihood security" as the economic crisis deepens. Whilst talking about the situation in the US, no first world country is immune.

State regulators say they have noticed that power shutoffs have moved up the economic chain. "We're seeing an uptick in middle-class people who have never been in this situation before," said Eric Hartsfield, director of the customer-service division of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.

As the situation gets worse, many in the first world will be faced with a reality very similar to, or worse than, that of people within the third world, entirely due to a total lack of livelihood security.

Security implies a measure of resilience and adaptability in the face of changing conditions. Your average suburban shop assistant has a very small base of non-practical skills to fall back on, and you could pretty safely put money on the guess that food production or wildfood harvesting aren't in that repertoire.

This is yet another argument for people to begin learning to be generalists and to stop outsourcing so many of the essentials of their existence. Everyone needs to take stock of their livelihood security and work at improving it. More of the market economy needs to be recaptured and withdrawn back into the household economy to ensure survival during tough times.

Rhizome Growth, In Action!

2008-11-03T14:15:00.003+11:00

Have you ever encountered a new idea that draws together various scraps of ideas in your head, so much so that you begin to see examples of it all around you? The first time I ever encountered the idea of systems analysis as a lad was a bit like this. That you could examine the interactions of things and deduce systems of activity was the most amazing thing to me. This surely led to an appreciation of things like permaculture and computer programming, though the two may seem to be from opposite ends of the earth.

Anyhow, I'd like to give you a link to what I think is rhizome growth in real life:

A New Patch In The Neighbourhood

Gavin now has a new seedling rhizome node right next door, I would guess in the largest part due to his example and enthusiasm, as well as due to his ability and readiness to assist with getting started. Gavin's neighbourhood now has the potential to be more resilient as a result.

I see the rhizome idea as being a model of an ideal system. Sure, most ideals remain just that, but it is an ideal that ties together a lot of different threads, and answers some unanswered questions. It's also being implemented at this very moment. What we end up with will most likely not follow the exact plan, but I don't believe it was intended in that way.

Hamlets in the city might end up being, rather than extended family groups, groups of 5 - 10 neighbouring homes, all working together to provide their own food. Hamlets in the country may well follow the model more closely, where there is more room and more work for children and the elderly, especially as PO kicks in and there is less opportunity outside of the home. Still, there is nothing I can see to prevent existing community living structures from existing well within the framework.

As I see it, the core tenets are those of self-reliance in small groups (ideally sized to foster that self-reliance) linked together in networks that by their nature provide an impetus against centralisation of authority and management, and that facilitate local trade over non-local.

This kind of growth is something that we could rationally expect to occur during tough times. The only reason we wouldn't see such networks forming would be in the case that existing centres of power act to hold on to that authority, for example comandeering farmland and creating government distribution centres for food, would quickly put a stop to such growth. Anti-stockpiling laws and confiscation of food would be another. Both things we would hope would never occur in our society and day and age.

Two-Step To Rhizomes

2008-10-31T14:54:00.004+11:00

Two-Step To Rhizomes

I remember stumbling across Jeff Vail's Rhizome a year or two ago, giving the information a cursory examination and then wandering off onto other things.

The last few weeks, for whatever reason, have seen me involved in a few different discussions as to how we approach the future, what plan is best for dealing with the multiple crises we face as a society.

So it was with some joy that I re-discovered Rhizome. This time around I spent a lot more time reading up on the various ideas that go together to make it a whole, and the more I read, the more I liked. It fit well with a lot of my preconceived ideas (and ideals!).

The fundamentals (as I understand & interpret them) are that the countryside is dotted with hamlets, each of 10 - 40 people from a family group. Each group supplies itself a certain base level of self-sufficiency. It is able to care for itself. This is handled via combinations and permutations of permaculture, forest gardening & biointensive methods of production. Surrounding each hamlet's productive area is an area of "managed wilderness", akin to permaculture's zone 5, though this area is a buffer for bad times. When crops fail, the inhabitants turn to this region and apply hunter/gathering to the natural bounty to feed themselves. Each hamlet also supplies one or more specialty items, which are used in trade with other hamlets at gatherings that are arranged to occur loosely throughout the network.

In addition to the resilience arising out of the level of self-sufficiency for each node, it offers resilience on the network level as each hamlet depends and is depended upon by it's neighbours for both specialty items and to maintain the freedom that such a non-hierarchical structure brings.

This summary necessarily hastens over a lot of the realities, and many of them are discussed in detail on Mr Vail's blog, so that should be your first port of call if you wish to know more. Start with What is Rhizome?

In re-discovering this plan for the future, I was hit with something of a revelation. The seed, and often seedling, of Rhizome already exists in many parts of the world. Households such as our own, and others far more advanced than ours, form the basis of the future network of hamlets.

We're not yet hamlets, but we have a measure of self-sufficiency somewhere above the negative value assignable to most of the western population. We produce some specialty goods that we trade with others upon occasion. Even a pot of jam in exchange for a jar of olives is an exchange that is occurring along the lifelines that will one day connect together the hamlets of Rhizome. They are an existing and active economy outside of that reliant on the hierarchical structures of modern society.

I'm aware, via my time at Aussies Living Simply, that there are other regions with active communities linked together in this way. They might not be direct neighbours, but they are operating within a network that meets many of the other criteria put forward as a part of the Rhizome idea. Aussies Living Simply and similar sites are, as well as bringing together neighbours, in effect creating the wider network connections beyond the immediate geographically local ones. This connecting is as fragile as the internet and so will one day need to be replaced with the robust solutions Mr Vail proposes, but it is a good start.

The question that naturally arises is, where to from here?

That Rhizome could be implemented in an across the board, one-off change of policy & practice is obviously (very!) highly improbable. That it might be a natural continuation of the growth of that which already exists is much more highly probable. If we simple living types keep doing what we are doing, and keep bringing others into the fold from time to time, those decentralised networks will naturally expand. Regardless of whether we are in the city or the country, it's that measure of self-reliance, and the network of like-minded people, that really matters. Obviously there are certain implementation problems when based in the city, but they should not prove insurmountable.

Without counting "doing what we are already doing", I can see two fairly obvious steps to facilitating the growth of Rhizome out of the current system:

1. Be prepared with excess foundation.

In the same way that you have frames of foundation ready for when you receive a new swarm of bees, so you should have many of the elements of a self-sufficient garden & forest waiting to be applied to new land. Put aside a small (or big!) corner of your land for a nursery and always have plants growing within it. Cuttings of your favourite useful herbs, some tree, herb and vegetable seedlings, and if you're keen even some grafted fruit trees.

Try to give some away every year as advertising, or even sell them as a sideline, so you don't end up with a whole heap of old stock. When ever you meet a potential new "rhizome node" (yes, they are people too, I imagine) load them up, even if they need to come back with the trailer. Help them out with planning out their gardens if they desire it, but otherwise be there to offer them assistance, advice and support. Supply the additional nutrients and energy that will help this seedling grow into a mature tree. It is of ultimate and infinite benefit to both parties.

2. Develop as many specialist skills as you comfortably can.

It falls upon those of us at (or in my case, within distant sight of!) the forefront of this new social model to prepare for teaching others. We need to learn more than just one or two skills, we need to be comfortable with as many such skills as possible, and have whatever resources, tools and books are needed to back up and expand upon the basics of those crafts. To go one further (and perhaps easier than learning them all), stock up on references for a myriad other skills that we just don't have time to tackle, having them ready for others when there are more to share the joy. Many of us on this path are inclined to do this anyway, so this is perhaps just one more useful argument to justify innumerable hobbies and a bulging bookshelf!

This is not because I believe a single person, or even family, can accomplish everything that needs to be done. It's because someone has to be prepared to help others learn these skills in the future, and there just aren't enough of us to go around at the moment. As the tenuous Just-In-Time by-the-skin-of-our-teeth society we live in starts to fail us, we will have more and more willing students. Without our preparations there may not be the knowledge and resources for them to even consider getting started, and the road to their (and by relation our) success will be so much longer. Our planning and preparation may spell the difference between an excessively frugal, grubby future and one of leisurely, agrarian indulgence. It may be the difference between water and beer, milk and cheese, wooden and metal spoons, bark shanties or stone homes.

We will see, if things continue as they are, a time when both grandparents and children remain in (or return to) the home for longer periods of their lives, when households naturally swell up beyond the nuclear size. Siblings may migrate out of cities to bunk with country family members, bumping the household up to the status of a hamlet. The natural decline of our civilisation will drive this aspect on it's own. In the same way the growth of new hamlets will occur as new families move out into the country, and the spaces left in the cities are filled by remaining neighbours spreading out their hamlet estates.

Our job, as the ones already on the path, is to be prepared to welcome and assist newcomers, get them a few steps along the path to the stage of self-sufficiency so they can as quickly as possible become productive, self-reliant members of the network, providing benefits to the new society as a whole.

What's Happening

2008-10-27T13:42:00.005+11:00

It's been a busy couple of weeks here at the farmlet. We've finished off a few more jobs around the place, and also completed our enclosed area out at Lyndhurst. We've even started to fill it up with some of our resource pile, though it's going to be a relatively slow process.

On the sale front I've put together a website with a partly interactive map of the place listing all of the fruit trees on the block, and a photo gallery that currently covers only the outside of the place. Pictures of the inside are dependent on keeping ahead of the kids messing the place up ;-)

http://www.floodstreetfarmlet.net/

The vegetable garden is coming along nicely now. We've had a couple of light frosts, but I'm covering all of the plants up with a couple of plant pots inverted over them (with a bit of lawn clippings in the top to cover the holes) and this has been keeping me out of trouble. Hopefully we'll see an end to the frost soon. The beans and zucchini are rocketing along, tomatoes and cucumbers are a bit slower, still suffering a touch of transplant shock and the cold nights we've had lately. The first bed of sweetcorn seed is in but, again due to the cold, has yet to show itself through the mulch.

Now that we're essentially reaching an end to the works required here we've started to sketch out some plans for the new place. We're thinking that if we install a water tank, and pipe and pump to get some water up from the creek then we should be set to put some trees and things in this Autumn. We will need to fence off a house block, and figure some way of keeping the pasture down, but doing so will mean that no matter when we finally get the house underway we've still gotten a head start on getting the fruit trees up and running. That's one of the hardest parts of leaving this place. The older trees are now loaded with fruit, yet we're walking away from that to be set back by three years. At least with a plan like this we might only be three years behind rather than five or six if we leave it until the house is finished.

Off To Market

2008-09-26T10:34:00.005+10:00

We reached a point the other day at the Flood Street Farmlet. A special point, where we realised were faced with spending the rest of our lives finishing up all of the odd jobs and changing things here and there, to get it just right. We could see that we would potentially carry on in that fashion for quite a while to come. We seemed to be procrastinating over putting the place on the market.

We're unprepared, very unprepared for moving, but then, we've never really been prepared before, and we've moved a fair bit. The DW put her foot down and said she wanted the place on the market, wanted to be off on our next adventure. I "ummed" and even "aarghed". I said "what about if we just get job X done?" ... "and then perhaps job Y?", and it was pointed out that this was why we were never going to put the place on the market if we did not do it straight away.

I like to finish (some) things. The problem is that a home, especially the unusual kind of home that also includes food production elements, is an ongoing, life-long project. It never stops growing and changing, so the bar for "complete" was always going to be creeping off into the future. Each job done was seen in terms of better saleability (well, sort of, I've always enjoyed changing things around, even in rental properties), but they would only reveal more jobs needing completion that also affected the perfectness of the place (let me tell you it's far from perfect!) I needed to accept that it would never be perfect, and that it needed to go "as-is".

And so we made the call and the agent has been for a tour. He tells us it's a challenge. Not because the place is bad, mind you, just because it is relatively unique, given that it's a big house on a big block in a small village, with the orchard, berry patch, vege gardens and poultry houses. It's a lifestyle in a package, but that in turn somewhat limits it's appeal to only those within the demographic to which that lifestyle appeals.

Sure, it could sell to anyone, but the value of the changes made over the last few years would not be apparent or worth anything to such an "anyone", which is where the challenge lies. The "anyone" might see all the changes as needing a bulldozer to make the block suitable for something as horrendous as subdivision.

Within a fortnight or two the contract will be drawn up, and we'll be able to go on the market. We've got that long to finish off a few jobs, and transport a lot of our resource piles away to neaten the place up. And a lot of mowing to be done. And, a lot of hoping, for we sincerely hope that someone with similar ideas to ourselves comes along and takes up the Flood Street Farmlet challenge.

Given the current economic climate I doubt we will be able to be choosy. "So you plan to bulldoze it eh? Can't sell it to you then, sorry!", sounds all nice and idealistic, but when it comes down to it, our resources are currently spread thin, and we really need to concentrate them again so we can get moving on the new place. Time and money spent on this place would be so much better spent on our new block. It's up to the next people taking this place on to put their stamp on it, and much more stamping on our part will only make it harder for them ;-)

Global Approach To Emissions

2008-09-12T10:59:00.000+10:00

The debate in Australia over carbon emissions and what we should do about them seems to have devolved largely into a conflict around the facts that we are a small nation, with a small population, and anything we do will have little effect on the overall outcomes. If the big nations like China, India and the US are not on board, any effort we make will be swamped. This is the core of the argument against action. A lot of sensible voices are pointing out myriad reasons why we should act anyway, but those messages don't carry much weight with the people who hold the purse strings.

In reading through some commentary on the Garnaut report this morning it occurred to me that the solution is actually rather simple, though perhaps simplisticly so I do admit. Still, simple ideas are often the best!

We take our internal action, putting in place an emissions tax scheme, rather than trading scheme. We want a penalty, direct, to the point, no mincing words and actions. A tax is a direct way of reducing production and consumption of emissions. It does not allow for fudging and swapping, it gives no favouritism, and like the Terminator, it never sleeps and it never gives up. The dirty coal fired power plant needs to know it's doing the wrong thing, not think that it needs to be a bit more clever in how it trades it's emissions. Trading schemes are another layer of distraction and obscufation, another game for peole with money to play, at the expense of the masses.

Following that action we put in place a series of external actions aimed squarely at those nations that have chosen not to take action. Every import from a country that isn't doing something about climate change is taxed in proportion for the full measure of the emissions it is producing, similarly every export to that country is taxed to make up the shortfall from it's lack of action.

This sends an immediate and undeniable message to the other nation, as well as creating a market signal within the local economy. We are encouraged by prices to shop locally, to manufacture and produce locally. At the global level we are encouraged to trade with nations who have taken steps to deal with emissions, in preference to those who have not.

If the "Made in China" plastic toy in the MacDonalds happy meal is now costing $5 or more thanks to the carbon taxes we are putting in place on them they will swiftly disappear from the meals. Similarly, every tonne of coal sent overseas would need a tax applied that was proportionate to the damage it will do when burned. If they're not paying the tax internally, then they're paying it to the supplier.

No country, and no transaction with a country should be immune, even down to currency exchanges. If a country does not want to do something about it's emissions, it's up to the rest of the global economy to do something for it, to force it's hand in the matter.

In addition to the basic signal, that unless they wish to play climate-change ball their economy will be wound back by external forces, it immediately provides an imperative to implement a carbon tax within their own borders. I know I'd rather have the tax money working in our own economy than someone else's.

It should be mandated that the tax revenue be spent on non-polluting energy projects, and on green manufacturing, housing and transport. It's there to help fund the shift to the new economy. Such actions would hurt, both at home and abroad, but either way we are going to go through a period of pain before we come out the other side. Better a period of swift adjustment than a drawn out and painful alteration under the weight of a changed climate. Better to siphon the funds from the damaging elements of the global economy to support the healing and renewing elements.

Our greatest global challenge at the moment with respect to top-down action is overcoming the inertia and disillusionment created by inaction within the giants of the global economy. If every smaller nation on Earth with a desire to get working on the problem signed on to a treaty to enact such penalties then the recalcitrent nations would quickly realise they'd better get moving to catch up with the bandwagon. If states and towns did it within the borders of countries then it sends a notice to the wider nation.

We cannot nicely ask the powers that be to care for the Earth, we already know they wont listen. They will do as much as they need to do to mollify, and not a whit more. We need to insist that they do it, and if they don't we need to do it for them. The single greatest hurdle at the moment is that the people who can take such high level actions are very unwilling to do so. They're more interested in preserving the economy in it's current state.

It's like a fruit tree, some years you prune a little, other years you need to be more drastic and prune out some of the larger limbs, otherwise future fruiting is going to be seriously compromised or even non-existent. It's time now for the saw rather than the secateurs.

Projects Update

2008-09-08T16:19:00.008+10:00

First off, the project for turning the small metal drums into an ash processing facility was something of a failure. The glorified seive was way too small to process enough ash rapidly, and there were a few technical issues with the way it was set up.

All is not lost though. I found a nice solid fine sieve at the rubbish dump a few years back, that I stuck on legs and put a funnel under. I used it for sieving sand and earthy materials for making seed raising and cutting mixes. The DW was threatening to dump another load of ashes up the back, along with the valuable cargo of charcoal, so I quickly knocked up a second sieve to sit on top of the first, with a coarser mesh. The coarse sieve captures the large chunks of charcoal suitable for the forge. The lower one gets all the smaller bits that can go into potting mixes and into the ground as an agri-char or bio-char, and the ash goes into the funnel and then into a bucket. For now the ashes are being stored in a feed bag in the shed. I'll be taking a pH reading of the soil around the place and over at the new block to see where it might be most profitably applied.

Over the weekend before last I also constructed a new set of front steps for the house. The old ones were rusty red-painted steel steps, rather steep (yes, all two steps of them :-) ) with a big size difference between the different treads. The new ones are solid hardwood. I dipped into the bounty from the cattle yards I salvaged a few months ago and put them together. They've had their final coats of linseed oil applied and have been installed.

We've also discovered the joy of limestone toppings. Extremely cheap at about $28/cubic metre, they set like concrete (almost) and look good enough to walk on. We're going to turn all the muddy walking tracks into a decent surface. If only we'd tackled it before we started planning on selling the place!

Things are looking really good in the glasshouse, many of the cuttings have taken, even a few of the plum tree cuttings are looking like they might make it through. Still not sure about the apples though. They're normally a few weeks behind the plums, so I won't get an idea of whether they're going to make it for a bit. It's not all rosy though, the tallow tree cuttings have browned off, I'm thinking due to the extra heat and the fact that they had not yet formed sufficient roots. I've got my fingers crossed, as the tree up the back often gets hit by frost and loses it's leaves, and then comes back a few weeks later, so the cuttings may be as resilient.

Out at the new block, I've got a couple of posts in for a new bit of boundary fence. The previous owner's sheep are making free with the land we've bought that falls outside the fences, so it's high time these commons were enclosed. More seriously, stage one is a small section that will create a sectioned off area for storing my resource (junk) pile, where the goats agisted on our land cannot get to it. We'd hate for them to get injured climbing over piles of steel with all sorts of sharp protrusions, so we need an area they cannot get to.

I was also looking at putting the sheds etc in this general area as well, though I've still got doubts about it being the ideal spot. It is close to the house, but it is also crammed into a corner against the boundary, limiting the options for future expansion. The trouble is that other areas close to the house are all down on the worst of the slope, making access tricky at best, or too far away from the house. A shed or three is not an easy or cheap thing to move, so a bit more thought is in order before we start setting plans in stone.

Ashes to Ashes

2008-08-13T18:19:00.005+10:00

In The Garden

Green with a gun has suggested using the ashes on the garden. I have until now avoided this, recalling warnings we were given when first starting out in gardening that it would alter the pH of the soil and damage it's structure. In the interests of finding the facts and deciding whether we really do have a winning solution I thought it worth investigating some more.

Research across a range of sources reveals the following elements may be present in wood ash, with quantities being dependent on the wood burned, and the ground that the tree grew in. In all cases hardwood ashes have more nutrients (and more ash) than softwood ashes. The values below are all from Northern hemisphere sources, and there's a chance our local Eucalyptus would come up with slightly different numbers.

Element	Content	Notes
Calcium	15% - 30%	Generally in the form of calcium carbonate. This is the same stuff we get in lime, which is used to raise soil pH from acid towards alkaline.
Potassium	3% - 9%	In the form of potash
Phosphorus	1% - 3%	As phosphates.
Magnesium	1% - 3%
Sulphur	0% - 1%
Boron Cadmium Chromium Copper Iron Lead Manganese Nickel Zinc	Trace	A number of the trace elements are often classed as “heavy metals” and considered to be pollutants rather than valuable nutrients.

According to the PDF:

wood-ashes-garden-soil.pdf

wood ashes are 40% - 50% as effective at altering soil pH when compared to lime. The other sources indicate that the constituents of ashes are water soluble therefore fast acting, in contrast to lime which takes longer to do it's job.

All sources indicated that wood ash should only be used on alkaline soils, and if using large amounts pH should be tested every year or two.

A number of other warnings were supplied, paraphrased, condensed and/or summarised below:

Don't use ash at the same time as applying nitrogenous fertilisers. The fertilisers will gas off the nitrogen as ammonia in the high pH, so you're wasting resources. Wait for a couple of weeks for the ash to do it's thing then apply the nitrogen.
Acid loving plants should not have wood ash applied to them e.g. Blueberries.
Alkaline should not have ash applied to them, and neutral soils should only have it applied very carefully in small quantities.
Ashes should not be applied where potatoes will be put as they may promote potato scab.
Don't use ash from stuff other than wood. You never know what you'll get.
Don't use ash on your seedbed at time of planting or on seedlings, ash salts are quick acting and relatively strong, so will burn the seedlings.

Another use for wood ash is as a pest control. It can be liberally dusted over infestations of pear and cherry slug to great effect. It was the solution of choice applied during my childhood, and I recall with some trepidation the act of spreading the stuff around.

Some representative sources on wood ash in the garden:

wood-ashes-garden-soil.pdf

Totally Practical: Wood Ash

Wood ashes from your yule log can help your garden grow

Use caution with wood ash on your lawn and garden

Wood Ash in the Garden

WOOD ASHES - How To Use Them In The Garden

Is Wood Ash Good for Garden Soil?

In Soap and Fuels

Wood ashes (from hardwood trees) can also be used to make lye. Lye is generally made by soaking water through a barrel (with a perforated base) of ashes. The stuff that comes out the bottom is lye water, and needs to be concentrated for use by boiling off the excess water. This is pottassium hydroxide, rather than sodium hydroxide. This is good news if you're looking for a complete on-farm process for making biodiesel, as pottassium hydroxide is the stuff that is used to make ethanol-ester biodiesel, and ethanol can also be made on-farm, unlike methyl-ester biodiesel (which uses sodium hydroxide) See the following if you want to know more:

Making lye from wood ash

Ethanol biodiesel

A comprehensive guide with pictures covering soap making from lye is available at:

Traditional Soap Making

Another blog indicates that soap from potash lye is a jelly or soft soap, and requires hardening up with the addition of table salt if that is the aimed for product. According to the resource hard soaps are made with sodium lye.

Making Pioneer Soap

Plans For Drums And Other Melodies

2008-08-06T15:31:00.005+10:00

Back to the mundane world of pseudo-farm life for a post.

I've got a couple of plans fermenting at the moment, thanks to the gift of an apple bin full of 20 litre drums. Nothing like a source of raw materials to inspire all sorts of ideas. Hopefully not a case of having a hammer and everything looking like a nail...

Project number 1 is a charcoal and ash separation plant. I've been separating the charcoal and ash from the house fireplace so that I can make use of the charcoal in the forge. It's a messy job using a scrap of mesh over a bucket, so this little bit of work should make it a whole lot more efficient. The picture below shows the main cradle, there will be another similar one beneath it without the mesh windows. This will catch the ash and channel it into one drum, the charcoal will go out the end into a second one.

I'm still toying with the idea of grading the charcoal into two lots, those pieces of a size to be useful in the forge and other smaller bits that can be used in the garden as biochar. That will involve a very fine mesh in the upper window and a larger one in the lower window and some modifications to the catching cradle beneath to allow a second drum.

All that needs to be done now is find a use for the ash. At the moment this is being stored in a feed bag in the shed. With the exception of turning it into lye and hoping I can get hold of enough fat for soap I'm currently at a loss for ideas...

The second project will be a roller that I can drag behind the ute to compact road base. We've got quite a bit of road building to do out at Lyndhurst, and I'd like to do the early stages of it using hard work and the ute if possible. The plan is that we'll get truck loads of local road base dropped in the rough area, grade it out fairly level (now there's a project, building something to allow this task to be done with the ute!) and then roll it firm with the roller.

I've previously built a person powered roller by punching a hole in the bottom of a drum, fixing a bit of gal pipe centred through the drum, liberally greased, and then filling it with concrete and basalt rocks. A series of these that can be slid onto a longer pole and then hooked into a harness to be towed behind the ute should work well enough. I've also considered using two 44 gallon drums to do it, which would produce a better end result, but such a contraption would need to be made on-site as transporting the finished product out there would be tricky, to say the least.

In other news, and other plans, we've finally settled on a basic plan for moving forward overall. It was stressful for a time there trying to figure out the best way to juggle all of the competing demands to try and get ourselves out onto the new block. We've given up thinking about a full blown shed at this point, our outgoings so closely match incomings that having the resources to do that isn't going to happen for some time.

Instead we're going to get a shipping container moved out there, which is an economical means of securely storing the majority of the “junk” (resources!) currently in the shed. We will also be moving the site office out there and working on rigging it up as my office. This should involve a phone line and enough power for a single light and a laptop (assuming I can fit my current systems onto a laptop and run them with sufficient speed and reliability) The laptop should last for three or four hours on a charge from home each day, then continue with a top-up from whatever alternative power system we can implement for the remaining hours of the working day. We'll probably need a bit of power for the actual phone and answering machine, I don't really fancy going back to the old tin can catch me if you can style of communication.

Once we know I can work out there we can move into rental mode. We've minimized the stuff we need to cart around, and removed the inconvenience of re-establishing a home office every time we need to shift to a new rental. Rental mode means selling mode. We can stick this place on the market and get into the rest of the project. The added bonus will be that if I'm working out there daily it will be easy to water a few trees in the morning or evening, so we can start to get some real plantings going on out there.

Once we've sold this place we'll be in a position (as long as the economic sphere keeps it's spokes in place for a while yet) to build and kit out a shed for temporary accommodation. Then it's on to building the house itself. For the shed we are thinking a rammed earth construction. We were going to go with a skillion roof for ease of sticking it together, but sizing the timbers on that for a decent span leads me to believe it would be cheaper to go with a gable type roof. I've acquired some curved I-beam that would make a nice roof shape, just have to find some way of calculating spans and designing webbing to suit. Should be fun :-P

It's a grand plan, ambitious and all that, but I figure if I can build the charcoal and ash separation gizmo then anything is possible!!

Searching, But For What?

2008-07-30T15:50:00.004+10:00

I subscribe to a mailing list on the subject of peak oil, well a couple actually, but one in particular. In general the mail sent to these lists is passing on news relevant to the realm of peak oil debate and discussing that news. There are the occasional digressions as with all such lists, and then there are the questions on solutions, and debate over those. There is no general thread of looking for solutions, just reactive comment on solutions presented in the media.

A number of peak oil focussed forae suffer from a similar problem. They are news filters, which serves a purpose, but that seems to be their entire rationale for existence. Occasionally someone comes along and asks about the feasibility of some alternate source of energy, and is generally given the bad news. I wonder to myself, what is the point of trawling through all this stuff if the best that can be offered is essentially “there is no hope”?

There are of course no solutions to peak oil, as such. There are only responses. These responses can occur at a number of levels in society, and as many prominent thinkers have pointed out, the best responses are at the local and personal level. The effects of change at these levels will ultimately filter up through all other levels of society.

Accepting the realities of EROEI as a limiting factor in all debates over responses, along with the realities of finite resources, we are presented with a very simple set of possible responses. Well, it seems simple to my mind, perhaps I'm missing something.

There is one possible positive response. Reduction. Plain and simple. We don't use as much “stuff”. We reduce our population to sustainable levels, and at the same time reduce our consumption to sustainable levels. We live off the natural increase of the environment whilst allowing enough for the other species of the Earth and leaving the capital as an investment.

There are a raft of negative responses. There's no point detailing them, a look over some of the main peak oil sites will readily illustrate the general themes.

Given that there is only one plausible positive response, in what light do we consider suggestions for alternatives within our various ways of life?

Questions on the feasibility of alternative energies are invariably met with the response, “if we converted X% of our output of Y product to Z fuel then it would only replace a squillionth of our current demand.” and the discussion comes to a halt there.

Yes, this is an honest appraisal of the thermodynamic realities we are faced with. Still, it seems to miss a valuable point. In light of our single positive response what impact would such an alternative energy have? How can it be used within the context of a world that has embraced that single positive response? The respondents to the original questions only seem to consider the question in terms of preserving the status quo. What if the question were couched in terms of a new worldview, where we have taken the necessary steps under the positive plan? What gains may we see from it?

We need to give up on the idea of having lives like they are today. Our lives tomorrow will be nothing like they are today. Once we can do that, we can consider options in a new light. Biodiesel will not fuel a future that's like today. If the future is one where we have reduced population, reduced consumption, where 90% of the population walks to where they need to go, produces vegetables in their back yards, collects rain water off their rooves, then biodiesel could well allow farmers to continue producing bulk grain crops. It wont allow us to motor to the corner store 500m down the road, but it might allow us to get grain after that 500m walk, and have bread for lunch after the walk back again.

A lot of peak oil discussion is still operating from basis of attempting to preserve our current way of life, it is innate to the mindset of the people considering options for the future. We will not get ahead, we will have no meaningful discussion with respect to alternative energies, until we accept the condition of reduction in the first instance and from there go on to consider their feasibility. A future 1kWhr per day per household lifestyle is a much greater possibility than a 20kWhr per day per household lifestyle. The possibility of achieving that are orders of magnitude greater. If we throw our hands in the air and give up because we cannot achieve the 20kWhr lifestyle then we are shooting ourselves in the foot, cutting off our noses to spite our faces.

While ever we are wasting out time and energy searching for ways to escape the unavoidable realities we are missing many valuable chances to take opportunities and courses of action that will lead to our ultimate benefit in the future, a future markedly different than our current state, but at the least possessing a rational balance of modernity and sustainability.

Above are some Chinese Tallow Tree (Sapium sebiferum) cuttings. These guys will produce the most oil per hectare of any crop short of algae, according to some sources, and the infrastructure required is going to be a lot less.

Carbon Shock, Trees & Sheds

2008-07-07T17:48:00.004+10:00

I'm having a bash at Green With A Gun's carbon accounting. At this early stage I'm tracking most things, but estimating water and power use from my records, which are pretty extensive. I'm a compulsive grapher of such things, and get excited when a new water or power bill arrives, until I realise that I have to pay for it as well as graphing it... I figure we're going to get the worst up front, and in future months when we have a chance to make some changes we can measure the figures more accurately.

So how do the numbers look so far? Pretty poor to be honest.

For a household of 5, two adults and three kids, we're going to be spending more than ¢1200 this month, leaving us with a deficit of over ¢700. Can I put it on the credit card???

There will still be numbers for purchases, compost, rubbish & recycling, and fuel use to come in over the course of the month, but the big numbers, water and power use, are already in there, and they're huge! I thought we were doing fairly well given that I work out of home, one of the reasons for the big power bill I guess, that and the oversized off-peak water heater we were left by the previous owners, designed to fill the massive spa for lazy lounging in steaming bubbly water, a legacy of times before people considered the environment in advance of leisure time activities.

Still, there are surely ways to reduce this overall usage, even given the fact that we wont be spending up big on major changes due to the fact that we are hoping to move on sooner rather than later. Teaching the kids to turn off taps and lights properly would be a good start, and being more rigorous in turning off my computer would help as well. Until we get the power and water down then everything else is dwarfed in comparison. A bit like changing to compact flouro light globes and then driving to the corner shop four times a day.

Yesterday I potted on the elm seedlings we started last year. Eighteen tiny elm trees now in individual pots. They'll be grown on for another year before being planted out in one of the hedgerows-to-be out at the new farm. We've got six oaks begun at the same time that will go out this winter if I can organise some form of tree guards for them. I'll have to choose my month carefully for those, ¢900 back on the account would be nice! I'm leaning toward some recycled apple bins, knock the base out of them, and replace a couple of the boards on the north side with old netting, as well as slinging a bit it over the top. We've got a gully full of the stuff, ready to be recycled, so it seems like a carbon saving plan to me.

I love propagating trees, as I'm sure I've mentioned before, but we're faced with two challenges now that we have enough land to put in (almost) as many trees as we can imagine. Water and protection. Whilst the water is around, getting out to the block weekly during summer may be a challenge, though Mum has kindly offered to help out there, so one challenge may be surmountable. Hares and roos are the other challenge. There isn't much we can do about the roos, they're a part of the environment that we need to learn to live with, but the hares, well, we might be sampling a few new dishes in the coming months. I hear jugged hare is a winner.

I'm also working on some plans for a shed. I've recently come into possession of a large pile of steel that would be suitable for the roof spans on a nice shed. After spending some evenings over the weekend working up a suitable rough plan I did some costings. Then I compared those costs to some kit sheds that are available. I was in for a nasty shock. Even with the savings from all the steel, the major component of the cost of the shed will be cladding and roofing. Roofing alone would cost over $6 000, walling another $4 000, so changing the walling material is only going to reduce the cost to around $10 000, before the costs of fitting out for temporary accommodation. The kit shed costs around $10 000 complete (not including fitout for accommodation of course), with the added bonus of not needing to visit engineers to get it certified, and certainly enjoying an easier journey through the council gauntlet. We're not rushing into anything just yet, who knows, another couple of tons of steel could turn up, or a shed's worth of corrugated iron, but at this stage the sensible option would seem to be the kit shed. Now, what can I possibly use 20 odd curved spans of I-beam for?

Misappropriated Revolution?

2008-06-25T15:53:00.005+10:00

I finished reading a book called “The Owner-Built Homestead” by Barbara and Ken Kern last night, originally published in1977, though it indicates the original copyright year was 1974. The book has languished on my shelf for a number of years now, being referred to sporadically and in a piecemeal fashion. With our new project in it's formative stages I've dusted off a number of books like this and read them cover to cover to make sure I don't miss anything useful.

Last night, as I read the final chapter I came across the following gem that caused me some concern. Please forgive any transcription errors, and unconscious changes of spelling to my native tongue:

Homesteading is a self-reliant way of life on the land, and wholesome food production may well be the first step toward achieving self-reliance. This momentum toward self-reliance and self-provision has been, in recent years, appropriately labeled the Green Revolution. It has been quietly moving forward as families return to the soil to raise their crops and their children. Nothing seems substantially to impede it's progress.

I've enboldened the shocking bit. All through the recent years of my life I've known the Green Revolution according to the standard of the day, that it referred to the scientific conquest over nature. As I drifted off to sleep I thought about this change. It's quite common for different groups to use the one term in different ways, but these two uses of the term seem to be diametrically opposed. One refers to a shift of lifestyle back closer to the earth, the other to a shift in practices that facilitate a movement of people away from the land, and a gradual destruction of the earth.

A quick search of the internet seems to indicate that the first use of the term “Green Revolution” in it's modern context is ascribed to USAID director William Gaud in 1968. To quote answers.com:

The term "Green Revolution" was first used in 1968 by former USAID director William Gaud, who noted the spread of the new technologies and said, "These and other developments in the field of agriculture contain the makings of a new revolution. It is not a violent Red Revolution like that of the Soviets, nor is it a White Revolution like that of the Shah of Iran. I call it the Green Revolution."

Speech by William S. Gaud to the Society for International Development. 1968.
http://www.answers.com/topic/green-revolution?cat=technology

The full text of the speech is available at:

http://www.agbioworld.org/biotech-info/topics/borlaug/borlaug-green.html

So it would appear that William's use of the term predates it's inclusion in the book by at least 6 and maybe 9 years, though I imagine greater research would perhaps dig up references to the term in a lot of old homesteading literature from those times.

No matter which way it went, whether it was the chicken or the egg, the science based revolution gained the association with the term, for better (and in my opinion) or worse. Reading through the speech, the following sticks out, and I wonder what impact such a statement has had:

Is the aid program in trouble because economic development does not matter - because it is not important? Nonsense! Development is the burning obsession of more than half the people in the world. Development as Pope Paul has said, is the new name for peace. Development does matter and it cannot wait.

Pope Paul said that development is the new peace? Development that now works for the rich and fails the poor? The following from http://www.indiastudychannel.com/resources/16170-Origin-Green-Revolution.aspx sums it up nicely:

Yet far from bringing prosperity, two decades of Green Revolution have left Punjab riddled with discontent and violence. Instead of plenty, Punjab has been left with diseased soils, pest infested cops, waterlogged deserts. indebted and discontented farmers.

It has often being suggested that the Green Revolution was the only alternative by which India and the rest of the Third World could have increased their food availability. Yet, until the 1960's India was successfully following an agricultural development policy based on strenghthening the ecological base of agriculture and the self-reliance of peasants. Most of the states were undergoing land reforms and measures were taken to secure tenure for tenant cultivators, to fix reasonable rents, and tjo abolish the Zamindari system. Ceilings on land holdings were also reduced. The 'land transformation' programme put forward by the Ministry of Agriculture, achieved major successes. Infact, the rate of growth of total crop production was higher during this period.

I don't want to “buy a vowel”, I want a consonant. And that consonant would be the letter “d” and we can replace our “n” and get a much better picture. We know how powerful words and phrases can be, that the pen is mightier than the sword. If only the Green Revolution as we now know it had been correctly labelled as the “Greed Revolution” and left the subsistence movement with the name “Green Revolution” where might we be today?

To finish with another quote from Barbara and Ken, speaking on the Green Revolution:

As one unsung poet puts it, “Don't look for it's soldiers in the city. Most of the real ones are long since gone to their domesand gardens, with goats and chickens the day was won. You will now see only plastic imitations who will starve yelling, “What's it all mean?” - not knowing that the revolution has come and gone and was won in a patch of beans.”

Obviously the closing years of that decade was one of hope for sane and rational living.Unfortunately what was seen as a shift gaining momentum appeared to lose that forward drive during the 1980's and 1990's, floundering against the renewed vigour of capitalism and corporate agribusiness.

The movement is still there, but it still remains a subset of society, a fringe group, probably similar in proportion to what it was when Barbara and Ken wrote that book. The trouble is that we are now faced with greater and more pressing concerns, such as climate change and peak oil, and the apparatus of government and business that has congealed around society is operating to the direct detriment of the homesteading movement (whatever it may be called in people's own societies). These concerns were there back in the 1970's, but they were neglected in the intervening years, so the danger they present has increased dramatically, and our chances of taking action, and of that action producing useful results, have been proportionally reduced.

Here in Australia we face numerous challenges on our path to becoming small farmers, and that's before we even get to the stage of thinking about sticking something in the ground or on the field. Sometimes it seems that the powers that be have done everything possible to make self-reliance a difficult and demanding path to follow. It is likely that this is an unintended side-effect of the push to make things easier for big centralised corporations, but it has it's effect regardless of the ultimate motive.

Reclaiming the Green Revolution is probably beyond us now, and as it was such a catchy, pithy phrase, it is a great shame. All the same, the self-reliance revolution must go on. Perhaps it will be the Golden Revolution, powered by the sun, ushering in a golden age of harmony with the earth?

Another Quick Update

2008-05-30T16:22:00.002+10:00

Yet another month flown by! I wont bother making excuses for not posting, they're the same as the usual ones ;-)

I've calmed down since my water crisis, and essentially given up on the idea of having a lot of massive dams, at least for the moment. We've decided we'll have a single large dam to the capacity of our maximum harvestable right, situated at the bottom of hill, where three gullies feed into one. It's a nice spot for a dam.

The rest of our water needs we will handle through swales/contour banks. This will help prevent erosion on our very steep block, as well as ensuring any water that does fall takes the long way round on it's journey to the creek. If we can maximise the work it does then we'll be as well off as if we stored it in the first place.

We're still tossing up a lot of ideas for cropping, nothing has been settled yet. Having our water plans sorted out (sort of) allows us to make some more serious decisions, at least with respect to dumping some ideas. We wont be growing a commercial crop of hazelnuts for one, though we may still have a crack at some olives.

We're also toying with the idea of a bit of herbage. The DW really loves herbs, and so do I, so I think they'd be perfect given our inclinations. We will of course have to do a lot of market research before we move in that direction, but it allows an avenue of diversity. One of our axioms for this adventure is "not all of our eggs in one basket".

Part of our building process involves putting in a 5m or bigger stock grid on the council road (it's not theirs yet, and they may be sent the bill for it before they can have it, lol!) and we've been covered a lot of suppliers for prices. Thankfully we found a relatively local supplier who has them for half the price we've been quoted to date, so that is a bit of good news. I just hope we can take advantage of it before steel prices shoot through the roof.

Our other option is of course to convince the landowner on the other side of the council road that it is more economical to fence his paddock off, even though he loses a scrap of grazing land (that belongs to council anyway). This option is half the price of the lowest priced grids.

The new farm is generally on hold until we get the current farmlet officially on the market (it's sort of on there now, but not properly). We're working through the painting, and have finished off the tiling, so it's slowly getting there. One of the major hurdles will be when we want to move all our accumulated resources out to the new place. Storage there is currently nil, so we're going to need to implement some solutions for that. We have contemplated containers, and may end up going that route, they're almost as economical as a shed (floorspace per dollar wise) without the construction headaches.

So many up in the air plans can get confusing and cause an undue amount of stress. Thankfully it's the weekend now and we're planning a campfire out the back tonight (in fact I think it's already lit!). Sausages, coleslaw and fire-taters, with toasted marshmallows for desert. A great way to wind down from the working week before getting into the working (but infinitely more satisfying) weekend.

Water Complexity Crisis

2008-05-02T15:48:00.003+10:00

Over the last few weeks I've been investigating possibilities for our new block of land. We intend to run some form of commercial operation on it, most likely one or more tree crops. We don't like to put all of our eggs in one basket so spreading across a couple of different crops will meet the goal of resiliency (in addition to the myriad other subsystems we intend to implement for our own use.)

One of the first concerns was irrigation. The region is reasonably well watered with an annual rainfall around 800mm per annum. Certainly not coastal, but good enough. In planning such an enterprise a person generally tries to consider worst case scenarios, and in this instance we're looking at how we would survive a total drought for a year or more.

The answer to this is by having stored water on hand to irrigate the trees. If we can get them through the drought period, even without returning a crop, then we live to try another day.

A landowner has a right to harvest a certain amount of water on their land, known as their "harvestable right", which is set as a proportion of the annual rainfall in an area. Our factor is 0.08, which is 0.01% of the average rainfall or thereabouts (though I am sure there is some much more arcane way of working this out used by the folks in power.) To calculate the size of dams allowed on the property from this, one multiplies the factor by the land size in hectares to arrive at the number of megalitres of storage allowed.

So for our modest estate we come up with a figure of 2.24ML. This is deemed to be sufficient for domestic and stock watering, which seems fair enough.

The real problems arise when you need to consider irrigating a crop. Based on our scenarios we would need somewhere in the vicinity of 10ML to survive a total drought in reasonable condition if we were to plant just 1ha of a tree crop such as olives. If we give up the desire to get a crop off in drought years and irrigate only to keep the trees alive then this could be reduced to 4ML, perhaps.

All of this seems fair enough, we'd be quite willing to pay for the privilege of being able to trap extra water falling from the sky (even though this irks a part of me) but the problem is, how?

It might seem as simple as paying the appropriate licences and getting on with the job, but sadly, no, it's not that easy. It's actually so difficult that even the people in the government department in charge of all this stuff cannot explain it clearly.

They start out with "You need to buy a water allocation from someone else." and that's where the flow of useful & sensible information seems to end.

So I ask "Are we buying part of their harvestable right?" and the answer to that is "no".

It seems harvestable rights are immutable, inalienable, untradeable.

So I ask the next dumb question: "Where does the water for the water allocations come from then, if everyone has only got 'harvestable rights' that cannot be traded?"

From what I could discern there are people out there who somehow have a water allocation beyond their "harvestable right". I have no idea how they would have gained this allocation given that the system apparently cannot create new water allocations, but I guess that's just one of the mysteries of bureaucracy that we just need to accept.

If I wish to get my enterprise secure with respect to water I need to find someone who has water and who wants to sell it. The trouble is a quick check on the government register of water allocation sales shows not a single one in the last two years in our catchment. A search on a national water trading website shows that there are currently none for sale either, so at the moment I've reached a dead end. I'll check in with a few stock and station agents in the region to see what they know, so all might not be lost, but with the mines purchasing water left, right and center, I don't hold out much hope.

There are of course other ways to skin a cat, and we will proceed with our primary course of action which is storing water in the soil itself, but we will be operating without the backup of dam-based storage for the times when the soil goes crispy. I guess that way we're not taking all of the excitement and risk out of the enterprise!

Ooops

2008-04-24T09:18:00.004+10:00

I'd like to apologise to anyone who still stops by to see if anything has changed! It's been an awfully long time since I put up a post.

A lot has happened in the months since the end of January. A lot is still happening, so this is just a short note to let you know I still exist, and will attempt to resume something like normal service soon.

We have our new block of land, and have been getting it ready to have some animals agisted on it. We've also got the repayments on it, and interest rates have gone from 7.8% to 8.5% in the few months from November last year. Amazing stuff!

We've got our current liferaft (the Flood Street Farmlet of course) informally on the market now. I say informally as it's not being put with any agents at the moment, and is offered at reduced cost as we haven't finished things like painting, tiling etc so it doesn't look as good as it will shortly. Still, if somebody wants it now they're welcome to it :-)

It seems things are heating up across the world with respect to peak oil, peak everything, and the general crisis of civilisation. Some recent blogs by folks far more dedicated than I can hope to be at the moment. Of course they also have a lot of very intelligent and scary things to say!

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2008/04/business-as-usual.html

And, if you're getting the feeling that you're in the midst of history in the making:

http://sharonastyk.com/2008/04/22/we-regret-to-inform-you/

Take care, and I promise to write something a bit more substantial soon!!

How Relocalisation May Work

2008-01-25T11:58:00.000+11:00

In the last week there has been a flurry of activity over at The Oil Drum on the subject of relocalisation. It began with an essay by Stuart Staniford, titled The Fallacy Of Reversibility which looked at the future prospects for relocalisation. There was a followup piece analysing this essay, mainly aimed at pointing out the holes, called Is Relocalisation Doomed by Sharon Astyk. Green With A Gun has also made some important points on the issue, and certainly a lot easier to follow.

There are now hundreds of comments on the articles, arguing to and fro about their merits and the general future of relocalisation and/or society. It's a lot to wade through, and as with all such commenting, there will never be a consensus. I'm setting out here to put together my thoughts on the matter. These thoughts have kept me awake for the last night or two (or three) so hopefully by setting them down I might get a peaceful night's rest. It is not a quantitative analysis, more a discussion on probable mechanisms that would influence a change in social behaviour to bring about something resembling relocalisation.

To begin, Stuart approaches the subject of whether relocalisation will result from peak oil from the perspective of the supplier. This, I think, is a major flaw in his analysis. Any change does not proceed from one element of a relationship alone, but is the result of the changes in both sides. Supplier and consumer are intimately linked in the case of food supply, and by only looking at the supply side of the equation we are missing at least half of the case.

Boiled down, Stuart is asking "will industrial agriculture become unprofitable due to peak oil?" and unfortunately this is missing the heart of the matter. It's not whether industrial agriculture will be profitable or not that tells us whether relocalisation will work post-peak oil.

The first question should be "what is relocalisation?". This will give us a basis that will allow us to consider the situation in the correct light.

To my mind relocalisation is about sourcing your goods and services in the local economy. An adjunct to that is that the local economy must step up to the plate and supply more goods and services to meet the demands of local consumers. That's it in a nutshell. Keep in mind that supplier and consumer are always intimately linked, one accepts feedback from the other and vice versa.

Nothing in that description implies the continuance or otherwise of industrial agriculture. There is also nothing in it that says industrialised agriculture cannot be used locally. We must insert a caveat, that obviously fuel and parts for the maintenance of machinery are generally not locally available commodities, but a profitable enterprise should be able to deal with those issues.

Relocalisation is more about the spatial relationship with sources of goods than the sources themselves. Sure other issues can be brought into it, such as of ethical production, but these are sideline issues to the central issue of distance. I'm not sure whether it fits the purist relocalisation philosophy, but I believe trade over distance will continue to a degree even in a relocalised area, but that trade wont be in the goods required for our day-to-day survival.

Whilst relocalisation covers things other than food, the focus here is on food, due to the critical part it plays in our continued existence. I believe the ideas expressed for food can be applied to other things with some consideration.

I do appreciate that Stuart was most likely approaching the issue in the fashion he did in order to prove that whilst there was broadscale industrial agriculture there was no impetus for suppliers to turn to any other model of production, but I personally see this as playing around the fringes of the true issues that need to be considered. It's not about whether the supplier needs to turn to some new model of production, but about whether the consumer needs to.

I will touch briefly on a related issue for a moment. There is a lot of talk about calls for large proportions of the population to return to producing their own food as a part of the relocalisation ethos. In Stuart's essay it seemed to be assumed that this would be enacted by a movement of people into the workforce of existing farms, that there would be some economic spur that would drive the farmer to take on physical labourers in place of machinery. I think this is also a misunderstanding of relocalisation. Such a thing would not come to pass at least until it cost more to run machinery than it did to hire labour. Whilst that state of affairs is entirely possible, as Stuart was able to prove it's not likely for some time to come, at least not from a purely economic standpoint in relation to the farmer's bottom line.

Let us consider the consumer, strangely absent from Stuart's analysis, yet central to the reasoning behind relocalisation as a mitigation strategy for peak oil.

Relocalisation is currently a voluntary exercise. It is an activity undertaken by people and communities as a form of insurance. Why insurance? By patronising local suppliers, demand will increase supply, according to economic theory. With an abundance of local suppliers a community or region becomes insulated against shocks to the industrialised mechanisms of goods supply.

I feel this is one of the core paradigms of the relocalisation movement. Forseeing disruptions to stretched supply chains (often global in extent) localities hope to minimise the impact of such disruptions on their daily lives, and therefore upon their chances of continued existence.

The push for relocalisation is not going to come from the bottom line of the grower, but from the consumer. Whilst we have abundant transport fuels to run the current networks everything is okay. As soon as supply declines to any great extent then trouble begins. It does not matter whether a farm in the U.S. is economically viable post-peak oil if the people reliant on it's produce are half a world away in Australia and the goods never arrive because the transport company is unable to purchase fuel.

This highlights the fact that one of the primary motivators is going to be the cost and availability of transport. The cost of getting the goods to market, where this remains possible. Farm gate prices will have an influence on the final price, but these are compounded along with the cost of transport, and the overheads and operating profit of the end marketers, to give a final price. As this goes up, so the affordability of the food decreases.

This leads us to the second factor that needs to be considered when trying to understand what may push people to relocalisation, spending power. Let's consider a "case study" to illustrate some points.

A consumer earns $800 per week working. Of that $800, $200 goes to driving 40km into the nearest town to work on a daily basis. A further $300 is spent on food for the family and the rest goes on mortgage/rent, and sundry other expenses.

As the price of food increases due to the increasing input costs (fundamentally, fuel), we will have inflation (if I understand economic theory correctly!) and the standard approach to combatting inflation is to raise interest rates. So as food costs increase and mortgage/rent payments increase.

Our hypothetical consumer does not want to give up her job, so cutting back on fuel use is not an option. Due to the troubled housing market, moving is not an immediate option. The non-essential sundry expenses go first, and then the budget of food needs to be trimmed. Over time this happens again and again. No more chocolate biscuits, then no more biscuits at all. No more pre-packaged meals. No more soft drink. Before too long the consumer is at a point where they are forced to buy raw foods (if they know of such things, perhaps they have starved for lack of 2 minute noodles by this time) and create their own meals.

The essential message (if sense prevails) is that the consumer gradually moves to a state of producing meals from raw foods. They are now caught between a rock and a hard place. Further increases in price cannot be dealt with by making the diet more raw, they can only be dealt with by reducing the amount of food available.

Now of course there are a multitude of humans, and every one will have a different response to such a situation. Perhaps they turn to charity, move in with relatives, etc. Some though, will have thought ahead and now be growing some proportion of their own food, likely to be mostly vegetables. So begins one aspect of forced relocalisation. Not forced in the sense that everyone will be required to do it by some authority, but forced in that there is an outside factor or influence driving people to it.

The final element of relocalisation to be considered (here at least) is that of the source of food. Currently the majority of people shop in big chain supermarkets. The buying power of these organisations means that food can be brought to the consumer at a price that is often lower than the input costs to the producer. I am personally acquainted with horticulturalists who have left the industry due to the fact that they were getting paid less for their produce than it cost them to grow it.

Now many people would argue that this is a push toward economies of scale, that larger farms will take the place of these smaller, family run enterprises, and one of the central assertions of Stuart's piece is that such large farms will remain profitable throughout.

It is already a fact that our local farmer's market is cheaper than the local supermarket (when I say local, both are 45km away from the village where we reside) The farmer's market is well supported, but only occurs fortnightly.

Again, talking of sensible choices, as fuel prices rise, and following them food prices, we should still see a difference between these two means of obtaining food. Word would get around as people began to search for cheaper sources of food. Patronage at the market would increase, local growers currently supplying to the central markets would hear of this and change the way they do business, moving to sell through the markets. The markets may then run weekly, or daily even, as demand from the consumer spurs the suppliers on.

The cheaper prices at the market still generally mean that the supplier is getting more than when selling to the wholesale market, as long as the farmer is willing to go to such lengths. I imagine that other forms of market selling will come about, such as local agent systems where the fellow who enjoys the hurley burley of the markets collects produce from a group of more socially reticent suppliers and takes it along weekly or daily.

And so relocalisation would come about through the forces applied upon the consumer by the system, and then applied by the consumer back onto the system. As budgets are squeezed by increasing prices consumers move from the ease of driving to the nearest supermarket for pre-packaged meals to sourcing rawer foods closer to home in an attempt to maintain their existence. To be sure this will not happen as a rule, and not be across the board, but it is a mechanism that will result in relocalisation without conscious intent.

As indicated in the beginning, this is a consideration of hypothetical mechanisms that could drive relocalisation, an attempt to look at the factors that were missed in Stuart's essay. It lacks numerical backing, and also suffers for the fact that humans are, if nothing else, an unpredictable species. Still, if the chains of cause and effect outlined here are logically consistent, then it is certainly a possibility, though whether it is a probability remains to be seen. If ever I get a holiday again I may try to put some numbers to it.

Done, Perhaps? Well Shorn, Certainly!

2008-01-21T11:42:00.000+11:00

First an update on the state of Billie, the new girl on the block, for the folks who have expressed a desire to see how she turned out after her run through the beauty salon. A much more visually and aromatically appealing creature :-) About a third the size as well.

Our professional goat wrangler friend tells us she is probably around 2 years old, and in good condition considering her recent lifestyle. Once shorn she had a toenail trim, drench and vaccination, and then kitted out with a collar. We were also informed that she has very nice fibre, so next shearing, when it hopefully wont be so infested with weeds and bugs, it might be a candidate for spinning.

Over the last few days she has already become much more tame. She enjoys a good scratch, though she needs to be caught to give her one. Once you've begun you can let go and she'll stand there enjoying it. She also doesn't run for the hills when we come near, so we're making swift progress. We're hoping that by the time she's willing to come when called for a treat of some kind then we'll be able to let her off and she wont immediately trash the fences in an attempt to escape.

As I hinted at in the last post, this weekend was spent out on the new block, doing the work that is required to "start construction" so that we can preserve the building entitlement when the boundary change goes through.

It was a wet, wet, wet weekend, especially Saturday, though a few showers went through on Sunday. This is the first time in some time that we've had decent rain, which I considered quite ironic. There was no way I was going to put off the work for an extra week, so went ahead regardless. I arrived on site at about 8 am on Saturday, and the bulldozer arrived half an hour later. Work commenced shortly after that.

My tasks were to get the new access installed, and when the earthworks were complete install the erosion control. Initially we were thinking we'd go with strawbales for this aspect of the project, but thankfully my FIL had some of the real stuff from one of his previous projects, so I was able to put that to use. Strawbales are very hard to come by at the moment, so we may have had to wait to get them.

Below are some pictures of the progress of leveling the house site.

Below, the job is done...

Below is a picture of the new access, about half way through the work. I still had to string some wire up on the left hand fence. We will need to introduce about a foot of fill into the "driveway" to bring it up to level. You can just make out a hummock of dirt at the foot of the left hand gatepost, which represents roughly where it will need to come up to.

The earthworks were completed by about 3pm on Sunday, fences and erosion control by 6pm. All in all it was an action packed, sometimes miserable and wet, weekend, but we got the jobs done, and maybe, just maybe, we might be only a couple of weeks away from settlement on the block. Then the fun will really begin. Our only concern at this stage is whether we have installed enough erosion control. We wont know the answer to that until the certifier gets back tomorrow and can get out and have a look at it. Our fingers are firmly crossed...

Construction, Angora And Forest Gardening

2008-01-18T11:59:00.000+11:00

Tomorrow the bulldozer will be arriving and the levelling of the house site will begin. I've also got all of the bits and pieces ready to build the new gateway, so I'll do that whilst the big machinery crawls about doing it's thing. I'll be sure to get a few pictures!

With some luck (and a lot of hard work, I'm guessing) we should have all of the work finished this weekend, meaning we can hand the ball back to the vendor so he can do what needs to be done and we can settle on the land, contractually, if not physically at this stage.

On the home front we've recently been gifted an Angora goat. She's stinky and feral after living wild in a friend's paddock, an escapee from another farm that could never escape from the newer home after breaking in. With some paitent care she has become a bit more friendly in only a few days. There's hope for her, much more than when the prior "owner" was set to give her a "lead injection" to end her feral rampage and harrassment of his alpacas. Sometime later today our friend from across the road will be visiting with her shearing plant and we will clean off a few years worth of matted and crusty fleece and spruce her up. She should hopefully smell a lot better after that.

I've recently finished reading Forest Gardening, by Robert A de J Hart. The concepts of forest gardening were developed in roughly the same era as those of Permaculture and agroforestry, in this case over in England. Many of the themes are similar to those running through Permaculture, but I found the book very enjoyable for the focus that was given to the philosophy and ethics of our lives. It is certainly a book about transitioning to post-industrial living, in harmony with the green world (though peak oil is not mentioned, or even hinted at, once!) It also discusses the role of craft as a part of being human. Creating things with our hands is one of the greatest things we can do, one of the most satisfying, and also one that can put us in much closer contact with nature. The following excerpt sums up the philosophy of the book perfectly:

To my mind, the basic criterion must be responsibility. The Green world is the responsible world. It recognises that the basis of all life is the miracle of the green leaf. The green pigment, chlorophyll, is the only substance on earth that understands how to harness the energy of the sun to create living matter. Moreover the green leaf absorbs harmful carbon dioxide, the cause of the greenhouse effect, and exhales oxygen, without which no living organism can exist for more than a few minutes. Therefore our first duty to all life is to preserve as much greenness as possible and to promote an ever increasing abundance of green growth. Industrial society, on the other hand, is essentially hostile to greenery. It kills it with it's acid rain, buries it beneath layers of concrete, it burns and bulldozes it out of existence. Therefore measures to ameliorate the colossal harm that it does are not enough. For the sake of all life, we must at all costs progress as speedily as possible towards a post-industrial society, which will meet the majority of it's physical needs, from the infinite and largely unexplored potentialities of the green world.

p133 (Any transcription errors are my own)

The following blog post is also well worth a read. US centric but applicable to all free peoples, it discusses the gradual erosion of the right to run small farms due to the fact that nobody seems to want to take responsibility for their own choices anymore, and would rather blame (and sue) someone else: Please Pass the Bubblewrap

A Quick Update

2008-01-07T10:38:00.000+11:00

The silly season has drawn to a close now, or at least I'm hoping it has. The eldest son is still on holidays so his unique style of play still reverberates around the house, and they are all expecting visitors out later today, so it's not exactly going to be peaceful, but my holidays are over so things are returning to normal.

The Christmas period has been quiet in terms of progress with the new land, the council shut down so the changes we need to get through were stalled, and therefore everything else was as well. Hopefully they have returned to work now, and things will once again start moving along. There are under three months to go until we need to settle, and a lot needs to happen in that time. Realistically it shouldn't take too long to get it all done, but as always it depends on events occurring in a certain order, so trouble with any one of them puts a stop on the whole process.

My FIL has kindly offered to take his bulldozer out to the land and level the house site for us, which will be a substantial cost saving. Other than leveling the site we need to put in some erosion control, and build the entrance to council standards. I can have the entrance and erosion control done in a weekend, my FIL reckons the leveling will take the same. The trouble is we need to have the house site moved before we can proceed with that work, and the construction certificate issued. Moving the house site is our current stumbling block, but should be resolved this week (fingers crossed).

The Flood Street Farmlet has not been entirely neglected over this time, even though the focus of the blogging has been on the new land. The vegetables are growing very well, corn is starting to form cobs, we've been eating cucumbers, zucchinis and beans for some time now, and our late planted tomatoes are getting close to ripening. The potatoes are looking a little wilted, we've not had any rain for some time now, and we've returned to the usual struggle of trying to water everything within a short enough span to allow it enough moisture to survive. We're expecting around 37 degrees today, the hottest this summer, so things have been pleasantly mild to slightly too hot, which is great. Hopefully today is not going to be a change in regime, but rather a momentary aberration.

I was able to put part of my holidays to constructive use, the rotting front porch has been replaced with a nice new decking, and a bit of extra support added to stop it wobbling like a trampoline. I'll still need to paint all of the eaves and touch up other areas, but overall the outside is getting close to a "ready to sell" state. This leaves us considering what to do with the "lovely" carpet in the lounge room. Do we rip it up and go timber floor, replace it, or leave it for the next folks to change to their heart's desire? We realise there is too much to do to get the house into a state where it would be perfect, but our feeling is that the next owners will not be happy with that either, and will want to alter it to suit their own tastes, so we would be effectively wasting money to do too much. I guess the motto is something along the lines of just enough so that it doesn't look too awful :)

Shifting The Goal Posts

2007-12-18T09:19:00.000+11:00

In considering our recent experiences it has become clear to me that humans can define success in a fashion that is relative to current experiences. In the beginning we set some expectations of what we defined as success, and then worked toward that goal. As events have unfolded, and the goal posts have moved further away, our definition of success has been adjusted to suit the new information.

There have been times when we have railed at the fact that we have needed to go further and further each time we reconsider our ultimate goal, and this reinforces the mystic idea that it is expectation that is one of the primary causes of unhappiness. We were unhappy because we expected that our original goal would be set in stone and we would be able to work towards it, achieve it, and then move on.

The universe has different ideas. It has "reasons" for making us take a certain path in life. Certain events must unfold before other events can take place, things must happen in their proper order. In the dark times when we are ruled by our expectations it is hard to see this, but it generally takes a display of generosity on behalf of the universe to set us back on track.

A case in point is the fact that we now not only have to get a construction certificate before we can buy the land, but we also have to begin construction. Now this is so far from the original advice given to us by the council that we were quite upset and wondering what on earth was going wrong. After a couple of angst ridden days considering this, we decided that if we could afford it we would forge ahead. In order to satisfy the certifier and council we would need to construct the new entrance to the property and do the earthworks for the site.

So yesterday I called the council to organise an on-site meeting to discuss the entry way to the property. The first DA on the block had a set of conditions on road signage, a new public intersection and the gateway to the property. These had been transferred directly to our new DA.

The first spot we stopped at was where the old lane joins to the new lane, which currently runs through a gate, dog-legs and then runs up the boundary fence of two blocks of land, through a paddock. We were required to put in a heavy-duty stock grate, and fix up the intersection. The stock grate alone is in the vicinity of three thousand dollars.

After discussing this with the gentleman from council we arrived at the conclusion that it would be alright to fence the road from the paddock, and do away with the stock grid and associated access gates to bypass the grid. Doing this could result in a massive saving on that bit of work.

Buoyed by this tentative bit of news (we still need to get approval from the owner of that land for that little scheme) we drove up to the top of the hill and stopped at the current gate to the block of land. Now the old DA was on an envelope further through on the block, along the new laneway, winding above some impressive hillside, over culverts and what-not to the furthest point on the property via another gate. Our decision was to have our home at the "front" of the block, the eastern-most side (the lane runs roughly east to west along the northern boundary of the property).

The fellow from the council pulled out the DA, then his itemised list of costs for the signage that would need to go in on the public road. He immediately began ticking and crossing things on his list. Because the conditions had been transfered directly from the old DA without consideration they included close to four thousand dollars worth of signs, three of which weren't needed as our house site was nice and close to the old lane. We would need only a T-intersection sign, and two for a culvert crossed on the road up. No winding road signs, no "don't drive over this cliff" signs, no signs for the four culverts further along the lane. Total saving in the vicinity of three thousand dollars!

So in one short meeting the universe was out to show me that it wasn't trying to make things hard for us (well not too hard, anyway) it was just organising things in it's own inscrutable way. When we can accept this and flow with it then we can be happy. I think ultimately it's a distinction between whether we believe things are meant to work out for the best, and we can therefore put our faith in the mysterious forces that direct events, or whether we feel negative about it all, and descend into the unhappiness of disappointed expectations.

Our "Sacred Lily Of The Incas" or Ismene

Round And Round We Go

2007-11-30T11:05:00.000+11:00

Returning to more mundane matters after the recent rantings, we've hit another crisis with respect to securing our new land and home. I am, at the moment, pondering the workings of councils, wondering how they end up achieving anything given that one hand does not seem to know what the other is doing, and that they are invariably working at cross purposes even whilst attached to the one being.

We have been informed that, contrary to all previous advice from the particular person, that having a DA for our house on the land is not actually enough to secure things through the boundary change that is pending upon the lot. The thought now is that we need to also have a construction certificate. Advice I have been given from other quarters seems to see this as redundant, one is much the same as another given that both documents are tied to a particular folio number. If one is at risk of disappearing when the folio number changes, then surely the other is just as likely to evaporate.

I generally don't enjoy taking a grim view of people's actions. Most act from their own knowledge, doing what they think is best at the time, and for this reason I think even foolish actions can often be forgiven and attributed to lack of complete knowledge. I'm having serious doubts in this case.

Why would a person, who is hired to perform a particular task, not actually know the things involved in the performance of that task? Why should there be such a great shift of knowledge in such a short span of time? What was true and proper yesterday, becomes today something that is false?

Building a house is a big job, whether we're doing the work ourselves or not, and the decisions that go into it are not to be rushed or taken lightly. We would ideally have liked to have at least a year to consider things, before turning the first sod. This attempt to require us to have a construction certificate prior to settlement is rushing things along way to swiftly.

To top that off, chances are we may not even be able to get a construction certificate. We were considering owner building, and to do that we need another certificate. To obtain that one, a person needs to own the land they intend to build upon, or at the very least hold a three year lease on that land. Now why on earth would we want to take out a lease on the land that we are hoping to finalise purchase of within the next month or two? For that is the only way forward. We cannot purchase until we get the certificates, and we cannot get the certificates until we purchase. I get the feeling we are going around in circles!

The option of taking on a builder is similarly mostly a non-option. Besides the greatly increased costs we would be facing, how many builders will sign up and pay the construction insurances for a block of land, the purchase of which is in doubt? More pertinent, would I be wise to sign on with a builder in such a case? That worthy tradesman is sure to want some compensation if it all went sour.

I like to contrast my thoughts here with those I had in the earlier stages of this adventure. I seem to recall writing that the universe was helping us along, looking after us and ensuring everything was going to work out at the right time and in the right order. Do I still feel the same now?

I think that I do, though I am also hesitant to decide which way to go next. There is certainly a lesson in this, but the trick is figuring out what it is. Is it that I should not lie down and accept without question what council has to say in this matter? Should I fight rather than flow? Are there times when we should swim against the current and on into calmer waters? Or is it that this is actually the best course of action (if we can somehow work out the issues surrounding the certificates) but I just don't yet see all the variables in play, so cannot comprehend the value of the course?

One thing is for sure, regardless of which course of action is chosen, only time will tell.