Funeral

On Thursday, Rusty the $100 Chook looked broody -- she kept heading to her nest to just sit, and she wasn't eating much. To break broodiness, you need to put the bird in a coolish spot with no nesting material, so that's what I did. Our chook dome was sitting on the freshly-mowed lawn, so I popped her in there with food and water but no nesting material.

Unfortunately, she wasn't broody. Yesterday morning she was sitting where I'd left her, but with her head on the ground and her eyes closed. She was too far gone to eat or drink. I warned the Twig and the Sprig that she would die that day (the Twig was very sober on his walk to school, the Geek told me) and settled her on a comfortable bed of dry lawn clippings in shade. We had to go out, but I doubt she lasted the morning -- she was stiff when I popped home at 2:30. In retrospect, she had probably been a bit off-colour for a few days, but she had no particular symptoms.

Rusty became our $100 chook a few years ago, after she began to suffer diarrhoea. It turned out that an egg had broken internally. The shell was removed by our vet and she had to go on antibiotics, hence the sobriquet.

The Geek is now digging a burial site selected by the Twig, under our lemon tree. The Twig has been watching a DVD about Ancient Egypt and plans to build a pyramid over Rusty's grave.

Penny, our remaining chook, looks rather lonely. I have been trying for a while to find some chooks to add to the flock, but it has been a bit more difficult than I thought. Isa Browns are easy to obtain, but not long-lived (as we have seen) and most heritage breeders live outside the Sydney basin. We'll have to take a day trip somewhere soon.

From Laura Ingalls Wilder

This is a lightly edited version of Laura's column "As a farm woman thinks," from November 1, 1923.

While driving one day, I passed a wornout farm. Deep gullies were cut thru the fields where the dirt had been washed away by the rains. The creek had been allowed to change its course, in the bottom field, and cut out a new channel ruining the good land in its way. Tall weeds and brambles were taking more strength from the soil already so poor that grass would scarcely grow... as [my companion] looked over the neglected farm he exclaimed, "Oh, it is a crime! It is a crime to treat good land like that!"... It is a crime to wear out and ruin a farm and the farmer who does so is a thief, stealing from posterity.

We are the heirs of the ages, but the estate is entailed as large estates frequently are, so that while we inherit the earth, the great round world which is God's Footstool, we have only the use of it while we live and must pass it on to those who come after us. We hold the property in trust and have no right to injure it nor to lessen its value. To do so is dishonest, stealing from our heirs their inheritance.

The world is the beautiful estate of the human family, passing down from generation to generation, marked by each holder while in his possession according to his character.

Did you ever think how a bit of land shows the character of the owner? A dishonest greed is shown by robbing the soil: the traits of a spendthrift are shown in wasting the resources of the farm by destroying its woods and waters, while carelessness and laziness are plainly to be seen in deep scars on the hillsides and washes in the lower fields.

It should be a matter of pride to keep our own farm, that little bit of the earth's surface for which we are responsible in good condition, passing it on to our successor better than we found it.

Laura Ingalls Wilder, Proto-Environmentalist

A Girlsown friend has recently lent me Laura Ingalls Wilder: Farm Journalist: Writings from the Ozarks * (thanks, Sharon!). Laura wrote a column for the Missouri Ruralist between 1911 and 1924 called "As a farm woman thinks," which dealt with a vast range of topics of interest to rural women.

What has struck me is her awareness of working with nature when farming, rather than against it, as well as the keen powers of observation and description which you can see in the Little House books. Take this (ostensibly from Almanzo's point of view) from 1912:

As I never allowed hunting on the farm, the quail were thick in the orchard and used to wallow and dust themselves like chickens in [the] fine dirt close to the tree. I wish this fact to be particularly noted in connection with the other fact that I had no borers in my trees for years.
A near neighbor set out 2,000 trees at about the same time and lost seven-eighths of them because of borers. He used every possible means to rid his trees of them except the simple one of letting the quail and other birds live in his orchard. Instead he allowed his boys to kill every bird they saw. (p. 21)

There is a recurring theme over many years that one does not need a lot of money to farm well, and numerous examples of successful farms where the owners simply couldn't afford commercial fertiliser, but used their brains to work out ways to fertilise the soil with local materials. A number of farmers, including Almanzo, used alley-cropping while their orchard trees were small.

Yet Laura's interest in wise use of resources extends far beyond farming. Her article of September 5, 1919 discusses the alarming loss of forest across the USA and the country's future lack of coal -- apparently the end of the American hard coal supply was in sight back then (according to Wikipedia, the peak of US anthracite production was in 1914), and she wondered what future housewives would use as cooking fuel.

Now if the editor of theMissouri Ruralist thought that this sort of stuff was interesting to rural women, why are women's columns and magazines these days filled with such tawdry rubbish? When Laura wrote about coal and forests, women's suffrage had not yet been achieved (and she had a number of comments about the responsibility of the vote when it did come, in 1920).

Laura wrote about something that all of us in the gardening blogosphere can relate to here:

Now is the time to make garden! Anyone can be a successful gardener at this time of year and I know of no pleasanter occupation these cold, snowy days, than to sit warm and snug by the fire making garden with a pencil, in a seed catalogue. What perfect vegetables do we raise in that way and so many of them!... Best of all, there is not a bug or worm in the whole garden and the work is so easily done. (pp. 133-4)

Well, I tend to do that sort of thing in late summer, when it's too hot to do anything else, and our cold days tend not to be snowy, but the picture is true here too!

Laura saw travel times move from horse-drawn to aeroplane pace, bringing people closer together:

The world is growing smaller each day. It has been shrinking for centuries, but during these later years it is diminishing in size with an ever increasing swiftness, yet so gradual is the change that we do not realize what is taking place unless we compare the present with the past... Theses people whom we have always carelessly bunched together in our minds as foreigners will be our friends and neighbors from this time on.(p. 159)

Wouldn't she have loved blogging!

*Hines, Stephen W. (ed.) (2007). Laura Ingalls Wilder: Farm Journalist: Writings from the Ozarks. University of Missouri Press, Columbia.

Upon Simplicity

Scrub Oak has been pondering why simple living is "so darn difficult". I think it's... because it is! Simple living isn't brainless living; that's what we're leaving behind. In fact, I would define Simple Living as a lifestyle based on making choices in favour of sustainability. And that means questioning our assumptions, the hardest form of thinking, along with the hard grind of keeping ourselves informed. It's the mindfulness that makes it difficult, the sudden rethinking of all the old ways all at once. But how can we move forward when we get stuck?

I think the first step is one from permaculture: design by analysis. You start by listing the characteristics of components of a system. An honest assessment of who we are and where we are is important. As one of our assets is money available, I think a look at the budget is essential. But there are other resources, particularly your time and your emotional resources. Is there a possible activity or goal that doesn't fit with the money, time or energy you have available? Then it's off the list. I have poor fine-motor skills and not much time. Sewing my own clothes isn't on my list of aspirations! But I love gardening and cooking, so I do have a vegetable garden.

The other part of design by analysis is putting various components together so that you have a system that works efficiently. I haven't baked bread for ages, but I love doing it, and I have a little more time now that I am no longer spending it at the physiotherapist's.... and our preferred commercial bread has just hit $5 a loaf. Baking my own bread has just reappeared on the agenda.

Another permie idea which can help is the notion of making the least change for the greatest possible effect. Think of small, meaningful changes, not grand gestures. In Flylady terms, take baby steps. Treat life with the patience and care you take with early tomato seedlings, and then see what a harvest you get.

Sydney Golden Wattle

Let misers hoard and hide their gold;
Here there is treasure-trove untold,
In yellow blossom, mass on mass
Spread out for wayfarers who pass
With hearts to feel, and eyes to see
How lovely is the wattle tree.

The Wattle Tree, Dora Wilcox

This is my Sydney Golden Wattle (Acacia longifolia); the cylindrical
flower-heads are about 4cm long. We tend to think of wattles as having round flower-heads, but this isn't always the case. My tree has a shrubby habit and is about 3m tall. They'll grow to 8m but, like most acacias, aren't long-lived. Unlike my other wattles, this species has large leaves (actually phyllodes, but I'll leave that to the botanists to discuss). It is only lightly scented, but to me the smell has an undertone of rotting vegetation. I'm glad it's right up the back and that its scent is overpowered by that of the Fringe Wattle! This is one I won't be growing again. The next one I try will be our national flower, A. pycnantha.

Parramatta Wattle

As promised, here is another of my wattle trees in flower. It is Acacia parramattensis, the Parramatta Wattle. When I bought it, the tag said that it would grow to five metres high. That's great, I thought; I need something to protect the house from westerly sun, but not something that will grow tall enough to obstruct our electrical wires. And it's a native of Western Sydney, too!


See where the wires are?

Oh well, at least it keeps the summer sun off the garden.

I'd guess the tree is about 8m tall. It is only after you've been a victim that you hear that nurseries can be a bit "imaginative" in describing the potential heights of plants. In some cases, this is not their fault: some Australian species vary considerably in height depending on growing conditions. The Royal Botanical Gardens says the Parramatta Wattle will reach 6m. I would guess that they grew it on Sydney sandstone, perhaps in the harbourside gardens, and that it does not really enjoy those conditions. The Australian National Botanic Gardens puts the height at 16m! If this much variation in height is possible, why not give the range on the label?

All my wattle flowers have held on well this year. We've had some cold, rainy weather, and it seems to have lengthened the flowering period. Last year, this tree was only in flower for two weeks before old-gold confetti littered the ground. This year, it's been about a month, and the flowers are only starting to fall.

This brings me to a garden mystery. As I said, I have two Parramatta Wattles. Only this one is in flower. The other is not even in bud. All I can think of is that the second one is growing against a garden shed, giving it a cool root run. Perhaps it doesn't know it's almost Spring. As the temperature outside is currently about 12 C, but the apparent temperature is 6 C, I'm not sure that I'm ready to believe in Spring yet, either.

Composting Confluence

I found an interesting pair of posts today. Rhonda Jean, as I mentioned, has been discussing composting, and was horrified to discover that one of her readers:

• is not allowed to capture rainwater (a state law)
• is not allowed to have a clothesline (Home Owners' Association by-law)
• is not allowed to have chickens (ditto)

Indeed the poor lady is supposed to have her landscaping vetted by the HOA. Rhonda Jean's reaction is pretty much the same as mine. I'm particularly intrigued that Colorado doesn't allow the capture of rainwater from hard surfaces like roofs. After all, that water will enter the stormwater system (I assume) rather than being absorbed by the land, and therefore cause flooding.

It is even more remarkable that citizens of the Land of the Free would voluntarily sign up to the intrusive impositions of HOAs, yet they do. I would consider it a gross impertinence for my neighbours to interfere in quiet, private backyard matters such as my washing. How is it any business of theirs?

But oh, it's a different matter when the elected government tells people what to do! San Francisco wants to bring in mandatory recycling -- and that's government interference! No matter that proper separation of rubbish lowers the costs of disposal as well as protecting the environment. It's intrusion. Yet what the HOA decrees isn't? With considerably less justification?

I must say the San Francisco legislation does seem rather ham-fisted. I think my council's solution involves more carrot and less stick -- most Sydney councils would have a similar system. In my municipality, we are issued one 120-litre (32 US gallons) rubbish bin, which is emptied weekly. Excess rubbish removal must be ordered and paid for. The recycling bin is 240 litres (64 US gallons) and is emptied fortnightly -- it takes paper, steel tins, aluminium cans, glass and recyclable plastics. The identical green waste bin (for garden refuse) is emptied on the alternate fortnight. If the garbos notice improperly sorted waste, they will refuse to empty the bin -- it's then the householder's responsibility to fix it up. There is no need to turn the garbos into the eco-police, but there is a reasonable incentive to sort rubbish properly and minimise landfill waste.